HC junks plea seeking VVPAT or ballot paper for assembly polls

The Gujarat High Court today dismissed a plea seeking use of either the old ballot papers or only the paper trail-equipped electronic voting machines during the state assembly elections later this year.
The plea was dismissed by a division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi.
Petitioner Reshma Patel, convener of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (which was in the forefront of Patel quota agitation) claimed in her plea that EVMs were not "fully reliable, foolproof, tamper-proof or hacker-proof."
The Election Commission should be asked to replace EVMs with ballot paper, or to ensure Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) for every EVM, she had demanded.

The assembly elections are due in the state later this year.
The plea by Patel had also alleged that the names of thousands of members of a "particular community" were missing from the voters' lists in the 2015 municipal corporation polls.
It had sought the court's direction to the poll panel to prevent this in future.