The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday gave clarifications to the queries by the Supreme Court on the constituency wise programming of EVMs and VVPATs for the casting of votes and the printing of VVPAT slips in the order of the candidates in each Lok Sabha constituency.

A bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta queried the Elevation Commission official relating to the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs including whether the micro controllers fitted in them are reprogrammable.

The bench among other issues sought clarity from the poll panel officials whether the micro controller is installed in the controlling unit or the VVPAT and the flash memory of the microcontrollers in EVMs cannot be reprogrammed.

The poll panel official responded, “All three units, ballot units, VVPATs and the chip… all have their own micro controllers and these micro controllers are housed in secured unauthorised access detection module and it cannot be accessed. All the micro controllers are one time programmable. It is burned when inserted so can never be changed. For symbol loading we have two manufacturers, one is ECI and Bharat Electronics.”

The top court said that it would consider passing directions to strengthen the EVMs system since going back to ballot paper was out of the question.

“Let us see what can be done if any safeguards are needed, we will see what is needed to strengthen the current system (EVMs),” said the bench.

Earlier in the morning, the bench had said it needs clarification on certain aspects as there was some confusion over the answers given by the ECI to ‘frequently asked questions’ (FAQs) about EVMs and official to be present in court at 02.00 pm to clear its queries.

The petitions sought cross verification by the voters of votes cast by them as “counted as recorded” in the EVMs with VVPAT.

Currently, VVPAT slips of five randomly selected EVMs in every Assembly segment are verified.

The Supreme Court had on April 18 reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions led by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking 100 per cent cross verification of the votes exercised through the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) with that of the printed slips generated by the attached Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), as Election Commission of India (ECI) had defended the integrity of the electronic voting system, and asserting that it was not prone to any external interference or manipulations.

Reserving the verdict after a hearing spread over two days (April 16 and 18), the top court had said that everything cannot be suspected and the good work done by the poll panel should be appreciated.

The bench had observed that “Everything can’t be suspected. Please also appreciate if they (Election Commission) have done something good. We heard you because we are also concerned. Does everything have to be explained to you?”

The bench had further said, “You need not understand every technical element. Voter has to be satisfied with the explanation given by the ECI. The Evidence Act also says official acts are normally presumed to be done validly.”