Is there any punishment for EVM tampering? Supreme court questions ECI
Last Updated on April 17, 2024 by News Desk
Recently, the supreme court questioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) about the penalties, if any officer/ authority tampers with Electronic Voting Machine (EVMs).
“If there is any manipulation, what is the prescribed punishment? That is a serious matter. There should be a fear that if something wrong is done, there will be consequences,” the court said.
To this, ECI responded that it would be dealt under “the breach of office punishment.”
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta was dealing with a batch of petitions seeking 100% cross verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with EVMs in upcoming elections.
Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for the petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), contended that all VVPAT slips must be tallied with the EVMs instead of tallying only 5 EVMs, which is the current practice. They also suggested voting through ballot papers instead of EVMs.
The court rejected the suggestion and remarked, “We all know what happened when there was ballot papers”
It further mentioned, “From the 2019 elections, the BloombergQuint analysed the data on the ECs website to go statewise and this data was pulled from the website later and there were discrepancies in 373 constituencies,”
The court also emphasised the potential increase in issues and biases if there is human intervention in polling. “Typically, human interventions lead to problems, and human fallibility, including biases, can arise. Machines, generally without human intervention, yield accurate results. However, issues arise when there is human intervention or unauthorised alterations to the software or machines. If you have any suggestions to prevent this, please present them.” The court said.
The court went on inquiring about the prevailing legislations punishing the ones who tampers or manipulates the EVMs. It said that “unless there is fear of stringent punishment, there will always be a possibility of manipulation or tampering with the EVMs.”
Further, it sought clarification on whether CCTV cameras are installed at all polling booths.
The ECI responded that CCTV cameras are installed in 50 percent of polling booths.
The matter is listed to continue on April 18, thursday.
Written by Shagun Behal
