NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking an audit of the source code of all Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and placing the report in the public domain.
Calling the issue “sensitive”, a bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra maintained that if the source code or hash code signature of EVMs is placed in the public domain, it could be misused by unscrupulous elements.
“The Election Commission of India (ECI) is entrusted with control over elections. Presently, the petitioner places no actionable material before this court to show that the Election Commission has acted in breach of its constitutional mandate. Placing the source code audit in the public domain intervenes with policy issues and we are not inclined to interfere in this. There is no material to show that the Election Commission is not fulfilling its mandate. Thus, we do not interfere in this petition,” the court said in its order.
The order came while the bench was considering a plea filed by one Sunil Ahya, wherein it was contended that there was no formal audit report of the source code available in the public domain. Calling such audit mandatory for the survival of democracy, Ahya submitted before the bench that source code was like the brain of the EVMs.
Pleas on marital rape listed for mid-Oct
The Supreme Court on Friday said it would list pleas on the issue of marital rape for hearing in mid-October. The pleas raise the legal question of whether a husband enjoys immunity from prosecution
for the offence of rape if he forces his wife, who is not a minor, to have sex.
Petition for the survey of Shahi Eidgah binned
The top court on Friday refused to entertain a plea by ‘Shri Krishna Janambhoomi Mukti Nirman Trust’ seeking a survey of the Janmabhoomi-Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura to determine whether it was built on a pre-existing Hindu temple. The appeal challenging a July 10 decision of the Allahabad High Court.