Top Court Seeks Poll Body Reply On Petition For VVPAT Slips' Full Count

A bench comprising justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta issued notices to the ECI, while taking note of the petitions filed by activist Arun Kumar Agrawal and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), news agency ANI reported.

The petition further challenged the commission's guidelines that mandates VVPAT verification shall be done sequentially, i.e. one after the other, causing undue delay. The plea stated, "If simultaneous verification is done and more officers are deployed for counting in each assembly constituency, then complete VVPAT verification can be done in a matter of 5-6 hours."

The Centre has spent nearly ₹5,000 crore on purchase of nearly 24 lakh VVPATs but presently, VVPAT slips of only approximately 20,000 VVPATs are verified, it further said.