A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said the court was not the controlling authority of another constitutional body (Election Commission) which should take independent decisions pertaining to the poll process.When advocate Prashant Bhushan insisted there was still a possibility of a malicious programme being lodged in EVMs to alter the election results, the SC said. “The report you are relying on says there is no incident of hacking yet. We are not the controlling authority of another constitutional authority. We cannot control the election. The judgment of the court did say VVPAT… but where is the direction to increase the paper count? Can we issue mandamus on the basis of suspicion?”
The SC, on the previous hearing on April 18, had virtually ruled out the possibility of returning to ballot paper.
The bench, on the previous hearing on April 18, had virtually ruled out the possibility of returning to ballot paper, and said there was a huge drawback with the system and use of EVMs had stood the test of time with increasing voting percentage reflecting voters’ faith in it.
Though the court had reserved its verdict earlier, it held another hearing on Wednesday to clear doubts regarding the technical functioning of EVMs and a deputy election commissioner, like on the last occasion, answered the court’s queries.
Asked whether microcontroller was installed in the controlling unit or the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) unit, the commission told the bench that all three units – control unit, ballot unit and VVPAT unit – had their own microcontrollers which were one-time programmable.