New Delhi, 25 January 2025: The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, will review a petition from former Haryana minister and five-time MLA Karan Singh Dalal, demanding a policy for verifying electronic voting machines (EVMs).
During Friday’s proceedings, a bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Manmohan referred the plea and similar petitions to the Chief Justice’s bench. “This can go before the Chief Justice’s bench,” the judges stated.
Dalal, joined by co-petitioner Lakhan Kumar Singla, who secured the second-highest votes in their respective constituencies, called for the Election Commission of India (ECI) to establish a protocol for verifying the microcontrollers or “burnt memory” of EVMs, including their four components: control unit, ballot unit, VVPAT, and symbol loading unit.
Citing a Supreme Court judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms vs. Union of India, the petition accentuated an earlier directive that required 5% of EVMs per constituency to undergo verification after results were declared. This verification process, carried out by engineers from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), was mandated only upon written requests from candidates placed second or third in the election.
The petition criticized the ECI for failing to implement such a policy, alleging that the current standard operating procedure (SoP) includes only basic diagnostic checks and mock polls. It argued that the existing methods neglect comprehensive scrutiny of the burnt memory to detect potential tampering.
“The engineers’ role is limited to counting VVPAT slips during the mock poll, which does not ensure a thorough integrity check,” the petitioners asserted.
Dalal and Singla clarified that their plea does not contest the election outcomes but aims to ensure a robust mechanism for safeguarding EVM integrity. They urged the Supreme Court to order the ECI to complete the verification framework within eight weeks.
Meanwhile, separate election petitions challenging results are pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In the last Haryana assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured 48 of 90 seats.
