MP Assembly polls: SC reserves order on Kamal Nath's petition on VVPAT

The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its order on a petition filed by senior Congress leader, Kamal Nath seeking proper verification of Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), voter list and others in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.

A two judge bench of the apex court, headed by Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri and also comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan reserved the order. "We are reserving the order," the bench of the top court said.

During the course of hearing, Kapil Sibal, senior lawyer appearing for Kamal Nath, told the apex court that the voter list of Madhya Pradesh should be given in the text format. "The voter list is in the PDF format, and it is very difficult to verify a voter in this format," he added.

Sibal also submitted to the apex court that there are five crore voters in the state of Madhya Pradesh, adding, "it is very difficult to identify a genuine voter". He also told the apex court that there are approximately 68 lakh fake voters in the state.

The advocate for the Election Commission of India (ECI), Vikas Singh submitted to the top court and admitted that there were earlier certain irregularities in the voter list, which was rectified later. "We have also deleted more than a lakh forged voters from the state voter list," he added.

The ECI had on October 04, submitted to the Supreme Court that Kamal Nath's petition regarding discrepancies in the voter list in Madhya Pradesh was based on false evidence. Vikas Singh, had told the apex court that the list available on their website was tweaked which was presented before the court.

On August 10, Kamal Nath filed the petition in the apex court seeking a direction to the ECI for transparency in the Madhya Pradesh polls.

The petition also sought the apex court's intervention demanding a direction to the ECI regarding compulsory cross-verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) vote count with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in the Madhya Pradesh polls.