VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Wednesday reserved its verdict on the petition filed by former MLA Balineni Sreenivasa Reddy refraining the Election Commission of India from going ahead with its standard operating procedure (SOP) issued on July 16 to conduct mock polling in place of verification of EVMs and VVPATs against the Supreme Court orders.
Balineni had earlier sought random verification of EVMs and VVPATs following his defeat in the recent elections. When the election authorities conducted mock polling rather than verification, he approached the court.
When the petition came up for hearing on Wednesday, ECI counsel Avinash Desai informed the court that the Supreme Court did not order for counting of VVPATs and the verdict is applicable to burn memory only.
He said after elections, the EVMs and VVPATs would be sealed and there is no possibility of counting them again without the court orders. He further said there is no relation between VVPAT slips and burn memory and VVPATs have only flash memory.
Balineni’s counsel Subramanya Sriram said the Supreme Court’s verdict clearly mentioned about verification of EVMs and VVPATs for transparency in the conduct of polls. After hearing both sides, Justice Nimmagadda Venkateswarlu reserved judgment.