'Don't erase, reload data': Supreme Court to EC on plea seeking verification of EVMs
The top court bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta told EC not to erase the data and reload the data, and let someone examine it.
The Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission of India to file its reply within 15 days on a plea seeking directions to the poll panel to include the checking and verification of burnt memory of EVMs in their Standard Operating Procedures, India Today reported.
HT cannot independently verify this information.
According to the report, the top court bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta told EC not to erase the data and reload the data, and let someone examine it.
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) had filed the plea. During the hearing, ADR's counsel Prashant Bhushan said that the organisation sought the procedure that the EC needed to adopt as per the Supreme Court judgment in consonance with their standard operating protocol.
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“What we want is that somebody should examine the software and the hardware of the EVMs in order to see if the software and hardware has any element of manipulation or not,” Bhushand argued.
CJI Khanna asked that once the votes are counted, will the paper trail be there or taken out?
"They are supposed to save EVMs too, the paper trail is supposed to be there," Bhushan responded.
According to the India Today report, the apex court said,"We didn’t want that till counting there’s any disturbance (through earlier order) At the same time, we wanted (to see) if someone had any doubt... We wanted not that EVM should be tampered with, we wanted that maybe engineering can say if there has been any tampering."
What EC said in its earlier judgment
According to a PTI report, the top court in its earlier judgement had mandated that five per cent of the EVMs per assembly constituency should undergo verification by the engineers from EVM manufacturers after the election results are announced.
It was said by the top court that the verification process would be conducted upon a written request from the candidates securing the second or third-highest votes.