The Supreme Court has been moved seeking the review of its April 26, 2024, verdict rejecting the plea seeking 100 per cent cross verification of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) votes with their Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

The petition seeking the review of the April 26 judgment has been moved by one of the petitioners Arun Kumar Agarwal stating that there are mistakes and arrows apparent in the judgment.

The review petition says: “It is not correct to state that the result will be unreasonably delayed (by tallying EVM votes with VVPAT slips), or the manpower required will be the double of that already deployed… Existing CCTV surveillance of counting halls would ensure that manipulation and mischief does not occur in VVPAT slip counting.”

Arun Kumar Agarwal in his review petition has stated that the “electronic voting machines do not allow voters to verify that their votes have been accurately recorded. Furthermore, given their very nature, electronic voting machines are especially vulnerable to malicious changes by insiders such as designers, programmers, manufacturers, maintenance technicians, etc.”

Seeking the review of the April 26 judgment, the petitioner Arun Kumar Agarwal which says votes “counted as recorded” in the EVMs with VVPAT.

“Therefore, in light of the above there are apparent errors on the face of the impugned order dated April 26, 2024 and the impugned judgment is liable to be reviewed,” it added.

By its April 26 judgment, the top court had rejected the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and others plea seeking 100 per cent cross verification of the EVM votes with VVPAT slips and had directed the Election Commission that after the completion of the symbol loading process in the VVPATs undertaken on or after Mat 1, 2024, the symbol loading units shall be sealed and secured in a container and the same shall be kept in the strong rooms along with the EVMs at least for 45 days after the declaration of results.

Finding no infirmity in the conduct of polling using the EVMs, a bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta had asked the Election Commission of India to examine the suggestion for using counting machine for the counting the VVPAT paper slips and whether along with the symbol there could be a bar code for each party.