SC asks EC to look into media reports on EVM functioning during mock polling in Kerala

The Supreme Court on Thursday orally asked the Election Commission (EC) to look into media reports suggesting that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) erroneously registered votes in favour of the BJP during mock polling in Kerala’s Kasaragod.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta asked senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing EC, to look into the issue raised by advocate Prashant Bhushan.

Amid the ongoing hearing on pleas seeking directions to the poll body to tally every vote cast through EVMs with Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips, Bhushan drew the attention of the apex court towards a news article published on Tuesday where agents of Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) candidates in Kerala alleged that BJP’s lotus was getting extra votes during the commissioning of the machines for the polling.

At this, Justice Khanna told ECI’s counsel: “Mr. (Maninder) Singh, please check this up.”

The top court is hearing the public interest litigations (PILs) seeking a direction to the EC to mandatorily cross-verify the votes cast in EVMs with VVPAT as opposed to the current practice of counting VVPAT slips of five randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency.