SC to hear Kamal Nath's plea for random verification of VVPAT machines in MP polls

The Supreme Court today agreed to hear next week a plea of senior Congress leader Kamal Nath seeking random verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud considered the submission of lawyer Varun Chopra that the plea be listed for urgent hearing and said that it would come up next week.

The leader, in his plea, has sought a direction to the Election Commission to randomly verify VVPAT slips with EVM votes at 10 per cent of polling stations in every constituency.

Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha said that the plea has also sought a direction to the poll panel to publish the voter list in "text format as per rules" and to expeditiously decide all complaints before final publication of the voter list.

"Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction to the Respondents (Election Commission) to issue directions for conducting VVPAT verification at least 10 per cent randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency/ assembly segment to ensure free and fair elections," the plea said.

It also said the display time for the VVPAT slip for the voters should be 15 seconds instead of the current seven seconds