Is there any punishment for tampering with or manipulating EVMs? Supreme Court asks ECI

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) whether there is any law providing for punishment of officials and authorities for manipulating Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). .A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said that unless there is fear of stringent punishment, there is always possibility of a manipulation."Suppose there is some manipulation what the punishment prescribed. That is serious thing. There should be a fear that if something wrong is done then there will be punishment," the Court remarked."Breach of office punishment is there," the counsel for ECI replied."We are not on the procedure. There is no specific provision with regard to manipulation done, if at all," Justice Khanna said.The Court, however, in the same breath also said that the system should not be doubted."My home state West Bengal has more population that Germany. We need to repose some trust and faith on somebody. Do not try to bring down the system like this," Justice Datta said.The Court was hearing a batch of petitions seeking a thorough count of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips in elections. The petitioners said that all VVPAT slips should be tallied with the EVMs instead of restricting it to only 5 EVMs which was being done presently. The Bench said that human intervention in the polling and counting process could lead to further problems and biases."Normally human interventions lead to problems and human weakness can be there which includes biases as well. Machine normally without human intervention will give you accurate results. Yes, the problem arises when there is human intervention or makes unauthorised changes when they are around the software or machine. If you have any suggestion to avert this, then you can give us that," the Court said. The Court also turned down the plea to go back to election via ballot paper instead of EVMs."We all know what happened when there was ballot papers. You may have but we have not forgotten. Anyways we heard the three solutions. We do not want a debate on this now," it remarked.The Court then suggested whether it would be possible to have an inspection of the EVM by an independent technical team."Some thing we thought of - Whether we can after the voting is done, the machines can be kept for technical team inspection so that there is no foul play. We went through counter affidavit and saw how mock polling is done. We want to know if the three units are there and if the three units can be kept together," the Court asked.Pertinently, the Court also sought to know whether CCTV cameras are installed at all polling booths. The ECI said that CCTV cameras are installed in 50 percent of polling booths. The hearing will continue on April 18. .Supreme Court junks plea against Delhi High Court verdict rejecting fresh First Level Checking of EVM, VVPAT.The plea by three petitioners concerns the use of EVMs alongside VVPAT slips in elections.One of the petitioners has prayed that each and every EVM vote be tallied against VVPAT slips.The plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said that VVPAT slips must be tallied with votes cast through EVMs so that citizens can confirm that their vote has been ‘counted as recorded’ and ‘recorded as cast.'.Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ADR, told the Court that either the polling process should return to ballot paper or all VVPAT slips should be counted and tallied with the votes shown by EVMs. "We can go back to paper ballots. Another option is to give VVPAT slip to the voters in hand. Otherwise the slips falls into the machine and the slip can be then given to the voter and it can be put into the ballot box. then the VVPAT design was changed. It had to be a transparent glass but it was changed to dark opaque mirror glass where it is only visible when the light is on for 7 seconds," he said.Bhushan also cited the example of Germany. "What is the population of Germany," the bench asked."5-6 crores," Bhushan replied."97 crores is total number registered voters in India," the Court pointed out.Bhushan further said that chips used in EVMs are programmable and many European countries have reverted to ballot paper."These are programmable chips. Most European countries have gone back from EVMs to paper ballot," he said."Don't go to that," said Justice Khanna."It is not disputed, it is fact," Bhushan maintained. Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, who too appeared for one of the petitioners, said that the votes on EVM should be tallied with VVPAT slips.The bench, however, questioned the practicality of this suggestions."ECI says 12 days will be taken to count all the VVPAT Slips," Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan weighed on.Bhushan said that currently VVPAT slips are tallied only with respect to 5 EVMs in an assembly segment which was too less. "They are only counting 5 VVPAT machines per assembly when there are 200 such machines this is 5 percent only and there can be no justification in this. The seven second light can also lead to manipulation. The voter should be allowed to take the VVPAT slip to put it into the ballot box," he said.Sankaranarayanan highlighted a report by BloombergQuint as per which there were discrepancies between EVMs and VVPAT slips in 373 constituencies. "What we are saying that the paper slip falls from the box and we collect that paper slip.. and we see what we have voted for. 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," he said.Senior Advocate Huzefa Ahmadi too said that it is ideal that there is no doubt as regards the election process in the minds of citizens. "As a voter with stake in democratic process, any residuary doubt, if it can be assuaged in a reasonably practical way must be adopted. The process must not be just fair but also seen to be fair and thus VVPAT can be tallied with the EVM votes counted," he contended.It will only add to the prestige of the ECI, he added..Tallying of VVPAT slips with EVMs has always been a subject of contention.Before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, leaders of around 21 opposition political parties had moved the apex court seeking VVPAT verification of at least 50 percent of all EVMs.Back then, ECI used to tally only one random EVM per assembly segment with VVPAT.On April 8, 2019, the apex court raised this number from 1 to 5 and disposed of the plea.In May 2019, the Court dismissed a plea filed by some technocrats seeking VVPAT verification of all EVMs.