Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking review of its judgement rejecting plea for 100 per cent verification of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) votes with their Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.
The latest statement of the Congress leader came a day after he called EVMs a ‘black box’ in India that cannot be scrutinised, in the wake of a media report claiming EVM hacking at Mumbai North West parliamentary constituency in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.
He said the goal is to leave no one behind and let everyone fully participate in the electoral process.
Despite the commission's lofty claims, the Election Commission of Pakistan's (ECP) new Election Management System (EMS) failed, he said.
"Elections through ballot paper are necessary to restore the faith in democracy,” said the Samajwadi Party president.
The Commission said the VVPAT verification will be done after the counting of votes and not before.
On Tuesday, 22 Opposition parties demanded that VVPAT slips at randomly selected five polling booths be counted first, and if any discrepancy occurs, then VVPAT slips be tallied for the entire assembly segments.
The bench, comprising of justices Arun Mishra and MR Shah, refused to entertain the PIL filed by Tech 4 All, a Chennai based organisation, observing that a larger bench, headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, has already dealt with the matter and passed an order.
Last night, BSP candidate Afzal Ansari sat on a protest outside the strongroom in Ghazipur -- where EVMs are being kept -- to prevent them from being transported out in a vehicle.
“I'm really impressed with the electronic voting machines (EVMs). We don't have those in Australia. I think even with paper ballots which we have in Australia, it's always a case where there's a risk to integrity in any system. VVPAT is actually a good development,” said Sidhu.
