SC reserves judgment in EVM-VVPAT case after seeking certain clarifications from ECI

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved its judgment in the matter relating to 100 per cent verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slip after seeking certain clarification from the Election Commission of India.

After hearing the arguments, the court said, "answers have been given," as reported by Live Law.

Last week also the Bench reserved its verdict on a batch of public interest litigations (PILs) in the matter and cautioned against suspecting everything regarding EVMs.

The apex court verbally observed that it would be wrong to assume that foreign countries are more advanced than India.

The VVPAT is a mechanism that ensures that voters are given visual confirmation that their vote has been cast. Paper slips show in a display on the VVPAT machine with the candidate’s serial number, name, and party symbol for seven seconds so that the voter can verify their vote.

A petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and activist Arun Kumar Agarwal seek counting all VVPAT slips.

First introduced in 2014, the VVPAT system was trialled in that year's general elections, with the system seeing widespread usage in the 2017 Goa Assembly elections. The VVPAT-EVM combo was used across all the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies in the 2019 general elections.