Congress leader Udit Raj on Wednesday raised concerns about how the Supreme Court has dealt with pleas for 100% verification of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips during the counting from electronic voting machines when votes are counted on May 23.

Raj asked if the top court was involved in rigging the elections. “Why doesn’t the Supreme Court want to have all VVPAT slips counted?” he said on Twitter. “Is it also involved in the rigging? If all government work is stalled due to election process for about three months, then how does it matter if counting takes two or three extra days?”

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Raj told ANI that he was not levelling allegations against the Supreme Court, instead he was only raising concerns. “When 22 parties went to the Supreme Court asking for increase in number of VVPAT slips being counted, SC rejected it saying it will cause a delay,” he said.

Raj’s remarks come a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition filed by NGO Tech4All, which had sought 100% verification of the VVPAT slips with the results from electronic voting machines. The petitioner said voting machines were not reliable and were vulnerable to tampering. The court dismissed the petition, calling it a nuisance.

The Election Commission on Wednesday rejected the demands raised by representatives of 21 Opposition parties the previous day to have checks of VVPAT slips of randomly-selected polling stations before the counting of the votes on May 23.

Last month, the Supreme Court had ordered that VVPAT slips be used to verify votes for five electronic voting machines in every constituency during the ongoing elections instead of just one. The court had said this practice would ensure the “greatest degree of accuracy, satisfaction” in the election process. A review plea claimed that the “increase from one to five was not a reasonable number”.