Supreme Court Upholds EVM-VVPAT System: Balancing Electoral Integrity and Technological Trust

In a significant judgment for Indian democracy, the Supreme Court of India rejected petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) counts with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips. The bench, comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, emphasized that the current system is robust and that 'blind distrust' of the electoral process could lead to unnecessary chaos and undermine public confidence. The court's decision rests on the principle that the current protocol—which involves the random verification of VVPAT slips from five polling stations per assembly segment—is statistically sound and sufficient to ensure integrity. The judges noted that a shift to 100% manual counting would be labor-intensive, prone to human error, and would significantly delay the declaration of results, effectively reverting the process to the era of paper ballots.