SC ordered 2% slip audit in 2019 on parties' petition
Supreme Court's decision to hear a plea seeking complete count of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail paper slips in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls has brought back the focus on the Election Commission of India's rationale in limiting the verification to five randomly selected EVMs.
The poll panel has defended its rationale in courts and also found support from experts such as the Indian Statistical Institute which said the random formula was statistically sound. After a petition by over 20 political parties in 2019, SC mandated physical verification of EVM-VVPAT counts in 2% polling booths per constituency.
Of the 20,687 polling stations where the mandatory physical verification of VVPAT slips was conducted on SC orders in 2019, eight cases of mismatch were found, which EC said were mainly due to 'easily explainable human errors'. The mismatch estimated at 0.0004% had no impact on the results in all eight cases, EC maintained.
VVPAT count takes 50-60 minutes per EVM. This sequential physical verification for five EVMs added five more hours to total counting day time. Opposition parties have, however, argued that the sanctity of a fair election outweighed the concern of longer hours or days to declare the result.
VVPAT was first introduced in 2013 to build greater confidence in EVM. The question now is how many VVPAT slips should be tallied to build trust. In 2016, EC mulled over increasing VVPAT slips to be counted. Rounds of discussions were held and auditing 5% found maximum favour but the plan was never
