MCD Polls: Which EVM units VVPAT compatible, High Court asks Delhi EC

The Delhi High Court asked Delhi State Election Commission to inform which of the EVM units procured by it for the upcoming MCD polls are compatible with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)

The Delhi High Court Thursday asked Delhi State Election Commission to inform which of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) units procured by it for the upcoming MCD polls are compatible with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

Justice Rekha Palli granted 10 days to the State Election Commission to file its response on this aspect and listed for further hearing on April 29 the plea by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) seeking to conduct the upcoming MCD polls with EVMs which are compatible with VVPAT.

Advocate Sumeet Pushkarna, appearing for the State Election Commission (SEC), said that the state authority is dependent on the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the supply of EVMs and it has procured on loan over 29 thousand control units and over 32 thousand ballot units.

The control unit and ballot unit are the two components of an EVM.

The answering respondent (SEC) has procured 29,532 Control Units (Series No: J, N, S & G) and 32,028 Ballot Units (Series No: J, N, S, C & M) from 12 districts of Bihar as allocated by ECI. It took about one month to transport these EVMs to the Commission, said the affidavit filed by SEC.

"The Election Commission of India has been kind enough in providing the EVMs (M2 without VVPAT in the present case), on a loan basis to the answering respondent, as it does for other State Election Commissions in the country," it added.

In the affidavit, the SEC said that even though non-VVPAT machines are used for local body elections in India, it has no objections if the upcoming municipal elections are to be conducted using VVPATs subject to the availability of the required machinery with the ECI.

Senior advocate Rahul Mehra, appearing for the political party, submitted that certain models of the units procured by SEC are not compatible with VVPAT and it should be disclosed as to how many VVPAT compatible machines are there across the country.

The lawyer for SEC said that when the political parties were earlier informed about the use of the EVMs without VVPAT, no objections were raised by them.

Earlier, the court had asked the ECI to inform whether the VVPAT system can be used only with M-3 EVMs and if they can be made available to Delhi SEC for conducting the municipal elections.

The counsel for State EC had submitted that VVPAT is used only in General elections and Legislative Assembly polls and as a matter of policy, the EC is using M-2 EVMs Pan India for municipal polls.

While M-2 EVM stands for 2nd generation Electronic Voting Machines, M-3 is 3rd generation Electronic Voting Machines.

AAP, through MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, has said in the plea that the EVMs without VVPAT machines make it almost impossible to ascertain the accuracy of the machines and rule out any tampering.

The use of the old M-2 EVMs without VVPAT is in contravention of the express directions issued by the Supreme Court in Subramanian Swamy vs Election Commission of India, (2013), which emphatically recognised that the incorporation and implementation of a system of paper trail in EVMs is an indispensable requirement of a free and fair elections, the plea filed through advocate Rakesh Kumar Sinha said.

It has alleged that the decision of the State EC to hold the MCD Elections 2022 with M-2 EVMs without VVPAT is manifestly wrong and amounts to a colourable exercise of power.

This raises genuine apprehension about the sanctity of the entire electoral process, it has said, adding that this decision has been conveyed in the reply to the party's March 2, 2022 representation made to the authorities to use the EVMs compatible with the VVPATs.

As such the respondent no. 1 (State EC) has apparently violated the constitutional guarantee of elections being free, fair, and impartial, it alleged.