The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned arguments over the sanctity of voting through Electronic Voting Machines and told petitioners, who sought to rely on poll data to claim that the majority of voters don’t trust the devices, that private figures cannot be the basis to distrust EVMs.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta was hearing petitions seeking 100 per cent verification of the EVM votes with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
The bench asked Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who made the submission, about the source of the data. When Bhushan replied that it was a poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Justice Datta said, “Poll! Let’s not believe in these private polls”.
Justice Khanna said, “This type of argument may not be acceptable because there is no data about 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”.
To a query about alternate solutions he was suggesting, Bhushan said one of the ways was to go back to the ballot paper. “Earlier there used to be ballot papers. There can be ballot papers. Most European countries have gone back to back to ballot papers”.
Justice Datta then asked, “What is the population of Germany?” Germany must be about 6 crore, replied Bhushan.
Responding a while later to Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, who appeared for another petitioner, Justice Datta said, “It is a humongous task. Not possible for any European country to conduct. Let’s not draw analogies and comparisons from Germany and other countries. My home state West Bengal has more population than what Mr Bhushan said about Germany’s population. It’s a very small state… We have to repose some trust and confidence in somebody. Of course, they are accountable…but don’t try to bring down the system like this”.
Justice Khanna referred to what had been happening before the EVMs were introduced. “Fortunately, we are now in our sixties. We have seen what used to happen earlier. Have you forgotten that? If you have forgotten that, I am sorry, I have not forgotten”.
Bhushan wondered if it was booth capturing that the judge was referring to. To this, Justice Khanna said, “Forget about booth capturing. What happens when ballot papers are…anyway. Let’s not enter into a debate”.
The bench also told an intervenor who said the EVMs are manufactured by a Public Sector Undertaking and the technical person employed by the PSU is not accountable. “If it is done by the private sector, will you be happy? You will be happy with the private sector manufacturing the machines… If the private sector was manufacturing, you would have come here and said it should not be manufactured by the private sector”.
The court said “As far as when we have to examine whether the EVMs are functioning properly, we will have to go by the data. With regard to what is the total number of votes polled in a particular year on year together and whether they have tallied it with the total number of votes counted later on, in how many cases discrepancies were there? How many cases in which the candidates’ request for counting of the paper slips were ultimately done? How many discrepancies were found in that? That will give us the true picture of whether the EVMs are being manipulated or the chances of manipulation or not. That data they will provide. We will ask them for that data”.
The arguments remained incomplete and will continue on April 18.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 16-04-2024 at 17:54 IST
