The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, is set to hear a plea advocating for a standardized policy on the verification of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The plea, initiated by former Haryana minister and five-time MLA Karan Singh Dalal, calls for a methodical examination of EVMs to uphold electoral integrity. Justices Dipankar Datta and Manmohan, upon initial review, have directed that the matter be considered alongside similar petitions by the Chief Justice’s bench.
Karan Singh Dalal, along with co-petitioner Lakhan Kumar Singla, both of whom garnered the second-highest votes in their constituencies, have raised concerns over the lack of a clear protocol for inspecting the “burnt memory” or microcontrollers in EVM components—namely the Control Unit, Ballot Unit, Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), and Symbol Loading Unit. They argue that the existing procedures fail to thoroughly assess these components for potential tampering.
The petitioners refer to a precedent set by the Supreme Court in the ‘Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India’ case, which mandated that 5% of EVMs per assembly constituency should be verified by manufacturers’ engineers post-election upon request from candidates finishing second or third. However, they claim the Election Commission (EC) has not established a clear policy following this directive, leaving significant gaps in the EVM verification process.
The current Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) by the EC, according to the petition, only encompasses basic diagnostic tests and mock polls, without a deeper scrutiny of the burnt memory for signs of tampering. Furthermore, the involvement of engineers from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), the EVM manufacturers, is reportedly restricted to counting VVPAT slips during these tests, which the petitioners argue is insufficient for a comprehensive audit.
