Delhi municipal polls; Delhi High Court issues notice to Election Commission on AAP’s plea to conduct elections through VVPAT equipped EVMs
According to the petition; only VVPAT-equipped EVMs should be used because it is; otherwise impossible for voters to know whether their vote went to the candidate for whom they voted.
On Thursday, the Delhi High Court sought the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) and State Election Commission’s (SEC) responses to a petition filed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) seeking directions to conduct the upcoming municipal elections in the national capital using Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) equipped with Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) [Aam Aadmi Party (Through Saurabh Bharadwaj MLA) vs State Election Commission and Anr].
Senior Advocate Rahul Mehra; appearing for the Aam Aadmi Party, told the court that, despite the fact that; the elections are only a few weeks away, the SEC has yet to develop a proper infrastructure in accordance with the Supreme Court’s orders.
However, Senior Advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Election Commission of India, challenged the petition’s viability on the grounds that it had already provided the government with over 60,000 M-2 EVMs.
As a result, the Court requested that; the ECI and the SEC inform it whether or not the M-2 EVMs are compatible with the use of VVPATs.
According to the petition, filed by advocate Rakesh Kumar Sinha; the Supreme Court in its decision in Subramanian Swamy vs Election Commission of India held that; the use of EVMs with paper trails is a requirement for free and fair elections.
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