The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking the use of VVPAT with EVMs in the by-elections in Gurdaspur in Punjab and Vengara in Kerala. The appellant wanted a paper trail of all votes cast.

The petition was filed by a social worker Sabu Stephen, asking for the October 11 by-elections to be changed to VVPAT and that counting of all votes will have to be compared with the paper trail in case of any discrepancy.

If any discrepancy is found, the paper trail data should be considered as final, the appeal contended.

The counting of votes for the elections will be done on October 15.

The issue of use of VVPAT comes to the fore because of complaints that EVMs have been compromised on several occasions and in certain cases it has been documented during demonstrations that even though the button of one candidate was pressed, the VVPAT had spewed out another candidate’s name, adding fuel to the DEVM controversy fire.

—India Legal Bureau