Bring Back Ballot Papers: What Did SC Say?

It has become a common practice in the Indian political system to happily push the blame on EVMs whenever a party loses the election. This first started in AP when Jagan started blaming EVMs for his defeat in the election and was followed by Congress after they lost Haryana polls to BJP. Lastly, the opposition camp in Maharashtra also sang the same EVM tune when NDA swept the polls last week.

Coming to the topic now, KA Paul, who is usually active in the Telugu states whenever the elections are around took up a PIL to the Supreme Court regarding EVMs. In this PIL, he noted that the Indian Election Commission must bring back the paper ballot system for polling and remove EVMs, and here is what the Supreme Court replied.

The bench, comprising Justices Vikram Nath and P.B. Varale, rejected Dr. Paul’s claims of alleged tampering with Electronic Voting Machines. During the hearing, the bench noted the inconsistency of arguments against EVMs, stating,

The apex court stated “What usually happens is, if a party wins the elections, EVMs are not tampered with. When a party loses the elections, EVMs are tampered with.”

The court dismissed the PIL saying that the leading parties in the country have accepted EVMs as a standard practice and there is no sufficient need to go back on this now.

This could be considered as a sharp retort to Jagan Mohan Reddy, who tweeted even today that there are complaints on EVMs and hence, paper ballots must be brought back. The Supreme Court has made it very clear that EVMs will continue to be used for the electoral roll in India.