MP polls: Kamal Nath seeks random check of VVPATs

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on August 17 a writ petition filed by senior Congress leader Kamal Nath seeking random verification of voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. A three-judge bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud directed the petition to be listed on August 17. The petition wants the Election Commission to conduct VVPAT verification in at least 10% randomly selected polling stations in each Assembly constituency/segment to ensure free and fair elections.

In his petition, Mr Kamalnath said he along with senior leaders from the state of MP submitted a detailed representation to the Election Commission on June 3, highlighting that 60 lakh duplicate, repeat, multiple, illegal, invalid, false etc. entries/voters in the electoral rolls of MP for Assembly polls 2018 and requested indulgence of EC for addressing the same. It was also pointed out that the EC had recently dropped more than 24 lakh voters from the voter list published in January 2018 for the state of MP., and it would not be out of place to mention that the EC had admitted 2,37,234 photo entries found to be suspicious/ unclear/blank photos.

He said the EC had said that only 5.88 Lakh units out of requisite total of 16.15 Lakh EVMs with VVPAT units have been delivered till date and that there was delay in manufacturing and procuring VVPAT machines. He said random checking of VVPAT machines are necessary as if the candidate is not satisfied with the counting process or the results on request, there should be a counting of paper trails immediately.  Hence he prayed for a direction for the random use of VVPAT units in the ensuing assembly polls.