No 100% VVPAT Count or Paper Ballots: Supreme Court Upholds EVMs and Adds Two Safeguards

The petitioners, attributing no malice to the Election Commission, said that the possibility of manipulating EVMs created suspicion (Khanna J., para 2). In the alternative they asked for a return to paper ballots, for the VVPAT slip to be given to the voter and put in a ballot box, or for 100% counting of VVPAT slips (Khanna J., para 3). They also attacked the tinted VVPAT window and Rule 49MA of the 1961 Rules (Khanna J., para 4). The 2024 General Elections were under way (Datta J., para 8), and N. Chandrababu Naidu had raised verification to 5 EVMs per assembly segment (Khanna J., para 9).

Repeated challenges based on suspicion without cogent material are undesirable (Khanna J., para 16). The programme is burnt into one-time programmable microcontrollers and cannot be altered after delivery, so the fear of tampering to favour a candidate was rejected (Khanna J., paras 20, 42). More than 4 crore VVPAT slips have been tallied with control units; the one mismatch arose from mock poll data not being deleted (Khanna J., paras 58, 60). The voter's fundamental right to an accurately recorded and counted vote cannot be equated with a right to 100% VVPAT counting or physical access to slips (Khanna J., para 69). More manual counting would delay results and invite human error, and paper ballots would undo electoral reforms (Khanna J., paras 70, 72). The tinted window keeps the slip secret and does not breach Rule 49M (Khanna J., para 73). Concurring, Datta J. held that a writ petition resting on mere suspicion that a right could be infringed should not be entertained (Datta J., paras 22, 28). Res judicata applies to writ petitions, and the EVM question must be treated as concluded unless substantial evidence is shown (Datta J., paras 30, 35).