EVM dispute: Supreme Court directs Election Commission not to delete any data
#News India February 11,2025
The Supreme Court on Tuesday, February 11, asked the Central Election Commission or ECI what is the standard operating procedure (SOP) for electronic voting machines after the voting is over. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna told the ECI in clear words, for the time being, do not delete any data from the EVMs or reload any data. A petition was filed in the Supreme Court demanding not to delete data from the machines even after the counting of votes is over.
According to Live Law, the court said that the Election Commission will have to inform the court about the process of destroying or burning the EVM memory and microcontroller after the election. The Chief Justice said, “This is not adverse.” He said, “If the losing candidate wants clarification, then the engineer can give clarification that there has been no tampering.”
The court gave this direction while hearing the petition of Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), Haryana and some Congress leaders. In the petitions, it was demanded that the court should direct the Commission to formulate a policy for checking the original burnt memory / microcontroller of EVMs.
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We don’t want such an elaborate process where you have to reload something… don’t delete the data, don’t reload the data – all you have to do is have someone come and verify it.-Supreme Court, February 11, 2025 Source: Live Law
The petition also demanded that the burnt memory and microcontroller of the EVM be verified by an engineer to prove that the EVM has not been tampered with. The next hearing of the case will be in the week starting March 3.
The Supreme Court also told the Election Commission’s counsel that the amount of Rs 40,000 fixed by the ECI for verification of EVMs is too high. “Reduce the cost of Rs 40,000 – it is too high,” the CJI said.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan said, “What we want is that one should examine the software and hardware of the EVMs to see if there is any element of manipulation in them.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan appeared on behalf of ADR. He said that the ECI’s SOPs on EVM verification are not adequate as per the main judgment of the court.
According to Live Law, however, the Supreme Court also refused to entertain a similar petition filed by former Haryana minister Karan Singh Dalal and Lakhan Kumar Singla (a candidate in the recent Haryana assembly elections) seeking verification of EVMs used in the Haryana assembly elections, as an earlier petition filed by them on the same issue was withdrawn without getting liberty to file a fresh petition.
