NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict on Friday on a batch of petitions seeking directions to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Centre to ensure that voters are able to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been "counted as recorded".
A two-judge bench of the top court, led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Dutta, will pronounce the judgment tomorrow at around 10:30 a.m., according to the Supreme Court's updated cause list
The apex court had on Wednesday reserved the verdict on the batch of pleas after hearing extensively from the petitioners, ECI and other respective parties.
The apex court's causelist further said that there are two judgments in the case - one by Justice Khanna and the other by Justice Datta.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the bench, was apprised by an official from the ECI about how the EVMs and VVPATs along with its detailed know how of the control unit panel and their security features. The ECI consistently told and made it clear to the apex court that the EVMs cannot be tampered with under any circumstance and that the complete counting of the VVPAT slips was not practically feasible.
The ECI offcial also said that the EVMs are standalone machines and they could not be tampered with.
"The VVPATs could also not be tampered with," the offcial said.
A bench initially had reserved judgment on the petitions on April 18 after two days of hearing. The Court listed the petitions again on April 24 to seek certain technical clarifications from the ECI, which the commission told it.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for one of the petitioners, argued that the flash memory of Micro Control Units can be reprogrammed and tampered with.
The apex court asked this to ECI official and wanted some clarification on this. So the ECI official clarified that it was wrong to say that the Micro Control Units can be reprogrammed.
"We are not the controlling authority of another constitutional authority. We cannot control the elections," the top court said.
In one of its hearings, the court observed that everything could not be seen in a suspicious manner.
