Indian Election Commission rejects claims over EVM error that 'favoured' BJP

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday (Apr 18) informed the Supreme Court that claims and reports of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) malfunctioning were fake.

Some media outlets carried unverified reports that EVM had registered extra votes in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during a mock poll in Kerala's Kasaragod.

While presenting his side, senior deputy election commissioner Nitesh Kumar Vyas told a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, "These news reports are false."

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"We have verified the allegation from the district collector and it appears that they are false. We will submit a detailed report to the court," Vyas added.

The matter came up during the hearing of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). The petitions were filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and others.

The Kerala issue was flagged earlier in the day by Prashant Bhushan, counsel for ADR. He cited a news report also. The bench then asked senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the ECI, to look into the issue.

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The ECI official present in the courtroom explained the working of the EVMs and VVPAT as he said that the manufacturer does not know which button is going to be allotted to which party. The allocation of machines is also not predetermined.

He weighed in on the cross-verification issue saying that there had been no mismatch ever between EVMs and VVPAT slips.

The bench observed during the hearing: "This is electoral process. There has to be sanctity. Let nobody have apprehension that something which is expected is not being done."

(With inputs from agencies)