'We cannot control elections'; SC on EVM-VVPAT verification

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday remarked on a PIL that demanded the apex court to control the LS polls. The court observed that the elections conducted under the supervision of the Election Commission, which is a constitutional body will remain as it is. The bench headed by Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Dutta also denied any chances of the elections going back to ballot papers.

The court will ponder over steps to strengthen the services of the EVM voting system. The observation was made after hearing the arguments in the Public Interest Litigation to match the votes in the EVMs with the respective VVPAT slips. The plea was adjourned for judgment.

The Supreme Court summoned the Election Commission official and took clarification about the EVM working format. The court held that there was no evidence of external programs being loaded into the EVM's flash memory. The court said it won’t move with punitive action against the EVM on the sole basis of suspicion.

The Supreme Court observed that the source code of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) should not be disclosed as it could be misused. A set of instructions regarding the operations of the voting machine is coded in the machine and is called source code.

• There are separate micro-controllers in the three parts of the EVM, namely, the ballot unit, the control unit and the VVPAT.

• Microcontroller can only be used once. No one can access it. All three units will be sealed with pink colour.

• The Commission rejected the claim of the petitioners that the flash memory of the micro-control unit can be tampered with and clarified that it cannot be reprogrammed.

• Machines are kept in strong room for 45 days. Election petitions, if any, will continue to be kept under seal.