The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that the matter pertaining to Electronic voting machine (EVM) data cross-checking against voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) records will be taken up after 2 weeks after the senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before the Apex Court.
It was during Special bench by Justice Sanjiv Khanna along with Justice Bela Trivedi and Justice MM Sundresh,that the Senior lawyer Kapil Sibal spoke about the matter.
Kapil Sibal requested that matter may be heard next week on Tuesday. The petitions were otherwise supposed to come up today but were not listed today since Justice Khanna was heading a Special Bench.
Sr Adv Gopal Sankarayanarayan added to the request made by Sibal pointing out that the Lok Sabha elections were nearing.
Justice Khanna however said that the court is aware of the gravity of situation but cannot do much about it.
Justice Khanna added that the Court had thought that the hearing could be fastened but the matter may be struck out from the list now.
The judge however said that in the manner cases are being listed, it would come next to next week.
During the hearing, Justice Khanna to Advocate on Record Prashant Bhushan reiterated that the matter would come up next to next week and sufficient time would be given to the counsel.
A bench led by Justice BR Gavai, two weeks back issued notice on another petition seeking 100% verification of VVPAT slips.
The petitioners, which includes NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, seek that all VVPATs be verified, instead of the current practice of the ECI to randomly verify 5 EVMs per assembly segment.
The petitioners also seek measures to ensure that the voters’ votes are “recorded as cast” and “counted as recorded”.