SC Bench opposes returning to paper ballots saying that EVMs are accurate

The Supreme Court on Tuesday disagreed with the idea of a return to paper ballots to restore the “little man’s” con dence in the electoral process, saying machines give “absolutely accurate results” unless human bias maligns them.

“Human weaknesses, including bias, may lead to a problem. Machines without human intervention would give absolutely accurate results,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna, heading a twojudge Bench, observed.

The court was open to the testing of the “actual performance” of electronic voting machines (EVMs). It said the review should be wholly based on data provided by the Election Commission, and not opinion garnered from private quarters.

The court xed the hearing on Thursday . The Bench, also comprising Justice Dipankar Datta, rejected the idea of returning to paper ballots. “We are in our sixties… We have seen in our lives what happened when it was ballot papers. We have seen the drawbacks of the past,” Justice Khanna said.

The court was hearing separate petitions led by the Association for Democratic Reforms and by Arun Kumar Agarwal highlighting the voter’s fundamental right to information about his vote. The petitioner clari ed they were not attributing malice to the EVMs. Their only issue was that the EVM system did not provide voters with con rmation or con dence about their votes. The VVPAT (Voter Veri able

The court has said that it is open to a review of the actual performance of EVMs, based on Election Commission data.

Paper Audit Trail) machine showed the slip only for seven seconds, after the vote was cast.

“I am not talking about the urbane voter in this courtroom. I am talking about the queues of multitudes who are hustled into the polling booths to press a button and hustled out, not knowing what really happened. Leaving aside the foibles about the past regarding ballot papers, that system had at least given the little man con dence that he had put his little cross across the right party symbol,” senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, for Mr. Agarwal, submitted. “I am unable to con rm my vote. My physical contact with my vote has gone completely,” he said.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan said the voter leaves the booth with no sense of accuracy. Mr. Bhushan suggested three options — revert to paper ballots, give VVPAT paper slips to voters for them to put in the ballot box and nally to make VVPAT screens transparent glass rather than opaque, as it was now.