EVMs Non-Tamperable, Demand For 100% VVPAT Verification ‘Regressive’: Election Commission Tells Supreme Court

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has staunchly defended electronic voting machines (EVM) as ‘non-tamperable’, both owing to technological measures and strict administrative and security procedures designed by the commission. In a recent affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the commission has stated – “The electronic voting machines are non-tamperable, both due to technological measures, and also due to strict administrative and security procedures laid out by ECI, whereby no access to EVM/VVPAT is allowed to any unauthorised person. Hence, these are protected from any tampering or manipulation whether before the polls, or during the polls, or after the polls, in storage or transportation from manufacturer to the state or district or vice versa, or when transported from one state to another.” The election commission has opposed a plea seeking complete verification of EVM data against voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) records, saying that it was yet another attempt to cast doubt over the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs on ‘vague and baseless’ grounds. Their recent affidavit was filed in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by the non-governmental organisation Association for Democratic Reforms, which is currently being heard by a bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna. In their reply, the election commission has argued that counting all VVPAT paper slips manually, as suggested, would not only be labour and time-intensive, but also be prone to ‘human error’ and ‘mischief’. This would essentially be a retrogression to the paper ballot system, the commission has alleged – “Manual counting of this scale will also be prone to human error and mischief, leaving aside the drudgery of days of counting small slips of paper potent with possibilities of mischievous false narratives on social media, round after round of counting across the country…The petition is essentially suggesting going back to paper ballot system.” Besides praying for a more robust system of cross-verification between EVM and VVPAT tallies, the petitioner has also asked for a declaration by the court that every voter has the fundamental right to verify that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’, praying for directions to affect appropriate changes to enforce this ‘fundamental right’. No such fundamental right exists, the election commission has categorically said in its affidavit. The poll panel has also disputed the petitioner’s claim that its recent plea sought to give full effect to the purport and object of the 2013 judgement in Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, in which the Supreme Court held ‘paper trail’ to be an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections and directed the ECI to introduce the VVPAT mechanism - “The petitioner has incorrectly relied on the ratio of Subramaniam Swamy, which is not applicable in the present case, because this court has not given any direction for cross verification of the count in EVMs with VPATs. The petition was only about the introduction of paper trail to facilitate the voter to verify their vote in the form of VVPAT slip for fullest transparency in the system. In other words, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail or VVPAT is essentially introduced for the purpose of the voter to verify the vote cast in the form of a VVPAT slip at the time of voting in the polling station, and not with the objective of cross-verification or counting of slips at a later stage.” The commission has further pointed out that in 2019, in response to a ruling of the Supreme Court on a plea filed by 21 opposition leaders including former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, the number of random polling stations in each assembly constituency or each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency subject to mandated verification of paper audit trail (PAT) slips was enhanced from 1 to 5. The present system of random verification of five VVPATs per assembly constituency or segment achieved a state of 'near-certainty', the commission has told the court, relying on the margin of sampling error calculated by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) - “The Indian Statistical Institute recommended that undertaking slip verification for 479 EVMs and VVPATs was sufficient to indicate a confidence level of 4 Sigma or 99.9936 percent…The prevalent practice of testing of five randomly chosen EVM-VVPAT systems per assembly constituency or segment translates to a total of 20,600 randomly chosen systems. This is far beyond the recommendation of the ISI, and the Election Commission of India’s own earlier practice of verification of one system per assembly constituency or segment which in itself was much in excess to the statistically recommended figure. As per the present sampling mandate of five randomly chosen EVM-VVPAT...

EVMs Non-Tamperable, Demand For 100% VVPAT Verification ‘Regressive’: Election Commission Tells Supreme Court

Awstika Das

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