The Supreme Court said on Tuesday it will hear on April 16 a batch of pleas seeking cross-verification of the votes cast with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

The VVPAT is an independent vote verification system which enables an elector to see whether his vote was cast correctly. It generates a paper slip which can be viewed by the voter. It is kept in a sealed cover and can be opened in case of a dispute.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, which could not take up the petitions related to Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), said it will consider all pleas in the matter for hearing on next Tuesday.

The seven-phase Lok Sabha polls will begin on April 19.

The top court had said on April 3 it would hear next week the plea filed by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) along with other matters, after advocate Prashant Bhushan sought an urgent hearing.

On April 1, the top court had sought responses from the Election Commission and the Centre on a plea by activist Arun Kumar Agrawal seeking a complete count of VVPAT slips in polls as opposed to the current practice of tallying slips from only five randomly selected EVMs from each assembly segment comprising a parliamentary constituency.

Both the pleas will now be taken up for hearing on April 16.The ADR has sought the court’s direction to the poll panel and the Centre to ensure the voters are able to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been “counted as recorded”.

The petition has sought matching the count in EVMs with votes that have been verifiably “recorded as cast” and to ensure that the voter is able to verify through VVPAT slip that his vote, as recorded on the paper slip, has been “counted as recorded”.