Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 29
The Election Commission today defended before the Supreme Court its current system of random counting of the VVPAT slips from one polling booth per Assembly segment, contending it was “found to be most suitable” after due studies and tests.
In an affidavit filed in the top court, the poll panel said: “Any further increase in the sample size of verification will lead to very negligible gain in the confidence level, which currently is way above 99.9936 per cent.”
Pointing out that polling was scheduled to commence from April 11, 2019, it said to seek to alter the system at this stage might not be feasible and increasing the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) verification level as demanded by Opposition leaders shall enlarge the time required for counting to about six days.
Increased VVPAT slip counting will require extensive training and capacity building of election officials in the field and substantial increase of such officials will be required for deployment in the field, it submitted.
The top court had on Monday asked the EC to file an affidavit detailing the possible difficulties if the VVPAT verification was increased from the present level of one in each assembly segment for the upcoming Lok Sabha and assembly polls.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi is seized of a PIL by Opposition leaders Chandrababu Naidu (TDP), Sharad Pawar (NCP), KC Venugopal (Congress), Derek O’Brien (TMC), Akhilesh Yadav (SP), SC Mishra (BSP), MK Stalin (DMK), Arvind Kejriwal (AAP), Farooq Abdullah (NC) and Sharad Yadav (Loktantrik Janata Dal).
The petitioners, who belonged to six national and 15 regional parties, have demanded that at least 50 per cent EVMs with VVPAT should be subjected to verification and tallying of EVM votes and VVPAT slips.
The Bench had asked Deputy Election Commissioner Sudeep Jain to file the affidavit by 4 pm on March 28 but later extended it to 10.30 am Friday. A Bench headed by CJI Gogoi will consider the EC affidavit on April 1 to decide the Opposition leaders’ petition.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2FKi1yy
via Today’s News Headlines
No comments: