The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to modify its April 8 order which directed the Election Commission (EC) to increase random matching of Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to five polling booths per Assembly segment in the Lok Sabha elections, and dismissed the review plea of 21 Opposition leaders seeking that it be raised to 50 per cent.

As soon as hearing started, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi asked senior advocate AM Singhvi, who is representing the Opposition, during the hearing, “How much counting do you want now?”.

“We have asked for 50 per cent, but we can settle for 33 per cent or 25 per cent verification.

My Lords had agreed with our plea in principle, but increased the counting from one VVPAT to only five. My Lords, 50 per cent was not ‘viable’ at this point of time during the Lok Sabha elections,” Singhvi submitted.

The hearing that lasted barely a minute, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi responded, “We decline to review our order.”

After the Supreme Court junked their plea, a delegation of Opposition leaders led by TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and other election commissioners and urged to protect democracy and bring transparency in electoral process. “The EC’s job is to conduct elections in transparent manner, what we are asking for is. They have agreed to some points and they are working. Let them work, again we’ll decide what to do,” he said. “We respect the Supreme Court’s order...But the party will not give up and continue its fight for transparency in the election process in the country. It’s absolutely critical for the EC to work transparently to ensure free and fair elections,” Naidu said in a statement.

Earlier, during the hearing, Singhvi said the apex court had increased the random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs to five polling booths per Assembly segment and they are now seeking that it should be increased to 25 per cent at least. “It will be for the satisfaction of confidence building measures,” Singhvi told the Bench also comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna. TDP chief Naidu, NC leader Farooq Abdullah, CPI parliamentarian D Raja and AAP MP Sanjay Singh, were present in the courtroom when the SC rejected the plea.

Citing issues with electronic voting machines (EVM) in the first few phases of polling for the Lok Sabha election, 21 Opposition parties including TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah, CPI leader D Raja and Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi had filed a review petition in the Supreme Court demanding verification of 50 per cent EVMs using Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

The petition claimed that after the first phase of polling, in many cases, EVMs were found to be defective and faulty. “It has been reported that in some cases where voters would vote for one party, EVMs would record their vote having been cast for another party,” the review petition said.

The EC has consistently maintained that the glitches experienced in the first three phases of the seven-phase election are within acceptable limits in terms of number of defects. The poll body at present matches VVPAT slips of 4,125 EVMs under the “one EVM per Assembly segment” guideline. Following the court order, the Election Commission will have to count the VVPAT slips of five times as many machines in each constituency, or that of 20,625 EVMs.

Reacting after the SC ruling, Deputy Election Commissioner Sudeep Jain spoke to the media, saying the Opposition also demanded stricter guidelines to be implemented by the EC regarding verification of votes. “There is no doubt about the integrity of EVMs. Not a single EVM have recorded wrongly. Review petition had no new facts. We are happy with the Supreme Court order. It had examined all aspects and said five VVPATs will have to be counted instead of one. EVMs and VVPATs are perfect and we have no doubt they are tamper-proof,” Jain said.

“Counting of five VVPATs will delay overall counting by five hours. It takes an hour to count one VVPAT, with four more it will take another four hours... The election results may be out on May 23 night or 24 morning,” he said.