The Supreme Court on Friday has scheduled a hearing in January 2025 for a petition seeking a policy for the verification of electronic voting machines.
The petition was filed by former Haryana minister and 5-time MLA Karan Singh Dalal, along with one Lakhan Kumar Singla.
The bench hearing the case will be led by Justice Dipankar Datta, with the hearing set to take place in the week beginning January 20, 2025.
Earlier, a bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar had decided that the new plea, which follows previous requests for similar reliefs, would be heard by a bench headed by Justice Datta. The petitioners are seeking to implement a protocol for the examination of EVMs in compliance with the Supreme Court’s earlier April 2024 ruling.
In April, the Supreme Court had rejected the demand for returning to paper ballots, terming the suspicion around EVM manipulation “unfounded.” The court affirmed that the electronic voting devices were secure and eliminated issues like booth capturing and bogus voting.
However, it allowed unsuccessful candidates securing second and third places to request verification of microcontroller chips embedded in 5% of EVMs per assembly constituency, provided they submitted a written request and paid a fee.
Dalal and Singla, having secured second-highest votes in their constituencies, are now seeking to ensure the implementation of this provision. They have asked the Election Commission (EC) to establish a protocol for examining the “burnt memory” or microcontroller of EVM components, which include the control unit, ballot unit, Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), and the symbol loading unit. They argue that the current standard operating procedure issued by the EC only involves basic diagnostic tests and mock polls, without addressing the critical issue of verifying the burnt memory for possible tampering.
While their petition does not challenge the election results, the petitioners have emphasized the need for a robust EVM verification process to prevent future doubts over the integrity of the machines.
The petitioners have urged the Supreme Court to direct the Election Commission to complete the verification exercise within 8 weeks. The election results themselves remain under challenge in separate petitions filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Courts.
In the most recent Haryana elections, the BJP emerged victorious with 48 out of 90 assembly seats.
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