Mitali Palnitkar
Published on: March 3, 2022 at 18:22 IST
A Writ Petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking an increase in randomly selected Polling stations for the purpose of mandatory verification of VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) paper slips in each Assembly Constituency/Segment.
The Petition was drafted by Advocate Raj Kumar and was filed by Advocate Binay Kumar Das.
RTI Activist Rakesh Kumar sought strict compliance with the Supreme Court direction in N Chandrababu Naidu & Ors v Union of India and Anr, wherein guidelines were issued for mandatory verification of VVPAT slips out of five randomly selected Polling stations after completing final round of counting votes recorded in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
Relief was sought for increasing the number of randomly selected Polling stations from 5 to 25 and/or proportionately in each Assembly Constituency/Segment.
The Petition stated that this would ensure transparency in counting votes during elections. Also, it would give greater satisfaction to the society and it would have faith in the system of voting.
Kumar contended that when the candidates or their agents come to know about the outcome of election during last round of counting votes, they do not wait for counting VVPAT slips of the randomly selected Polling stations.
The Plea stated that the election process is the execution of Free Speech of the voters for selecting their prospective Government. However, the lacunae in the process of counting votes that is the VVPAT paper slips prejudices their Fundamental Right of Free Speech and causes grave injury to the citizens of India.
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