Won't interfere in Gujarat election, says Supreme Court rejecting Congress EVM-VVPAT plea
The Supreme Court turned down the Congress's plea seeking that the Election Commission be directed to count 25 per cent of votes cast in the Gujarat election with VVPAT slips.
In Short
- Supreme Court refuses to interfere in Gujarat elections, junk Congress plea
- Direct EC to verify 25 per cent of Gujarat votes with VVPAT slips, Congress prayed to SC.
- Yesterday, Congress called the EC a 'puppet' of the PMO.
Just two days before the Election Commission counts the votes cast in the Gujarat Assembly election, the Congress approached the Supreme Court praying that the poll body be directed to tally 25 per cent of all ballots in Gujarat with voter slips printed by the Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
The apex court, however, turned down the plea, refusing to interefere in the Gujart election. Senior Congress leaders and lawyers Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Kapil Sibal represented the Congress at the court.
This comes a day after the Congress launched an unprecedented attack on the Election Commission, accusing it of being a "puppet" of the Prime Minister's Office. The Congress's accusations were in reference to its allegations that PM Narendra Modi violated the model code of conduct by conducting a roadshow outside the Ahmedabad polling centre where he voted yesterday's in Gujarat second phase of voting.
The poll body had earlier directed its Chief Electoral Officer in Gujarat to take action over an interview Congress vice-president gave to a Gujarati media channel. Allegations were raised that Gandhi's interview, which aired after campaigning deadline for the Gujarat polls ended, was a violation of the model code of conduct.
VVPAT machines print a paper slip that shows the voter whom she cast the ballot for. While the voter can observe the slip in the polling booth, she cannot take it away from the voting centre. The slip is instead stored in a compartment.
The Election Commission, if it chooses to, can then tally the slips from a particular Electronic Voting Machine's (EVM's) compartment and tally the paper records with the votes cast in the machine.
First introduced in a civic election in Maharashtra, VVPATs were deployed in each and every voting centre in Gujarat as well as Himachal Pradesh, which too went to the poll in this cycle of state elections. In September this year, the Election Commission announced its decision to conduct all future elections with the EVM-VVPAT combination. This was in response to allegations of EVM tampering that were raised in the days following the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election.
The Congress's plea in unprecedented since the use of VVPAT in an entire state election is happening only for the second time in India. The first time was during the Goa Assembly election earlier this year.
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(This story has been updated with background details and the news of Supreme Court rejecting Congress's plea)
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