The story so far: The Supreme Court on April 18 reserved its judgment on a batch of petitions seeking directions to tally Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the elections. Asserting that voters have the fundamental right to feel confident about the electoral process, the petitioners have voiced their apprehensions about the possibility of EVMs malfunctioning or being tampered with to register votes in favour of a party.
However, a Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta observed during the proceedings that EVMs give “absolutely accurate results” unless human bias maligns them and further pointed out that an increased voter turnout over the years indicates that the people have faith in the system.
The proceedings in the case and the expected verdict are of immense significance with the Lok Sabha elections currently underway.
Also read: A look inside the electronic voting machine
What are VVPAT machines and how did they evolve?
A VVPAT machine is attached to the ballot unit of the EVM and prints out a slip of paper with the voter’s choice indicated on it as soon as a vote is cast. The printed slip is visible for seven seconds for the voter to verify if their vote was cast correctly before it falls into a compartment kept underneath. Instead of being handed over to the voters, VVPAT slips are used later by the polling officials to to verify votes cast in five randomly selected polling booths.
The idea of VVPAT machines was first proposed in 2010 following a meeting held by the Election Commission of India (ECI) with political parties to discuss the reforms needed to increase transparency in the polling process. After the consultation, the proposal was referred to the ECI’s Technical Expert Committee. The final design of the VVPAT was approved by the committee in February 2013 following field trials conducted in regions like Ladakh, Thiruvananthapuram, Cherrapunjee, East Delhi and Jaisalmer.
BENGALURU – KARNATAKA – 25/03/2018 : People getting hand-on experience of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM s) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), ahead of Karnataka Assembly Elections – 2018, during the EVM-VVPAT awareness programme at Lalbagh west gate, in Bengaluru on March 25, 2018. Photo: K. Murali Kumar
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MURALI KUMAR K
Subsequently, the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 were amended in 2013 to allow VVPAT machines, piloted that year in the by-election for the Noksen assembly seat in Nagaland. After that, the ECI decided to introduce VVPATs in a phased manner with the 2019 General Elections being the first where EVMs were 100% backed by the VVPAT machines.
To determine the percentage of VVPAT machines’ slips that need to be counted to verify the accuracy of a poll, the ECI in 2018 asked the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) to come up with a “mathematically sound, statistically robust and practically cogent sample size for the internal audit of the VVPAT slips with the electronic result of EVMs.” Accordingly, in February 2018, the ECI decided that the VVPAT slips of one randomly selected polling station should be counted per Assembly constituency.
In February 2019, the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, and several other political leaders approached the Supreme Court to direct the ECI to verify 50% of VVPAT slips in each Assembly constituency. In response, the apex electoral body said in an affidavit that if this process were to be adopted, it would delay the announcement of results by at least 6 days. It also highlighted the infrastructural challenges, including the availability of manpower, as hindrances to the implementation of such a proposal.
On April 8, 2019, the top Court ordered the ECI to increase the number of polling booths that undergo VVPAT verification by increasing the same size to five polling stations per Assembly seat. As per existing practice, the five polling stations are selected by a draw of lots by the concerned Returning Officer, in the presence of the candidates.
What are the petitioners demanding?
The Association for Democratic Rights (ADR) and other petitioners have demanded cross-verification of 100% EVM votes with VVPAT paper slips to accord more credibility to the polling process. They have highlighted that the ECI has failed to provide a foolproof procedure to verify that a voter’s vote has been counted as recorded, an indispensable part of voter verifiability. According to them, this can be attributed to the existing practice of a voter not being provided with a copy of their VVPAT slips.
Citing the example of the 2019 general elections, the petitioners pointed out that there were ECI-acknowledged instances of variance in the results captured in the EVMs and VVPATs. “To illustrate, during mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of five randomly selected polling stations, in polling station no. 63 of Mydukur assembly constituency in Andhra Pradesh in the 2019 general elections, the returning officer officially verified that there was a discrepancy of 14 votes in the EVM and VVPAT counts,” the plea asserted.
Similarly, during the proceedings, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan referred to a report by The Quint alleging that there were discrepancies between the votes polled and those reflected in the VVPATs during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He argued that there were “serious discrepancies… in 373 constituencies which went to polls in the first phase of the election.” He further relied on a July 2023 report of the Committee on Government Assurances which stipulated that “the Union government is yet to provide a reply for the last four years after it promised Parliament that it would obtain information from the Election Commission about possible discrepancies between the EVMs and VVPAT tally during the 2019 elections.”
Highlighting that there exists a risk of manipulation, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan pointed out that both EVMS and VVPATs have a “programmable chip” and that the ECI has previously denied sharing their “source code” on the ground that they constitute the intellectual property of the manufacturers. The Court was further apprised that the EVMs are assembled by two Public Sector Undertakings — the Electronics Corporation of India Limited and Bharat Electronics Limited, which have several members of the BJP as their directors.
Considering that the Lok Sabha elections are already underway, the senior counsel suggested that the easiest thing for the ECI to do is to let the light in the VVPAT screen remain lit throughout the voting time (as opposed to the present practice of keeping the light lit for 7 seconds) so that the voter can see the slip cutting and falling into the box kept below.
How has the Election Commission responded?
The ECI said that it has matched EVM votes with more than 4 crore VVPAT slips and that there have been no discrepancies recorded so far. Countering claims of tampering, it asserted that it is impossible to manipulate EVMs “at any stage.”
“Votes are registered in the control unit only after receiving the confirmation from VVPAT about the print and fall of the VVPAT paper slips… There is a ‘fall sensor’ in the VVPAT. In case the slip is not cut or does not fall into the ballot box, the VVPAT shows ‘fall error’ and no vote is recorded in the control unit,” the poll body elucidated. It, however, acknowledged that “differences in count, if any, have always been traceable to human errors like non-deletion of mock poll votes” from the control unit of the EVM or the VVPAT.
Opposing the petitioners’ demand for 100% cross-verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips, it pointed out that the proposal was a “regressive thought and tantamount to going back to the days of manual voting using ballot system.” “On an average, 1,000 VVPAT slips are required to be counted per polling station… The small size and special nature of the paper make the slips sticky. Manual counting of VVPAT slips is cumbersome at every step. The process cannot be expedited or hurried,” it said.
Notably, the ECI rejected claims that EVMs registered extra votes in favour of the BJP during a mock poll in Kerala. During the proceedings, Mr. Bhushan told the Court that a report by Manorama Online pointed out that the ruling Left Democratic Front in the State and the United Democratic Front had submitted complaints to the district collector stating that at least four of the EVMs had erroneously recorded extra votes in favour of the BJP.
The Court was also informed that the manufacturers of the EVMs did not know which button would be allocated to which candidate, or the constituency to which the machine would be sent. Seven days before the polls, images of symbols are uploaded on the 4 MB flash memory of the VVPAT machine in the presence of candidates or their representatives, it said.
Dismissing allegations that there were instances of mismatch between the votes polled and those reflected in the VVPATs during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Commission underscored that such discrepancies were only concerning the live voter turnout data uploaded on its website and had nothing to do with the EVMs. It pointed out that such data was published on its website on a real-time basis by taking inputs from the presiding officers of polling stations.
“There was no mismatch between the data of votes polled as per EVMs which is recorded in Form 17C and the data of results which is declared as per Form 20,” it claimed.
What has the Supreme Court said so far?
During the proceedings, the Court chided the petitioners saying that “it was not good to be over-suspicious about everything” and that attempts should not be made to “bring down the system.”
“Mismatch between EVMs, VVPAT and register entries at a polling booth could happen because of a mix of factors. There are times when people sign in to the register and enter the poll booths but do not press the EVM. There could be similar other reasons,” it reasoned.
The Bench further rejected suggestions to revert to the ballot paper system by underscoring that the electoral process in India was a “humongous task.” It also hinted at instances of booth capturing to critique such a practice.
Retorting to Mr. Bhushan’s submission that a majority of people in India do not trust EVMs according to the CSDS-Lokniti pre-poll survey, Justice Datta said that the Bench will not “believe in these private polls.” Concurring, Justice Khanna added, “This type of argument may not be acceptable because there is no data with regard to that. A private poll will not be able to… It’s possible somebody else will take out a poll to the contrary. Let’s not go into all that.”
However, the Bench also flagged the trust deficit between the voters and the poll body by observing, “There seems to be some disconnect between what you are telling us and what is available in the public domain. That needs to be bridged.” It also highlighted the need for more stringent punishment for election manipulations and misconduct by polling officers but clarified that such a reform was solely with the Parliament’s remit.
What do experts have to say?
According to former IAS officer K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, the ECI’s sample size of “five EVMs per Assembly constituency” does not conform to the fundamental principles of statistical sampling and leads to high margins of error. “…the ECI has not specified the ‘population’ to which its sample size relates. It has not explained how it arrived at its sample size. It has maintained silence about the ‘next steps’ in the event of a mismatch between the EVM count and the VVPAT count in the chosen sample, and it has glossed over reported cases of mismatch. A system of VVPAT-based audit of EVMs in which these three vital issues have been left vague or unaddressed is categorically unacceptable,” he wrote in The Hindu.
Backing the proposal for 100% cross-verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi said that it is essential to restore people’s confidence in the electoral process. He wrote on social media platform X that “[Counting all VVPAT slips] won’t take more than a day.”