“Blindly distrusting any…”: The Supreme Court urges “trust, harmony” in the EVM-VVPAT controversy
Rejecting petitions for full cross-verification of votes cast with electronic voting machines (EVM) through Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines, the Supreme Court noted that it is not advisable to take any part of the system for granted as this can breed unjustified suspicion. Judges Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta’s bench noted that “democracy is all about striving to build harmony and trust between all institutions” as they rejected pleas in the case.
Two judges rendered different but in agreement rulings. While keeping an impartial viewpoint is essential when assessing organizations or systems, mistrusting any part of the system out of hand can lead to unjustified skepticism. Judge Datta made a comment. In order to guarantee the system’s legitimacy and efficacy and to provide space for significant adjustments, a critical but constructive approach informed by logic and evidence should be adopted,” he continued.
After symbols are fed into electronic voting machines in strong rooms, the Supreme Court ordered the Election Commission to store and seal the units used to load the symbols for a period of forty-five days. On the request of the runners-up and third-place contenders, the supreme court additionally permitted the engineers of the EVM makers to confirm the microcontroller of the devices following the announcement of the results. The court noted that the microcontroller can be verified seven days following the results’ announcement.
A fixed amount must be paid by the nominee. Refunds will be given if it is discovered that EVM were tampered with.The court was asked by three petitioners to order the authorities to give VVPAT slips to every voter and count every vote cast from ballot boxes.Justice Khanna declared, “We have rejected all of them.” Senior attorney Prashant Bhushan claims that the Supreme Court ordered that ballots with barcodes should be examined to determine whether or not they may be mechanically tallied by machines.
