Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee chief Kamal Nath moved the Supreme Court on Friday, seeking random verification of paper trails of electronic voter machines in the upcoming state Assembly elections. The top court will hear his plea next week, reported PTI.
The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, or VVPAT system, allows the voting machine to dispense a paper to voters so that they can verify if their vote has been cast correctly. In his plea, Nath asked the court to direct the Election Commission to randomly verify VVPAT slips with votes cast using the machines at 10% of the polling stations in every constituency. He also demanded that voter lists be provided in the text format.
In June, the Election Commission said it would tally paper trail slips with the results of electronic voting machines in 5% of polling stations in each seat for both Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. However, polling officials will count the paper trail slips in not more than 14 randomly selected booths.
The current Madhya Pradesh Assembly’s term expires in January 2019 and the state is scheduled to go to the elections later this year. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been in power in the state since 2003.
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