On the 3rd of May, the Supreme Court (SC) finally agreed to listen to a review petition by 21 opposition parties for verification of the 50 % Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) using Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT.)
Earlier this month, the SC refused to listen to verify all the EVMs and said it would verify only VVPATs. While agreeing to review the petition, a bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta also agreed to have an open court hearing for this case.
Led by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, the opposition parties asked the SC to recall the order it passed on the 8th of April. The petitioners also said the EVMs being used in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections are defective and should be replaced.
While the SC agreed to hear the plea, it did not when the hearing will be heard. The tentative date for the next hearing is going to be sometime next week. Filed by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Sanghvi, the plea, filed after the conclusion of the third phase of polls, said, “The petitioners submit that the aforesaid increase is not sufficient and will not make any substantial difference to the situation that existed prior to the passing of the impugned order.”
According to the petitioners, a majority of the EVMs stopped functioning properly after the first phase of the elections ended. The review petition said, in most cases, people could see that after they voted, the slip was cast to another person.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the review petition sometime next week.
Stay tuned for more updates.
