VVPAT WP (C) 434 - 2023 Merged & Bookmarked

IN THE HON’BLE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CIVIL ORIGINAL WRIT JURISDICTION
(PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION)
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. _______ OF 2023

(UNDER ARTICLE 32 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA)
IN THE MATTER OF:

ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS ….PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. ….RESPONDENTS
WITH
I.A. NO. _________ OF 2023
(WITH APPLICATION FOR INTERIM DIRECTIONS)
PAPERBOOK
(FOR INDEX KINDLY SEE INSIDE)
COUNSEL FOR THE PETITIONER: PRASHANT BHUSHAN

RECORD OF PROCEEDING
S. NO. PARTICULARS PAGES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
INDEX
Sl. No. Particulars of Documents Page No. of Part Rema

to which it rks
belongs
Part I Part II
(Conten (Conten
ts of ts of file
Paper alone)
Book)
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)
1. Court Fees
2. Listing Proforma A1- A2 A1- A2
3. Cover Page of Paper Book A3
4. Index of Record of A4
Proceedings
5. Limitation Report Prepared A5
by Registry
6. Defect List A6
7. Note Sheet NS 1 to
8. Synopsis & List of Dates

B-S
B-S
9. Writ Petition with Affidavit 1-29

1- 30
10. Annexure P1: A copy of the 30-38
judgement of this Hon’ble 31-129
Court in Subramanian
Swamy v. Election
Commission of India, (2013)
10 SCC 500
11. Annexure P2: A true copy 39-44

130-135
of the order dated
24.04.2017 passed by this
Hon’ble Court in Contempt
Petition (Civil) No. 303 of
2016
12. Annexure P3: A copy of the 45-80
136-234
Conduct of Election Rules,
1961
13. Annexure P4: A copy of 81-86

235-240
the judgment of this Hon’ble
Court in N. Chandrababu
Naidu v. Union of India,
(2019) 15 SCC 377

241-284
the counter affidavit filed by
the ECI in N. Chandrababu
Naidu v. Union of India,
(2019) 15 SCC 377

285
form verified by the
Returning Officer showing
variance of 14 votes (6
percent of the total votes in
EVM) in Polling Station No.
63 of Mydukur Assembly
Constituency in Andhra
Pradesh in the 2019 general
elections

134-135
article dated 25.05.2019
titled, “The discrepancy in
the votes was due to not
clearing the votes from the
mock poll” as per clarification
given by the Returning
Officer to fact checking
website factly.in

288-292
article dated 12.04.2019
titled, “Andhra Pradesh polls:
High stakes brawl-ridden
battle sees Election
Commission in dock for
malfunctioning EVMs”
published on Firstpost

141-308
the ‘Manual on Electronic
Voting Machine & VVPATs’
published by the ECI in
December, 2022

461-507
the report titled, ‘An inquiry
into India’s Election System:
Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT
system fit for democratic
elections?” published in
January, 2021, by Citizens’
Commission on Elections’
(CCE) chaired by Hon’ble
Justice (retd) Madan B.
Lokur, former judge of the
Supreme Court of India
508-523
representation dated
02.05.2022 sent to the
Election Commission of India
21. Application
Application
Filing Index for Direction
for Interim Direction 372-374
524-526
Filing
22. Letter Memo
Vakalatnama
dated 22.03.2023 375 527
528
376
23.
23 Vakalatnama
Filing Memo
24. Vakalatnama,Certificate & ID proof of the Petitioner 377-379
A1
SECTION: X (WRIT)
PROFORMA FOR FIRST LISTING
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(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
COUNSEL FOR THE PETITIONERS
REGISTRATION NO. 515
E-Mail: prashantbhush@gmail.com
NEW DELHI
DATED: 13.03.2023
B
SYNOPSIS
The present petition is being filed in Public Interest under Article 32 of
the Constitution of India seeking appropriate directions to the Election
Commission of India (hereinafter, ‘ECI’) to give full effect to the purport
and object of this Hon’ble Court’s directions in Subramanian Swamy
v. Election Commission of India , (2013) 10 SCC 500 wherein
“taking note of the advantage in the system” without insisting on any
incontrovertible proof of errors/manipulation; in order to “have fullest
transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters”,
this Hon’ble Court held that “‘paper trail’ is an indispensable requirement
of free and fair elections” and directed the ECI to introduce Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (hereinafter, ‘VVPAT’) in Electronic Voting
Machines (hereinafter, ‘EVM’s) as under:
at page 508
28. From the materials placed by both the sides, we are satisfied
that the “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and
fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be
achieved only with the introduction of the “paper trail”. EVMs with
Vvpat system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With an
intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the
confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with Vvpat
system because vote is nothing but an act of expression which has
immense importance in a democratic system.
29. In the light of the above discussion and taking notice of the
pragmatic and reasonable approach of ECI and considering the fact
that in general elections all over India, ECI has to handle one
million (ten lakh) polling booths, we permit ECI to introduce Vvpat
in gradual stages or geographical-wise in the ensuing general
elections. The area, State or actual booth(s) are to be decided by
ECI and ECI is free to implement the same in a phased manner.
We appreciate the efforts and good gesture made by ECI in
introducing the same. For implementation of such a system (Vvpat)
in a phased manner, the Government of India is directed to provide
required financial assistance for procurement of units of Vvpat.”
C
It is noteworthy that the term used is ‘Voter’ verifiable. It is the

satisfaction and verification of the voter that is at the heart of electoral
democracy and not just that of the ECI, domain experts, political parties,
or candidates. ‘Voter verifiable’ means that each voter must be able to
verify: firstly, that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’; and, secondly,
that their vote has been ‘counted as recorded’.
The requirement of the voter verifying that her vote has been ‘recorded
as cast’ is somewhat met when the VVPAT slip is displayed for about
seven seconds after pressing of the button on the EVM through a
transparent window for the voter to verify that her vote has been
‘recorded as cast’ on the internally printed VVPAT slip before the slip falls
into a ‘ballot box’. (‘Somewhat’ because the voter is not given a
copy of the print out of her VVPAT.)
However, there is a complete vacuum in law as the ECI has provided no

procedure for the voter to verify that her vote has been ‘counted as
recorded’ which is an indispensable part of voter verifiability. The failure
of the ECI to provide for the same is in the teeth of purport and object
of the directions issued by this Hon’ble Court in paragraphs 28 and 29 of
Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India , (2013)
10 SCC 500.
Further, the prevalent procedure wherein the ECI only counts the
electronically recorded votes in all of the EVM’s and cross verifies the
relevant EVMs with the VVPATs in only 5 randomly selected polling
stations in each assembly constituency is inter alia deficient as:
D
1. The electronic recording of the voter’s choice in the EVM does not
meet the criteria of vote being verified as ‘recorded as cast’ as the
voter only verifies the VVPAT;
2. There is no way for any of the voters to verify that their individual
vote has actually been ‘counted as recorded’ because there is no
procedure provided for by the ECI for them to match the VVPATs
that they had certified as being ‘recorded as cast’ with what is
actually counted;
3. Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section 66-A of Conduct
of Election Rules, 1961, itself provides that the count of VVPATs
shall prevail over the count reflected in EVMs which is a statutory
admission/acknowledgement that it is finally the VVPAT which
accurately captures the will of the voter and that
variance/errors/malafides in the results captured in the EVMs
cannot be ruled out.
Pertinently, only due the last minute nature of the proceedings in N.

Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377, this
Hon’ble Court, keeping in mind that the ECI had, “pointed out
infrastructure difficulties, including manpower availability, at this point of
time, in increasing the number of EVMs for verification” (Para 6)
because of which the, “declaration of result of election could be delayed
by 5-6 days,” (Para 6) directed the ECI to count VVPATs in 5 polling
stations per assembly constituency as opposed to the prayer in the writ
petition for counting of 50% VVPATs across the country as the Court at
that point in time found that, “ the proximity to the election schedule
announced by the ECI must be kept in mind.” (Para 9 emphasis
supplied).
E
Further, vide the same order, Writ Petition (C) No. 23 of 2019 was
disposed off by this Hon’ble Court expressed it’s “reluctance to go into
the issues regarding the integrity of the EVMs which have been raised at
a belated stage. The petition was filed in the month of December 2018
raising various technical issues which are not possible to be gone into at
this stage.” (Para 12)
Further, at paragraph 5.20 of the counter affidavit filed by the ECI in

Chandrababu Naidu’s case, the ECI had indicated a way out in the longer
run and stated,“It is also relevant to mention that there are no barcodes
on the paper slip which allows the same to be tallied mechanically
through a counting machine” (Para 5.20 of ECI affidavit in Chandrababu
Naidu’s case)
During the 2019 general elections there were ECI acknowledged

instances wherein there was variance in the results captured in the
EVMs and that of the VVPATs. To illustrate, during mandatory
verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 randomly selected polling
stations, in polling station No. 63 of Mydukur Assembly Constituency in
Andhra Pradesh in the 2019 general elections, the Returning officer
officially verified that there was a discrepancy of 14 votes in the EVM
and VVPAT counts. The EVM count was 233 votes whereas the VVPAT
count was 219 votes. In other words 6 percent of the counted votes in
that EVM had not been cast. The Returning Officer of the constituency
later clarified that the discrepancy is true and was due to non-clearance
of votes polled in the mock-poll conducted at 7 am on the polling day
from the EVM.
F
While the explanation given by the Returning Officer may be correct,
what is noteworthy is that the variance was detected only because that
EVM came to be randomly chosen to be matched with the VVPAT count.
Whether the EVM counts in all those polling stations where the results
were not cross verified with the VVPATs is anybody’s guess.
The above illustration shows that the count stored in EVMs are
inherently open to variance with the count reflected in VVPATs due to
any number of reasons such as bonafide human errors in the complex
seriatium of do’s and dont’s prescribed by the ECI involving a number
of individuals to discharge their responsibilities with 100% accuracy
each time over a long period of time; technical snags; &/or malafide
actions.
Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ chaired by Hon’ble Justice

(Retd.) Madan B. Lokur
In such circumstances, the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE)

came into being to go into critical aspects of the conduct of elections,
call for expert advice where necessary and come up with appropriate
suggestions. The CCE was chaired by Hon’ble Justice (retd) Madan B.
Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge, with other former statutory and
constitutional functionaries assosciated with it.
The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs primarily on

the touchstone of whether and how far their use complied with
‘democracy principles’ viz:
1. The voting process should be transparent in a manner that the
general public can be satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded
and counted.
G
2. The voting and counting process should be publicly auditable.
3. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps in the
voting process. If special expert knowledge is required then all
should be able to select their own experts.
4. There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and
ascertainment of the results reliably without too much special
knowledge.
5. An election process should not only be free and fair, but also be
seen to be free and fair.
6. Election Commission should be in full control of the entire voting
process, and the public at large should be able to verify.
7. Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting, should be in
sync with changing technologies and technological practices, and
be subject to public scrutiny/examinability
The group relied on depositions and expert opinions of several national

and international experts. Among the domain knowledge holders who
submitted deposition before this CCE group were Ronald L. Rivest of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA; Alex
Halderman of the University of Michigan, USA; Poorvi L. Vora and
Bhagirath Narahari of George Washington University, USA; Alok
Choudhary of North-western University, USA Sandeep Shukla, Professor,
Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur; Douglas W. Jones of the
University of Iowa, USA; Nasir Memon of New York University (Brooklyn),
USA; Philip B. Stark of the University of California, Berkeley, Vanessa
Teague, Associate Professor, School of Computing and Information
Systems, University of Melbourne, Cyber security, Australia; MG
Devasahayam, former civil servant; Bappa Sinha of Free Software
Movement of India, Subodh Sharma of Computer Science and
Engineering and of the School of Public Policy, IIT, Delhi; S Prasanna,
Advocate, Delhi, Venkatesh Nayak, RTI activist, KV Subrahmanyam,
Professor, Computer Science, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai,
Poonam Agarwal, media-person and Anupam Saraf, Professor and
H
Future Designer, Dr Sanjiva Prasad and Dr Subhashis Banerjee of IIT,
Delhi.
Broadly, the findings of the CCE in a report titled, ‘An inquiry into India’s
Election System: Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT system fit for democratic
elections?’, published in January, 2021 are as under:
The report has devoted considerable time and expertise in

scrutinising the technical architecture of EVMs and the
accompanying VVPATs. The ECI does not appear to safeguard
against the possibilities of ‘side-channel attacks’, i.e. hacking
electronic devices through electromagnetic and other methods.
Even the ‘software guard extensions’ of sophisticated Intel
processors have proved vulnerable to interference and tampering.
Just a few EVMs can swing election results for a constituency. That
the processor chip in the EVM is only one-time programmable is
also in doubt. In fact, latest EVMs use the MK61FX512VMD12
microcontroller supplied by an US based multinational, which has
a programmable flash memory.
Further examination is possible only when the ECI makes the EVM
design and prototype available for public technical audit. It is noted
that none of the ECI’s experts has credentials in computer security
and the Commission reposing trust in many other external entities
and organisations, that could lend themselves to breach of
complete security. After tracking the various stages of the EVM’s
movement within the election setup — before and during polls,
subsequent storage, counting and declaration of results — the
report opines that there are certain intervals during which the
machines could be accessed without authority or tampered with.
The findings reveal that there is, indeed, no guarantee that the
voter’s choice has been reflected with total fidelity in all cases and
thus submit that immediate steps be taken to rectify the ECI’s
current procedures, irrespective of the scale and extent of possible
error or manipulation. Besides, domain experts have clearly stated
that the present ‘quality assurance’ and testing strategies of the
ECI certainly do not rule out scope for mischief or manoeuvring of
results.
I
The VVPAT system was introduced to ensure that voters were able
to see and check physically paper slips that emanated from the
EVMs and printers attached to them.
The Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPAT as an

additional stage to assure voters about the complete fidelity of
their votes but the current procedure of voting does not sync with
this objective and leaves gaps that could be manipulated. This
paper trail has, for instance, been rendered ineffective as the
‘marked slips’ pop up for too brief a time for the voter to verify
her/his vote before it moves away to its sealed box. Besides, the
ECI refuses to cross check the tally of counting VVPAT paper-slips
with electronic results on the grounds of being unnecessary and
time consuming, even though the total time taken is considerably
less than the time spent in counting the traditional papers received
in ballot boxes. Even though VVPAT slips of votes cast are bound
to be retained for one year after polls, the ECI has destroyed these
slips of the 2019 polls, leading to grave apprehensions about its
bona fides. Rules regarding mandatory recount of EVM results and
the compulsory counting of the VVPAT paper slips are absolutely
unavoidable.
The conclusions of the report are as under:

a. Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the present
EVM/VVAPAT system is not verifiable and therefore is unfit for
democratic elections.
b. That an EVM has not yet been detected to have been hacked
provides no guarantee that it cannot be hacked. Thus, elections
must be conducted assuming that the EVMs may possibly be
tampered with.
c. In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than even
what the civil society and the political parties demand (30% and
50% respectively) to ensure verification and reliable ascertainment
of results.
d. There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic vote count
before the results are declared. The audit may in some cases -
depending on the margin of victory - require a full manual counting
of VVPAT slips.
e. The electronic voting system should be re-designed to be
software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable or
auditable.
J
That in light of the above, the present petition seeks a declaration from
this Hon’ble Court that it is the fundamental right of every voter to verify
that her vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’ and
issuance of necessary ancillary directions in this regard in light of:
● The purport and object of directions of this Hon’ble Court in
Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India ,
(2013) 10 SCC 500;
● Logic underlying Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section
66A of Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, which itself provides that
the count of VVPATs shall prevail over the count reflected in EVMs;
● The counter affidavit filed by the ECI in Chandrababu Naidu’s case,
wherein the ECI at Pargraph 5.20 had indicated a way out in the
longer run and stated,“It is also relevant to mention that there are
no barcodes on the paper slip which allows the same to be tallied
mechanically through a counting machine”;
● ‘Democracy principles’ as enunciated by Citizens’ Commission on
Elections’ chaired by Hon’ble Justice (Retd.) Madan B. Lokur and
findings and recommendations of the report published by them.
Hence, the present petition.

K
LIST OF DATES
2010
Ensuring the fairness and integrity of the electoral process
and the sanctity of the voter’s will is a continious and ongoing
process.
The Election Commission of India, in consultation with the

political parties, considered to explore the use of VVPAT with
a view to enhance transparency during the election process.
Introduction of VVPAT implied that a paper slip is generated
bearing name and symbol of the candidate along with
recording of vote in the Control Unit, so that in case of any
dispute, paper slip could be counted to verify the result being
shown on the EVM. Under VVPAT, a printer is attached to the
Balloting Unit and kept in the voting compartment.
The voter after pressing the button on Balloting Unit can view
the printed slip on VVPAT through the viewing window and,
thus, can verify that the vote is recorded for the Candidate of
his/her choice. The paper slip remains visible on VVPAT for
seven (7) seconds through a transparent window.
The Election Commission of India referred the matter to its

Technical Expert Committee (TEC) on EVMs for examining and
making a recommendation in this regard. The Expert
Committee had several rounds of meetings with the
manufacturers of EVM, namely, Bharat Electronics Limited
(BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), on
this issue and then had met the political parties and other civil
society members to explore the design requirement of the
VVPAT system with the EVM. On the direction of the Expert
L
Committee, BEL and ECIL made a prototype and

demonstrated before the Committee and the Election
Commission of India in 2011. On the recommendation of the
Expert Committee on EVM & VVPAT system, the Election
Commission of India conducted simulated election for the field
trial of WPAT system in Ladakh (Jammu & Kashmir),
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Cherrapunjee (Meghalaya),
East Delhi District (NCT of Delhi) and Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) in
July 2011. After 1 field trial of the VVPAT system, Election
Commission of India made a detailed reassessment of the
VVPAT system to further fine tune the VVPAT system.
Accordingly, the manufacturers developed 2nd version of
VVPAT prototype. The same was again subjected to 2nd field
trial in the said five locations in July- August 2012. Thereafter,
in the meeting of the Technical Expert Committee held on
19th February, 2013, the Committee approved the design of
VVPAT and also recommended the Election Commission of
India to take action on amendment of the rules for using
VVPAT. The model was demonstrated to all the political
parties in an all-party meeting on 10th May, 2013.
14.08.2013 Accordingly, introduction of VVPAT was facilitated by

amending the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 vide the
Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules, 2013, which was
notified in the Official Gazette of India by the Ministry of Law
and Justice on 14.08.2013, whereby a proviso was inserted
after Rule 49A, inter alia, to provide for a printer with a drop
box to be attached to a voting machine. Furthermore, Rule
M
49MA and Rule 56D (contained in Rule 66A) were also inserted
in the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 vide the said
notification.
Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section 66A of

Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, provides that the count of
VVPATs shall prevail over the count reflected in EVMs.
2013 In Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of

India, (2013) 10 SCC 500 in order to “have fullest
transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of
the voters”, this Hon’ble Court held that “‘paper trail’ is an
indispensable requirement of free and fair elections ” and
directed the ECI to introduce Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
(hereinafter, ‘VVPAT’) in Electronic Voting Machines
(hereinafter, ‘EVM’s) as under:
28. From the materials placed by both the sides, we are

satisfied that the “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement
of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the
EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the “paper
trail”. EVMs with Vvpat system ensure the accuracy of the
voting system. With an intent to have fullest transparency in
the system and to restore the confidence of the voters, it is
necessary to set up EVMs with Vvpat system because vote is
nothing but an act of expression which has immense
importance in a democratic system.
29. In the light of the above discussion and taking notice of
the pragmatic and reasonable approach of ECI and considering
the fact that in general elections all over India, ECI has to
handle one million (ten lakh) polling booths, we permit ECI to
introduce Vvpat in gradual stages or geographical-wise in the
ensuing general elections. The area, State or actual booth(s)
are to be decided by ECI and ECI is free to implement the same
in a phased manner. We appreciate the efforts and good
N
gesture made by ECI in introducing the same. For

implementation of such a system (Vvpat) in a phased manner,
the Government of India is directed to provide required
financial assistance for procurement of units of Vvpat.”
June, 2014 In June 2014, the Election Commission of India itself
proposed to implement WPAT at every polling station in the
next General Election to the Lok Sabha in 2019 and sought
funds of Rs 3,174 Crores from the Government of India.
29.09.2014 In 2014, the Election Commission decided to use VVPATs
along with EVMs in certain assembly constituencies during

the ensuing General Election to the Legislative Assemblies of
Haryana and Maharashtra, 2014. The Election Commission of
India itself stressed on the immediate deployment of VVPATs
for further safeguarding the integrity of the voting system as
well as strengthening confidence of the voters.
24.04.2017 By Order dated 24.04.2017, this Hon'ble Court disposed of

the aforementioned Conmt. Pet. (C) No. 303 of 2016 (filed
in Civil Appeal No. 9093 of 2006) in the following terms:
“2. From the materials laid before the Court it appears that
on 19th April, 2017 the sanction of the President of India
for purchase of 16, 15,000 Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
(VVPAT) at an estimated cost of Rs.3,173.47 crore
(excluding faxes and freight as applicable) from Mls Bharat
Electronics Ltd., Bangalore and Mls Electronics Corporation
of India Ltd., Hyderabad has been conveyed to the Election
Commission of India.
3. Pursuant to the above, on 21st April, 2017, the
Election Commission of /ndia has placed orders with M/s
Bharat Electronics Ltd., Bangalore and Mls Electronics
Corporation of India Ltd., Hyderabad for purchase of
8,07,500 \/VPAT units from each of the aforesaid firms
indicating September, 2018 as the outer limit for
O
procurement of the said units.

4. Shri Ashok Desai, learned Senior Counsel for the Election
Commission of India has also placed a set of written
instructions received by him from the Election Commission of
India which indicates that all the VVPAT machines should be
available by September 2018 and such machines should be
available for deployment in the next General Elections to
constitute 17th Lok Sabha. Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the written
instructions which deal with the above are as follows:
“3. It is submitted that on this schedule it is anticipated that
the all VVPATs machines should de available by September,
2018 and should be able to be deployed by and be in situ by
February, 2019. As a result all VVPAT Units would be available
by March, 2019 which is the expected commencement date
of next General Elections to constitute 17th Lok Sabha.
4. That for General Elections for Pañiament alone there
are more than 10,00,000 polling stations and as such equal
number of VVPATs are required. A margin is however,
necessary in case there are simultaneous elections in some
constituencies and also for reserves.
5. In view of the aforesaid developments that have taken
place we are of the view that the present Contempt Petitions
ought not to be entertained any further. We accordingly close
the contempt petitions in the light of the developments
noticed and mentioned above.”
By virtue of this Hon’ble Court’s aforesaid orders there was

100% deployment of VVPATs along with EVMs in the ensuing
elections.
11.10.2017 The Election Commission of India, on 11.10.2017, intimated

the Chief Electoral Officers of Gujarat, Gandhinagar and
Himachal Pradesh, Shimta that in the forthcoming General
elections to State Legislative Assemblies of Gujarat and
Himachal Pradesh, mandatory verification of VVPAT paper
P
slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling station per

Assembly Constituency shall be done on a 'pilot' basis.
2019 In N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15

SCC 377, this Hon’ble Court, keeping in mind that the ECI
had, “pointed out infrastructure difficulties, including
manpower availability, at this point of time, in increasing the
number of EVMs for verification” (Para 6) because of which
the, “declaration of result of election could be delayed by 5-6
days,” (Para 6) directed the ECI to count VVPATs in 5 polling
stations per assembly constituency as opposed to the prayer
in the writ petition for counting of 50% VVPATs across the
country as the Court at that point in time found that, “ the
proximity to the election schedule announced by the ECI must
be kept in mind.” (Para 9).
Further, vide the same order, Writ Petition (C) No. 23 of 2019
was disposed off by this Hon’ble Court holding, “12. We
express our reluctance to go into the issues regarding the
integrity of the EVMs which have been raised at a belated
stage. The petition was filed in the month of December 2018
raising various technical issues which are not possible to be
gone into at this stage.” (Para 12)
Further, at paragraph 5.20 of the counter affidavit filed by the

ECI in Chandrababu Naidu’s case, the ECI had indicated a way
out in the longer run and stated,“It is also relevant to mention
that there are no barcodes on the paper slip which allows the
Q
same to be tallied mechanically through a counting machine”

(Para 5.20 of ECI affidavit in Chandrababu Naidu’s case)
13.12.2019 Amidst reports of discrepancy in the data on number of votes

polled and number of EVM votes counted in the 2019 general
elections, notice was issued by this Hon’ble Court in W.P. (C)
1382/2019 filed by the petitioner herein on the following
prayers:
A. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to conduct actual and accurate
reconciliation of data before the declaration of the final
result of any election.
B. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing
the Respondent No. 1 to provide the following
information in the public domain for the 2019 Lok Sabha
elections and for all future elections: (i) statutory forms
17C, Form 20, Form 21C, Form 21D & Form 21 E.
C. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to investigate the discrepancies which
had taken place in the 17th Lok Sabha election results.
D. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to formulate a robust procedure for all
future elections for the investigation of all discrepancies
in election data.
2019 The 2019 general elections were the first full scale
parliamentary elections conducted using VVPATs. There were
ECI acknowledged instances wherein there was variance in the
results captured in the EVMs and that of the VVPATs. To
illustrate, during mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT
of 05 randomly selected polling stations, in polling station No.
63 of Mydukur Assembly Constituency in Andhra Pradesh in the
2019 general elections, the Returning officer officially verified
that there was a discrepancy of 14 votes in the EVM and VVPAT
R
counts. The EVM count was 233 votes whereas the VVPAT
count was 219 votes. In other words 6 percent of the counted
votes in that EVM had not been cast. The Returning Officer of
the constituency later clarified that the discrepancy is true and
was due to non-clearance of votes polled in the mock-poll
conducted at 7 am on the polling day from the EVM.
2021 The Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE) came into being

to go into critical aspects of the conduct of elections, call for
expert advice where necessary and come up with appropriate
suggestions. The CCE was chaired by Hon’ble Justice (retd)
Madan B. Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge, with other
former statutory and constitutional functionaries assosciated
with it.
The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs

primarily on the touchstone of whether and how far their use
complied with ‘democracy principles’. In short, it insists on
absolute transparency in facilitating the voter to exercise his or
her choice and in ensuring that these selections are, indeed,
reflected in the stored vote and counted as such — without the
slightest deviation whatsoever. These principles also mandate
that the voting procedure is easily understandable and
verifiable by the voter and open to audit without complications
even when relevant technology is utilised. There should be
absolutely no scope for error or misrepresentation of the
elector’s choice.
S
In light of it’s findings as regards various deficiencies in the

current practice and procedure of using EVMs and VVPATs it
concluded:
a. Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the

present EVM/VVAPAT system is not verifiable and therefore is
unfit for democratic elections.
b. That an EVM has not yet been detected to have been hacked
provides no guarantee that it cannot be hacked. Thus,
elections must be conducted assuming that the EVMs may
possibly be tampered with.
c. In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than
even what the civil society and the political parties demand
(30% and 50% respectively) to ensure verification and reliable
ascertainment of results.
d. There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic vote
count before the results are declared. The audit may in some
cases - depending on the margin of victory - require a full
manual counting of VVPAT slips.
e. The electronic voting system should be re-designed to be
software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable
or auditable.
13.03.2023
Hence, the present petition.
1

EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINAL JURISDICTION
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. _____OF 2023
(PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION)
IN THE MATTER OF:
1. ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS

THROUGH ITS FOUNDER-TRUSTEE
PROF. JAGDEEP CHHOKAR
T-95, 2nd FLOOR, C.L HOUSE
GAUTAM NAGAR , New Delhi-110049
Mail:DELHI-11049
NEW jchhokar@gmail.com PETITIONER
Mail:
Mobile:
jchokkar@gmail.com
9999620944
VERSUS
VERSUS
1. ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA

THROUGH IT’S SECRETARY
NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD
NEW DELHI-110001
2. UNION OF INDIA
THROUGH THE CABINET SECRETARY
CABINET SECRETARIAT
RASHTRAPATI BHAWAN
NEW DELHI-110004 RESPONDENTS
WRIT PETITION UNDER ARTICLE 32 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF

INDIA INTER ALIA SEEKING A DIRECTION FROM THIS HON’BLE
COURT TO ENSURE THAT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AT
ELECTIONS IS ACCURATELY REFLECTED BY COUNTING VOTES
THAT HAVE BEEN VERIFIABLY ‘RECORDED AS CAST’ AND
‘COUNTED AS RECORDED’ AND ANCILLARY DIRECTIONS IN
THIS REGARD
TO,
THE HON’BLE CHIEF JUSTICE AND
THE OTHER COMPANION JUDGES OF
THE HON’BLE HIGH COURT OF DELHI
2
HUMBLE PETITION OF THE

PETITIONER ABOVE NAMED.
MOST RESPECTFULLY SHOWETH: -
1. The Petitioner trust has filed the present Public Interest Litigation under
Article 32 of the Constitution of India seeking directions from this
Hon’ble Court to ensure that voters can individually and severally verify
that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’
and issuance of ancillary directions in this regard.
1A. The Petitioner herein is Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR),

a trust registered with Registration No. F/9/9339/AHMEDABAD. ADR has
been at the forefront of electoral reforms in the country for the last 20
years from wide-ranging activities including advocacy for transparent
functioning of political parties, conducting a detailed analysis of
candidates in every election, and researching the financial records of
political parties including their income-tax returns. It was on ADR’s
petition that this Hon’ble Court ordered all election candidates to declare
their criminal records and financial assets. The Organization is registered
as Public Trust under Mumbai Public Trust Act, 1950. Under the practice
followed by ADR, the Founder-Trustee Prof. Jagdeep S Chhokar is
authorized to institute proceedings on behalf of Petitioner trust. The
Registration Certificate of Petitioner trust and authority letter are being
filed along with the Vakalatnama. The petitioner trust’s annual income is
Rs.4,77,20,226 (FY/18-19) (PAN No.AAAAA2503P) . Petitioner trust not
being an individual does not have a National UID number.
The petitioner has no direct or indirect nexus with the subject matter of
the present petition except in so far as it relates to Public Interest.
3
That no civil, criminal, or revenue, or any other litigation is pending in

any court of India in which petitioner may be a party that could have any
nexus with the substance of the present petition.
That the petitioner has means to pay costs if any imposed by the Hon’ble
Court.
That the petitioner has not filed any similar petition praying for the same
reliefs as herein before any other court of law and no such petition is
pending except W.P. (C) 1382/2019 filed by the petitioner herein on
which this Hon’ble Court was pleased to issue notice vide order dated
13.12.2019 with the following prayers:
E. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to conduct actual and accurate reconciliation of
data before the declaration of the final result of any election.
F. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to provide the following information in the public
domain for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and for all future
elections: (i) statutory forms 17C, Form 20, Form 21C, Form 21D
& Form 21 E.
G. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to investigate the discrepancies which had taken
place in the 17th Lok Sabha election results.
H. Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction directing the
Respondent No. 1 to formulate a robust procedure for all future
elections for the investigation of all discrepancies in election data.
That petition had been filed pointing out that there were serious
discrepancies between the number of voters in different constituencies,
that is the voter turnout data collated and provided by the EC and the
number of votes counted.
A representation dated 02.05.2022 was made to the Election Commission

of India vide email and then by hand on 05.05.2022 (received by Election
4
Commission on 05.05.2022) on the same issues raised in the present

petition however no response has been received from the Election
Commission.
The petitioners have no better remedy available than to approach this

Hon’ble Court.
THE CASE IN BRIEF

2. In Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India ,
(2013) 10 SCC 500 in order to “have fullest transparency in the
system and to restore the confidence of the voters”, this Hon’ble Court
held that “‘paper trail’ is an indispensable requirement of free and fair
elections” and directed the ECI to introduce Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trail (hereinafter, ‘VVPAT’) in Electronic Voting Machines (hereinafter,
‘EVM’s). A copy of the judgment of this Hon’ble Court in Subramanian
Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013) 10 SCC 500 is annexed
herewith as Annexure P1 at (Pages 31-129
30-38).
______).
3. Thereafter, in Contempt Petition (Civil) No.303 of 2016 in Civil Appeal

No. 9093/2013, this Hon’ble Court noted that the government had not
made available the requisite funds for implementation of it’s directions
as regards VVPATs. The court directed the ECI to bring on record the
approximate time within which VVPATs could be introduced subject to
release of funds. Vide order dated 24.04.2017 this Hon’ble Court
disposed off the contempt petition after being informed that after
release of funds the ECI had placed orders for procurement of VVPATs
which would be made available by September, 2018, and the same
would be deployed for conduct of the 2019 general elections. A true
copy of the order dated 24.04.2017 passed by this Hon’ble Court in
5
Contempt Petition (Civil) No. 303 of 2016 in is annexed herewith as

39-44).
Annexure P2 at (Pages130-135
________).
4. That the introduction of VVPAT was facilitated by amending the Conduct

of Election Rules, 1961 vide the Conduct of Elections (Amendment)
Rules, 2013, which was notified in the Official Gazette of India by the
Ministry of Law and Justice on 14.08.2013, whereby a proviso was
inserted after Rule 49A, inter alia, to provide for a printer with a drop
box to be attached to a voting machine. Furthermore, Rule 49MA and
Rule 56D (contained in Rule 66A) were also inserted in the Conduct of
Election Rules, 1961 vide the said notification.
Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section 66A of Conduct of

Election Rules, 1961, provides that the count of VVPATs shall prevail
over the count reflected in EVMs. Section 56(D) provides as under:
56-D. Scrutiny of paper trail.—(1) Where printer for paper trail is
used, after the entries made in the result sheet are announced,
any candidate, or in his absence, his election agent or any of his
counting agents may apply in writing to the returning officer to
count the printed paper slips in the drop box of the printer in
respect of any polling station or polling stations.
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer shall,
subject to such general or special guidelines, as may be issued by
the Election Commission, decide the matter and may allow the
application in whole or in part or may reject in whole, if it appears
to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule (2) shall
be in writing and shall contain the reasons therefor.
(4) If the returning officer decides under sub-rule (2) to allow
counting of the paper slips either wholly or in part or parts, he
shall—
(a) do the counting in the manner as may be directed by the
Election Commission;
(b) if there is discrepancy between the votes displayed on
the control unit and the counting of the paper slips,
6
amend the result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips

count;
(c) announce the amendments so made by him; and
(d) complete and sign the result sheet.
A copy of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, is annexed herewith as

Annexure P3 at (Pages 136-234
45-80).
_______).
5. That Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section 66-A of Conduct

of Election Rules, 1961, is a statutory admission/presumption of the
position in law and fact that:
5.1. It is finally the VVPAT which accurately captures the will of the
voter;
5.2. And that variance/errors/malafides in the results captured in the
EVMs cannot be ruled out for any given reason.
6. That due the last minute nature of the proceedings in N. Chandrababu

Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377, this Hon’ble Court,
keeping in mind that the ECI had, “pointed out infrastructure difficulties,
including manpower availability, at this point of time, in increasing the
number of EVMs for verification” (Para 6) because of which the,
“declaration of result of election could be delayed by 5-6 days,” (Para
6) directed the ECI to count VVPATs in 5 polling stations per assembly
constituency as opposed to the prayer in the writ petition for counting
of 50% VVPATs across the country as the Court at that point in time
found that, “the proximity to the election schedule announced by the
ECI must be kept in mind.” (Para 9).
Further, vide the same order, Writ Petition (C) No. 23 of 2019 was
disposed off by this Hon’ble Court expressed it’s “reluctance to go into
7
the issues regarding the integrity of the EVMs which have been raised
at a belated stage. The petition was filed in the month of December
2018 raising various technical issues which are not possible to be gone
into at this stage.” (Para 12)
A copy of the judgment of this Hon’ble Court in N. Chandrababu

Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377 is annexed herewith
as Annexure P4 at (Pages 235-240
81-86).
______)
7. Pertinently, at paragraph 5.20 of the counter affidavit filed by the ECI

in Chandrababu Naidu’s case, the ECI had indicated a way out in the
longer run and stated,“It is also relevant to mention that there are no
barcodes on the paper slip which allows the same to be tallied
mechanically through a counting machine”
A copy of the counter affidavit filed by the ECI in N. Chandrababu
Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377 is annexed herewith
as Annexure P5 at (Pages241-284
87-130)
_______).
8. That on 11.04.2019, the elections to the 17th Lok Sabha were

conducted by the Respondent No. 1 in seven phases and covered all
542 constituencies. The results were announced on 23.05.2019.
9. Notably there were ECI acknowledged instances wherein there has been
variance in the results captured in the EVMs and that of the VVPATs.
9.1. To illustrate, during mandatory verification of paper slips of
VVPAT of 05 randomly selected polling stations, in polling station
No. 63 of Mydukur Assembly Constituency in Andhra Pradesh in
the 2019 general elections, the Returning officer verified that
8
there was a discrepancy of 14 votes in the EVM and VVPAT

counts. The EVM count was 233 votes whereas the VVPAT count
was 219 votes. In other words 6 percent of the counted votes in
that EVM had not been cast.
9.2. The Returning Officer of the constituency later clarified that the
discrepancy is true and was due to non-clearance of votes polled
in the mock-poll conducted at 7 am on the polling day from the
EVM.
9.3. Further, amidst reports of ‘techincal snags’ in the working of a
number of EVMs deployed on election day, the Returning officer
himself could not vote in the morning as the EVM at the Undavalli
polling station in Tadepalli, which falls under Mangalagiri
Assembly constituency hit ‘technical snags’. He went later on in
the evening to cast his vote after the EVMs there were restored.
9.4. That while the explanation given by the Returning Officer may be
correct, what is noteworthy is that the variance was detected only
because that EVM came to be randomly chosen to be matched
with the VVPAT count.
9.5. Whether the EVM counts in all those polling stations where the
results were not cross verified with the VVPATs is not available in
the public domain.
A copy of form verified by the Returning Officer showing variance of 14

votes (6 percent of the total votes in EVMs) in Polling Station No. 63 of
Mydukur Assembly Constituency in Andhra Pradesh in the 2019 general
285
131-133).
elections is annexed herewith as Annexure P6 at (Pages ________)
A copy of article dated 25.05.2019 titled, “The discrepancy in the votes

was due to not clearing the votes from the mock poll” as per clarification
9
given by the Returning Officer to fact checking website factly.in is

286-287
134-135).
annexed herewith as Annexure P7 at (Pages_______).
A copy of article dated 12.04.2019 titled, “ Andhra Pradesh polls: High

stakes brawl-ridden battle sees Election Commission in dock for
malfunctioning EVMs” published on Firstpost is annexed herewith as
Annexure P8 at (Pages 288-292
136-140).
_______).
10. That the count stored in EVMs are inherently open to variance with the
count reflected in VVPATs due to any number of reasons such as
bonafide human errors in the complex seriatium of do’s and dont’s
prescribed by the ECI involving a number of individuals to discharge
their responsibilities with 100% accuracy each time over a period of a
number of months; technical snags; &/or malafide actions.
A copy of the ‘Manual on Electronic Voting Machine & VVPATs’ published
by the ECI in December, 2022 is annexed herewith as Annexure P9 at
293-460
141-308).
(Pages______)
11. That in such circumstances, the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’

(CCE) came into being to go into critical aspects of the conduct of
elections, call for expert advice where necessary and come up with
appropriate suggestions. The CCE was chaired by Hon’ble Justice (retd)
Madan B. Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge, with other former
statutory and constitutional functionaries assosciated with it.
12. The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs primarily on
the touchstone of whether and how far their use complied with
‘democracy principles’ viz:
10
12.1. The voting process should be transparent in a manner that the

general public can be satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded
and counted.
12.2. The voting and counting process should be publicly auditable.
12.3. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps in
the voting process. If special expert knowledge is required then
all should be able to select their own experts.
12.4. There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and
knowledge.
12.5. An election process should not only be free and fair, but also be
seen to be free and fair.
12.6. Election Commission should be in full control of the entire voting
process, and the public at large should be able to verify.
12.7. Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting, should be
in sync with changing technologies and technological practices,
and be subject to public scrutiny/examinability
13. That the group relied on depositions and expert opinions of several
national and international experts. Among the domain knowledge
holders who submitted deposition before this CCE group were Ronald L.
Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA;
Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan, USA; Poorvi L. Vora and
Bhagirath Narahari of George Washington University, USA; Alok
Choudhary of North-western University, USA Sandeep Shukla,
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur; Douglas W.
Jones of the University of Iowa, USA; Nasir Memon of New York
University (Brooklyn), USA; Philip B. Stark of the University of California,
Berkeley, Vanessa Teague, Associate Professor, School of Computing
and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Cyber security,
Australia; MG Devasahayam, former civil servant; Bappa Sinha of Free
Software Movement of India, Subodh Sharma of Computer Science and
Engineering and of the School of Public Policy, IIT, Delhi; S Prasanna,
Advocate, Delhi, Venkatesh Nayak, RTI activist, KV Subrahmanyam,
11
Professor, Computer Science, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai,

Poonam Agarwal, media-person and Anupam Saraf, Professor and
Future Designer, Dr Sanjiva Prasad and Dr Subhashis Banerjee of IIT,
Delhi.
14. That the CCE published a report titled, ‘An inquiry into India’s Election
System: Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT system fit for democratic
elections?’ in January, 2021.
A copy of the report titled, ‘An inquiry into India’s Election System: Is
the Indian EVM and VVPAT system fit for democratic elections? ”
published in January, 2021, by Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE)
chaired by Hon’ble Justice (retd) Madan B. Lokur, former judge of the
Supreme Court of India, is annexed herewith as Annexure P10 at
461-507
309-355).
(Pages______).
15. The report notes the following concerns with EVM’s:

15.1. In an EVM, where votes are recorded electronically by press of a
button, and the voter cannot examine what has been recorded,
there is no way to provide a guarantee to a voter that her vote is
cast as intended (recorded correctly in the EVM), recorded as cast
(what is recorded in the EVM is what is collected in the final tally)
and counted as recorded. This casts doubts on a purely EVM-
based system.
15.2. It is well known that theoretically establishing the correctness of
a system as complicated as an EVM is a computationally
intractable problem. It is also well known that Quality Assurance
(QA) testing is never adequate to establish the correctness of an
EVM, and such tests can detect only a small fraction of possible
software or hardware errors (follows a common maxim that tests
do not constitute a proof of correctness). Also, pre-determined
and pre-set test patterns are known to be inadequate for
verification of the integrity of an EVM. The present EVM system
is not verifiable and therefore is unfit for democratic elections.
12
15.3. If the correctness of an EVM cannot be established then it is

practically impossible to predict whether an EVM can be hacked
or not. In particular, that an EVM has not yet been hacked
provides no guarantee whatsoever that it cannot be hacked. Thus
elections must be conducted assuming that the electronic voting
machines may possibly be tampered with.
15.4. Voter-verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is one possible to way
to make the voting system auditable. Using VVPAT a voter can in
principle verify that her vote is cast as intended, and a suitably
designed end-of-poll statistical audit can possibly determine that
the collection and counting are correct. This, however, is crucially
dependent on the following four requirements :
15.4.1. That the VVPAT slips are in one-to-one correspondence
with the electronic records. Otherwise, it needs to be
clearly defined which of the two is the legal definition of a
vote.
15.4.2. That the VVPAT system is truly voter-verified. The correct
VVPAT protocol is to allow a voter to approve the VVPAT
slip before the vote is cast, and to provide an option to
cancel her vote if a discrepancy is noticed. It also requires
a clear protocol for dispute resolution if a voter complains
that a VVPAT printout is incorrect. The ECI’s VVPAT system
is not truly voter-verified because it does not provide the
necessary agency to a voter to cancel her vote if she thinks
it has been recorded incorrectly. Also, in case the voter
raises a dispute, there is no way for her to prove that she
is not lying. As such, penalizing a voter in such a situation
is not correct.
15.4.3. There must be compliance audit, verifiable by all
candidates and interested members of the general public,
to ensure the integrity of the VVPAT slips. The VVPAT slips
may be trustworthy at the time of voting, but it is
necessary to ensure that they remain trustworthy later
while auditing. Only then a subsequent statistical audit can
establish the correctness of the voting process. There has
to be sufficient guarantees against spurious injection or
deletion of votes after polling and before counting when
the EVMs and VVPATs are in custody of ECI, without
requiring any trust assumptions. Otherwise, the mere
agreement of electronic and VVPAT counts cannot rule out
spurious vote injections or deletions in both.
15.4.4. There must be post-election audit of the EVM counts
against manual counting of the VVPAT slips.
13
It is incorrect to assume that the prevalence of faulty (or hacked)

EVMs is homogeneous across the population, independent of the
margin of winning votes. In fact, it may be sufficient to tamper
only a few EVMs to swing an election if a contest is close. Thus, in
practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than even what
the civil society and the political parties demand (30% and 50%
respectively) to ensure verification and reliable ascertainment of
results.
16. The report further notes:

16.1. The report has devoted considerable time and expertise in
scrutinising the technical architecture of EVMs and the
accompanying VVPATs. The ECI does not appear to safeguard
against the possibilities of ‘side-channel attacks’, i.e. hacking
electronic devices through electromagnetic and other methods.
Even the ‘software guard extensions’ of sophisticated Intel
processors have proved vulnerable to interference and
tampering. Just a few EVMs can swing election results for a
constituency. That the processor chip in the EVM is only one-time
programmable is also in doubt. In fact, latest EVMs use the
MK61FX512VMD12 microcontroller supplied by an US based
multinational, which has a programmable flash memory.
16.2. Further examination is possible only when the ECI makes the EVM
design and prototype available for public technical audit. It is
noted that none of the ECI’s experts has credentials in computer
security and the Commission reposing trust in many other
external entities and organisations, that could lend themselves to
breach of complete security. After tracking the various stages of
the EVM’s movement within the election setup — before and
during polls, subsequent storage, counting and declaration of
results — the report opines that there are certain intervals during
which the machines could be accessed without authority or
tampered with.
16.3. The findings reveal that there is, indeed, no guarantee that the
voter’s choice has been reflected with total fidelity in all cases
and thus submit that immediate steps be taken to rectify the ECI’s
current procedures, irrespective of the scale and extent of
possible error or manipulation. Besides, domain experts have
clearly stated that the present ‘quality assurance’ and testing
strategies of the ECI certainly do not rule out scope for mischief
or manoeuvring of results.
14
16.4. The VVPAT system was introduced to ensure that voters were
able to see and check physically paper slips that emanated from
the EVMs and printers attached to them.
16.5. The Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPAT as an
additional stage to assure voters about the complete fidelity of
their votes but the current procedure of voting does not sync with
this objective and leaves gaps that could be manipulated. This
paper trail has, for instance, been rendered ineffective as the
‘marked slips’ pop up for too brief a time for the voter to verify
her/his vote before it moves away to its sealed box. Besides, the
ECI refuses to cross check the tally of counting VVPAT paper-slips
with electronic results on the grounds of being unnecessary and
time consuming, even though the total time taken is considerably
less than the time spent in counting the traditional papers
received in ballot boxes. Even though VVPAT slips of votes cast
are bound to be retained for one year after polls, the ECI has
destroyed these slips of the 2019 polls, leading to grave
apprehensions about its bona fides. Rules regarding mandatory
recount of EVM results and the compulsory counting of the VVPAT
paper slips are absolutely unavoidable.
17. The report concludes:

17.1. Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the present
EVM/VVPAT system is not verifiable and therefore is unfit for
democratic elections.
17.2. That an EVM has not yet been detected to have been hacked
provides no guarantee that it cannot be hacked. Thus, elections
must be conducted assuming that the EVMs may possibly be
tampered with.
17.3. In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than even
what the civil society and the political parties demand (30% and
50% respectively) to ensure verification and reliable
17.4. There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic vote count
before the results are declared. The audit may in some cases -
depending on the margin of victory - require a full manual
counting of VVPAT slips.
17.5. The electronic voting system should be re-designed to be
software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable or
auditable.
18. The report finally recommends as under:

15
18.1. The decision making processes within the ECI need to be much
more logical, rigorous and principled compared to what it was for
the 2019 parliamentary elections.
18.2. EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The electronic
voting system should be redesigned to be software and hardware
independent in order to be verifiable or auditable. This does not
imply that software or hardware cannot be used, but that the
correctness of the election outcome cannot be entirely dependent
on their working correctly.
18.3. The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-
verified. The voter should be able to approve the VVPAT printout
before the vote is finally cast, and be able to cancel if there is an
error.
18.4. The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines during
the entire time after polling and before counting and auditing
must be ensured in a manner that is verifiable by all (and
especially the candidates). There should be no trust requirement
on the custody chain.
18.5. There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote count before
the results are declared. The audit should not be based on ad hoc
methods but by counting a statistically significant sample of the
VVPAT slips according to rigorous and well established statistical
audit techniques. The audit may in some cases - depending on
the margin of victory - require a full manual counting of VVPAT
slips.
18.6. There should be legislation to decide what is to be done if the
audits reveal a problem. Such legislation should ideally be based
on well-established statistical procedures and not on subjective
decision of a few officials.
18.7. There is a definite need to move away from certification of voting
equipment and processes and demonstrate that the outcome of
an election is correct irrespective of machines and trust on
custody chains of EVMs. Two ways to do this are by adopting
rigorous and well established strategies for risk-limiting audits or
by using a provably end-to-end verifiable cryptographic protocol,
or both. The ECI should explore the possibilities.
18.8. Finally, the voting system design should be subjected to
independent (of the government and ECI) review and the
integrity of the election process should be subjected to
independent audit. The findings should be made public. In
particular, all design details should be transparent and publicly
available.
16
19. That as regards delay in counting of votes is concerned, it is

submitted that if the ECI’s own suggestion of incorporating bar codes on
VVPAT slips is implemented then the counting can be conducted
expeditiously through bar code scanners. Further, elections being the
foundation of democracy, it is necessary to ensure that the election
results are robust and accurate than merely ‘fast’. Further, the election
schedules for the elections conducted in the recent past show that there
is in any case a significant delay between the date(s) on which votes are
cast and date(s) on which the votes are counted. If the Election
Commission can wait for more than a month in some cases to count
votes, there is no reason why even if the process of counting of votes is
delayed slightly; endeavor should not be made to ensure that robust and
accurate results are obtained.
An indicative table showing the schedule of elections in the recent passed

is as under:
Particulars of election Last Day of Date of

Voting/ Voting Declaratio
period n of
Result/Dat
e of
Counting
Gujarat Elections 2022 01.12.2022 – 08.12.2022
05.12.2022
Himachal Pradesh 12.11.2022 08.12.2022
Elections 2022
Uttar Pradesh Elections 10.02.2022 – 10.03.2022
2022 07.03.2022
Manipur Elections 2022 28.02.2022 – 10.03.2022
05.03.2022
Punjab Elections 2022 20.02.2022 10.03.2022
Goa Elections 2022 14.02.2022 10.03.2022
17
Uttarakhand Elections 14.02.2022 10.03.2022

2022
West Bengal Elections 27.03.2021 – 02.05.2021
2021 29.04.2021
Assam Elections 2021 27.03.2021 – 02.05.2021
06.04.2021
Kerala Elections 2021 06.04.2021 02.05.2021
Tamil Nadu Elections 06.04.2021 02.05.2021
2021
Bihar Elections 2020 28.10.2020 – 10.11.2020
07.11.2020
Delhi Elections 2020 08.02.2020 11.02.2020
Jharkhand Elections 30.11.2019 – 21.12.2019
2019 20.12.2019
Haryana Elections 2019 21.10.2019 24.10.2019
Maharashtra Elections 21.10.2019 24.10.2019
2019
Lok Sabha Elections 11.04.2019 – 23.05.2019
2019 19.05.2019
Odisha Elections 2019 11.04.2019 – 23.05.2019
29.04.2019
Andhra Pradesh 11.04.2019 23.05.2019
Elections 2019
Arunachal Pradesh 11.04.2019 23.05.2019
Elections 2019
Sikkim Elections 2019 11.04.2019 23.05.2019
Rajasthan Elections 07.12.2018 11.12.2018
2018
Telangana Elections 07.12.2018 11.12.2018
2018
Madhya Pradesh 28.11.2018 11.12.2018
Elections 2018
Mizoram Elections 2018 28.11.2018 11.12.2018
Madhya Pradesh 25.11.2018 08.12.2018
Elections 2013
Chhattisgarh Elections 12.11.2018 – 11.12.2018
2018 20.11.2018
Karnataka Elections 12.05.2018 15.05.2018
2018
Meghalaya Elections 27.02.2018 03.03.2018
2018
Nagaland Elections 2018 27.02.2018 03.03.2018
18
Tripura Elections 2018 18.02.2018 03.03.2018

Gujarat Elections 2017 09.12.2017 – 18.12.2017
14.12.2017
Himachal Pradesh 09.11.2017 18.12.2017
Elections 2017
Uttar Pradesh Elections 11.02.2017 – 11.03.2017
2017 08.03.2017
Manipur Elections 2017 04.03.2017 – 11.03.2017
08.03.2017
Uttarakhand Elections 15.02.2017 11.03.2017
2017
Goa Elections 2017 04.02.2017 11.03.2017
Punjab Elections 2017 04.02.2017 11.03.2017
Kerala Elections 2016 16.05.2016 19.05.2016
Tamil Nadu Elections 16.05.2016 19.05.2016
2016
West Bengal Elections 04.04.2016 – 19.05.2016
2016 05.05.2016
Assam Elections 2016 04.04.2016 – 19.05.2016
11.04.2016
Bihar Elections 2015 12.10.2015 – 08.11.2015
05.11.2015
Delhi Elections 2015 07.02.2015 10.02.2015
Jammu & Kashmir 25.11.2014 – 23.12.2014
Elections 2014 20.12.2014
Jharkhand Elections 25.11.2014 – 23.12.2014
2014 20.12.2014
Haryana Elections 2014 15.10.2014 19.10.2014
Maharashtra Elections 15.10.2014 19.10.2014
2014
Lok Sabha Elections 07.04.2014 – 16.05.2014
2014 12.05.2014
Andhra Pradesh 07.05.2014 16.05.2014
Elections 2014
Telangana Elections 30.04.2014 16.05.2014
2014
Odisha Elections 2014 10.04.2014 – 16.05.2014
17.04.2014
Sikkim Elections 2014 12.04.2014 16.05.2014
Arunachal Pradesh 09.04.2014 16.05.2014
Elections 2014
19
Rajasthan Elections 01.12.2013 08.12.2013

2013
Mizoram Elections 2013 25.11.2013 09.12.2013
Chhattisgarh Elections 11.11.2013 – 08.12.2013
2013 19.11.2013
Karnataka Elections 05.05.2013 08.05.2013
2013
Meghalaya Elections 23.02.2013 28.02.2013
2013
Nagaland Elections 2013 23.02.2013 28.02.2013
Tripura Elections 2013 14.02.2013 28.02.2013
20. A representation dated 02.05.2022 was sent to the Election

Commission of India by email and also a hard copy was received by the
Election Commission on 05.05.2022. There has been no response from
the Election Commission of India. A copy of representation dated
02.05.2022 sent to the Election Commission of India is annexed herewith
508-523
as Annexure P11 at (Pages 356-371).
______).
21. That in such circumstances petitioners herein have been constrained

to approach this Hon’ble Court as they have no other efficacious remedy
available.
22. That no other petition has been filed by petitioner herein before this
or any other court seeking the same reliefs.
GROUNDS
In light of the facts and circumstances aforementioned the petitioners
are preferring the present petition on the following grounds without
prejudice to each other:
20
A. BECAUSE, the prevalent procedure and practice of the Election

Commission of India in cross verifying the count in EVMs with
VVPATs in 5 randomly selected polling stations per assembly
constituency is not in consonance with the spirit, purport, and
object of this Hon’ble Court’s directions in Subramanian Swamy
v. Election Commission of India, (2013) 10 SCC 500 wherein
in order to “have fullest transparency in the system and to restore
the confidence of the voters”, this Hon’ble Court held that “ ‘paper
trail’ is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections” and
directed the ECI to introduce Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
(hereinafter, ‘VVPAT’) in Electronic Voting Machines (hereinafter,
‘EVM’s) as under:
at page 508
28. From the materials placed by both the sides, we are satisfied
that the “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and
fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be
achieved only with the introduction of the “paper trail”. EVMs with
Vvpat system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With an
intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the
confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with Vvpat
immense importance in a democratic system.
pragmatic and reasonable approach of ECI and considering the fact
that in general elections all over India, ECI has to handle one
million (ten lakh) polling booths, we permit ECI to introduce Vvpat
in gradual stages or geographical-wise in the ensuing general
elections. The area, State or actual booth(s) are to be decided by
ECI and ECI is free to implement the same in a phased manner.
We appreciate the efforts and good gesture made by ECI in
introducing the same. For implementation of such a system (Vvpat)
in a phased manner, the Government of India is directed to provide
required financial assistance for procurement of units of Vvpat.”
21
B. BECAUSE, verifiably accurate reflection of the will of the voters in

the electoral process is at heart of democracy as free and fair
elections are part of the Basic Structure of the Constitution of India
[Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu, 1992 Supp (2) SCC 651].
‘Voter’ verifiable means that it is the satisfaction and verification of
the voter that is at the heart of electoral democracy and not just
that of the ECI, domain experts, political parties, or candidates.
‘Voter verifiable’ means that each voter must be able to verify:
firstly, that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’; and, secondly,
that their vote has been ‘counted as recorded’. The requirement of
the voter verifying that her vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ is
somewhat met when the VVPAT slip is displayed for about seven
seconds after pressing of the button on the EVM through a
transparent window for the voter to verify that her vote has been
‘recorded as cast’ on the internally printed VVPAT slip before the
slip falls into a ‘ballot box’.(‘Somewhat’ because the voter is not
given a copy of the print out of her VVPAT.) However, in so far as
‘counted as recorded’ is concerned there is a complete vacuum in
law as the ECI has provided no procedure for the voter to verify
that her vote has been ‘counted as recorded’ which is an
indispensable part of voter verifiability.
C. BECAUSE, Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section 66A

of Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, provides that the count of
VVPATs shall prevail over the count reflected in EVMs. Rule
56(D)(4)(b) is a statutory admission/presumption of the position in
law and fact that it is finally the VVPAT which accurately captures
the will of the voter and that variance/errors/malafides in the
results captured in the EVMs cannot be ruled out for any given
22
reason. Given the statutory acknowledgement, it is manifestly

arbitrary and violation of Article 14 to then not cross verify the
count in EVMs with that in VVPATs.
Rule 56(D) provides as under:

56-D. Scrutiny of paper trail.—(1) Where printer for paper trail is
used, after the entries made in the result sheet are announced,
any candidate, or in his absence, his election agent or any of his
counting agents may apply in writing to the returning officer to
count the printed paper slips in the drop box of the printer in
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer shall,
subject to such general or special guidelines, as may be issued by
the Election Commission, decide the matter and may allow the
application in whole or in part or may reject in whole, if it appears
to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule (2) shall
be in writing and shall contain the reasons therefor.
shall—
the control unit and the counting of the paper slips, amend
the result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips count;
D. BECAUSE, during the 2019 general elections there were ECI

acknowledged instances wherein there was variance in the results
captured in the EVMs and that of the VVPATs. To illustrate, during
mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 randomly
selected polling stations, in Polling Station No. 63 of Mydukur
Assembly Constituency in Andhra Pradesh in the 2019 general
elections, the Returning officer officially verified that there was a
discrepancy of 14 votes in the EVM and VVPAT counts. The EVM
23
count was 233 votes whereas the VVPAT count was 219 votes. In
other words 6 percent of the counted votes in that EVM had not
been cast. The Returning Officer of the constituency later clarified
that the discrepancy is true and was due to non-clearance of votes
polled in the mock-poll conducted at 7 am on the polling day from
the EVM.
While the explanation given by the Returning Officer may be

correct, what is noteworthy is that the variance was detected only
because that EVM came to be randomly chosen to be matched with
the VVPAT count.
Whether the EVM counts in all those polling stations where the
results were not cross verified with the VVPATs is anybody’s
guess/hope/trust/belief. It is submitted that leaving the accurate
reflection of the voters will to guesses/hope/trust/belief is not in
consonance with Articles 14, 19, & 21.
E. BECAUSE, the above illustration shows that the count stored in

EVMs are inherently open to variance with the count reflected in
VVPATs due to any number of reasons such as bonafide human
errors in the complex seriatium of do’s and dont’s prescribed by
the ECI involving a number of individuals to discharge their
responsibilities with 100% accuracy each time over a long period
of time; technical snags; &/or malafide actions. Leaving the
accurate reflection of the voters will at the vagarancies of ECI’s
complex seriatium of do’s and dont’s involving a large number of
intermediaries is not reasonable and in violation of Article 14.
24
F. BECAUSE, the prevalent rules and procedure do not meet the

criteria of certain basic ‘Democracy Principles’viz:
● The voting process should be transparent in a manner that
the general public can be satisfied that their vote is correctly
recorded and counted.
● The voting and counting process should be publicly
auditable.
● Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps
in the voting process. If special expert knowledge is required
then all should be able to select their own experts.
● There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and
knowledge.
● An election process should not only be free and fair, but also
be seen to be free and fair.
● Election Commission should be in full control of the entire
voting process, and the public at large should be able to
verify.
● Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting, should
be in sync with changing technologies and technological
practices, and be subject to public scrutiny/examinability
G. BECAUSE, the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE) came into

being to go into critical aspects of the conduct of elections, call for
expert advice where necessary and come up with appropriate
suggestions. The CCE was chaired by Hon’ble Justice (retd) Madan
B. Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge, with other former statutory
and constitutional functionaries assosciated with it. The CCE’s
expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs primarily on the
touchstone of whether and how far their use complied with
aforesaid ‘democracy principles’. In a report titled, ‘An inquiry into
India’s Election System: Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT system fit
for democratic elections?’ in January, 2021 published by the
committee it found that:
25
● Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the

present EVM/VVAPAT system is not verifiable and therefore
is unfit for democratic elections.
● That an EVM has not yet been detected to have been hacked
provides no guarantee that it cannot be hacked. Thus,
elections must be conducted assuming that the EVMs may
possibly be tampered with.
● In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than even
what the civil society and the political parties demand (30%
and 50% respectively) to ensure verification and reliable
● There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic vote
count before the results are declared. The audit may in some
cases - depending on the margin of victory - require a full
manual counting of VVPAT slips.
● The electronic voting system should be re-designed to be
software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable
or auditable.
The committee finally recommended as under:

● The decision making processes within the ECI need to be
much more logical, rigorous and principled compared to what
it was for the 2019 parliamentary elections.
● EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The electronic
voting system should be redesigned to be software and
hardware independent in order to be verifiable or auditable.
This does not imply that software or hardware cannot be
used, but that the correctness of the election outcome
cannot be entirely dependent on their working correctly.
● The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-
verified. The voter should be able to approve the VVPAT
printout before the vote is finally cast, and be able to cancel
if there is an error.
● The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines
during the entire time after polling and before counting and
auditing must be ensured in a manner that is verifiable by all
(and especially the candidates). There should be no trust
requirement on the custody chain.
● There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote count
before the results are declared. The audit should not be
based on ad hoc methods but by counting a statistically
significant sample of the VVPAT slips according to rigorous
and well established statistical audit techniques. The audit
26
may in some cases - depending on the margin of victory -

require a full manual counting of VVPAT slips.
● There should be legislation to decide what is to be done if
the audits reveal a problem. Such legislation should ideally
be based on well-established statistical procedures and not
on subjective decision of a few officials.
● There is a definite need to move away from certification of
voting equipment and processes and demonstrate that the
outcome of an election is correct irrespective of machines
and trust on custody chains of EVMs. Two ways to do this
are by adopting rigorous and well established strategies for
risk-limiting audits or by using a provably end-to-end
verifiable cryptographic protocol, or both. The ECI should
explore the possibilities.
● Finally, the voting system design should be subjected to
independent (of the government and ECI) review and the
integrity of the election process should be subjected to
independent audit. The findings should be made public. In
particular, all design details should be transparent and
publicly available.
However, no action has been taken by the ECI upon the said
report.
H. BECAUSE, earlier due the last minute nature of the proceedings

in N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC
377, this Hon’ble Court, keeping in mind that the ECI had, “pointed
out infrastructure difficulties, including manpower availability, at
this point of time, in increasing the number of EVMs for
verification” (Para 6) because of which the, “declaration of result
of election could be delayed by 5-6 days,” (Para 6) directed the
ECI to count VVPATs in 5 polling stations per assembly
constituency as opposed to the prayer in the writ petition for
counting of 50% VVPATs across the country as the Court at that
point in time found that, “ the proximity to the election schedule
announced by the ECI must be kept in mind.” (Para 9). Further,
27
vide the same order, Writ Petition (C) No. 23 of 2019 was disposed
off by this Hon’ble Court expressed it’s “reluctance to go into the
issues regarding the integrity of the EVMs which have been raised
at a belated stage. The petition was filed in the month of December
2018 raising various technical issues which are not possible to be
gone into at this stage.” (Para 12)
I. BECAUSE, at paragraph 5.20 of the counter affidavit filed by the

ECI in Chandrababu Naidu’s case, the ECI had indicated a way out
in the longer run and stated,“It is also relevant to mention that
there are no barcodes on the paper slip which allows the same to
be tallied mechanically through a counting machine”. Introduction
of bar codes on the VVPATs as seemingly indicated by the ECI:
a. Would reduce the time it takes to count the VVPATs;
b. And if a copy of the printed VVPAT with the bar code is made
available to the voter, allow them to tally their slip with the
result declared by the ECI if ECI post declaration of results
makes available an online platform wherein the voter can
scan their barcode and verify if their VVPAT has been
accurately counted in the declared results.
c. Would be a positive step in satisfying the twin requirements
of voter also verifying that their vote has been ‘recorded as
counted’ and ‘counted as recorded’.
PRAYER
In these circumstances, it is therefore most respectfully prayed that your
Lordships may graciously be pleased to:
28
I. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate writ, order, or

direction to the respondents to cross verify the count in EVMs with
votes that have been verifiably ‘recorded as cast’ by the voters
themselves i.e. the VVPATs;
II. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate writ, order, or
direction to the respondents to ensure that the voters are able to
verify through VVPATs that their vote has been ‘counted as
recorded’;
III. Declare as unconstitutional the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961,
and the practice and procedure of Election Commission of India to
the extent that they violate the fundamental right of the voters to
verify through VVPATs that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’
and ‘counted as recorded’; &/or,
IV. Pass such other orders or directions as this Hon’ble Court may
deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of the present
petition
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KINDNESS, THE PETITIONER AS IS DUTY

BOUND SHALL EVER PRAY
DRAWN BY:
Rahul Gupta (Advocate)
Alice Raj (Advocate)
Suroor Mandar (Advocate)
FILED BY:
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
(ADVOCATE ON RECORD FOR PETITIONER)
NEW DELHI
DATED: 13.03.2023
28A
S 28
22
29
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ANNEXURE P2 39
1
ITEM NO.44 COURT NO.4 SECTION XIV
S U P R E M E C O U R T O F I N D I A
RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
CONMT.PET.(C) NO. 303/2016

IN
C.A. NO. 9093/2013
BACKWARD & MINORITY COMMUNITY EMPLOYEES

FEDERATION (BAMCEF) PETITIONER(S)
VERSUS
SYED NASIM AHMAD ZAIDI RESPONDENT(S)

(WITH OFFICE REPORT)
WITH
CONMT.PET.(C) NO. 745/2016 IN C.A. NO. 9093/2013
Date : 24/04/2017 These petitions were called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJAN GOGOI
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE NAVIN SINHA
For parties: Mr. Ranjit Kumar, SG

Mr. Neeraj Kishan Kaul, ASG
Mr. Aman Sinha, Sr. Adv.
Mr. S.S. Ray, Adv.
Mr. Nalin Kohli, Adv.
Mr. Ashok Panigrahi, Adv.
Mr. Ankit Roy, Adv.
Mr. Sri Om Swarup, Adv.
Ms. Anil Katiyar, Adv.
Mr. Ranjit Kumar, SG

Mr. S.S. Ray, Adv.
Mr. M.K. Maroria, Adv.
Mr. Manoj Prasad, Sr. Adv.

Ms. Ambika Ray, Adv.
Mr. Ashutosh Dubey, Adv.
Mr. Irshad Ahmad, Adv.
Ms. Sarvesh Bisaria, Adv.

Mr. Prakash Chandra Sharma, Adv.
Mrs. S. Usha Reddy, Adv.
40
2
Mr. Ashok Desai, Sr. Adv.

Ms. Meenakshi Arora, Sr. Adv.
Mr. S.K. Mehndirata, Adv.
Ms. Monisha Handa, Adv.
Mr. Mohit D. Ram, Adv.
UPON hearing the counsel the Court made the following

O R D E R
The contempt petitions are closed in terms of the
signed order.
[VINOD LAKHINA] [ASHA SONI]

COURT MASTER COURT MASTER
[SIGNED ORDER IS PLACED ON THE FILE]

41
1
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
CIVIL ORIGINAL JURISDICTION
CONTEMPT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. 303/2016

IN
CIVIL APPEAL NO. 9093/2013
BACKWARD & MINORITY COMMUNITY

EMPLOYEES FEDERATION
(BAMCEF) ...PETITIONER(S)
VERSUS
SYED NASIM AHMAD ZAIDI ...RESPONDENT(S)

WITH
IN
[SWAMI ISHAVARDAS SINGH VS. NASIM ZAIDI]
ORDER
1. During the pendency of the present
contempt petitions certain developments
have taken place as evident from the
relevant information placed by Shri Ranjit
Kumar, learned Solicitor General appearing
for the Union of India as well as Shri
Ashok Desai, learned Senior Counsel
appearing for the Election Commission of
India.
42
2
2. From the materials laid before the
Court it appears that on 19th April, 2017
the sanction of the President of India for
purchase of 16,15,000 Voter Verifiable
Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) at an estimated
cost of Rs.3,173.47 crore (excluding taxes
and freight as applicable) from M/s Bharat
Electronics Ltd., Bangalore and M/s
Electronics Corporation of India Ltd.,
Hyderabad has been conveyed to the Election
3. Pursuant to the above, on 21st
April, 2017, the Election Commission of
India has placed orders with M/s Bharat
Hyderabad for purchase of 8,07,500 VVPAT
units from each of the aforesaid firms
indicating September, 2018 as the outer
limit for procurement of the said units.

43
3
4. Shri Ashok Desai, learned Senior
Counsel for the Election Commission of
India has also placed a set of written
instructions received by him from the
Election Commission of India which
indicates that all the VVPAT machines
should be available by September 2018 and
such machines should be available for
deployment in the next General Elections to
constitute 17th Lok Sabha. Paragraphs 3 and
4 of the written instructions which deal
with the above are as follows:
“3. It is submitted that on

this schedule it is anticipated
that the all VVPATs machines
should be available by
September, 2018 and should be
able to be deployed by and be in
situ by February, 2019. As a
result all VVPAT Units would be
available by March, 2019 which
is the expected commencement
date of next General Elections
to constitute 17th Lok Sabha.
4. That for General

Elections for Parliament alone
44
4
there are more than 10,00,000

polling stations and as such
equal number of VVPATs are
required. A margin is however,
necessary in case there are
simultaneous elections in some
constituencies and also for
reserves.
5. In view of the aforesaid
developments that have taken place we are
of the view that the present Contempt
Petitions ought not to be entertained any
further. We accordingly close the contempt
petitions in the light of the developments
noticed and mentioned above.
....................,J.
(RANJAN GOGOI)
...................,J.
(NAVIN SINHA)
NEW DELHI
APRIL 24, 2017
(TRUE COPY)
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ANNEXURE P3
The
Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961
(Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961)
[As amended up to Noti. No. S.O. 2804(E), dated 17-6-2022]

[25th April, 1961]
PART I
PRELIMINARY
1. Short title and commencement.—(1) These rules may be called the Conduct of Elections Rules,
1961.
(2) They shall come into force on the 25th day of April, 1961:
Provided that these rules shall not apply to or in relation to any election called but not completed before
that date and the Representation of the People (Conduct of Elections and Election Petitions) Rules, 1956, shall
continue to apply to or in relation to any such election as if these rules had not been made.
2. Interpretation.—(1) In these rules, unless the context otherwise requires,—
(a) “Act” means the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (43 of 1951);
(b) “ballot box” includes any box, bag or other receptacle used for the insertion of ballot paper by voters;
1 [(ba) “counterfoil” means the counterfoil attached to a ballot paper printed under the provisions of these
rules;]
(bb) 2 [* * *]
(c) “election by assembly members” means an election to the Council of States by the elected members
of the Legislative Assembly of a State by the members of the electoral college of a Union Territory, or
an election to the Legislative Council of a State by the members of the Legislative Assembly of that
State;
(d) “elector”, in relation to an election by assembly members, means any person entitled to vote at that
election;
(e) “electoral roll”, in relation to an election by assembly members, means the list maintained under
Section 152 by the returning officer for that election;
(f) “electoral roll number” of a person means—
(i) the serial number of the entry in the electoral roll in respect of that person;
(ii) the serial number of the part of the electoral roll in which such entry occurs; and
(iii) the name of the constituency to which the electoral roll relates;
(g) “Form” means a Form appended to these rules and in respect of any election in a State, includes a
translation thereof in any of the languages used for official purposes of the State;
3 [(gg) “marked copy of the electoral roll” means the copy of the electoral roll set apart for the purpose of
marking the names of electors to whom ballot papers are issued at an election;]
(h) “polling station”, in relation to an election by assembly members, means the place fixed under
Section 29 for taking the poll at that election;
(i) “presiding officer” includes—
(i) any polling officer performing any of the functions of a presiding officer under sub-section (2) or
sub-section (3) of Section 26; and
(ii) any returning officer while presiding over an election under sub-section (2) of Section 29;
(j) “returning officer” includes any assistant returning officer performing any function he is authorised to
perform under sub-section (2) of Section 22;
(k) “section” means a section of the Act.
(2) For the purposes of the Act or these rules, a person who is unable to write his name shall, unless
otherwise expressly provided in these rules, be deemed to have signed an instrument or other paper if—
(a) he has placed a mark on such instrument or other paper in the presence of the returning officer or the
presiding officer or such other officer as may be specified in this behalf by the Election Commission,
and
(b) such officer on being satisfied as to his identity has attested the mark as being the mark of that
person.
(3) Any requirement under these rules that a notification, order, declaration, notice or list issued or made
by any authority shall be published in the Official Gazette shall, unless otherwise expressly provided in these
rules, be construed as a requirement that it shall be published in the Gazette of India if it relates to an election
to, or membership of, either House of Parliament or an electoral college, and in the Official Gazette of the
State, if it relates to an election to or membership of, the House or either House of the State Legislature.
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(4) The General Clauses Act, 1897 (10 of 1897) shall apply for the interpretation of these rules as it applies
for the interpretation of an Act of Parliament.
PART II
GENERAL PROVISIONS
3. Public notice of intended election.—The public notice of an intended election referred to in Section 31
shall be in Form 1 and shall, subject to any directions of the Election Commission, be published in such
manner as the returning officer thinks fit.
4. Nomination paper.—Every nomination paper presented under sub-section (1) of Section 33 shall be
completed in such one of the Forms 2-A to 2-E as may be appropriate:
Provided that a failure to complete or defect in completing, the declaration as to symbols in a nomination
paper in Form 2-A or Form 2-B shall not be deemed to be a defect of a substantial character within the
meaning of sub-section (4) of Section 36.
4
[4-A. Form of affidavit to be filed at the time of delivering nomination paper.—The candidate or his
proposer, as the case may be, shall, at the time of delivering to the returning officer the nomination paper
under sub-section (1) of Section 33 of the Act, also deliver to him an affidavit sworn by the candidate before a
Magistrate of the first class or a Notary in Form 26.]
► Educational qualification.—False declaration regarding educational qualification of returned candidate, made in affidavit
filed in Form 26 prescribed under Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, is a defect of substantial character. Hence, nomination is
liable to be rejected under Section 36(4) of RP Act, 1951, Mairembam Prithviraj v. Pukhrem Sharatchandra Singh, (2017) 2
SCC 487.
5. Symbols for elections in Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies.—(1) The Election
Commission shall, by notification in the Gazette of India, and in the Official Gazette of each State, specify the
symbols that may be chosen by candidates at elections in Parliamentary or Assembly constituencies and the
restrictions to which their choice shall be subject.
(2) 5 [Subject to any general or special direction issued by the Election Commission either under sub-rule
(4) or sub-rule (5) of Rule 10, where at any such election], more nomination papers than one are delivered by
or on behalf of a candidate, the declaration as to symbols made in the nomination paper first delivered, and no
other declaration as to symbols, shall be taken into consideration under Rule 10 even if that nomination paper
has been rejected.
6. Authentication of certificates issued by the Election Commission.—A certificate issued by the
Election Commission under sub-section (2) of Section 9 or under sub-section (3) of Section 33 shall be signed
by the Secretary to the Election Commission and shall bear its official seal.
7. Notice of nominations.—The notice of nominations under Section 35 shall be in such one of the Forms
3-A to 3-C as may be appropriate.
8. List of validly nominated candidates.—(1) The list of validly nominated candidates referred to in sub-
section (8) of Section 36 shall be in Form 4.
(2) The name of every such candidate shall be shown in the said list as it appears in his nomination paper:
Provided that if a candidate considers that his name is incorrectly spelt or is otherwise incorrectly shown in
his nomination paper or is different from the name by which he is popularly known, he may, at any time before
the list of contesting candidates is prepared, furnish in writing to the returning officer the proper form and
spelling of his name and the returning officer shall, on being satisfied as to the genuineness of the request,
make the necessary correction or alteration in the list in Form 4 and adopt that form and spelling in the list of
contesting candidates.
9. Notice of withdrawal of candidature.—(1) A notice of withdrawal of candidature under sub-section (1)
of Section 37 shall be in Form 5 and shall contain the particulars set out therein; and on receipt of such notice,
the returning officer shall note thereon the date and time at which it was delivered.
(2) The notice under sub-section (3) of Section 37 shall be in Form 6.
10. Preparation of list of contesting candidates.—(1) The list of contesting candidates referred to in sub
-section (1) of Section 38 shall be in Form 7-A or Form 7-B as may be appropriate and shall contain the
particulars set out therein and shall be prepared in such language or languages as the Election Commission
may direct.
(2) [Omitted]
(3) If the list is prepared in more languages than one, the names of candidates therein shall be arranged
alphabetically according to the script of such one of those languages as the Election Commission may direct.
(4) At an election in a Parliamentary or Assembly constituency, where a poll becomes necessary, the
returning officer shall consider the choice of symbols expressed by the contesting candidates in their
nomination papers and shall, subject to any general or special direction issued in this behalf by the Election
Commission,—
(a) allot a different symbol to each contesting candidate in conformity, as far as practicable, with his
choice; and
(b) if more contesting candidates than one have indicated their preference for the same symbol decide
by lot to which of such candidates the symbol will be allotted.
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(5) The allotment by the returning officer of any symbol to a candidate shall be final except where it is
inconsistent with any directions issued by the Election Commission in this behalf in which case the Election
Commission may revise the allotment in such manner as it thinks fit.
(6) Every candidate or his election agent shall forthwith be informed of the symbol allotted to the candidate
and be supplied with a specimen thereof by the returning officer.
11. Publication of list of contesting candidates and declaration of result in uncontested election.—
(1) The returning officer shall, immediately after its preparation, cause a copy of the list of contesting
candidates to be affixed in some conspicuous place in his office and where the number of contesting
candidates is equal to, or less than, the number of seats to be filled, he shall, immediately after such
affixation, declare under sub-section (2) or, as the case may be, sub-section (3) of Section 53 the result of the
election in such one of the Forms 21 to 21-B as may be appropriate and send signed copies of the declaration
to the appropriate authority, the Election Commission and the chief electoral officer.
(2) If a poll becomes necessary under sub-section (1) of Section 53, the returning officer shall supply a
copy of the list of contesting candidates to each such candidate or his election agent, and then shall also
publish the list in the Official Gazette.
12. Appointment of election agent.—(1) Any appointment of an election agent under Section 40 shall be
made in Form 8 and the notice of such appointment shall be given by forwarding the same in duplicate to the
returning officer who shall return one copy thereof to the election agent after affixing thereon his seal and
signature in token of his approval of the appointment.
(2) The revocation of the appointment of an election agent under sub-section (1) of Section 42 shall be
made in Form 9.
13. Appointment of polling agents.—(1) The number of polling agents that may be appointed under
Section 46 shall be one agent and two relief agents.
(2) Every such appointment shall be made in Form 10 and shall be made over to the polling agent for
production at the polling station or the place fixed for the poll, as the case may be.
(3) No polling agent shall be admitted into the polling station or the place fixed for the poll unless he has
delivered to the presiding officer the instrument of his appointment under sub-rule (2) after duly completing
and signing before the presiding officer the declaration contained therein.
14. Revocation of the appointment of a polling agent.—(1) The revocation of the appointment of a
polling agent under sub-section (1) of Section 48 shall be made in Form 11 and lodged with the presiding
officer.
(2) In the event of any such revocation the candidate or his election agent may, at any time before the poll
is closed, make a fresh appointment in the manner specified in Rule 13 and the provisions of that rule shall
apply to every such agent.
15. Publication of the hours fixed for polling.—The hours fixed for polling under Section 56 shall be
published by notification in the Official Gazette.
16. Voting normally to be in person.—Save as hereinafter provided, all electors voting at an election
shall do so in person at the polling station provided for them under Section 25 or, as the case may be, at the
place of polling fixed under Section 29.
PART III
POSTAL BALLOT
17. Definitions.—In this Part,—
(a) 6 [“service voter” means any person specified in clause (a) or clause (b) of Section 60, but does not
include “classified service voter” defined in Rule 27-M;]
(b) “special voter” means any person holding an office to which the provisions of sub-section (4) of
Section 20 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 are declared to apply or the 7 [spouse] of
such person, if he or she has been registered as an elector by virtue of a statement made under sub-
section (5) of the said section;
(c) “voter on election duty” means any polling agent, any polling officer, presiding officer or other public
servant, who is an elector in the constituency and is by reason of his being on election duty unable to
vote at the polling station where he is entitled to vote.
18. Persons entitled to vote by post.—The following persons shall, subject to their fulfilling the
requirements hereinafter specified, be entitled to vote by post, namely:—
(a) at an election in a Parliamentary or Assembly constituency—
(i) special voters;
(ii) service voters;
(iii) voters on election duty; and
(iv) electors subjected to preventive detention;
8
[(v) persons notified under clause (c) of Section 60 of the Act, including absentee voters;]
(b) at an election in a Council constituency—
(i) voters on election duty;
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(ii) electors subjected to preventive detention; and

(iii) electors in the whole or any specified parts, of the constituency if directed by the Election
Commission in this behalf under clause (b) of Rule 68;
(c) at an election by assembly members—
(i) electors subjected to preventive detention; and
(ii) all electors if directed by the Election Commission in this behalf under clause (a) of Rule 68.
19. Intimation by special voters.—A special voter who wishes to vote by post at an election shall send an
intimation in Form 12 to the returning officer so as to reach him at least ten days before the date of poll; and
on receipt of the intimation the returning officer shall issue a postal ballot paper to him.
20. Intimation by voters on election duty.—(1) A voter on election duty who wishes to vote by post at
an election shall send an application in Form 12 to the returning officer so as to reach him at least seven days
or such shorter period as the returning officer may allow before the date of poll; and if the returning officer is
satisfied that the applicant is a voter on election duty, he shall issue a postal ballot paper to him.
(2) Where such voter, being a polling officer, presiding officer or other public servant on election duty in the
constituency of which he is an elector, wishes to vote in person at an election in a Parliamentary or Assembly
constituency and not by post, he shall send an application in Form 12-A to the returning officer so as to reach
him at least four days, or such shorter period as the returning officer may allow, before the date of poll; and if
the returning officer is satisfied that the applicant is such public servant and voter on election duty in the
constituency, he shall—
(a) issue to the applicant an election duty certificate in Form 12-B,
(b) mark ‘EDC’ against his name in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that an election duty
certificate has been issued to him, and
(c) ensure that he is not allowed to vote at the polling station where he would otherwise have been
entitled to vote.
21. Electors under preventive detention.—(1) The appropriate Government shall, within 15 days of the
calling of an election, ascertain and intimate to the returning officer the names of the electors, if any,
subjected to preventive detention together with their addresses and electoral roll numbers and the particulars
about their places of detention.
(2) Any elector subjected to preventive detention may, within 15 days of the calling of an election, send an
intimation to the returning officer that he wishes to vote by post, specifying his name, address, electoral roll
number and place of detention.
(3) The returning officer shall issue a postal ballot paper to every elector subjected to preventive detention
whose name has been intimated to him under sub-rule (1) or under sub-rule (2).
22. Form of ballot paper.—9 [(1) Every postal ballot paper shall have a counterfoil attached thereto, and
the said ballot paper and the counterfoil shall be in such form, and the particulars therein shall be in such
language or languages, as the Election Commission may direct.]
(2) The names of the candidates shall be arranged 10 [on the postal ballot paper] in the order in which they
appear in the list of contesting candidates.
(3) If two or more candidates bear the same name, they shall be distinguished by the addition of their
occupation or residence or in some other manner.
23. Issue of ballot paper.—(1) A postal ballot paper shall be sent by post under certificate of posting to
the elector together with—
(a) a declaration in Form 13-A;
(b) a cover in Form 13-B;
(c) a large cover addressed to the returning officer in Form 13-C; and
(d) instructions for the guidance of the elector in Form 13-D:
Provided that the returning officer may, in the case of a special voter or a voter on election duty, deliver the
ballot paper and forms, or cause them to be delivered, to such voter personally:
11 [Provided further that the postal ballot paper may be transmitted by the Returning Officer by such
electronic means as may be specified by the Election Commission for the persons specified in sub-clause (ii) of
clause (a) of Rule 18.]
12 [(1-A) Where a postal ballot paper is transmitted electronically, the provisions of this rule and Rules 22,
24 and 27 shall, mutatis mutandis, apply.]

13 [(2) The returning officer shall at the same time—
(a) record on the counterfoil of the ballot paper the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the
marked copy of the electoral roll;
(b) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that a ballot paper
has been issued to him, without however recording therein the serial number of the ballot paper
issued to that elector; and
(c) ensure that elector is not allowed to vote at a polling station.]
(3) Before any ballot paper is issued to an elector at an election in a local authorities' constituency or by
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assembly members, the serial number of the ballot paper shall be effectively concealed in such manner as the
Election Commission may direct.
(4) Every officer under whose care or through whom a postal ballot paper is sent shall ensure its delivery to
the addressee without delay.
(5) After ballot papers have been issued to all the electors entitled to vote by post, the returning officer
shall—
(a) at an election in a Parliamentary or Assembly constituency, 14 [subject to the provisions of Rule 27-P,]
seal up in a packet that part of the marked copy of the electoral roll which relates to service voters and
record on the packet a brief description of its contents and the date on which it was sealed and send
the other relevant parts of the marked copy to the several presiding officers 15 [or marking the names
of electors to whom ballot papers are issued at the polling stations without however recording therein
the serial numbers of the ballot papers issued to the electors]; and
(b) at any other election, seal up in a packet the marked copy of the electoral roll and record on the
packet a brief description of its contents and the date on which it is sealed.
16
[(6) The returning officer shall also seal up in a separate packet the counterfoils of the ballot papers issued
to electors entitled to vote by post and record on the packet a brief description of its contents and the date on
which it was sealed.]
24. Recording of vote.—(1) An elector who has received a postal ballot paper and desires to vote shall
record his vote on the ballot paper in accordance with the directions contained in Part I of Form 13-D and then
enclose it in the cover in Form 13-B.
(2) The elector shall sign the declaration in Form 13-A in the presence of, and have the signature attested
by, a stipendiary magistrate or such other officer specified below, as may be appropriate, to whom he is
personally known or to whose satisfaction he has been identified—
(a) in the case of a service voter, such officer as may be appointed in this behalf by the Commanding
Officer of the unit, ship or establishment in which the voter or her husband, as the case may be, is
employed or such officer as may be appointed in this behalf by the diplomatic or consular
representative of India in the country in which such voter is resident;
(b) in the case of a special voter, an officer not below the rank of a Deputy Secretary to Government;
(c) in the case of a voter on election duty, any gazetted officer or the presiding officer of the polling
station at which he is on election duty;
(d) in the case of an elector under preventive detention, the Superintendent of the Jail or the
Commandant of the detention camp in which the elector is under detention; and
(e) in any other case, such officer as may be notified in this behalf by the Election Commission.
25. Assistance to illiterate or infirm voters.—(1) If an elector is unable through illiteracy, blindness or
other physical infirmity to record his vote on a postal ballot paper and sign the declaration, he shall take the
ballot paper, together with the declaration and the covers received by him to an officer competent to attest his
signature under sub-rule (2) of Rule 24 and request the officer to record his vote and sign his declaration on
his behalf.
(2) Such officer shall thereupon mark the ballot paper in accordance with the wishes of the elector in his
presence, sign the declaration on his behalf and complete the appropriate certificate contained in Form 13-A.
26. Re-issue of ballot paper.—(1) When a postal ballot paper and other papers sent under Rule 23 are for
any reason returned undelivered, the returning officer may re-issue them by post under certificate of posting
or deliver them or cause them to be delivered to the elector personally on a request being made by him.
(2) If any elector has inadvertently dealt with the ballot paper or any of the other papers sent to him under
Rule 23 in such a manner that they cannot conveniently be used, a second set of the papers shall be issued to
him after he has returned the spoiled papers and satisfied the returning officer of the inadvertence.
(3) The returning officer shall cancel the spoiled papers so returned and keep them in a separate packet
after noting thereon the particulars of the election and the serial numbers of the cancelled ballot papers.
27. Return of ballot paper.—(1) After an elector has recorded his vote and made his declaration under
Rule 24 or Rule 25, he shall return the ballot paper and declaration to the returning officer in accordance with
the instructions communicated to him in Part II of Form 13-D so as to reach the returning officer before 17 [the
hour fixed for the commencement of counting of votes].
(2) If any cover containing a postal ballot paper is received by the returning officer after the expiry of the
time fixed in sub-rule (1), he shall note thereon the date and time of its receipt and shall keep all such covers
together in a separate packet.
(3) The returning officer shall keep in safe custody until the commencement of the counting of votes all
covers containing postal ballot papers received by him.
18
[PART III-A
PROCEDURE FOR VOTING BY THE NOTIFIED CLASS OF ELECTORS
27-A. Definitions.—In this Part, unless the context otherwise requires,—
(a) “Assistant Returning Officer”, for the notified class of electors, means the Assistant Returning Officer
notified by the Election Commission for the purposes of this Part;
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19
[(aa) ‘absentee voter’ means a person belonging to such class of persons as may be notified, under
clause (c) of Section 60 of the Act, and who is employed in essential services as mentioned in the said
notification, and includes an elector belonging to the class of senior citizen or persons with disability 20
[or the COVID-19 suspect or affected persons];
(ab) ‘nodal officer’ means an officer authorised to verify the claim of an absentee voter not being an
elector belonging to the class of senior citizen or persons with disability;]
(b) “notified elector” means an elector who belongs to a class of persons notified by the Election
Commission under clause (c) of Section 60 of the Act 21 [, other than an absentee voter].
22
[(c) ‘person with disability’ means a person flagged as person with disability in the data base for the
electoral roll;
(d) ‘poll officer’ means the officer deputed to issue postal ballot to elector belonging to the class of senior
citizen or persons with disability;
(e) ‘senior citizen’ for the purpose of this Part means an elector belonging to the class of absentee voters
and is above 23 [65 years] of age.]
24
[(f) “COVID-19 suspect or affected persons” means the electors who are—
(i) tested as COVID-19 positive by the Government Hospital or the Hospital recognised by the
Government as COVID Hospital; or
(ii) under home quarantine or institutional quarantine due to COVID-19, and certified by such
competent authority, as may be notified by the State Government or Union territory
Administration.]
27-B. Special provisions for voting by the notified class of electors.—Notwithstanding anything
contained in Part III, the provisions of this Part shall apply to a notified elector who wishes to vote by post at
an election.
27-C. Intimation by a notified elector.—A notified elector who wishes to vote by post at an election shall
send an application in Form 12-C to the Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors so as to
reach him at least ten days before the date of the poll and on receipt of the intimation such Assistant
Returning Officer shall issue a postal ballot paper to him:
Provided that an application which does not furnish complete particulars as required in Form 12-C may be
rejected if such Assistant Returning Officer, despite making reasonable efforts, is not in a position to ascertain
the requisite information:
25 [Provided further that in case of an absentee voter, the application shall be made in Form 12-D, and shall
contain such particulars as specified therein, and shall be duly verified by the Nodal Officer for the absentee
voter, other than senior citizen or persons with disability, which shall reach the Returning Officer within five
days following the date of notification of election;
Provided also that an application in Form 12-C or Form 12-D without a certificate from the authorised officer
or nodal officer as required under Part II of Form 12 or Form 12-D shall be rejected;]
27-D. Form of ballot paper.—(1) Every postal ballot paper shall have a counterfoil attached thereto and
the said ballot paper and the counterfoil shall be in such form and the particulars therein shall be in such
language or languages as the Election Commission may direct.
(2) The names of the candidates shall be arranged on the postal ballot paper in the order in which they
27-E. Issue of ballot paper.—(1) A postal ballot paper shall be sent by post under certificate of posting to
the notified elector together with—
(a) a declaration in Form 13-A;
(b) a cover in Form 13-B;
(c) a large cover addressed to the Returning Officer in Form 13-C; and
(d) instructions for the guidance of the elector in Form 13-E:
Provided that the Assistant Returning Officer of the notified class of electors may deliver, or cause to be
delivered, the ballot paper and the Forms to the notified elector personally:
26
[Provided further that in the case of absentee voter, the postal ballot paper shall be issued in such manner
as may be specified by the Election Commission.]
(2) The Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors shall at the same time—
(a) record on the counterfoil of the ballot paper the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the
marked copy of the electoral roll.
(b) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that a ballot paper
has been issued to him without, however, recording therein the serial number of the ballot paper
issued to that elector.
(c) ensure that the elector is not allowed to vote at a polling station.
(3) Every officer under whose care or through whom a postal ballot paper is sent shall ensure its delivery to
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the addressee without delay.

(4) The Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors shall ensure that ballot papers are
issued to all such electors whose intimation has been received in accordance with Rule 27-C and who are
entitled to vote by post before eight days from the date of poll in the constituency and shall on expiry of the
said period of eight days keep the marked copies of the electoral rolls in sealed envelopes and record on the
envelopes a brief description of its contents and the date on which it was sealed and send the sealed
envelopes to the Returning Officer concerned.
(5) The Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors shall also seal up in a separate packet
the counterfoils of the ballot papers issued to electors entitled to vote by post and record on the packet a brief
description of its contents and the date on which it was sealed and send the sealed packet to the Returning
Officer concerned.
27-F. Recording of Vote.—(1) A notified elector who has received a postal ballot paper and desires to vote
shall record his vote on the ballot paper in accordance with the instructions contained in Form 13-E and then
enclose it in the cover in Form 13-B.
(2) The notified elector shall sign the declaration in Form 13-A in the presence of, and have the signature
attested by, an officer authorised under sub-rule (2) of Rule 27-J.
27 [(3) In the case of an absentee voter, the recording of vote shall be made in such centre as may be
specified by the Election Commission:

Provided that in the case of absentee voter in the class of senior citizen or persons with disability, the
attestation of declaration in Form 13-A shall be done by the poll officer.]
27-G. Assistance to illiterate or infirm electors.—(1) If a notified elector is unable through illiteracy,
blindness or other physical infirmity to record his vote on a postal ballot paper and sign the declaration, he
shall take the ballot paper together with the declaration and the covers received by him to an officer
authorised under sub-rule (2) of Rule 27-J and request the officer to record his vote and sign his declaration
on his behalf.
(2) Such officer shall thereupon mark the ballot paper in accordance with the wishes of the elector in his
presence, sign the declaration on his behalf and complete the requirements to be made in this behalf.
27-H. Re-issue of ballot paper.—(1) When a postal ballot paper and other papers sent under Rule 27-E
are for any reason returned undelivered, the Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors may re
-issue them by post under certificate of posting or deliver them or cause them to be delivered to the elector
personally either on a request being made by him or of his own.
(2) If any notified elector has inadvertently dealt with the ballot or any of the other papers sent to him
under Rule 27-E in such a manner that they cannot conveniently be used, a second set of the papers shall be
issued to him after he has returned the spoiled papers and satisfied the Assistant Returning Officer for the
notified class of electors of the inadvertence.
(3) The Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors shall cancel the spoiled papers so
returned and keep them in a separate packet after noting thereon the particulars of the election and the serial
numbers of the cancelled ballot papers.
27-I. Return of ballot paper.—(1) After a notified elector has recorded his vote and made his declaration
under Rule 27-F or Rule 27-G, he shall return the ballot paper and the declaration to the Returning Officer
concerned before the hour fixed for the commencement of counting of votes:
28
[Provided that in the case of absentee voter, postal ballot paper shall be returned to the centre provided
for recording of vote under sub-rule (3) of Rule 27-F, subject to any direction that may be issued by the
Election Commission in this behalf.]
(2) If any cover containing a postal ballot paper is received by the Returning Officer after the expiry of the
time fixed in sub-rule (1), he shall note thereon the date and time of its receipt and shall keep all such covers
together in a separate packet.
(3) The Returning Officer shall keep in safe custody until the commencement of the counting of votes all
covers containing postal ballot papers received by him.
27-J. Officers authorised to perform certain functions under this Part.—(1) The officers mentioned in
sub-rule (2) shall be the authorised officers for the purpose of—
(a) sub-rule (2) of Rule 27-G.
(b) issuing certificate in Part II of Form 12-C.
(2) Any of the following officers shall be the authorised officers for the purpose of sub-rule (1):—
(a) an officer in charge of a migrant camp/area.
(b) an officer in charge of an office from where the migrant elector draws his salary as a migrant
employee.
(c) an officer in charge of a treasury/bank from where the migrant elector draws his pension as a
pensioner.
(d) any gazetted officer.
27-K. Marked copy of the electoral roll.—The Returning Officer shall ensure that the marked copy of the
electoral roll received by him from the Assistant Returning Officer for the notified class of electors is used
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during the poll in the constituency that such electors who have been supplied with a postal ballot paper do not
cast the vote again.
27-L. Notwithstanding anything contained in Rule 54-A, the Election Commission may direct, by notification
in the Official Gazette, that the postal ballot papers may be mixed with the ordinary ballot papers at the time
of mixing of ordinary ballot papers under Rule 59-A and, in that case, the Election Commission may also
prescribe, by directions to the Returning Officers, the manner in which the mixing of postal ballot papers shall
be done with the ordinary ballot papers in the constituency.].
29
[PART III-B
VOTING BY CLASSIFIED SERVICE VOTERS THROUGH PROXY
27-M. Definition.—In this part, unless the context otherwise requires,—
(a) “classified service voter” means any person specified in clause (a) of Section 60, who opts to give his
vote by proxy;
(b) “proxy” means the person appointed by a classified service voter as his proxy under Rule 27-N to
give vote on his behalf and in his name;
(c) “service voter” means any person specified in clause (a) of Section 60 and registered as an elector in
the last part of the electoral roll for the constituency.
27-N. Appointment of proxy by a classified service voter.—(1) A service voter may opt to give his vote
by proxy appointed in the manner provided in sub-rules (2) to (4).
(2) Any service voter opting to vote by proxy may appoint any person as his proxy to give vote on his behalf
and in his name at an election in a parliamentary or assembly constituency:
Provided that such proxy shall be an ordinary resident in the constituency concerned and of not less than 18
years of age and shall not be disqualified for registration as an elector in an electoral roll under Section 16 of
the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (43 of 1950).
(3) The appointment of proxy under sub-rule (2) shall be made by the classified service voter in Form 13-F.
(4) Any appointment of proxy made under sub-rule (3) shall be deemed to be valid so long as the person
making it continues to be a service voter or till the date he revokes such appointment, or dies, whichever is
earlier:
Provided that any revocation of appointment shall be made in Form 13-G and shall be effective from the
date on which it is received by the Returning Officer:
Provided further that where he revokes such appointment, or the proxy appointed by him dies, while he
remains a service voter, he may appoint another person as proxy under these rules, as a substitute proxy in
Form 13-G and the substitute proxy so appointed shall be the proxy appointed by such classified service voter
under sub-rule (3) from the date of receipt of the Form 13-G by the Returning Officer.
27-O. Intimation of name of proxy by the classified service voter.—(1) The name of the proxy
appointed by a classified service voter under sub-rule (3), or, as the case may be, under the second proviso to
sub-rule (4), of Rule 27-N shall be intimated by him to the Returning Officer as soon as may be after such
appointment is made, and such intimation must reach the Returning Officer not later than the last date for
making nominations for the earliest election in the constituency after such appointment.
(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (1), if any intimation under that sub-rule reaches the
Returning Officer after the last date for making nominations in the constituency, such intimation shall not be
valid for the election then in progress, but shall, subject to the provisions of sub-rule (4) of Rule 27-N, be valid
for any future election in the constituency.
27-P. Action by Returning Officer on intimation of name of proxy.—(1) On receipt of intimation under
Rule 27-O from a classified service voter in regard to his proxy, the Returning Officer shall mark “CSV” against
the name of such voter in the last part of the electoral roll containing the names of all service voters so as to
indicate that the said voter has appointed his proxy, and the Returning Officer shall—
(a) if it is an intimation received before the last date for making nominations in the constituency, ensure
that no postal ballot paper is issued to such classified service voter; and
(b) if it is an intimation received after the said last date, ensure that a postal ballot paper is issued to
such classified service voter for the election then in progress, in accordance with the provisions
contained in Part III of these rules.
(2) The Returning Officer shall also prepare, and maintain up to date, a separate list of all classified service
voters who have given intimation of their proxies under Rule 27-O, and also of all such proxies with their
complete addresses, in such form and such manner as the Election Commission may specify from time to time.
(3) As soon as may be after the last date for making nominations in the constituency, the Returning Officer
shall, on the basis of the list maintained under sub-rule (2) and subject to such further direction as the
Election Commission may give in this behalf, prepare or cause to be prepared polling stationwise sub-lists of
all classified service voters and their proxies having regard to the residential address of each such classified
service voter as given in the electoral roll.
(4) Each sub-list prepared under sub-rule (3) shall thereafter be caused to be added by the Returning
Officer at the end to the relevant part of the electoral roll pertaining to each polling station concerned, and
such relevant part of the electoral roll together with the said sub-list shall be deemed to be the copy of the
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electoral roll to be used as the marked copy of the electoral roll under Rule 33-A or, as the case may be, under
Rule 49-F during the poll at the polling station concerned.
27-Q. Recording of votes of proxy.—(1) A person voting as proxy for a classified service voter shall do so
in person at the polling station concerned in the electoral roll of which the name of such classified service voter
is added under sub-rule (4) of Rule 27-P.
(2) The person voting as proxy shall record the vote on behalf of the classified service voter at the said
polling station, in the same manner as any other elector assigned to that polling station and the provisions of
Rules 34, 35 and 36 to 43 or, as the case may be, Rules 49-G, 49-H, 49-J to 49-R shall apply in relation to the
recording of vote by such proxy as they apply to any other elector at the polling station:
Provided that any reference to left forefinger of elector in Rule 37 or, as the case may be, Rule 49-K shall be
construed as reference to left middle finger of the person voting as a proxy under this rule.’.
PART IV
VOTING IN PARLIAMENTARY AND ASSEMBLY CONSTITUENCIES
30 [CHAPTER I
VOTING BY BALLOT]
28. Definitions.—31 [In this Chapter and Chapter II], unless the context otherwise requires,—
(a) “candidate” means a contesting candidate;
(b) “constituency” means a Parliamentary or Assembly constituency; and
(c) “polling agent”, in relation to a polling station, means a polling agent of a candidate duly appointed
under Section 46 for the polling station and includes a candidate and the election agent of a candidate
when present at the polling station.
29. Design of ballot boxes.—Every ballot box shall be of such design as may be approved by the Election
Commission.
30. Form of ballot papers.—32 [(1) Every ballot paper shall have a counterfoil attached thereto, and the
said ballot paper and the counterfoil shall be in such form, and the particulars therein shall be in such
language or languages, as the Election Commission may direct.]
(2) The names of the candidates shall be arranged on the ballot paper in the same order in which they
31. Arrangements at polling stations.—(1) Outside each polling station there shall be displayed
prominently—
(a) a notice specifying the polling area the electors of which are entitled to vote at the polling station
and, when the polling area has more than one polling station, the particulars of the electors so
entitled; and
(b) a copy of the list of contesting candidates.
(2) At each polling station, there shall be set up 33 [one or more voting compartments] in which electors can
record their votes screened from observation.
(3) The returning officer shall provide at each polling station a sufficient number of ballot boxes, copies of
the relevant part of the electoral roll, ballot papers, instruments for stamping the distinguishing mark on ballot
papers and articles, necessary for electors to mark the ballot papers.
32. Admission to polling stations.—The presiding officer shall regulate the number of electors, to be
admitted at any one time inside the polling station and shall exclude therefrom all persons other than—
(a) polling officers;
(b) public servants on duty in connection with the election;
(c) persons authorised by the Election Commission;
(d) candidates, their election agents and, subject to the provisions of Rule 13, one polling agent of each
candidate;
(e) a child in arms accompanying an elector;
(f) a person accompanying a blind or infirm elector who cannot move without help; and
(g) such other persons as the returning officer or the presiding officer may employ under sub-rule (2) of
Rule 34 or sub-rule (1) of Rule 35.
33. Preparation of ballot boxes for poll.—(1) Where a paper seal is used for securing a ballot box, the
presiding officer shall affix his own signature on the paper seal and obtain thereon the signatures of such of
the polling agents present as are desirous of affixing the same.
(2) The presiding officer shall thereafter fix the paper seal so signed in the space meant therefor in the
ballot box and shall then secure and seal the box in such manner that the slit for the insertion of ballot paper
thereinto remains open.
(3) The seals used for securing a ballot box shall be affixed in such manner that after the box has been
closed it is not possible to open it without breaking the seals.
(4) Where it is not necessary to use paper seals for securing the ballot boxes, the presiding officer shall
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secure and seal the ballot box in such manner that the slit for the insertion of ballot papers remains open and
shall allow the polling agents present to affix, if they so desire, their seals.
(5) Every ballot box used at a polling station shall bear labels, both inside and outside, marked with—
(a) the serial number, if any, and name of the constituency;
(b) the serial number and name of the polling station;
(c) the serial number of the ballot box (to be filled in at the end of the poll on the label outside the ballot
box only); and
(d) the date of poll.
(6) Immediately before the commencement of the poll, the presiding officer shall demonstrate to the polling
agents and other persons present that the ballot box is empty and bears the labels referred to in sub-rule (5).
(7) The ballot box shall then be closed, sealed and secured and placed in full view of the presiding officer
and the polling agents.
34
[33-A. Marked copy of electoral roll.—Immediately before the commencement of the poll the presiding
officer shall also demonstrate to the polling agents and others present that the marked copy of the electoral
roll to be used during the poll does not contain—
35
[(a) any entry other than those made in pursuance of clause (b) of sub-rule (2) of Rule 20 or clause (b)
of sub-rule (2) of Rule 27-E.]
36 [(b) any mark other than the mark made in pursuance of clause (b) of sub-rule (2) of Rule 23 or clause
(b) of sub-rule (2) of Rule 27-E.]

34. Facilities for women electors.—(1) Where a polling station is for both men and women electors, the
presiding officer may direct that they shall be admitted into the polling station alternately in separate batches.
(2) The returning officer or the presiding officer may appoint a woman to serve as an attendant at any
polling station to assist women electors and also to assist the presiding officer generally in taking the poll in
respect of women electors, and, in particular, to help in searching any woman elector in case it becomes
necessary.
35. Identification of electors.—(1) The presiding officer may employ at the polling station such persons
as he thinks fit to help in the identification of the electors or to assist him otherwise in taking the poll.
(2) As each elector enters the polling station, the presiding officer or the polling officer authorised by him in
this behalf shall check the elector's name and other particulars with the relevant entry in the electoral roll and
then call out the serial number, name and other particulars of the elector.
(3) Where the polling station is situated in a constituency, electors of which have been supplied with
identity cards under the provisions of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the elector shall produce his
identity card before the presiding officer or the polling officer authorised by him in this behalf.
(4) In deciding the right of a person to obtain a ballot paper the presiding officer or the polling officer, as
the case may be, shall overlook merely clerical or printing errors in an entry in the electoral roll, if he is
satisfied that such person is identical with the elector to whom such entry relates.
35-A. Facilities for public servants on election duty.—(1) The provisions of Rule 35 shall not apply to
any person who produces at the polling station an election duty certificate in Form 12-B and asks for the issue
of a ballot paper to him although the polling station is different from the one where he is entitled to vote.
(2) On production of such certificate the presiding officer shall—
(a) obtain thereon the signature of the person producing it;
(b) have the person's name and electoral roll number as mentioned in the certificate entered at the end
of the marked copy of the electoral roll; and
(c) issue to him a ballot paper, and permit him to vote, in the same manner as for an elector entitled to
vote at that polling station.
36. Challenging of identity.—(1) Any polling agent may challenge the identity of a person claiming to be
a particular elector by first depositing a sum of two rupees in cash with the presiding officer for each such
challenge.
(2) On such deposit being made, the presiding officer shall—
(a) warn the person challenged of the penalty for personation;
(b) read the relevant entry in the electoral roll in full and ask him whether he is the person referred to in
that entry;
(c) enter his name and address in the list of challenged votes in Form 14; and
(d) require him to affix his signature in the said list.
(3) The presiding officer shall thereafter hold a summary inquiry into the challenge and may for that
purpose—
(a) require the challenger to adduce evidence in proof of the challenge and the person challenged to
adduce evidence in proof of his identity;
(b) put to the person challenged any questions necessary for the purpose of establishing his identity and
require him to answer them on oath; and
(c) administer an oath to the person challenged and any other person offering to give evidence.
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(4) If, after the inquiry, the presiding officer considers that the challenge has not been established he shall
allow the person challenged to vote; and if he considers that the challenge has been established, he shall
debar the person challenged from voting.
(5) If the presiding officer is of the opinion that the challenge is frivolous or has not been made in good
faith, he shall direct that the deposit made under sub-rule (1) be forfeited to Government, and in any other
case, he shall return to the challenger at the conclusion of the inquiry.
37. Safeguards against personation.—(1) Every elector about whose identity the presiding officer or the
polling officer, as the case may be, is satisfied, shall allow his left forefinger to be inspected by the presiding
officer or polling officer and an indelible ink mark to be put on it.
(2) If any elector—
(a) refuses to allow his left forefinger to be inspected or marked in accordance with sub-rule (1) or has
already such a mark on his left forefinger or does any act with a view to removing the ink mark, or
(b) fails or refuses to produce his identity card as required by sub-rule (3) of Rule 35 he shall not be
supplied with any ballot paper or allowed to vote.
(3) Where a poll is taken simultaneously in a Parliamentary constituency and an Assembly constituency, an
elector whose left forefinger has been marked with indelible ink or who has produced his identity card at one
such election shall, notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rules (1) and (2), be supplied with a ballot
paper for the other election.
(4) Any reference in this rule to the left forefinger of an elector shall, in the case where the elector has his
left forefinger missing, be construed as a reference to any other finger of his left hand, and shall, in the case
where all the fingers of his left hand are missing, be construed as a reference to the forefinger or any other
finger of his right hand, and shall in the case where all his fingers of both the hands are missing be construed
as a reference to such extremity of his left or right arm as he possesses.
37 [38. Issue of ballot papers to electors.—(1) Every ballot paper before it is issued to an elector, and the
counterfoil attached thereto shall be stamped on the back with such distinguishing mark as the Election
Commission may direct, and every ballot paper, before it is issued, shall be signed in full on its back by the
presiding officer.
(2) At the time of issuing a ballot paper to an elector, the polling officer shall—
(a) record on its counterfoil the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the marked copy of the
electoral roll;
(b) obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector on the said counterfoil; and]
(c) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that a ballot paper
has been issued to him, without however recording therein the serial number of the ballot paper
issued to that elector:
38 [Provided that no ballot paper shall be delivered to an elector unless he has put his signature or thumb
impression on the counterfoil of that ballot paper.

(3) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (2) of Rule 2, it shall not be necessary for any presiding
officer or polling officer or any other officer to attest the thumb impression of the elector on the counterfoil.]
(4) No person in the polling station shall note down the serial numbers of the ballot papers issued to
particular electors.]
39. Maintenance of secrecy of voting by electors within polling station and voting procedure.—(1)
Every elector to whom a ballot paper has been issued under Rule 38 or under any other provision of these
rules, shall maintain secrecy of voting within the polling station and for that purpose observe the voting
procedure hereinafter laid down.
(2) The elector on receiving the ballot paper shall forthwith—
(a) proceed to one of the voting compartments;
(b) there make a mark on the ballot paper with the instrument supplied for the purpose on or near the
symbol of the candidate for whom he intends to vote;
(c) fold the ballot paper so as to conceal his vote;
(d) if required, show to the presiding officer the distinguishing mark on the ballot paper;
(e) insert the folded ballot paper into the ballot box; and
(f) quit the polling station.
(3) Every elector shall vote without undue delay.
(4) No elector shall be allowed to enter a voting compartment when another elector is inside it.
(5) If an elector to whom a ballot paper has been issued, refuses, after warning given by the presiding
officer, to observe the procedure as laid down in sub-rule (2), the ballot paper issued to him shall, whether he
has recorded his vote thereon or not, be taken back from him by the presiding officer or a polling officer under
the direction of the presiding officer.
(6) After the ballot paper has been taken back, the presiding officer shall record on its back the words
“Cancelled : voting procedure violated” and put his signature below those words.
(7) All the ballot papers on which the words “Cancelled : voting procedure violated” are recorded, shall be
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kept in a separate cover which shall bear on its face the words “Ballot papers : voting procedure violated”.
(8) Without prejudice to any other penalty to which an elector, from whom a ballot paper has been taken
back under sub-rule (5), may be liable, the vote, if any, recorded on such ballot paper shall not be counted.
40. Recording of votes of blind or infirm electors.—(1) If the presiding officer is satisfied that owing to
blindness or other physical infirmity an elector is unable to recognise the symbols on the ballot paper or to
make a mark thereon without assistance, the presiding officer shall permit the elector to take with him a
companion of not less than 39 [eighteen] years of age to the voting compartment for recording the vote on the
ballot paper on his behalf and in accordance with his wishes, and, if necessary, for folding the ballot paper so
as to conceal the vote and inserting it into the ballot box:
Provided that no person shall be permitted to act as the companion of more than one elector at any polling
station on the same day:
Provided further that before any person is permitted to act as the companion of an elector on any day under
this rule, the person shall be required to declare that he will keep secret the vote recorded by him on behalf of
the elector and that he has not already acted as the companion of any other elector at any polling station on
that day.
(2) The presiding officer shall keep a record in Form 14-A of all cases under this rule.
41. Spoilt and returned ballot papers.—(1) An elector who has inadvertently dealt with his ballot paper
in such manner that it cannot be conveniently used as a ballot paper may, on returning it to the presiding
officer and on satisfying him of the inadvertence, be given another ballot paper, and 40 [the ballot paper so
returned and the counterfoil of such ballot paper] shall be marked “Spoilt : cancelled” by the presiding officer.
(2) If an elector after obtaining a ballot paper decides not to use it, he shall return it to the presiding
officer, and 41 [the ballot paper so returned and the counterfoil of such ballot paper] shall be marked as
“Returned : cancelled” by the presiding officer.
(3) All ballot papers cancelled under sub-rule (1) or sub-rule (2) shall be kept in a separate packet.
42. Tendered votes.—(1) If a person representing himself to be a particular elector applies for a ballot
paper after another person has already voted as such elector, he shall, on satisfactorily answering such
questions relating to his identity as the presiding officer may ask, be entitled, subject to the following
provisions of this rule, to mark a ballot paper (hereinafter in these rules referred to as a “tendered ballot
paper”) in the same manner as any other elector.
(2) Every such person shall, before being supplied with a tendered ballot paper, sign his name against the
entry relating to him in a list in Form 15.
42 [(3) A tendered ballot paper shall be the same as the other ballot papers used at the polling except that—
(a) such tendered ballot paper shall be serially the last in the bundle of ballot papers issued for use at
the polling station; and
(b) such tendered ballot paper and its counterfoil shall be endorsed on the back with the words “tendered
ballot paper” by the presiding officer in his own hand and signed by him.]
(4) The elector, after marking a tendered ballot paper in the voting compartment and folding it, shall,
instead of putting it into the ballot box, give it to the presiding officer, who shall place it in a cover specially
kept for the purpose:
43 [Provided that where such elector is a member of a political party in an election to fill a seat or seats in the
Council of States, the presiding officer shall, before placing the tendered ballot paper in the said cover, allow
the authorised agent of that political party to verify as to which candidate the elector has cast his vote.
Explanation.—For the purposes of this rule, “authorised agent”, in respect of a political party, means an
authorised agent appointed, under sub-rule (2) of Rule 39-AA as made applicable, by clause (ii) of Rule 70, to
election, in a council constituency and, by assembly members other than by postal ballot under clause (a) of
Rule 68, by that political party.]
43. Closing of poll.—(1) The presiding officer shall close a polling station at the hour fixed in that behalf
under Section 56 and shall not thereafter admit any elector into the polling station:
Provided that all electors present at the polling station before it is closed shall be allowed to cast their votes.
(2) If any question arises whether an elector was present at the polling station before it was closed, it shall
be decided by the presiding officer and his decision shall be final.
44. Sealing of ballot boxes after poll.—(1) As soon as practicable after the closing of the poll, the
presiding officer shall close the slit of the ballot box, and where the box does not contain any mechanical
device for closing the slit, he shall seal up the slit and also allow any polling agent present to affix his seal.
(2) The ballot box shall thereafter be sealed and secured.
(3) Where it becomes necessary to use a second ballot box by reason of the first ballot box getting full, the
first box shall be closed, sealed and secured as provided in sub-rules (1) and (2) before another ballot box is
put into use.
(4) The foregoing provisions of this rule shall not apply at a polling station to the presiding officer of which
the Election Commission has issued a direction asking him to proceed in accordance with sub-rule (5).
(5) At any such polling station, as soon as practicable after the close of poll, the presiding officer shall—
(a) transfer all the ballot papers contained in the ballot box or boxes used at that polling station, without
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examining or counting them and with due regard to the secrecy of the ballot, into a cloth bag or cloth-
lined cover after demonstrating to the polling agents present that the bag or cover is empty;
(b) allow the polling agents present to inspect each ballot box and demonstrate to them that it has been
emptied;
(c) record on the bag or cover the name of the constituency, the name of the polling station and the date
of the poll; and
(d) seal the bag or cover and allow any polling agent present to affix his seal thereon.
45. Account of ballot papers.—(1) The presiding officer shall at the close of the poll prepare a ballot
paper account in Form 16 and enclose it in a separate cover with the words “Ballot Paper Account”
superscribed thereon.
44
[(2) The presiding officer shall furnish to every polling agent present at the close of the poll a true copy of
the entries made in the ballot paper account after obtaining a receipt from the said polling agent therefor and
shall also attest it as a true copy.]
46. Sealing of other packets.—(1) The presiding officer shall then make into separate packets—
(a) the marked copy of the electoral roll;
45 [(aa) the counterfoils of the used ballot paper;]
(b) the ballot papers signed in full by the presiding officer under sub-rule (1) of Rule 38 but not issued to
the voters;
(bb) any other ballot papers not issued to the voters;
(c) the ballot papers cancelled for violation of voting procedure under Rule 39;
(cc) any other cancelled ballot papers;]
(d) the cover containing the tendered ballot papers and the list in Form 15;
(e) the list of challenged votes; and
(f) any other papers directed by the Election Commission to be kept in a sealed packet.
(2) Each such packet shall be sealed with the seals of the presiding officer and with the seals either of the
candidate or of his election agent or of his polling agent who may be present at the polling station and may
desire to affix his seals thereon.
47. Transmission of ballot boxes, etc., to the returning officer.—(1) The presiding officer shall then
deliver or cause to be delivered to the returning officer at such place as the returning officer may direct—
(a) the ballot boxes or, as the case may be, the bags or covers referred to in Rule 44;
(b) the ballot paper account;
(c) the sealed packets referred to in Rule 46; and
(d) all other papers used at the poll.
(2) The returning officer shall make adequate arrangements for the safe transport of all ballot boxes,
packets and other papers and for their safe custody until the commencement of the counting of votes.
48. Procedure on adjournment of poll.—(1) If the poll at any polling station is adjourned under sub-
section (1) of Section 57, the provisions of Rules 44 to 47 shall, as far as practicable, apply as if the poll was
closed at the hour fixed in that behalf under Section 56.
(2) When an adjourned poll is recommenced under sub-section (2) of Section 57, the electors who have
already voted at the poll so adjourned shall not be allowed to vote again.
(3) The returning officer shall provide the presiding officer of the polling station at which such adjourned
poll is held, with the sealed packet containing the marked copy of the electoral roll and a new ballot box.
(4) The presiding officer shall open the sealed packet in the presence of the polling agents present and use
the marked copy of the electoral roll 46 [for marking the names of the electors to whom the ballot papers are
issued at the adjourned poll, without however recording therein the serial number thereof].
(5) The provisions of Rules 28 to 47 shall apply in relation to the conduct of an adjourned poll as they apply
in relation to the poll before it was so adjourned.
49. Voting by ballot at notified polling stations.—(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the
preceding provisions of this Part, the Election Commission may, by notification published in the Official Gazette
at least 15 days before the date, or the first of the dates, of poll appointed for an election, direct that the
method of voting by ballot shall be followed in that election at such polling stations as may be specified in the
notification.
(2) Every such polling station is hereafter in these rules referred to as a “notified polling station”.
(3) The provisions of Rules 28 to 48 shall apply in relation to every notified polling station subject to the
following modifications, namely:—
(a) in lieu of Rule 30, the following rule shall apply:—
“30-A. Form of ballot paper.—Every ballot paper shall be of such design as the Election Commission may
decide.”;
(b) in lieu of sub-rules (2) and (3) of Rule 31, the following sub-rules shall apply:—
“(2) At each notified polling station there shall be set up one voting compartment in which the ballot
boxes, one for each candidate, shall be placed for the reception of ballot papers during the poll and which
Pr nted or nt u n
shall be so designed that an elector can insert a ballot paper in any of the ballot boxes without being
observed by any person outside the compartment.
(3) The returning officer shall provide at each notified polling station a sufficient number of ballot boxes,
copies of the relevant part of the electoral roll, ballot papers and such other election materials as may be
required for taking the poll.”;
(c) in lieu of sub-rules (5), (6) and (7) of Rule 33, the following sub-rules shall apply:—
“(5) The symbol allotted to each candidate under Rule 10 shall be printed on labels which shall be affixed
both inside and outside the ballot box and such ballot box shall thereafter be deemed to have been allotted
to that candidate.
(6) Each ballot box shall also be marked with such other distinguishing marks as the Election
Commission may direct.
(7) Immediately before the commencement of the poll, the presiding officer shall allow inspection of each
ballot box by the polling agents present and demonstrate to them that (a) it is empty, (b) proper labels
have been affixed both inside and outside the box, and (c) the ballot box is marked in accordance with sub-
rule (6).
(8) After all the ballot boxes have been labelled, secured and sealed, they shall be placed in the voting
compartment side by side in the same order in which the names of the candidates to whom they have
respectively been allotted appear in the list of contesting candidates.”;
47
[(cc) in lieu of Rule 38, the following rule shall apply:—
“38-B. Issue of ballot papers to electors.—(1) Every ballot paper shall before issue to an elector be—
(a) stamped with such distinguishing mark as the Election Commission may direct; and
(b) signed in full on its back by the presiding officer.
(2) At the time of issuing a ballot paper to an elector, the polling officer shall record the serial number
thereof against the entry relating to the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll.
(3) Save as provided in sub-rule (2), no person in the polling station shall note down the serial numbers of
the ballot papers issued to particular electors.”;]
(d) in lieu of sub-rule (2) of Rule 39, the following sub-rule shall apply:—
“(1) On receiving the ballot paper, the elector shall forthwith go into the voting compartment and insert
the ballot paper through the slit into the ballot box allotted to the candidate for whom he wishes to vote.”;
(e) in lieu of sub-rule (1) of Rule 40, the following sub-rule shall apply:—
“(1) If the presiding officer is satisfied that owing to blindness or other physical infirmity an elector is
unable to recognise the symbols on the ballot boxes or to insert the ballot paper into a ballot box, the
presiding officer shall permit the elector to take with him a companion of not less than 48 [eighteen] years of
age to the voting compartment for ascertaining from him the name of the candidate for whom he wishes to
vote and for inserting the ballot paper into the ballot box of such candidate in accordance with the wishes of
such elector:
Provided that no person shall be permitted to act as the companion of more than one elector at any
polling station on the same day:
Provided further that before any person is permitted to act as the companion of an elector on any day
under this rule, the person shall be required to declare that he will keep secret the name of the candidate
for whom the elector has voted and that he has not already acted as the companion of any other elector at
any polling station on that day.”;
(f) in lieu of Rule 42, the following rules shall apply:—
‘42-A. Tendered votes.—(1) If a person representing himself to be a particular elector applies for a ballot
paper after another person has already voted as such elector, he shall, on satisfactorily answering such
questions relating to his identity as the presiding officer may ask, be supplied with a ballot paper in Form
17 (hereafter in these rules referred to as a “tendered ballot paper”).
(2) Every such person shall, before being supplied with a tendered ballot paper, sign his name against
the entry relating to him in a list in Form 15.
(3) Such person shall thereafter record on the tendered ballot paper the name of the candidate for whom
he wishes to vote; but if owing to illiteracy, blindness, physical infirmity or any other reason he is unable to
make such record, the presiding officer shall do so in accordance with his wishes.
(4) The procedure laid down in sub-rule (3) shall be followed with due regard to secrecy.
(5) Every such tendered ballot paper shall forthwith be placed in a cover specially kept for the purpose:
49
[Provided that where the person referred to in sub-rule (3) is a member of a political party in an
election to fill a seat or seats in the Council of States, the presiding officer, notwithstanding anything
contained in sub-rule (3), shall, before the tendered ballot paper is placed in the said cover, allow the
authorised agent of that political party to verify as to whom such person has cast his vote.
Explanation.—For the purposes of this rule, “authorised agent”, in respect of a political party, means an
authorised agent appointed, under sub-rule (2) of Rule 39-AA as made applicable, by clause (ii) of Rule 70,
to election, in a council constituency and, by assembly members other than by postal ballot under clause
Pr nted or nt u n
(a) of Rule 68, by that political party.]

42-B. Presiding Officer's entry into voting compartment during poll.—(1) The presiding officer may,
whenever he considers it necessary to do so, enter the voting compartment during poll and take such steps
as may be necessary to ensure that the ballot boxes therein are not tampered or interfered with in any way.
(2) If the presiding officer has reason to suspect that an elector who has entered the voting compartment
is tampering or otherwise interfering with any ballot box or has remained inside the voting compartment
unduly long, he shall enter the voting compartment and take such steps as may be necessary to ensure the
smooth and prompt progress of the poll.
(3) Whenever the presiding officer enters the voting compartment under this rule he shall permit the
polling agents present to accompany him.
42-C. Disposal of ballot papers found wholly or partly outside ballot boxes.—(1) If any ballot paper which
has been issued to an elector has not been inserted by him into any ballot box but is found anywhere in or
near the polling station, whether within or outside the voting compartment it shall be deemed to have been
returned to the presiding officer under sub-rule (2) of Rule 41 and dealt with accordingly.
(2) If a ballot paper is found partly inserted into the ballot box of a candidate, it shall be presumed that
the intention of the elector was to cast that vote for that candidate and the presiding officer shall
accordingly push the ballot paper into that ballot box.’;
(g) in lieu of Rule 44, the following rule shall apply:—
“44-A. Sealing of ballot boxes after poll.—(1) As soon as practicable after the closing of the poll, the
presiding officer shall close the slit of each ballot box and where the boxes do not contain any mechanical
device for closing the slit, he shall seal up the slit and also allow any polling agent present to affix his seals.
(2) All the ballot boxes shall thereafter be sealed and secured.”;
50 [* * *]
51 [(i) clause (aa) of sub-rule (1) of Rule 46 shall not apply; and
(j) in lieu of sub-rules (3) and (4) of Rule 48, the following sub-rule shall apply:—
“(3) The returning officer shall provide the presiding officer of the polling station at which such adjourned
poll is held with the sealed packet containing the marked copy of the electoral roll and a set of new ballot
boxes.
(4) The presiding officer shall open the sealed packet in the presence of the polling agents present and
use the marked copy of the electoral roll for recording the serial numbers of the ballot papers issued to
electors at the adjourned poll.”].
52 [CHAPTER II
VOTING BY ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES

49-A. Design of electronic voting machines.—Every electronic voting machine (hereinafter referred to as
the voting machine) shall have a control unit and a balloting unit and shall be of such designs as may be
approved by the Election Commission:
53 [Provided that a printer with a drop box of such design, as may be approved by the Election Commission,
may also be attached to a voting machine for printing a paper trail of the vote, in such constituency or
constituencies or parts thereof as the Election Commission may direct.]
49-B. Preparation of voting machine by the returning officer.—The balloting unit of the voting
machine shall contain such particulars and in such language or languages as the Election Commission may
specify.
(2) The names of the candidates shall be arranged on the balloting unit in the same order in which they
appear in the list of the contesting candidates.
(4) Subject to the foregoing provisions of this rule, the returning officer shall,—
(a) fix the label containing the names and symbols of the contesting candidates in the balloting unit and
secure that unit with his seal and the seals of such of the contesting candidates or their election
agents present as are desirous of affixing the same;
(b) set the number of contesting candidates and close the candidate set section in the control unit and
secure it with his seal and the seals of such of the contesting candidates or their election agents
present as are desirous of affixing the same;
54 [(c) where the printer for paper trail is used under the proviso to Rule 49-A, set the printer as per the
number of contesting candidates set in the control unit by—

(i) loading in the printer the serial numbers and names of candidates and symbols allotted to them as
given on the balloting units under clause (a);
(ii) loading paper in the printer; and
(iii) sealing the printer in such manner as may be directed by the Election Commission.]
49-C. Arrangements at the polling stations.—(1) Outside each polling station there shall be displayed
prominently—
Pr nted or nt u n
(a) a notice specifying the polling area, the electors of which are entitled to vote at the polling station
and, when the polling area has more than one polling station, the particulars of the electors so
entitled; and
(2) At each polling station there shall be set up one or more voting compartments in which the electors can
record their votes free from observation.
(3) The returning officer shall provide at each polling station one voting machine and copies of relevant part
of the electoral roll and such other election material as may be necessary for taking the poll.
(4) Without prejudice to the provisions of sub-rule (3), the returning officer may, with the previous approval
of the Election Commission, provide one common voting machine for two or more polling stations located in
the same premises.
49-D. Admission to polling stations.—The presiding officer shall regulate the number of electors, to be
admitted at any one time inside the polling station and shall exclude therefrom all persons other than—
(a) polling officers;
(b) public servants on duty in connection with the election;
(c) persons authorised by the Election Commission;
(d) candidates, their election agents and subject to the provisions of Rule 13, one polling agent of each
candidate;
(e) a child in arms accompanying as elector;
(f) a person accompanying a blind or infirm elector who cannot move without help; and
(g) such other person as the returning officer or the presiding officer may employ under sub-rule (2) of
Rule 49-G or sub-rule (1) or Rule 49-H.
49-E. Preparation of voting machine for poll.—(1) The control unit and balloting unit of every voting
machine used at polling station 55 [and the printer for paper trail where used,] shall bear a label marked with—
(a) the serial number, if any, and the name of the constituency;
(b) the serial number and name of the polling station or stations as the case may be;
(c) the serial number of the unit; and
agents and other persons present that 56 [no vote has been already recorded in the voting machine and it bears
the label referred to in sub-rule (1), and where the printer for paper trail is used that the drop box of the
printer is empty].
(3) A paper seal shall be used for securing the control unit of the voting machine, and the presiding officer
shall affix his own signature on the paper seal and obtain thereon the signature of such of the polling agents
present as are desirous of affixing the same.
(4) The presiding officer shall thereafter fix the paper seal so signed in the space meant therefor in the
control unit of the voting machine and shall secure and seal the same.
(5) The seal used for securing the control unit shall be fixed in such manner that after the unit has been
sealed, it is not possible to press the “result button” without breaking the seal.
(6) The control unit shall be closed and secured and placed in full view of the presiding officer and the
polling agents and the balloting unit placed in the voting compartment.
57
[(7) Where the printer for paper trail is used, the printer shall also be kept along with the balloting unit in
the voting compartment and shall be connected to the electronic voting machine in the manner as directed by
the Election Commission.]
49-F. Marked copy of electoral roll.—Immediately before the commencement of the poll, the presiding
officer shall also demonstrate to the polling agents and others present that the marked copy of the electoral
roll to be used during the poll does not contain—
(a) any entry other than that made in pursuance of clause (b) of sub-rule (2) of Rule 20; and
(b) any mark other than the mark made in pursuance of clause (b) of sub-rule (2) of Rule 23.
49-G. Facilities for women electors.—(1) Where a polling station is for both men and women electors,
the presiding officer may direct that they shall be admitted into the polling station alternately in separate
batches.
(2) The returning officer or the presiding officer may appoint a woman to serve as an attendant at any
polling station to assist women electors and also to assist the presiding officer generally in taking the poll in
respect of women electors, and in particular, to help/frisking any woman elector in case it becomes necessary.
49-H. Identification of electors.—(1) The presiding officer may employ at the polling station such
persons as he thinks fit to help in the identification of the electors or to assist him otherwise in taking the poll.
(2) As each elector enters the polling station, the presiding officer or the polling officer authorised by him in
this behalf shall check the elector's name and other particulars with the relevant entry in the electoral roll and
then call out the serial number, name and other particulars of the elector.
(3) Where the polling station is situated in a constituency electors of which have been supplied with identity
Pr nted or nt u n
cards under the provisions of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the elector shall produce his identity
card before the presiding officer or the polling officer authorised by him in this behalf.
(4) In deciding the right of a person to cast his vote, the presiding officer or the polling officer, as the case
may be, shall overlook the clerical or printing errors in an entry in the electoral roll if he is satisfied that such
person is identical with the elector to whom such entry relates.
49-I. Facilities for public servants on election duty.—(1) The provisions of Rule 49-H shall not apply to
any person who produces at the polling station an election duty certificate in Form 12-B and seeks permission
to cast his vote at that polling station although it is different from the one where he is entitled to vote.
(2) On production of such certificate, the Presiding Officer shall—
(a) obtain thereon, the signature of the person producing it;
(b) have the person's name and electoral roll number as mentioned in the certificate entered at the end
of the marked copy of the electoral roll; and
(c) permit him to cast his vote in the same manner as for an elector entitled to vote at that polling
station.
49-J. Challenging of identity.—(1) Any polling agent may challenge the identity of a person claiming to
be a particular elector by first depositing a sum of two rupees in cash with the presiding officer for each such
challenge.
(2) On such deposit being made, the presiding officer shall—
(a) warn the person challenged of the penalty for personation;
(b) read the relevant entry in the electoral roll in full and ask him whether he is the person referred to in
that entry;
(c) enter his name and address in the list of challenged votes in Form 14; and
(d) require him to affix his signature in the said list.
(3) The presiding officer shall thereafter hold a summary inquiry into the challenge and may for that
purpose—
(a) require the challenger to adduce evidence in proof of the challenge and the person challenged to
adduce evidence in proof of his identity;
(b) put to the person challenged any questions necessary for the purpose of establishing his identity and
require him to answer them on oath; and
(c) administer an oath to the person challenged and any other person offering to give evidence.
(4) If, after the inquiry, the presiding officer considers that the challenge has not been established he shall
allow the person challenged to vote; and if he considers that the challenge has been established, he shall
debar the person challenged from voting.
(5) If the presiding officer is of the opinion that the challenge is frivolous or has not been made in good
faith, he shall direct that the deposit made under sub-rule (1) be forfeited to Government and in any other
case, returned to the challenger at the conclusion of the inquiry.
49-K. Safeguards against personation.—(1) Every elector about whose identity the presiding officer or
the polling officer, as the case may be, is satisfied, shall allow his left forefinger to be inspected by the
presiding officer or polling officer and an indelible ink mark to be put on it.
(2) If any elector—
(a) refuses to allow his left forefinger to be inspected or marked in accordance with sub-rule (1) or has
already such a mark on his left forefinger or does any act with a view to removing the ink mark, or
(b) fails or refuses to produce his identity card as required by sub-rule (3) of Rule 49-H, he shall not be
allowed to vote.
(3) Where a poll is taken simultaneously in a Parliamentary constituency and an assembly constituency, and
elector whose left forefinger has been marked with indelible ink or who has produced his identity card at one
such election, shall notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rules (1) and (2) be permitted to cast his vote
for the other election.
(4) Any reference in this rule to the left forefinger of an elector shall, in the case where the elector has his
left forefinger missing, be construed as a reference to any other finger on his left hand, and shall, in the case
where all the fingers of his left hand are missing, be construed as a reference to the forefinger or any other
finger of his right hand, and shall in the case where all his fingers of both the hands are missing be construed
as a reference to such extremity of his left or right arm as he possesses.
49-L. Procedure for voting by voting machines.—(1) Before permitting an elector to vote, the polling
officer shall—
(a) record the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the marked copy of the electoral roll in a
register of voters in Form 17-A.
(b) obtain the signature or the thumb impression of the elector on the said register of votes; and
(c) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that he has been
allowed to vote.
58
[(d) give details of the document produced by the elector in proof of his/her identification : ]
Pr nted or nt u n
Provided that no elector shall be allowed to vote unless he has his signature or thumb impression on the
register of voters.
(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (2) of Rule 2, it shall be necessary for any presiding
officer or polling officer or any other officer to attest the thumb impression of the elector on the register of
voters.
49-M. Maintenance of secrecy of voting by electors within the polling station and voting
procedures.—(1) Every elector who has been permitted to vote under Rule 49-L shall maintain secrecy of
voting within the polling station and for that purpose observe the voting procedure hereinafter laid down.
(2) Immediately on being permitted to vote the elector shall proceed to the presiding officer or the polling
officer incharge of the control unit of the voting machine who shall, by pressing the appropriate button on the
control unit, activate the balloting unit; for recording of elector's vote.
(3) The elector shall thereafter forthwith—
(a) proceed to the voting compartment;
(b) record his vote by pressing the button on the balloting unit against the name and symbol of the
candidate for whom he intends to vote; and
(c) come out of the voting compartment and leave the polling station:
59
[Provided that where printer for paper trail is used, upon casting the vote by pressing the button as
referred to in clause (b), the elector shall be able to view through the transparent window of the printer, kept
along with the balloting unit inside the voting compartment, the printed paper slip showing the serial number,
name and the symbol of the candidate for whom he has cast his vote before such paper slip gets cut and drops
in the drop box of the printer.]
(5) No elector shall be allowed to enter the voting compartment when another elector is inside it.
(6) If an elector who has been permitted to vote under Rule 49-L or Rule 49-P refuses after warning given
by the presiding officer to observe the procedure laid down in sub-rule (3) of the said rules, the presiding
officer or a polling officer under the direction of the presiding officer shall not allow such elector to vote.
(7) Where an elector is not allowed to vote under sub-rule (6), a remark to the effect that voting procedure
has been violated shall be made against the elector's name in the register of voters in Form 17-A by the
presiding officer under his signature.
60 [49-MA. Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed on paper slip.—(1) Where printer
for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote under Rule 49-M alleges that the paper slip
generated by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for, the
presiding officer shall obtain a written declaration from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the
elector about the consequence of making a false declaration.
(2) If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1), the presiding officer shall make a
second entry related to that elector in Form 17-A, and permit the elector to record a test vote in the voting
machine in his presence and in the presence of the candidates or polling agents who may be present in the
polling station, and observe the paper slip generated by the printer.
(3) If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the facts immediately to the returning
officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the direction that may be given by
the returning officer.
(4) If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under sub-rule (1)
matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the presiding officer shall—
(i) make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form 17-A
mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test vote has been recorded;
(ii) obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against such remarks; and
(iii) make necessary entries regarding such test vote in Item 5 in Part I of Form 17-C.]
49-N. Recording of votes of blind or infirm electors.—(1) If the presiding officer is satisfied that owing
to blindness or other physical infirmities an elector is unable to recognise the symbol on the balloting unit of
the voting machine or unable to record his vote by pressing the appropriate button thereon without assistance
the presiding officer shall permit the elector to take with him a companion of not less than eighteen years of
age to the voting compartment for recording the vote on his behalf and in accordance with his wishes:
Provided that no person shall be permitted to act as the companion of more than one elector at any polling
station on the same day:
Provided further that before any person is permitted to act as the companion of an elector on any day under
this rule that person shall be required to declare that he will keep secret the vote recorded by him on behalf of
the elector and that he has not already acted as the companion of any other elector at any other polling station
on that day.
(2) The presiding officer shall keep a record in Form 14-A of all cases under this rule.
49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.—If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in
the register of voters in Form 17-A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under
sub-rule (1) of Rule 49-L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said
Pr nted or nt u n
entry in Form 17-A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be
obtained against such remark.
49-P. Tendered votes.—(1) If a person representing himself to be a particular elector seeks to vote after
another person has already voted as such elector, he shall, on satisfactorily answering such questions relating
to his identity as the presiding officer may ask, be, instead of being allowed to vote through the balloting unit,
supplied with a tendered ballot paper which shall be of such design, and the particulars of which shall be in
such language or languages as the Election Commission may specify.
(2) Every such elector shall before being supplied with tendered ballot paper write his name against the
entry relating to him in Form 17-B.
(3) On receiving the ballot paper he shall forthwith—
(b) record there his vote on the ballot paper by placing a cross mark ‘X’ with the instrument or article
supplied for the purpose on or near the symbol of the candidate for whom he intends to vote;
(d) show to the presiding officer, if required, the distinguishing mark on the ballot paper;
(e) give it to the presiding officer who shall place it in a cover specially kept for the purpose; and
(f) leave the polling station.
(4) If owing to blindness or physical infirmities, such elector is unable to record his vote without assistance;
the presiding officer shall permit him to take with him a companion, subject to the same conditions and after
following the same procedure as laid down in Rule 49-N for recording the vote in accordance with his wishes.
49-Q. Presiding officer's entry in the voting compartment during poll.—(1) The presiding officer may
whenever he considers it necessary so to do, enter the voting compartment during poll and take such steps as
may be necessary to ensure that the balloting unit is not tampered or interfered with in any way.
(2) If the presiding officer has reason to suspect that an elector who has entered the voting compartment is
tampering or otherwise interfering with the balloting unit or has remained inside the voting compartment for
unduly long period, he shall enter the voting compartment and take such steps as may be necessary to ensure
the smooth and orderly progress of the poll.
(3) Whenever the presiding officer enters the voting compartment under this rule, he shall permit the
polling agents present to accompany him if they so desire.
49-R. Closing of poll.—(1) The presiding officer shall close a polling station at the hour fixed in that behalf
under Section 56 and shall not thereafter admit any elector into the polling station:
Provided that all electors present at the polling station before it is closed shall be allowed to cast their votes.
(2) If any question arises whether an elector was present at the polling station before it was closed it shall
be decided by the presiding officer and his decision shall be final.
49-S. Account of votes recorded.—(1) The presiding officer shall at the close of the poll prepare an
account of votes recorded in Form 17-C and enclose it in a separate cover with the words ‘Account of Votes
Recorded’ superscribed thereon.
(2) The presiding officer shall furnish to every polling agent present at the close of the poll a true copy of
the entries made in Form 17-C after obtaining a receipt from the said polling agent therefor and shall attest it
as a true copy.
49-T. Sealing of voting machine after poll.—(1) As soon as practicable after the closing of the poll, the
presiding officer shall close the control unit to ensure that no further votes can be recorded and shall detach
the balloting unit from the control unit 61 [and from the printer, where printer is also used, so however, that the
paper slips contained in the drop box of the printer shall remain intact].
(2) 62 [The control unit, the balloting unit and the printer, where it is used, shall] thereafter be sealed, and
secured separately in such manner as the Election Commission may direct and the seal used for securing them
shall be so affixed that it will not be possible to open the units without breaking the seals.
(3) The polling agents present at the polling station, who desire to affix their seals, shall also be permitted
to do so.
49-U. Sealing of other packets.—(1) The presiding officer shall then make into separate packets,—
(b) the register of voters in Form 17-A;
(c) the cover containing the tendered ballot papers and the list in Form 17-B;
(d) the list of challenged votes; and
(e) any other papers directed by the Election Commission to be kept in a sealed packet.
(2) Each packet shall be sealed with the seal of the presiding officer and with the seal either of the
candidate or of his election agent or of his polling agent who may be present at the polling station and may
desire to affix his seal thereon.
49-V. Transmission of voting machines, etc., to the returning officer.—(1) The presiding officer shall
then deliver or cause to be delivered to the returning officer at such place as the returning officer may direct,—
(a) the voting machine;
P e rd y nu ry 3 64
Pr nted or nt u n
(b) the account of votes recorded in Form 17-C;

(c) the sealed packets referred to in Rule 49-U; and
(2) The returning officer shall make adequate arrangements for the safe transport of the voting machine,
packets and other papers for their safe custody until the commencement of the counting of votes.
49-W. Procedure on adjournment of poll.—(1) If the poll at any polling station is adjourned under sub-
section (1) of Section 57, the provisions of Rules 49-S to 49-V shall, as far as practicable, apply as if the poll
was closed at the hour fixed in that behalf under Section 56.
(2) When an adjourned poll is recommended under sub-section (2) of Section 57, the electors who have
already voted at the poll so adjourned shall not be allowed to vote again.
(3) The returning officer shall provide the presiding officer of the polling station at which such adjourned
poll is held, with the sealed packet containing the marked copy of the electoral roll, register of voters in Form
17-A and a new voting machine.
(4) The presiding officer shall open the sealed packet in the presence of the polling agents present and use
the marked copy of the electoral roll for marking the names of the electors who are allowed to vote at the
adjourned poll.
(5) The provisions of Rule 28 and Rules 49-A to 49-V shall apply in relation to the conduct of an adjourned
poll before it was so adjourned.
49-X. Closing of voting machine in case of booth capturing.—Where the presiding officer is of opinion
that booth capturing is taking place at a polling station or at a place fixed for the poll, he shall immediately
close the control unit of the voting machine to ensure that no further votes can be recorded and shall detach
the balloting unit from the control unit.]
PART V
COUNTING OF VOTES IN PARLIAMENTARY AND ASSEMBLY CONSTITUENCIES
50. Definitions.—In this Part, unless the context otherwise requires,—
(b) “constituency” means a Parliamentary or Assembly constituency;
(c) “counting agent” means a counting agent duly appointed under Section 47 and includes a candidate
and the election agent of a candidate when present at the counting;
(d) “notified polling station” means a polling station notified under Rule 49;
(e) “polling station” means a polling station provided under Section 25 other than a notified polling
station.
51. Time and place for counting of votes.—The returning officer shall, at least one week before the date,
or the first of the dates, fixed for the poll, appoint the place or places where the counting of votes will be done
and the date and time at which the counting will commence and shall give notice of the same in writing to
each candidate or his election agent:
Provided that if for any reason the returning officer finds it necessary so to do, he may alter the date, time
and place or places so fixed, or any of them, after giving notice of the same in writing to each candidate or his
election agent.
52. Appointment of counting agents and revocation of such appointments.—(1) The number of
counting agents that a candidate may appoint under Section 47 shall, subject to such general or special
directions as the Election Commission may issue in this behalf, not exceed sixteen at the place or each of the
places, fixed for counting under Rule 51.
(2) Every such appointment shall be made in Form 18 in duplicate, one copy of which shall be forwarded to
the returning officer while the other copy shall be made over to the counting agent for production before the
returning officer not later than one hour before the time fixed for counting under Rule 51.
(3) No counting agent shall be admitted into the place fixed for counting unless he has delivered to the
returning officer the second copy of his appointment under sub-rule (2) after duly completing and signing the
declaration contained therein and receiving from the returning officer an authority for entry into the place fixed
for counting.
(4) The revocation of appointment of a counting agent under sub-section (2) of Section 48 shall be made in
Form 19 and lodged with the returning officer.
(5) In the event of any such revocation before the commencement of the counting of votes, the candidate
or his election agent may make a fresh appointment in accordance with sub-rule (2).
53. Admission to the place fixed for counting.—(1) The returning officer shall exclude from the place
fixed for counting of votes all persons except—
(a) such persons (to be known as counting supervisors and counting assistants) as he may appoint to
assist him in the counting;
(b) persons authorised by the Election Commission;
(c) public servants on duty in connection with the election; and
(d) candidates, their election agents and counting agents.
Pr nted or nt u n
(2) No person who has been employed by or on behalf of, or has been otherwise working for, a candidate in
or about the election shall be appointed under clause (a) of sub-rule (1).
(3) The returning officer shall decide which counting agent or agents shall watch the counting at any
particular counting table or group of counting tables.
(4) Any person who during the counting of votes misconducts himself or fails to obey the lawful directions
of the returning officer may be removed from the place where the votes are being counted by the returning
officer or by any police officer on duty or by any person authorised in this behalf by the returning officer.
54. Maintenance of secrecy of voting.—The returning officer shall, before he commences the counting,
read out the provisions of Section 128 to such persons as may be present.
54-A. Counting of votes received by post.—(1) The returning officer shall first deal with the postal ballot
papers in the manner hereinafter provided.
(2) No cover in Form 13-C received by the returning officer after the expiry of the time fixed in that behalf
shall be opened and no vote contained in any such cover shall be counted.
(3) The other covers shall be opened one after another and as each cover is opened, the returning officer
shall first scrutinise the declaration in Form 13-A contained therein.
(4) If the said declaration is not found, or has not been duly signed and attested, or is otherwise
substantially defective, or if the serial number of the ballot paper as entered in it differs from the serial
number endorsed on the cover in Form 13-B, that cover shall not be opened, and after making an appropriate
endorsement thereon, the returning officer shall reject the ballot paper therein contained.
(5) Each cover so endorsed and the declaration received with it shall be replaced in the cover in Form 13-C
and all such covers in Form 13-C shall be kept in a separate packet which shall be sealed and on which shall
be recorded the name of the constituency, the date of counting and a brief description of its content.
(6) The returning officer shall then place all the declarations in Form 13-A which he has found to be in order
in a separate packet which shall be sealed before any cover in Form 13-B is opened and on which shall be
recorded the particulars referred to in sub-rule (5).
(7) The covers in Form 13-B not already dealt with under the foregoing provisions of this rule shall then be
opened one after another and the returning officer shall scrutinise each ballot paper and decide the validity of
the vote recorded thereon.
(8) A postal ballot paper shall be rejected—
63
[(a) if it bears any mark (other than the mark to record the vote) or writing by which the elector can be
identified; or]
64 [(aa)] if no vote is recorded thereon; or
(b) if votes are given on it in favour of more candidates than one; or

(c) if it is a spurious ballot paper; or
(d) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established; or
(e) if it is not returned in the cover sent along with it to the elector by the returning officer.
(9) A vote recorded on a postal ballot paper shall be rejected if the mark indicating the vote is placed on the
ballot paper in such manner as to make it doubtful to which candidate the vote has been given.
(10) A vote recorded on a postal ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground that the mark
indicating the vote is indistinct or made more than once, if the intention that the vote shall be for a particular
candidate clearly appears from the way the paper is marked.
(11) The returning officer shall count all the valid votes given by the postal ballot in favour of each
candidate, record the total thereof in the result sheet in Form 20 and announce the same.
(12) Thereafter, all the valid ballot papers and all the rejected ballot papers shall be separately bundled and
kept together in a packet which shall be sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of such of the
candidates, their election agents or counting agents as may desire to affix their seals thereon and on the
packet so sealed shall be recorded the name of the constituency, the date of counting and a brief description of
its contents.
55. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes.—[(1) 65 The returning officer may have the ballot box or boxes
used at more than one polling station opened and the ballot papers found in such box or boxes counted
simultaneously.]
66 [* * *]
(2) Before any ballot box is opened at a counting table, the counting agents present at that table shall be
allowed to inspect the paper seal or such other seal as might have been affixed thereon and to satisfy
themselves that it is intact.
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none of the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered with.
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any ballot box has in fact been tampered with, he shall not count
the ballot papers contained in that box and shall follow the procedure laid down in Section 58 in respect of that
polling station.
56. Counting of votes.—67 [(1) The ballot papers taken out of each ballot box shall be arranged in
convenient bundles and scrutinized.]
P e rd y nu ry 3 66
Pr nted or nt u n
(2) The returning officer shall reject a ballot paper—

(a) if it bears any mark or writing by which the elector can be identified, or
68
[(b) If it bears no mark at all or, to indicate the vote, it bears a mark elsewhere than on or near the
symbol of one of the candidates on the face of the ballot paper or, it bears a mark made otherwise
than with the instrument supplied for the purpose, or]
(c) if votes are given on it in favour of more than one candidate, or
(d) if the mark indicating the vote thereon is placed in such manner as to make it doubtful to which
candidate the vote has been given, or
(e) if it is a spurious ballot paper, or
(f) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established, or
(g) if it bears a serial number, or is of a design, different from the serial numbers, or, as the case may
be, design, of the ballot papers authorised for use at the particular polling station, or
(h) if it does not bear both the mark and the signature which it should have borne under the provisions
of sub-rule (1) of Rule 38:
Provided that where the returning officer is satisfied that any such defect as is mentioned in clause (g) or
clause (h) has been caused by any mistake or failure on the part of a presiding officer or polling officer, the
ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground of such defect:
Provided further that a ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground that the mark indicating the
vote is indistinct or made more than once, if the intention that the vote shall be for a particular candidate
clearly appears from the way the paper is marked.
(3) Before rejecting any ballot paper under sub-rule (2), the returning officer shall allow each counting
agent present a reasonable opportunity to inspect the ballot paper but shall not allow him to handle it or any
other ballot paper.
69 [(4) The returning officer shall endorse on every ballot paper which he rejects the word “Rejected” and the
grounds of rejection in abbreviated form either in his own hand or by means of a rubber stamp and shall initial
such endorsement.]
(5) All ballot papers rejected under this rule shall be bundled together.
(6) Every ballot paper which is not rejected under this rule shall be counted as one valid vote:
Provided that no cover containing tendered ballot papers shall be opened and no such paper shall be
counted.
70 [(7) After the counting of all ballot papers contained in all the ballot boxes used at a polling station has
been completed,—
(a) the counting supervisor shall fill in and sign Part II—Result of Counting, in Form 16, which shall also
be signed by the returning officer; and
(b) the returning officer shall make the entries in a result sheet in Form 10 and announce the
particulars.]
71
[* * *]
57. Sealing of used ballot papers.—The valid ballot papers of each candidate and the rejected ballot
papers shall thereafter be bundled separately and the several bundles made up into a separate packet which
shall be sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of such of the candidates, their election agents or
counting agents as may desire to affix their seals thereon; and on the packets so sealed shall be recorded the
following particulars, namely:—
(a) the name of the constituency;
72
[(b) the particulars of the polling station where the ballot papers have been used; and]
(c) the date of counting.
58. Counting of ballot papers transferred to bags or covers under Rule 44.—The provisions of Rules
55, 56 and 57 shall apply so far as may be in relation to counting of ballot papers and votes, if any, which
have been transferred from ballot boxes to cloth bags or cloth-lined covers under sub-rule (5) of Rule 44:
Provided that every reference in the said rules to a ballot box shall be construed as a reference to a bag or
cover to which the contents of a ballot box have been transferred.
59. Counting of votes at notified polling stations.—In relation to the counting of ballot papers found in
ballot boxes used at notified polling stations, 73 [Rules 50 to 54] and, in lieu of Rules 55, 56 and 57, the
following Rules shall apply, namely:—
“55-A. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes.—(1) All ballot boxes used at a notified polling station shall
be opened at the same time but every ballot box shall be dealt with in such manner that its contents do not
get mixed up with the contents of any other ballot box.
(2) Subject to the provisions of sub-rule (1), the returning officer may have the ballot boxes used at
more notified polling stations than one opened and their contents counted simultaneously.
(3) Before any ballot box is opened, the counting agents present shall be allowed to inspect the paper
seal or any other seal that might have been affixed thereon and to satisfy themselves that it is intact.
(4) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none of the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered
Pr nted or nt u n
with.
(5) If the returning officer is satisfied that any of the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered with, he
shall not count the ballot papers contained in any of the ballot boxes used at the polling station at which
such box was used and shall proceed as laid down in Section 58 in respect of that polling station.
(6) After each ballot box is opened, the counting agents present shall be allowed to inspect the ballot box
and satisfy themselves that it bears the proper symbol inside and has been duly marked in accordance with
the provisions of sub-rule (6) of Rule 33 as modified by clause (c) of sub-rule (3) of Rule 49.
(7) If any question arises as to the candidate to whom a particular ballot box was allotted at the poll, the
returning officer shall decide such question by a reference to the symbol inside the box:
Provided that—
(a) if there is no symbol inside the box, or
(b) if the symbol inside the box has been damaged or mutilated beyond recognition, or
(c) if the same symbol is found on two or more boxes used at the same polling station,
the returning officer, shall, wherever possible, decide the question by reference to all relevant circumstances
including the distinguishing marks on the ballot box, and where he does not consider it possible to decide the
question, he shall immediately refer it to the Election Commission for its decision.
56-A. Counting of votes.—(1) The ballot papers taken out of each ballot box shall be arranged in
convenient bundles and scrutinised.
(b) if it is a spurious ballot paper, or
(c) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established, or
(d) if it bears a serial number, or is of a design, different from the serial numbers or, as the case may be,
design, of the ballot papers authorised for use at the particular polling station, or
(e) if it does not bear both the mark and the signature which it should have borne under the provisions of
sub-rule (1) of Rule 38:
Provided that where the returning officer is satisfied that any such defect as is mentioned in clause (d) or
clause (e) has been caused by any mistake or failure on the part of a presiding officer or polling officer, the
ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground of such defect.
(3) Before rejecting any ballot paper under sub-rule (2), the returning officer shall allow the counting
agents present a reasonable opportunity to inspect the ballot paper but shall not allow them to handle it or
any other ballot paper.
(4) The returning officer shall record on every ballot paper which he rejects the letter ‘R’ and the grounds
of rejection in abbreviated form either in his own hand or by means of a rubber stamp.
(5) All ballot papers taken out of any one ballot box and rejected under this Rule shall be made into a
separate bundle.
(6) Every ballot paper which is not rejected under this Rule shall be counted as one valid vote:
Provided that no cover containing tendered ballot papers shall be opened and no such ballot paper shall
be counted.
(7) After the counting of all ballot papers contained in all the ballot boxes used at a polling station has
been completed,—
(a) the counting supervisor shall fill in and sign Part II—Result of Counting in 74 [Form 16] which shall
also be signed by the returning officer; and
(b) the returning officer shall make the entries in a result sheet in Form 20 and announce the particulars.
57-A. Sealing of used ballot papers.—(1) The valid ballot papers found in each ballot box, shall thereafter
be bundled together and kept along with the bundle of rejected ballot papers, if any found in that box in a
separate packet which shall be sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of such of the candidates,
their election agents or counting agents as may desire to affix their seals thereon and on the packet so
sealed there shall be recorded the following particulars, namely:—
(a) the name of the constituency,
(b) the particulars of the polling station where the ballot papers have been used,
(c) the name of the candidate to whom the ballot box was allotted, and
(d) the date of counting.
(2) The returning officer shall then place together all the packets made up under sub-rule (1) in respect
of each candidate in a separate container which shall be sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of
such of the candidates, their election agents or their counting agents as may desire to affix their seals
thereon and on the container so sealed shall be recorded the following particulars, namely:—
(b) the names of the candidates, and
(c) the date of counting.”
75 [59-A. 76[Counting of votes in specified constituencies.—Where the Election Commission apprehends
P e rd y nu ry 3 68
Pr nted or nt u n
intimidation and victimisation of electors in any constituency and it is of the opinion that it is absolutely
necessary that the ballot papers taken out of all boxes used in that constituency should be mixed before
counting, it may, by notification in the Official Gazette, specify such constituency and for counting of such
ballot papers, in lieu of Rules 55, 56, 57 and 59, the following rules shall apply], namely:—
“55-B. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes.—(1) The returning officer shall open, or cause to be opened,
simultaneously the ballot box or boxes used at more than one polling station and shall have the total
number of ballot papers found in such box or boxes counted and recorded in Part II of Form 16:
Provided that discrepancy, if any, between the total number of such ballot papers recorded as aforesaid
and the total number of ballot papers shown against item No. 5 of Part I shall also be recorded in Part II of
Form 16.
(2) Before any ballot box is opened at a counting table, the counting agents present at that table shall be
allowed to inspect the paper seal or such other seal as might have been affixed thereon and to satisfy
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none of the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered
with.
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any ballot box has in fact been tampered with, he shall not
count the ballot papers contained in that box and shall follow the procedure laid down in Section 58 in
respect of that polling station.
56-B. Counting of votes.—(1) Subject to such general or special directions, if any, as may be given by
the Election Commission in this behalf, the ballot papers taken out of all boxes 77 [used at more than one
polling station in a constituency] shall be mixed together and then arranged in convenient bundles and
scrutinised.
(b) if it bears no mark at all or, to indicate the vote, it bears a mark elsewhere than on or near the
symbol of one of the candidates on the face of the ballot paper or, it bears a mark made otherwise
than with the instrument supplied for the purpose, or
(c) if votes are given on it in favour of more than one candidate, or
(d) if the mark indicating the vote thereon is placed in such manner as to make it doubtful to which
candidate the vote has been given, or
(f) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established, or
(g) if it bears a serial number, or is of a design, different from the serial numbers, or, as the case may
be, design, of the ballot papers authorised for use at the particular polling station, or
(h) if it does not bear both the mark and the signature which it should have borne under the provisions
of sub-rule (1) of Rule 38:
Provided that where the returning officer is satisfied that any such defect as is mentioned in clause (g) or
clause (h) has been caused by any mistake or failure on the part of a presiding officer or polling officer, the
ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground of such defect:
Provided further that a ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground that the mark indicating
the vote is indistinct or made more than once, if the intention that the vote shall be for a particular
candidate clearly appears from the way the paper is marked.
(3) Before rejecting any ballot paper under sub-rule (2), the returning officer shall allow each counting
agent present a reasonable opportunity to inspect the ballot paper but shall not allow him to handle it or
any other ballot paper.
(4) The returning officer shall endorse on every ballot paper which he rejects the word “Rejected” and the
grounds of rejection in abbreviated form either in his own hand or by means of a rubber stamp and shall
initial such endorsement.
(5) All ballot papers rejected under this rule shall be bundled together.
(6) Every ballot paper which is not rejected under this rule shall be counted as one valid vote:
Provided that no cover containing tendered ballot shall be opened and no such paper shall be counted.
(7) After the counting of all ballot papers contained in all the ballot boxes used in a constituency has
been completed, the returning officer shall make the entries in a result sheet in Form 20 and announce the
particulars.
Explanation.—For the purpose of this Rule, the expression “constituency” shall, in relation to an election
from a Parliamentary constituency, mean the Assembly constituency comprised therein.
57-B. Sealing of used ballot papers.—The valid ballot papers of each candidate and the rejected ballot
papers shall thereafter be bundled separately and the several bundles made up into a separate packet
which shall be sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of such of the candidates, their election
agents or counting agents as may desire to affix their seals thereon : and on the packets so sealed shall be
recorded the following particulars, namely:—
P e rd y nu ry 3 69
Pr nted or nt u n
(a) the name of the constituency; and

(b) the date of counting.]
60. Counting to be continuous.—The returning officer shall, as far as practicable, proceed continuously
with the counting and shall, during any intervals when the counting has to be suspended, keep the ballot
papers, packets and all other papers relating to the election sealed with his own seal and the seals of such
candidates or election agents as may desire to affix their seals and take sufficient precaution for their safe
custody during such intervals.
61. Recommencement of counting after fresh poll.—(1) If a fresh poll is held under Section 58, the
returning officer shall, after completion of that poll, recommence the counting of votes on the date and at the
time and place which have been fixed by him in that behalf and of which notice has been previously given to
the candidates and their election agents.
(2) The provisions of Rules 56 and 57 shall apply so far as may be to such further counting.
62. [Omitted]
63. Re-count of votes.—(1) After the completion of the counting, the returning officer shall record in the
result sheet in Form 20 the total number of votes polled by each candidate and announce the same.
(2) After such announcement has been made, a candidate or, in his absence, his election agent or any of his
counting agents may apply in writing to the returning officer to re-count the votes either wholly or in part
stating the grounds on which they demand such re-count.
(3) On such an application being made the returning officer shall decide the matter and may allow the
application in whole or in part or may reject it in toto if it appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
(4) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule (3) shall be in writing and contain the reasons
therefor.
(5) If the returning officer decides under sub-rule (3) to allow a re-count of the votes either wholly or in
part, he shall—
(a) do the re-counting in accordance with Rule 54-A, Rule 56 or Rule 56-A, as the case may be;
(b) amend the result sheet in Form 20 to the extent necessary after such re-count; and
(c) announce the amendments so made by him.
(6) After the total number of votes polled by each candidate has been announced under sub-rule (1) or sub-
rule (5), the returning officer shall complete and sign the result sheet in Form 20 and no application for a re-
count shall be entertained thereafter:
Provided that no step under this sub-rule shall be taken on the completion of the counting until the
candidates and election agents present at the completion thereof have been given a reasonable opportunity to
exercise the right conferred by sub-rule (2).
64. Declaration of result of election and return of election.—The returning officer shall, subject to the
provisions of Section 65 if and so far as they apply to any particular case, then—
(a) declare in Form 21-C or Form 21-D, as may be appropriate, the candidate to whom the largest
number of valid votes have been given, to be elected under Section 66 and send signed copies thereof
to the appropriate authority, the Election Commission and the chief electoral officer; and
(b) complete and certify the return of election in Form 21-E and send signed copies thereof to the
Election Commission and the chief electoral officer.
65. Counting at two or more places.—If ballot papers are counted at more places than one, the
provisions of Rules 53, 54 and 55 to 60 shall apply to the counting at each such place, but the provisions of
Rules 54-A, 63 and 64 shall apply only to the counting at the last of such places.
66. Grant of certificate of election to returned candidate.—As soon as may be after a candidate has
been declared by the returning officer under the provisions of Section 53, or Section 66, to be elected, the
returning officer shall grant to such candidate a certificate of election in Form 22 and obtain from the
candidate an acknowledgment of its receipt duly signed by him and immediately send the acknowledgment by
registered post to the Secretary of the House of the People or, as the case may be, the Secretary of the
Legislative Assembly.
78 [66-A. Counting of votes where electronic voting machines have been used.—In relation to the
counting of votes at a polling station, where voting machine has been used,—
(i) the provisions of Rules 50 to 54 and in lieu of Rules 55, 56 and 57, the following Rules shall respectively
apply, namely:—
“55-C. Scrutiny and inspection of voting machines.—(1) The returning officer may have the control units
of the voting machines used at more than one polling station taken up for scrutiny and inspection and votes
recorded in such units counted simultaneously.
(2) Before the votes recorded in any control unit of a voting machine are counted under sub-rule (1), the
candidate or his election agent or his counting agent present at the counting table shall be allowed to
inspect the paper seal and such other vital seals as might have been affixed on the unit and to satisfy
themselves that the seals are intact.
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none of the voting machines has in fact been tampered
with.
Pr nted or nt u n
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any voting machine has in fact been tampered with he shall
not count the votes recorded in that machine and shall follow the procedure laid down in Section 58, or
Section 58-A or Section 64-A, as may be applicable in respect of the polling stations where that machine
was used.
56-C. Counting of votes.—(1) After the returning officer is satisfied that a voting machine has in fact not
been tampered with, he shall have the votes recorded therein counted by pressing the appropriate button
marked “Result” provided in the control unit whereby the total votes polled and votes polled by each
candidate shall be displayed in respect of each such candidate on the display panel provided for the purpose
in the unit.
(2) As the votes polled by each candidate are displayed on the control unit, the returning officer shall
have,—
(a) the number of such votes recorded separately in respect of each candidate in Part-II of Form 17-C:
79
[Provided that the test vote recorded, if any, for a candidate, as per Item 5 in Part I of Form 17-C,
shall be subtracted from the number of votes recorded for such candidate as displayed on the control
unit;]
(b) Part II of Form 17-C completed in other respects and signed by the counting supervisor and also by
the candidates or their election agents or their counting agents present; and
(c) corresponding entries made in a result sheet in Form 20 and the particulars so entered in the result
sheet announced.
80 [56-D. Scrutiny of paper trail.—(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, after the entries made in the
result sheet are announced, any candidate, or in his absence, his election agent or any of his counting
agents may apply in writing to the returning officer to count the printed paper slips in the drop box of the
printer in respect of any polling station or polling stations.
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer shall, subject to such general or special
guidelines, as may be issued by the Election Commission, decide the matter and may allow the application
in whole or in part or may reject in whole, if it appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule (2) shall be in writing and shall contain the
reasons therefor.
(4) If the returning officer decides under sub-rule (2) to allow counting of the paper slips either wholly or
in part or parts, he shall—
(a) do the counting in the manner as may be directed by the Election Commission;
(b) if there is discrepancy between the votes displayed on the control unit and the counting of the paper
slips, amend the result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips count;
(d) complete and sign the result sheet.]
57-C. Sealing of voting machines.—(1) After the result of voting recorded in a control unit has been
ascertained candidate wise and entered in Part II of Form 17-C and Form 20 under Rule 56-C, the returning
officer shall reseal the unit with his seal and the seals of such of the candidates or their election agents
present who may desire to affix their seals thereon so, however, that the result of voting recorded in the
unit is not obliterated and the unit retains the memory of such result 81 [and where printer for paper trail is
used, the returning officer shall seal the paper slips in such manner, as may be directed by the Election
Commission].
(2) The control unit 82 [and the paper slips] so sealed shall be kept in specially prepared boxes on which
the returning officer shall record the following particulars, namely:—
(b) the particulars of polling station or stations where the control unit has been used;
(c) serial number of the control unit 83 [and printer wherever used];
(d) date of poll; and
(e) date of counting”;
(ii) the provisions of Rules 60 to 66 shall, so far as may be, apply in relation to voting by voting
machines and any reference in those Rules to,—
(a) ballot paper shall be construed as including a reference to such voting machine;
(b) any rule shall be construed as a reference to the corresponding rule in Chapter II of Part IV or, as the
case may be, to Rule 55-C or 56-C or 57-C.]
PART VI
VOTING AT ELECTIONS BY ASSEMBLY MEMBERS AND IN COUNCIL CONSTITUENCIES
84
[67. Definition.—Unless the context otherwise requires, in this Part—
(a) and in Rule 84, “authorised agent”, in respect of a political party, means an authorised agent
appointed, under sub-rule (2) of Rule 39-AA as made applicable, by clause (ii) of Rule 70, to election,
in a council constituency and, by assembly members other than by postal ballot under clause (a) of
Rule 68, by that political party;
P e rd y nu ry 3 71
Pr nted or nt u n
(b) “election” means an election by assembly members or an election in a council constituency.]

68. Notification as to postal ballot.—The Election Commission may, by notification published in the
Official Gazette at any time before the last date for the withdrawal of candidatures at an election, direct that
the method of voting by postal ballot shall be followed:—
(a) at that election, if it is an election by assembly members; or
(b) in the whole or any specified parts of the constituency, if it is an election in a Council constituency.
69. Notice to electors at election by assembly members.—At an election by assembly members where
a poll becomes necessary, the returning officer for such election shall, as soon as may be after the last date for
the withdrawal of candidatures, send to each elector a notice informing him of the date, time and place fixed
for polling.
70. Rules for conduct of poll.—The provisions of Rules 28 to 35 and 36 to 48 shall apply—
(a) to every election by assembly members in respect of which no direction has been issued under clause
(a) of Rule 68, and
(b) to every election in a Council constituency unless voting by postal ballot has been directed in the
whole of that constituency under clause (b) of Rule 68,
subject to the following modifications, namely:—
(i) clause (a) of sub-rule (1) of Rule 31 shall not apply to an election by assembly members;
(ii) in lieu of Rules 37 to 40, the following rules shall apply:—
“37-A. Method of voting.—(1) Every elector has only one vote at an election irrespective of the number of
seats to be filled.
85 [(1-A) The provisions of sub-rules (1), (2) and (4) of Rule 37 shall apply in relation to electors in the
graduates' constituencies and teachers' constituencies as they apply in relation to electors in the
Parliamentary constituencies and Assembly constituencies.]
(2) An elector in giving his vote—
(a) shall place on his ballot paper the figure 1 in the space opposite the name of the candidate for whom
he wishes to vote in the first instance; and
(b) may, in addition, place on his ballot paper the figure 2 or the figures 2 and 3, or the figures 2, 3 and
4 and so on, in the space opposite the names of the other candidates in the order of his preference.
Explanation.—The figures referred to in clauses (a) and (b) of this sub-rule may be marked in the
international form of Indian numerals or in the Roman form or in the form used in any Indian language but
shall not be indicated in words.
86 [38-A. Issue of ballot papers to electors—(1) Every ballot paper, before it is issued to an elector, and
the counterfoil attached thereto shall be stamped on the back with such distinguishing mark as the Election
Commission may direct, and every ballot paper, before it is issued, shall be signed in full on its back by the
presiding officer.
(2) At the time of issuing a ballot paper to an elector, the polling officer shall—
(a) record on its counterfoil the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the marked copy of the
electoral roll;
(b) obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector on the said counterfoil; and
87 [(c) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that a ballot paper
has been issued to him,—

(i) and record in the marked copy of the electoral roll, the serial number of the ballot paper issued to
that elector, in the case of an election to fill a seat or seats in the Council of States;
(ii) without recording therein the serial number of the ballot paper issued to that elector, in the case of
an election to fill a seat or seats in the Legislative Council of a State;]
88
[Provided that no ballot paper shall be delivered to an elector unless he has put his signature or thumb
impression on the counterfoil of that ballot paper.]
(3) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (2) of Rule 2, it shall not be necessary for any
presiding officer or polling officer or any other officer to attest the thumb impression of the elector on the
counterfoil.
(4) 89 [Subject to Rule 39-AA, no person] in the polling station shall note down the serial numbers of the
ballot papers issued to particular electors.
90
[(5) Before any ballot paper is delivered to an elector at an election to fill a seat or seats in the
Legislative Council of a State by assembly members or in a local authorities' constituency, the serial number
of the ballot papers shall be effectively concealed in such manner as the Election Commission may direct.]
91 [39-A. Maintenance of secrecy of voting by electors within polling station and voting procedure.—(1)
Every elector, to whom a ballot paper has been issued under Rule 38-A or under any other provision of
these rules, shall maintain secrecy of voting within the polling station and for that purpose observe the
voting procedure hereinafter laid down.
(2) The elector on receiving the ballot paper shall forthwith—
(a) proceed to one of the voting compartments;
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(b) record his vote in accordance with sub-rule (2) of Rule 37-A with the article supplied for the purpose;
92
[(d) if required, show to the presiding officer, the distinguishing mark on the ballot paper;]
93
[(e)] insert the folded paper into the ballot box; and
94
[(f)] quit the polling station.
(4) No elector shall be allowed to enter a voting compartment when another elector is inside it.
(5) If an elector to whom a ballot paper has been issued, refuses, after warning given by the presiding
officer to observe the procedure as laid down in sub-rule (2), the ballot paper issued to him shall, whether
he has recorded his vote thereon or not, be taken back from him by the presiding officer or a polling officer
under the direction of the presiding officer.
(6) After the ballot paper has been taken back, the presiding officer shall record on its back the words
“Cancelled : voting procedure violated” and put his signature below those words.
(7) All the ballot papers on which the words “Cancelled : voting procedure violated” are recorded, shall
be kept in a separate cover which shall bear on its face the words “Ballot papers : voting procedure
violated”.
(8) Without prejudice to any other penalty to which an elector, from whom a ballot paper has been taken
back under sub-rule (5), may be liable, vote, if any, recorded on such ballot paper shall not be counted.]
95
[39-AA. Information regarding casting of votes.—(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in Rule 39-A,
the presiding officer shall, between the period when an elector being a member of a political party records
his vote on a ballot paper and before such elector inserts that ballot paper into the ballot box, allow the
authorised agent of that political party to verify as to whom such elector has cast his vote:
Provided that if such elector refuses to show his marked ballot paper to the authorised agent of his
political party, the ballot paper issued to him shall be taken back by the presiding officer or a polling officer
under the direction of the presiding officer and the ballot paper so taken back shall then be further dealt
with in the manner specified in sub-rules (6) to (8) of Rule 39-A as if such ballot paper had been taken
back under sub-rule (5) of that rule.
(2) Every political party, whose member as an elector casts a vote at a polling station, shall, for the
purposes of sub-rule (1), appoint, in Form 22-A, two authorised agents.
(3) An authorised agent appointed under sub-rule (2) shall be present throughout the polling hours at
the polling station and the other shall relieve him when he goes out of the polling station or vice versa.]
40-A. Recording of votes of illiterate, blind or infirm electors.—(1) If an elector is unable to read the
ballot paper or to record his vote thereon in accordance with Rule 37-A by reason of illiteracy, blindness or
other infirmity, the presiding officer shall, on being satisfied about such illiteracy, blindness or infirmity,
permit the elector to take with him a companion of not less than 96 [eighteen] years of age who is able to
read the ballot paper and record the vote thereon on behalf of, and in accordance with the wishes of, the
elector and, if necessary, to fold the ballot paper so as to conceal the vote and insert it into the ballot box:
Provided that no person shall be permitted to act as the companion of more than one elector at any
polling station on the same day:
Provided further that before any person is permitted to act as the companion of an elector or any day
under this Rule, the person shall be required to declare that he will keep secret the vote recorded by him on
behalf of the elector and that he has not already acted as the companion of any other elector at any polling
station on that day:
97 [Provided also that at an election by assembly members no such companion shall be an elector at that
election.]
(2) The presiding officer shall keep a record in Form 14-A of all the cases under this Rule.
(3) The presiding officer shall, when he is so requested by the companion of an elector, explain to him
the instructions for the recording of votes.]”;
(iii) in lieu of Rule 44, the following rule shall apply:—
“44-B. Sealing of ballot box after poll.—As soon as practicable after the close of the poll, the presiding
officer shall, in the presence of any polling agents who may be present, close the slit for insertion of ballot
papers of each ballot box or where the box does not contain any mechanical device for closing the slit, seal
up the slit and secure the ballot box:
Provided that it shall not be necessary to seal the slit or secure the ballot box if the counting of votes is
to begin immediately after the close of the poll.”;
98 [(iv) in Rule 46, in sub-rule (1), in lieu of clauses (b) and (c), the following clauses shall apply:—
“(b) the ballot papers signed in full by the presiding officer under sub-rule (1) of Rule 38-A but not
issued to the voters;
(c) the ballot papers cancelled for violation of voting procedure under Rule 39-A.”].
PART VII
COUNTING OF VOTES AT ELECTIONS BY ASSEMBLY MEMBERS OR IN COUNCIL CONSTITUENCIES
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71. Definitions.—In this Part,—

(1) “continuing candidate” means any candidate not elected and not excluded from the poll at any given
time;
(2) “count” means—
(a) all the operations involved in the counting of the first preferences recorded for candidates; or
(b) all the operations involved in the transfer of the surplus of an elected candidate; or
(c) all the operations involved, in the transfer of the total value of votes of an excluded candidate;
(3) “exhausted paper” means a ballot paper on which no further preference is recorded for a continuing
candidate, provided that a paper shall also be deemed to have become exhausted whenever—
(a) the names of two or more candidates, whether continuing or not, are marked with the same figure
and are next in order of preference; or
(b) the name of the candidate next in order of preference, whether continuing or not is marked by a
figure not following consecutively after some other figure on the ballot paper or by two or more
figures;
(4) “first preference” means the figure 1 set opposite the name of a candidate; “second preference” means
the figure 2 set opposite the name of a candidate; “third preference”means the figure 3 set opposite the name
of a candidate, and so on;
(5) “original vote”, in relation to any candidate, means a vote derived from a ballot paper on which a first
preference is recorded, for such candidate;
(6) “surplus” means the number by which the value of the votes, original and transferred, of any candidate
exceeds the quota;
(7) “transferred vote”, in relation to any candidate, means a vote the value or the part of the value of which
is credited to such candidate and which is derived from a ballot paper on which a second or a subsequent
preference is recorded for such candidate; and
(8) “unexhausted paper” means a ballot paper on which a further preference is recorded for a continuing
candidate.
72. Application of certain rules.—The provisions of Rules 51 to 54 shall apply to the counting of votes at
any election by assembly members or in a Council constituency as they apply to the counting of votes at an
election in a Parliamentary or Assembly constituency.
73. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes and packets of postal ballot papers.—(1) The returning
officer shall—
(a) first deal with the covers containing the postal ballot papers, if any, in the manner provided in sub-
rules (2) to (7) of Rule 54-A;
(b) then open the ballot boxes, take out from each box and count the ballot papers contained therein,
and record their number in a statement;
(c) scrutinise the ballot papers taken out of the ballot boxes as well as the postal ballot papers taken out
from the covers; and
(d) separate the ballot papers which he deems valid from those which he rejects endorsing on each of
the latter the word “Rejected” and the ground of rejection.
(2) 99 [Subject to Rule 38-A as made applicable, by clause (ii) of Rule 70, to election, in a council
constituency and, by assembly members other than by postal ballot under clause (a) of Rule 68, a ballot paper
shall] be invalid on which—
(a) the figure 1 is not marked; or
(b) the figure 1 is set opposite the name of more than one candidate or is so placed as to render it
doubtful to which candidate it is intended to apply; or
(c) the figure 1 and some other figures are set opposite the name of the same candidate; or
(d) there is any mark or writing by which the elector can be identified; 100 [or]
101 [(e) there is any figure marked otherwise than with the article supplied for the purpose:
Provided that this clause shall not apply to a postal ballot paper:
Provided further that where the returning officer is satisfied that any such defect as is mentioned in this
clause has been caused by any mistake or failure on the part of a presiding officer or polling officer, the ballot
paper shall not be rejected, merely on the ground of such defect.]
Explanation.—The figures referred to in clauses (a), (b) and (c) of this sub-rule may be marked in the
international form of Indian numerals or in the Roman form or in the form used in any Indian language, but
shall not be indicated in words.
74. Arrangement of valid ballot papers in parcels.—After rejecting the ballot papers which are invalid,
the returning officer shall—
(a) arrange the remaining ballot papers in parcels according to the first preference recorded for each
candidate;
(b) count and record the number of papers in each parcel and the total number; and
(c) credit to each candidate the value of the papers in his parcel.
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75. Counting of votes where only one seat is to be filled.—(1) At any election where only one seat is
to be filled, every valid ballot paper shall be deemed to be of the value of 1 at each count, and the quota
sufficient to secure the return of a candidate at the election shall be determined as follows:—
(a) add the values credited to all the candidates under clause (c) of Rule 74;
(b) divide the total by 2; and
(c) add 1 to the quotient ignoring the remainder, if any, and the resulting number is the quota.
(2) If, at the end of the first or any subsequent count, the total value of the ballot papers credited to any
candidate is equal to, or greater than, the quota or there is only one continuing candidate, that candidate shall
be declared elected.
(3) If, at the end of any count, no candidate can be declared elected, the returning officer shall—
(a) exclude from the poll the candidate who up to that stage has been credited with the lowest value;
(b) examine all the ballot papers in his parcels and sub-parcels, arrange the unexhausted papers in sub-
parcels according to the next available preferences recorded thereon for the continuing candidates,
count the number of papers in each such sub-parcel and credit it to the candidate for whom such
preference is recorded, transfer the sub-parcel to that candidate, and make a separate sub-parcel of
all the exhausted papers; and
(c) see whether any of the continuing candidate has, after such transfer and credit, secured the quota.
(4) If, when a candidate has to be excluded under clause (a) of sub-rule (3), two or more candidates have
been credited with the same value and stand lowest on the poll, the candidate for whom the lowest number of
original votes are recorded shall be excluded, and if this number also is the same in the case of two or more
candidates, the returning officer shall decide by lot which of them shall be excluded.
Counting of votes when more than one seat is to be filled
76. Ascertainment of quota.—At any election where more than one seat is to be filled, every valid ballot
paper shall be deemed to be of the value of 100, and the quota sufficient to secure the return of a candidate at
the election shall be determined as follows:—
(a) add the values credited to all the candidates under clause (c) of Rule 74;
(b) divide the total by a number which exceeds by 1 the number of vacancies to be filled; and
(c) add 1 to the quotient ignoring the remainder, if any, and the resulting number is the quota.
77. General instruction.—In carrying out the provisions of Rules 78 to 82, the returning officer shall
disregard all fractions and ignore all preferences recorded for candidates already elected or excluded from the
poll.
78. Candidates with quota elected.—If at the end of any count or at the end of the transfer of any parcel
or sub-parcel of an excluded candidate the value of ballot papers credited to a candidate is equal to, or greater
than the quota, that candidate shall be declared elected.
79. Transfer of surplus.—(1) If at the end of any count the value of the ballot papers credited to a
candidate is greater than the quota, the surplus shall be transferred, in accordance with the provisions of this
rule, to the continuing candidates indicated on the ballot papers of that candidate as being next in order of the
elector's preference.
(2) If more than one candidate have a surplus, the largest surplus shall be dealt with first and the others in
order of magnitude:
Provided that every surplus arising on the first count shall be dealt with before those arising on the second
count and so on.
(3) Where there are more surpluses than one to distribute and two or more surpluses are equal, regard shall
be had to the original votes of each candidate and the candidate for whom most original votes are recorded
shall have his surplus first distributed; and if the values of their original votes are equal, the returning officer
shall decide by lot which candidate shall have his surplus first distributed.
(4) (a) If the surplus of any candidate to be transferred arises from original votes only, the returning officer
shall examine all the papers in the parcel belonging to that candidate, divide the unexhausted papers into sub-
parcels according to the next preferences recorded thereon and make a separate sub-parcel of the exhausted
papers.
(b) He shall ascertain the value of the papers in each sub-parcel and of all the unexhausted papers.
(c) If the value of the unexhausted papers is equal to or less than the surplus, he shall transfer all the
unexhausted papers at the value at which they were received by the candidate whose surplus is being
transferred.
(d) If the value of the unexhausted papers is greater than the surplus, he shall transfer the sub-parcels of
unexhausted papers and the value at which each paper shall be transferred shall be ascertained by dividing
the surplus by the total number of unexhausted papers.
(5) If the surplus of any candidate to be transferred arises from transferred as well as original votes, the
returning officer shall re-examine all the papers in the sub-parcel last transferred to the candidate, divide the
unexhausted papers into sub-parcels according to the next preferences recorded thereon, and then deal with
the sub-parcels in the same manner as is provided in the case of sub-parcels referred to in sub-rule (4).
(6) The papers transferred to each candidate shall be added in the form of a sub-parcel to the papers
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already belonging to such candidate.

(7) All papers in the parcel or sub-parcel of an elected candidate not transferred under this rule shall be set
apart as finally dealt with.
80. Exclusion of candidates lowest on the poll.—(1) If after all surpluses have been transferred as
hereinbefore provided, the number of candidates elected is less than the required number, the returning officer
shall exclude from the poll the candidate lowest on the poll and shall distribute his unexhausted papers among
the continuing candidates according to the next preferences recorded thereon; and any exhausted papers shall
be set apart as finally dealt with.
(2) The papers containing original votes of an excluded candidate shall first be transferred, the transfer
value of each paper being one hundred.
(3) The papers containing transferred votes of an excluded candidate shall then be transferred in the order
of the transfers in which, and at the value at which, he obtained them.
(4) Each of such transfers shall be deemed to be a separate transfer but not a separate count.
(5) If, as a result of the transfer of papers, the value of votes obtained by a candidate is equal to or greater
than the quota, the count then proceeding shall be completed but no further papers shall be transferred to
him.
(6) The process directed by this rule shall be repeated on the successive exclusions one after another of the
candidates lowest on the poll until such vacancy is filled either by the election of a candidate with the quota or
as hereinafter provided.
(7) If at any time it becomes necessary to exclude a candidate and two or more candidates have the same
value of votes and are the lowest on the poll, regard shall be had to the original votes of each candidate and
the candidate for whom fewest original votes are recorded shall be excluded; and if the values of their original
votes are equal the candidates with the smallest value at the earliest count at which these candidates had
unequal values shall be excluded.
(8) If two or more candidates are lowest on the poll and each has the same value of votes at all counts the
returning officer shall decide by lot which candidate shall be excluded.
81. Filling the last vacancies.—(1) When at the end of any count the number of continuing candidates is
reduced to the number of vacancies remaining unfilled, the continuing candidates shall be declared elected.
(2) When at the end of any count only one vacancy remains unfilled and the value of the papers of some
one candidate exceeds the total value of the papers of all the other continuing candidates together with any
surplus not transferred, that candidate shall be declared elected.
(3) When at the end of any count only one vacancy remains unfilled and there are only two continuing
candidates and each of them has the same value of votes and no surplus remains capable of transfer, the
returning officer shall decide by lot which of them shall be excluded; and after excluding him in the manner
aforesaid, declare the other candidate to be elected.
82. Provision for re-counts.—(1) Any candidate or, in his absence, his election agent or counting agent
may, at any time during the counting of the votes either before the commencement or after the completion of
any transfer of votes (whether surplus or otherwise) request the returning officer to re-examine and re-count
the papers of all or any candidates (not being papers set aside at any previous transfer as finally dealt with),
and the returning officer shall forthwith re-examine and re-count the same accordingly.
(2) The returning officer may in his discretion re-count the votes either once or more than once in any case
in which he is not satisfied as to the accuracy of any previous count:
Provided that nothing in this sub-rule shall make it obligatory on the returning officer to re-count the same
votes more than once.
83. Illustration of the procedure as to the counting of votes under Rules 76 to 81.—An illustration
of the procedure as to the counting of votes in accordance with the provisions of Rules 76 to 81 is given in the
schedule to these rules.
84. Declaration of result and return by returning officers.—(1) Upon the completion of counting, the
returning officer shall, subject to the provisions of sub-rule (3) of Rule 81,—
(a) declare the result under Section 66 in Form 23 or Form 23-A as may be appropriate, and send signed
copies thereof to the appropriate authority, the Election Commission and the chief electoral officer;
(b) prepare and certify a return of the election in Form 23-B and after reporting the result of the election
under Section 67, send signed copies of the said form to the Election Commission and the chief
electoral officer; and
(c) permit any candidate or his election agent or counting agent to take a copy of, or extract from, such
return in Form 23-B.
(2) The returning officer shall thereafter—
(a) place the valid ballot papers in one packet and the rejected ballot papers in another;
(b) seal with the seals of the returning officer and of such of the candidates, their election agents or
counting agents as may desire to affix their seals, each of the packets referred to in clause (a) and the
packet containing the declarations by electors and attestations of their signatures; and
(c) record on each of the sealed packets the description of its contents and the date of election:
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102 [Provided that where such counting relates to an election to fill a seat or seats in the Council of
States, the returning officer shall, before sealing the packets under clause (b), allow the authorised
agent of a political party to verify as to whom the electors being members of that political party have
cast their votes.]
85. Grant of certificate of election to returned candidate.—As soon as may be after a candidate has
been declared to be elected the returning officer shall grant to such candidate a certificate of election Form 24
and obtain from the candidate an acknowledgment of its receipt duly signed by him and immediately send the
acknowledgment by registered post to the Secretary of the Council of States or, as the case may be, the
Secretary of the Legislative Council.
103
[PART VII-A
CONTRIBUTIONS REPORT, EQUITABLE SHARING OF TIME ON ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND MATERIAL TO
BE SUPPLIED TO RECOGNISED POLITICAL PARTIES
85-A. Definitions.—In this Part, unless the context otherwise requires,—
(a) “cable television network” and “cable operator” have the meanings respectively assigned to them in
clause (b) of Explanation to Section 39-A;
(b) “electronic media” has the meaning assigned to it in clause (a) of Explanation to Section 39-A;
(c) “political party” has the meaning assigned to it in clause (f) of sub-section (1) of Section 2;
(d) “recognized political party” has the meaning assigned to it in the Election Symbols (Reservation and
Allotment) Order, 1968.
85-B. Form of contributions report.—The report for a financial year under sub-section (1) of Section 29-
C shall be submitted in Form 24-A by the treasurer of a political party or any other person authorised by the
political party in this behalf, before the due date for furnishing a return of its income of that financial year
under Section 139 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961), to the Election Commission.
85-C. Allocation of equitable sharing of time on electronic media.—(1) The Election Commission shall,
for the purposes of allocating equitable sharing of time on the cable television network and other electronic
media under sub-section (1) of Section 39-A, categorise the cable television networks and electronic media
into the two separate categories that is to say one category which is owned or controlled or financed wholly or
substantially by funds provided to them by the Central Government and the other which is not owned or
controlled or financed wholly or substantially by funds provided to them by the Central Government.
(2) For allocating equitable sharing of time on the cable television network and other electronic media
owned or controlled or financed wholly or substantially by funds provided to them by the Central Government
referred to in sub-rule (1), the Election Commission shall determine, in consultation with the Ministry of the
Government of India dealing with the concerned subject, the maximum time period available on such cable
television network and other electronic media and allocate such time period proportionately among the
recognized political parties contesting the election on the basis of their past performances for the purposes of
displaying or propagating any election matter or to address public in connection with the election under sub-
section (1) of Section 39-A.
(3) For the purposes of this rule, “past performance of a recognized political party” shall be calculated,—
(i) in relation to the election to fill a seat or seats in the House of the People, on the basis of the
percentage of votes cast in the last preceding general election in favour of that recognized political
party with reference to the total votes cast in that general election, to fill the seats in that House;
(ii) in relation to the election to fill a seat or seats in the Legislative Assembly of a State (except the
State of Jammu and Kashmir), on the basis of the percentage of the votes cast in the last preceding
general election in favour of that recognized political party with reference to the total votes cast in that
general election, to fill the seats in that Assembly.
85-D. Supply of material by the Government.—The Central Government shall, at the time of any general
election to be held for the purposes of constituting the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of a
State provide to the Election Commission such number of copies of electoral roll, as finally published under the
Representation of the People Act, 1950 (43 of 1950), as the Election Commission may require for supplying
the same free of cost to the candidate of recognized political parties through such officers as may be specified
by the Election Commission and such officer shall act in accordance with such general or special directions as
may be issued by the Election Commission in this behalf.]
PART VIII
ELECTION EXPENSES
86. Particulars of account of election expenses.—(1) The amount of election expenses to be kept by a
candidate or his election agent under Section 77 shall contain the following particulars in respect of each item
of expenditure from day to day, namely:—
(a) the date on which the expenditure was incurred or authorised;
(b) the nature of the expenditure (as for example, travelling, postage or printing and the like);
(c) the amount of the expenditure—
(i) the amount paid;
(ii) the amount outstanding;
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(d) the date of payment;

(e) the name and address of the payee;
(f) the serial number of vouchers, in case of amount paid;
(g) the serial number of bills, if any, in case of amount outstanding;
(h) the name and address of the person to whom the amount outstanding is payable.
(2) A voucher shall be obtained for every item of expenditure unless from the nature of the case, such as
postage, travel by rail and the like, it is not practicable to obtain a voucher.
(3) All vouchers shall be lodged along with the amount of election expenses, arranged according to the date
of payment and serially numbered by the candidate or his election agent and such serial numbers shall be
entered in the account under item (f) of sub-rule (1).
(4) It shall not be necessary to give the particulars mentioned in item (e) of sub-rule (1) in regard to items
of expenditure for which vouchers have not been obtained under sub-rule (2).
87. Notice by district election officer for inspection of accounts.—The district election officer shall,
within two days from the date on which the account of election expenses has been lodged by a candidate
under Section 78, cause a notice to be affixed to his notice-board, specifying—
(a) the date on which the account has been lodged;
(b) the name of the candidate; and
(c) the time and place at which such account can be inspected.
88. Inspection of account and the obtaining of copies thereof.—Any person shall on payment of a fee
of one rupee be entitled to inspect any such account and on payment of such fee as may be fixed by the
Election Commission in this behalf be entitled to obtain attested copies of such account or of any part thereof.
89. Report by the district election officer as to the lodging of the account of election expenses
and the decision of the Election Commission thereon.—(1) As soon as may be after the expiration of the
time specified in Section 78 for the lodging of the accounts of election expenses at any election, the district
election officer shall report to the Election Commission—
(a) the name of each contesting candidate;
(b) whether such candidate has lodged his account of election expenses and if so, the date on which such
account has been lodged; and
(c) whether in his opinion such account has been lodged within the time and in the manner required by
the Act and these rules.
(2) Where the district election officer is of the opinion that the account of election expenses of any
candidate has not been lodged in the manner required by the Act and these rules, he shall with every such
report forward to the Election Commission the account of election expenses of that candidate and the vouchers
lodged along with it.
(3) Immediately after the submission of the report referred to in sub-rule (1) the district election officer
shall publish a copy thereof by affixing the same to his notice-board.
(4) As soon as may be after the receipt of the report referred to in sub-rule (1) the Election Commission
shall consider the same and decide whether any contesting candidate has failed to lodge the account of
election expenses within the time and in the manner required by the Act and these rules.
(5) Where the Election Commission decides that a contesting candidate has failed to lodge his account of
election expenses within the time and in the manner required by the Act and these rules it shall by notice in
writing call upon the candidate to show cause why he should not be disqualified under Section 10-A for the
failure.
(6) Any contesting candidate who has been called upon to show cause under sub-rule (5) may within
twenty days of the receipt of such notice submit in respect of the matter a representation in writing to the
Election Commission, and shall at the same time send to the district election officer a copy of his
representation together with a complete account of his election expenses if he had not already furnished such
an account.
(7) The district election officer shall, within five days of the receipt thereof, forward to the Election
Commission the copy of the representation and the account (if any) with such comments as he wishes to make
thereon.
(8) If, after considering the representation submitted by the candidate and the comments made by the
district election officer and after such inquiry as it thinks fit, the Election Commission is satisfied that the
candidate has no good reason or justification for the failure to lodge his account, it shall declare him to be
disqualified under Section 10-A for a period of three years from the date of the order, and cause the order to
be published in the Official Gazette.
104
[90. Maximum election expenses.—The total of the expenditure of which account is to be kept under
Section 77 and which is incurred or authorised in connection with an election in a State or Union Territory
mentioned in Column 1 of the Table below shall not exceed—
(a) in any one Parliamentary constituency of that State or Union Territory, the amount specified in the
corresponding Column 2 of the said Table; and
(b) in any one assembly constituency, if any, of that State or Union Territory, the amount specified in the
Pr nted or nt u n
corresponding Column 3 of the said Table—

105
[TABLE
Sl. No. Name of State or Union territory Maximum limit of election expenses in any one
Parliamentary Assembly constituency
constituency
1 2 3 4
I. STATES
1. Andhra Pradesh 95,00,000 40,00,000
2. Arunachal Pradesh 75,00,000 28,00,000
3. Assam 95,00,000 40,00,000
4. Bihar 95,00,000 40,00,000
5. Chhattisgarh 95,00,000 40,00,000
6. Goa 75,00,000 28,00,000
7. Gujarat 95,00,000 40,00,000
8. Haryana 95,00,000 40,00,000
9. Himachal Pradesh 95,00,000 40,00,000
10. Jharkhand 95,00,000 40,00,000
11. Karnataka 95,00,000 40,00,000
12. Kerala 95,00,000 40,00,000
13. Madhya Pradesh 95,00,000 40,00,000
14. Maharashtra 95,00,000 40,00,000
15. Manipur 95,00,000 28,00,000
16. Meghalaya 95,00,000 28,00,000
17. Mizoram 95,00,000 28,00,000
18. Nagaland 95,00,000 28,00,000
19. Odisha 95,00,000 40,00,000
20. Punjab 95,00,000 40,00,000
21. Rajasthan 95,00,000 40,00,000
22. Sikkim 75,00,000 28,00,000
23. Tamil Nadu 95,00,000 40,00,000
24. Telangana 95,00,000 40,00,000
25. Tripura 95,00,000 28,00,000
26. Uttar Pradesh 95,00,000 40,00,000
27. Uttarakhand 95,00,000 40,00,000
28. West Bengal 95,00,000 40,00,000
II. UNION TERRITORIES
1. Andaman and Nicobar Islands 75,00,000 —
2. Chandigarh 75,00,000 —
3. Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and 75,00,000 —
Diu
4. Delhi 95,00,000 40,00,000
5. Lakshadweep 75,00,000 —
6. Puducherry 75,00,000 28,00,000
7. Jammu and Kashmir 95,00,000 40,00,000
8. Ladakh 75,00,000 —]
PART IX
MISCELLANEOUS
91. Resignation of seats in case of election to more seats than one in a House.—(1) The time within
which a person may resign all but one of the seats in either House of Parliament or in the House or either
House of the Legislature of a State, to which he has been elected shall be—
(a) fourteen days from the date of his election under Section 67-A; or
(b) where the dates of his election are different in respect of different seats, fourteen days from the last
of those dates.
(2) Such resignation shall be addressed—
(a) to the Speaker or the Chairman of the House concerned; or
(b) where the office of the Speaker or Chairman is for the time being vacant or is, or is deemed to be, in
Pr nted or nt u n
abeyance, to the Deputy Speaker or the Deputy Chairman of the House concerned; or
(c) where the post of the Deputy Speaker or Deputy Chairman is also for the time being vacant or is
deemed to be, in abeyance, to the Election Commission.
(3) Where the resignation has been addressed to the Election Commission under sub-rule (2) the Election
Commission shall, as soon as may be after the receipt of the resignation, send a copy thereof to the Secretary
of the House concerned.
92. Custody of ballot boxes and papers relating to election.—(1) All ballot boxes used at an election
shall be kept in such custody as the chief electoral officer may direct.
106 [(1-A) All voting machines used at an election shall be kept in the custody of the district election officer
concerned.]
107
[(2) The district election officer shall keep in safe custody—
(a) the packets of unused ballot papers with counterfoils attached thereto;
(b) the packets of used ballot papers whether valid, tendered or rejected;
(c) the packets of the counterfoils of used ballot papers;
108 [(cc) the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of Rule 57-C;]
(d) the packets of the marked copy of the electoral roll or, as the case may be, the list maintained under
sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) of Section 152;
109 [(dd) the packets containing registers of voters in Form 17-A].
(e) the packets of the declarations by electors and the attestation of their signatures; and
(f) all other papers relating to the election:
Provided that in the case of an election in an Assembly constituency or a Parliamentary constituency or a
Council constituency which extends over more districts that one, the said papers shall be kept in the custody
of such one of the district election officers having jurisdiction over the constituency as the Election Commission
may direct:
Provided further that in the case of an election by assembly members the said papers shall be kept in the
custody of the returning officer.]
110 [93. Production and inspection of election papers.—(1) While in the custody of the district election
officer or, as the case may be, the returning officer—

(a) the packets of unused ballot papers with counterfoils attached thereto;
(b) the packets of used ballot papers whether valid, tendered or rejected;
111
[(cc) the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of Rule 57-C;]
(d) the packets of the marked copy of the electoral roll or, as the case may be, the list maintained under
sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) of Section 152; and
112 [(dd) the packets containing registers of voters in Form 17-A;]
(e) the packets of the declarations by electors and the attestation of their signatures;
shall not be opened and their contents shall not be inspected by, or produced before, any person or authority
except under the order of a competent court.
113 [(1-A) The control units sealed under the provisions of Rule 57-C and kept in the custody of the district
election officer shall not be opened and shall not be inspected by, or produced before, any person or authority
except under the orders of a competent court.]
(2) Subject to such conditions and to the payment of such fee as the Election Commission may direct,—
(a) all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection; and
(b) copies thereof shall on application be furnished.
(3) Copies of the returns by the returning officer forwarded under Rule 64 or, as the case may be, under
clause (b) of sub-rule (1) of Rule 84 shall be furnished by the returning officer, district election officer, chief
electoral officer or the Election Commission on payment of a fee of two rupees for each copy.]
94. Disposal of election papers.—Subject to any direction to the contrary given by the Election
Commission or by a competent court or tribunal—
114
[(a) the packets of unused ballot papers shall be retained for a period of six months and shall
thereafter be destroyed in such manner as the Election Commission may direct;]
115
[(aa) the voting machines kept in the custody of the district election officer under sub-rule (1-A) of
Rule 92 shall be retained intact for such period as the Election Commission may direct and shall not be
used at any subsequent election without the previous approval of the Election Commission;]
(b) the other packets referred to in sub-rule (1) or Rule 93 shall be retained for a period of one year and
shall thereafter be destroyed:
116 [Provided that packets containing the counterfoils of used ballot papers 117 [and the printed paper
slips, if any,] shall not be destroyed except with the previous approval of the Election Commission;]
(c) all other papers relating to the election shall be retained for such period as the Election Commission
may direct.
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94-A. Form of affidavit to be filed with election petition.—The affidavit referred to in the proviso to
sub-section (1) of Section 83 shall be sworn before a magistrate of the first class or a notary or a
commissioner of oaths and shall be in Form 25.
118 [95. Power of the Election Commission to issue directions.—Subject to the other provisions of these
rules, the Election Commission may issue such directions as it may consider necessary to facilitate the proper
use and operation of the voting machines.]
96. List of Members of State Assemblies and electoral colleges.—(1) The returning officer for an
election by the members of the Legislative Assembly of a State, to fill a seat or seats in the Council of States
or in the Legislative Council of a State, shall maintain a list of members of that Assembly with their addresses
corrected up-to-date in such form as the Election Commission may direct.
Explanation.—In this sub-rule any reference to the members of the Legislative Assembly of a State shall, in
relation to an election to the Council of States, be construed as a reference to the elected members of that
(2) The returning officer for an election by the members of the electoral college of a Union Territory to fill a
seat or seats in the Council of States shall maintain a list of members of that electoral college with their
addresses corrected up-to-date in such form as the Election Commission may direct.
97. Number of votes sufficient to secure the return of a candidate in relation to return of
forfeiture of deposits in certain cases.—For the purpose of the proviso to sub-section (4) of Section 158—
(a) a candidate who is not elected shall be deemed to get,—
(i) if he is a continuing candidate, the votes obtained by him at the end of the final count, and
(ii) if he is a candidate excluded from the poll, the votes obtained by him at the end of the count
immediately preceding his exclusion;
(b) the quota referred to in Rule 75 or Rule 76 shall be deemed to be the number of votes sufficient to
secure the return of a candidate.
98. Manner of serving the order of requisition of premises, vehicles, etc.—An order of requisition
under Section 160 shall be served—
(a) where the person to whom such order is addressed is a corporation or firm, in the manner provided
for the service of summons in Rule 2 of Order XXIX or Rule 3 of Order XXX, as the case may be, in the
First Schedule to the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (Act 5 of 1908); and
(b) where the person to whom such order is addressed is an individual—
(i) personally by delivering or tendering the order, or
(ii) by registered post, or
(iii) if the person cannot be found, by leaving an authentic copy of the order with any adult member of
his family or by affixing such copy to some conspicuous part of the premises in which he is known
to have last resided or carried on business or personally worked for gain.
99. Time for application for reference to arbitration under Section 161.—The time within which any
person interested who is aggrieved by the amount of compensation determined under sub-section (1) of
Section 168 or within which the owner of a vehicle, vessel or animal who is aggrieved by the amount of
compensation determined under sub-section (2) of that Section may make an application for referring the
matter to arbitration shall be fourteen days from the date of determination of the amount of such
compensation or where the amount of such compensation has been determined in the absence of the person
interested or, as the case may be, the owner, fourteen days from the date on which the intimation of such
determination is sent to that person or owner.
119
[FORM 1
(See Rule 3)
Notice of Election
Notice is hereby given that:—
(1) an election is to be held of a member to the House of the People/……………… Legislative
Assembly/………………………………… Legislative Council in the …………………… .… .. constituency;
or
(1) an election is to be held of a member(s) to the Council of States/……………… . Legislative
Council/……………………………… . by the elected members of the ………………………Legislative Assembly;
(2) nomination papers may be delivered by a candidate or by any of his proposers to the Returning Officer
or to …………………………………… Assistant Returning Officer, at …………… .. between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on any day
(other than a public holiday) not later than the …………… ..
(3) forms of nomination paper may be obtained at the place and time aforesaid;
(4) the nomination papers will be taken up for scrutiny at …………………… .. on …………………………… at
……………………….
(5) notice of withdrawal of candidature may be delivered either by a candidate or by any of his proposers or
by his election agent who has been authorised in writing by the candidate to deliver it to either of the officers
specified in paragraph (2) above at his office before 3 p.m. on the ……….
(TRUE COPY)
P e1 rd y nu ry 3
ANNEXURE P4 81
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Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e rd y nu ry 3 85
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Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
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Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
(TRUE COPY)
ANNEXURE: P5 87
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(TRUE COPY)
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ANNEXURE P6
132
Mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 (five) Randomly

Selected
Polling Stations
(Separate for each polling station – To be sent only to the CEO
concerned)
Name of State: ANDHRA PRADESH

No. and Name of Assembly/Parliamentary Constituency: ---------
ASSEMBLY CONSTITUENCY
SI No. and name of Polling Station : 63
Unique ID of Control Unit: BCUAA 53729, BCUAA83917
Unique ID of VVPAT: 1. BVTAK 84954 2. BVTAK 84742
It is certify that mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of

randomly selected polling station mentioned above has been
conducted as per the instructions of the Commission.
S.No. Name of No. of Votes Cast Discrepancy

Candidate As per EVM As per if any
Paper Slips
1 Kotainhrari 7+0=7 7+0=7 -
Malli------------
2 Sudhakar Yadav 51+1=52 51+0=51 01
Putta
3 BP Venkata 01+00=01 01+00=01 -
Pratap Reddy
4 Raghurami 160+11=171 160+0=160 11
Reddy Settipally
5 Pariditi Malhotra 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
6 Rajarami Reddy 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
Sriyapureddy
7 Devagudi 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
Sreenivas---
8 Iragamerddy 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
Priyadarshini
Reddy
9 Tupakula 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
Gangadhar
Reddy
10 Sankaraish 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
Putta
11 P. Balsiah Yadav 0+0=0 0+0=0 -
133
12 NOTA 0+2=2 0+0=0 2

Total 219+14=232 219+0=219 14
(Present during the mandatory verification of VVPAT slips count)
S.No Name of Mention Name of Signature

Candidate/ Candidate/ Party
Counting Agent Counting Agent
S RASHURARI S. BHUSYA---- ---- Sd/-
P. Sudhakar R. Sree------- T.O.P Sd/-
Note: In Second VVPA these are no slips pertaining to candidates, but

only 28 blank/not to be counted/ No Symbol test slips – counting case
done Three times.
Signature of Assistant Returning Officer

Sd/-
Signature of Returning Officer

Sd/-
Signature of ECI Observer

Sd/-
(TRUE TYPED COPY)

134
ANNEXURE: P7
The discrepancy in the votes was due to not clearing the

votes from the mock poll
25.05.2019, Akhil Reddy, factly.in
A post with a photo of EVM/VVPAT votes audit document is being

shared by many users on Facebook with a claim that there is a
discrepancy in the number of votes in EVM and VVPAT at a polling
station in Andhra Pradesh. Let’s try to check the authenticity of the
document in the post.
Claim: A audit document of VVPAT/EVM votes in a polling station

at Mydukur Assembly Constituency in Andhra Pradesh shows a
discrepancy of 14 votes.
Fact: The Returning Officer of the constituency clarified that the

discrepancy is true and was due to non-clearance of votes, polled in
the mock-poll conducted at 7 am on the polling day, from the EVM.
Hence the claim made in the post is TRUE.
When the photo in the post is properly observed, it can be found that
the discrepancy was reported at the polling station 63 in the Mydukur
Assembly Constituency. To check the authenticity of the document in
the post, FACTLY contacted the Returning Officer of the Mydukur
Assembly Constituency, Mr. Satish Chandra. He said that the
discrepancy in the number of votes in EVM and VVPAT is true. He
clarified that it happened because the votes from the mock poll
conducted at 7 am, before the voting began on the polling day, were
not cleared by the Presiding officer from the EVM. So, the document
in the post is legitimate. The returning officer also confirmed that
counting agents of the parties accepted this and that a detailed report
in this regard was sent to the office of the CEO, Andhra Pradesh.
For any additional information, the Returning Officer can be

contacted through the phone number given on the website of Chief
Electoral Officer, Andhra Pradesh.
135
To sum it up, the discrepancy in the votes happened due to

non-clearance of votes from the mock poll.
SOURCE:
https://factly.in/the-discrepancy-in-the-votes-was-due-to-not-clear
ing-the-votes-from-the-mock-poll/
(TRUE COPY)
136
ANNEXURE P8
Andhra Pradesh polls: High stakes brawl-ridden battle sees

Election Commission in dock for malfunctioning EVMs-Politics
News,
Firstpost, April 12, 2019 09:16:45 IST, G Ram Mohan & Aswarya
Murthy
Tirupati: The high-stakes battle for power in the state and the Centre
unfolded across Andhra Pradesh, which simultaneously elected its Lok
Sabha and Assembly representatives on Thursday, with widespread
violence between party workers of regional giants — the Telugu
Desam Party and YS Rajashekar Congress Party. Allegations of
distribution of money and EVM malfunctions, the scale of which is
under debate, drew considerations from the Election Commission
regarding repolling in certain constituencies. A total of 2,395
candidates battled it out for 175 Assembly seats.
Voting percentage had touched 75 percent across the state by 6 pm,

and was expected to rise to 80 percent as polling was still underway
and long queues were reported in some booths. In some constituencies
like Puthalapattu, the inter-party clashes turned so violent that polling
had to be stopped at 3 pm. The decision about repolling here and at
any other places will be taken on Friday, in consultation with the
Election Commission of India, the state's Chief Electoral Officer,
Gopalakrishna Dwivedi said in the post-poll press conference.
EC in the dock
Even without the fact that it had allowed itself to be drawn into the
state's political drama, the EC had a rather terrible polling day of
putting out defences against allegations of large-scale EVM failures.
The night before Phase 1, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu met
with Dwivedi at the secretariat in Velagapudi, Amaravati. During the
meeting, Naidu protested against the alleged bias by the EC in favour
of the Opposition YSRCP, especially in the transfer of key officials.
Naidu also accused the EC of playing into the hands of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi. On polling day, YSRCP chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy
pointed to this meeting to allege that the chief minister was
threatening the EC.
137
Naidu has demanded repolling at places where EVMs did not work.
He told the local media that 30 percent of the devices malfunctioned
and as a result, polling started up to three hours late at many places.
"Even technologically advanced countries are not using EVMs... a
voter doesn't get the satisfaction of voting through ballots when they
are voting on the EVMs. They don't ensure transparency. EVMs are
not correct for the voting process. Today, there are reports of EVM
malfunctioning from many booths," he said.
"Some news channels are reporting that 30 percent of the EVMs are
not working, which is not correct. In total, we have 45,959 booths, and
we are using around 92,000 EVMs, of which we have got 344 issues
and 25 are still pending," said Dwivedi.
But embarrassingly, he could not cast his vote due to technical issues
with the EVM at the Undavalli polling station in Tadepalli, which falls
under Mangalagiri Assembly constituency, despite making it there at 7
am. He went later on in the evening to cast his vote after the EVMs
there were restored.
Chandrababu Naidu and his family cast their votes. 101Reporters
Bloody ballots
Sporadic incidents of violence between party workers continue to be

reported across the state with casualties on both sides. YSRCP
workers allegedly attacked Speaker of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative
Assembly, Kodela Sivaprasada Rao, who went to inspect a polling
138
booth in Guntur's Sattenapalle constituency. Another TDP minister's

husband and sister were injured in a violent clash between factions in
Atahobilam in Kurnool. Allegations against opposing party workers
came thick and fast from Narasraopet, Eluru in West Godavari,
Jammalamadugu in Kadapa District and Mydukur.
A viral video of the alleged attack by Eluru TDP MLA Badeti Bujji on
YSRCP party workers in West Godavari district's Sanivarapupeta
grabbed the nation's attention — diverted as it was with the first phase
of polling held across 20 states and Union Territories — to the
brawling between the two biggest state parties. A bloodied party
worker was seen asking, "Is it right for an MLA to do this? Is he an
MLA or a rowdy? Why does he have a gunman? To beat people up?
We have come here to vote. Four people came in a car to hit us."
In another dramatic incident, Jana Sena Party Assembly candidate

Madhusudan Gupta damaged EVMs at Gooty in Anantapur district,
ostensibly protesting the alleged partisan manner in which polling
officials were conducting duties. The police arrested him.
Now and five years ago
The electoral outcome in Andhra Pradesh is set to become a watershed

in moulding the course of national politics and is a 'Do or Die' battle
for both Naidu and Opposition leader Jaganmohan Reddy. For Naidu,
who is gearing up to hand the reins of Andhra Pradesh reign to his
son, Nara Lokesh, in order to be able to play a bigger role in the
national level if the opportunity arises, a strong showing in his own
backyard is imperative.
Jagan, who narrowly missed the bus in the 2014 state elections (TDP
had a narrow lead of less than one percent over its rival in votes
polled), cannot afford to sit in the Opposition for another five years.
The son of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister and popular
Congress leader YSR Reddy, may find it difficult to keep his flock
together without power. But over the past five years, YSRCP has been
steadily gaining strength, probably best evidenced by the mass exodus
from the TDP ahead of the election, when 23 of MLAs and three MPs
switched to the YSRCP. Also by expertly egging on the TDP to take
on alliance partner BJP over the granting of special status to the state,
Jagan forced the TDP out of the Central government. YSRCP now
139
promises to deliver what TDP couldn't despite its cosy relationship

with the Centre and ministerial berths in the Union government.
Jagan is intent on scuttling Naidu's national aspirations by aligning

with Telangana chief K Chandrashekar Rao, who is batting for a
federal front. The TRS and YSRCP, having openly exhibited their
camaraderie initially, toned it down and desisted from open overtures.
TRS supremo, KCR, however, by promising to support special
category status for Andhra Pradesh the day before the campaign
ended, tried to blunt the flak being faced by the YSRCP from
anti-Telangana forces.
Taking a cue from Telangana's Assembly elections last year, when the
TDP was routed from the state after a vociferous TRS campaign that
branded it an "Andhra party", Naidu has been dubbing his rival Jagan,
KCR and Modi as anti-Andhra forces to stoke regional sentiment.
However, the TDP chief weathers strong anti-incumbency, and no

longer has the support of former NDA partner BJP or the Pawan
Kalyan-led Jana Sena Party, both of whom are contesting
independently. The BJP, which won four Assembly seats and two Lok
Sabha seats in 2014, has taken a hit in popular support with the TDP
and YSRCP making special category status their main campaign
plank. The TDP, which rolled out a slew of schemes essentially
transferring money from the public exchequer to the people, is
banking on them to beat any anti-incumbency working against it.
"But the anti-Telangana sentiment being stirred by the TDP may not
be a game changer in 2019. The exaggerated fears expressed during
Telangana agitation have been blunted. The voters across Andhra
Pradesh have more affinity to Hyderabad than Amaravati with no
stakes attached to the place for now. In this milieu, reports of a huge
shift in voters by those settled in Telangana to TRS were not
surprising. The umbilical cord that binds the Telugu people across the
regions cannot be wished away," said veteran journalist A Raghava
Sharma. Testament to this is the lakhs of voters from across Telangana
who travelled south over the past two days, braving traffic snarls
along the highway and overcrowded trains and buses.
The TDP has steered clear of aligning with Congress in the state,
although it still vouches for alliance with the Congress-led UPA at the
140
Centre. It has learnt its lesson from its alliance with the Congress in
the Telangana Assembly election. Further, the TDP was started by its
patriarch, the late NT Rama Rao, with an anti-Congress sentiment.
Either way, the Congress is barely holding on in the two Telugu states
and Andhra voters are essentially punishing the party for bifurcating
the state.
The authors are freelance writers and members of 101Reporters.com,

a pan-India network of grassroots reporters
With inputs from Nagaraja Gali
SOURCE:
https://www.firstpost.com/politics/andhra-pradesh-lok-sabha-elections
-assembly-polls-high-stakes-brawl-ridden-battle-sees-ec-in-dock-for-
malfunctioning-evms-6434001.html
(TRUE COPY)
141
ANNEXURE P9
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Cable to connect
Control Unit
BU Cable to connect
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Cable to connect Control Unit
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ANNEXURE P10
An Inquiry into India’s Election System
REPORT OF THE
CITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS
VOLUME I
Is the Indian EVM and

VVPAT System
Fit for Democratic Elections?
Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit for Democratic Elections? 1
310

Chairperson
Justice (retd) Madan B. Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge
Vice-Chairperson
Wajahat Habibullah, former Chief Information Commissioner
Members
Justice (retd) Hariparanthaman, former Madras High Court Judge
Prof. Arun Kumar, Malcolm S. Adiseshiah Chair Professor, Institute of Social Sciences
Subhashis Banerjee, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Delhi
Pamela Philipose, Senior Journalist
Dr John Dayal, Writer and Activist
Convenor
Sundar Burra, former Secretary, Government of Maharashtra
Coordinator
M. G. Devasahayam, IAS (retd)
Contact:
c/o CFA, R-21, Ground Floor, NDSE-II, New Delhi – 110 049. Email: cceindia2020@gmail.com
2 Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit for Democratic Elections?
311
REPORT OF THE
VOLUME I
Is the Indian EVM and

VVPAT System
January 2021
312
Inside
Acknowledgements... 05
Abbreviations... 06
Foreword... 07
Preface... 09
Executive Summary... 14
The Report: Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System
Fit for Democratic Elections...? 19
A Citizen’s Perspective : ‘Democracy Principles’ in
India’s Elections 33
Annexure... 43
313
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the roles of many persons who helped in various
ways in the preparation of this Report and thank them. The Members of the Citi-
zens’ Commission on Elections – Justice (Retd) Madan B. Lokur, Wajahat Habibul-
lah, Justice (Retd) Hari Paranthaman, Professor Subhashis Banerjee, Ms Pamela
Philipose, Professor Arun Kumar and Dr John Dayal- gave unstintingly of their
time both to make valuable suggestions and give insights from their respective ar-
eas of expertise. They also provided general guidance to the effort.
To all those who deposed before the Commission,too numerous to name – whether
from India or abroad, whether by written depositions or participation in Zoom
meetings – we must say that we are deeply grateful for it was their specialized
knowledge that helped firm up the bedrock of our understanding.
This is the first of a series of reports that the CCE is planning to bring out under the
title: An Inquiry into India’s Election System. Each theme covered under this series
had a mentor(s).It was they who sifted through the numerous depositions made,
conducted their own research and finalized Thematic Reports. We must place on
record our appreciation for their contributions to Professor Sanjiva Prasad, Mr
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Mr Harsh Mander, Mr V. Ramani, Professor Sanjay Ku-
mar, Professor Jagdeep Chhokar and Ms Anjali Bharadwaj.
Mr Jawhar Sircar, Mr G. Balagopal, Professor Dinesh Abrol, Mr Thomas Franco

and Mr Joe Athialy have been helping in the planning and organization of Press
Conferences in different cities and translations of key documents, while Balagopal
has hosted several Zoom meetings. Ms Poonam Agarwal and Ms Kavita Kabeer
have shared their journalistic insights into the crafting of a media strategy and the
making of short videos. To all of them our thanks.
Many have helped in this journey. If inadvertently, we have left out any names, our
apologies.
M. G. Devasahayam
Sundar Burra
314
Abbreviations
ADR : Association for Democratic Reforms
BEL : Bharat Electronic Limited
BJP : Bharatiya Janata Party
BU : Ballot Unit
CCG : Constitutional Conduct Group
CEC : Chief Election Commissioner
CFSL : Central Forensic Science Laboratory
CIC : Central Information Commission
CU : Control Unit
DEC : Deputy Election Commissioner
DRE : Direct Recording Electronic
ECI : Election Commission of India
ECIL : Electronics Corporation of India Limited
EVM : Electronic Voting Machine
IIT : Indian Institute of Technology
LED : Light-emitting Diode
MCC : Model Code of Conduct
RTI : Right to Information
SC : Supreme Court
STQC : Standardization Testing and Quality Certification
VVPAT : Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
WP : Writ Petition
315
Foreword
Modern India’s greatest pride is that it is not only the world’s largest, but
because of the grassroots institutional mechanisms that we have built for
the panchayat raj, is also the most vibrant democracy. It gives to every Indi-
an the world’s largest number of elected representatives to ensure peoples’
participation in governance at the local, state and national levels. At the
national level the institution of the Election Commission of India (ECI) is
mandated to ensure that this participation is not only truly representative,
but also one of the world’s most free.
In such a democracy, accountability and transparency are the guarantors
of good health. ECI, set up under Article 324 of the Constitution of India,
is expected to work with civil society to ensure this within the framework
of India’s Right to Information Act (RTI), 2005. In our democracy the RTI,
which encourages accountability through transparency, is an expression
of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government. Not
surprisingly, this commitment is shared by all political parties, forming
part of the manifesto also of India’s ruling party today. Citizens have con-
sistently worked with the Commission to flag issues of concern to govern-
ment or to the public. It is in this context that we might place the endeavour
of researching the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs which is described in
the present publication.
As the preface to the volume clarifies, our group of citizens have in our
careers been associated in big ways and small in the building of the gover-
nance of India as it stands today. For them, India’s Constitution has been
the only scripture, and hence they are concerned that the ECI’s conduct of
the parliamentary elections of 2019 had led to grave doubts about its fair-
ness, which has always been its greatest strength. The Association for Dem-
ocratic Reforms, the Constitutional Conduct Group of former civil servants
and the Forum for Electoral Integrity were among the civil society groups
that were constrained to invite public attention to what appeared to be the
ECI’s shortcomings in living up to its mandate of neutrality. Many political
parties, mainstream and digital media houses also joined in voicing serious
apprehensions as to the manner in which the ‘model code of conduct’ was
violated with impunity.
316
The ECI neither responded to criticism or sought to defend itself when

patent infirmities were specifically pointed out by responsible citizens with
no effort to satisfy the critics, several of whom were retired officials them-
selves, experienced in conducting elections. The Citizens’ Commission on
Elections’ (CCE) came into being to go into critical aspects of the conduct
of elections, call for expert advice where necessary and come up with ap-
propriate suggestions. These are to be placed in the public domain for the
consideration of Indian citizens who, at final call, should have the last word
in India’s governance to ensure that elections are conducted as merit the
proud Republic of India.
The first sectoral report that deals with the merits of Electronic Voting Ma-
chines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in light of
the requirement of verifiability and transparency is ready for public discus-
sion. The functioning of EVMs has been researched by CCE’s experts, spe-
cifically in light of their adherence to principles of democracy. In keeping
with the law, there is an insistence on absolute transparency to facilitate the
voter in the exercise of his or her choice and in ensuring that their selection
is indeed reflected in the stored vote and counted as such — with no devia-
tion whatever. These principles also mandate that the voting procedure be
easily comprehended and verifiable by the voter and open to audit without
complications but not concealed by the application of relevant technology.
There can be no compromise allowing for error or misrepresentation of
the elector’s choice, for in our view, that would be a compromise with the
essence of India’s democracy and therefore suborn our Constitution. To-
wards the end of ensuring that the elector’s choice is faithfully reflected, the
group has relied on expert opinions drawn from national and international
experts: these explain why even those countries most advanced in informa-
tion technologies have avoided the use of EVMs during polls, even despite
initial enthusiasm. The recommendations are now before the citizens not
only of India but before those of democracies across the world - as a gauge
for assessing safeguards to democratic functioning and their conservation
in light of revolutions in technology.
Madan B. Lokur
Wajahat Habibullah
January 26, 2021
317
Preface
Defending Democracy
By
M. G. Devasahayam*
In the recent years India’s democracy has been called into question by international
watchdogs. In the 2019 Democracy Index released by the intelligence unit of The Econo-
mist Group, London, India had slipped by 10 ranks to 51st position -- a big downgrade.
The Index categorised India under “flawed democracies.”
Post Parliament Election-2019 there has been a sharp decline. The 2020 ‘Democracy
Report’ by the V-Dem Institute based at the University of Gothenburg puts India in the
league of countries who have seen significant slides into authoritarianism. India’s dem-
ocratic process is ‘on a path of steep decline’, the Report says. This has been evidenced
from the happenings over the past six years, more so during the last year and a half
when there has been a consistent manifestation of a regressive authoritarian regime.
These developments turned our attention to the way in which Parliament Election-
2019 was conducted, votes counted and results declared. Josef Stalin has been quoted as
saying, “It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.” In
Stalin’s Russia, this was the common norm. Similar and other kinds of comments were
being made about Parliament Election-2019.
We also noticed that India has a deeply flawed first-past-the-post election system
wherein a political party winning just about 25% of the electorate’s mandate can cap-
ture power by having a majority number of MPs and impose its will on the entire popu-
lation as is happening now. Let us look at Parliament Election-2019 and the composi-
tion of the present Lok Sabha. For this election India had a total electorate of 91.05 crore
out of which 67.40% voters (61.86 crore) exercised their franchise. The ruling party (BJP)
secured 37.36% of these polled votes which was 22.90 crores and won 303 seats. If it had
318
been proportional representation system BJP’s seat share would have been only 201
which is far from majority. Furthermore, if BJP’s vote share is to be taken as percentage
of total electorate it turns out to be just 25.15%. This means that in the 2019 Parliament
election the current ruling dispensation received the mandate of only one-fourth of In-
dia’s electorate.
This itself is a cruel assault on representative democracy. What is worse, in the mat-
ter of Parliament Election-2019 its very integrity was called into question. In a healthy
democracy, citizens are expected to take an active interest in the process and conduct
of elections. The Election Commission of India (ECI), set up under Article 324 of the
Constitution of India, has often worked in close collaboration with non-political or-
ganisations dedicated to the strengthening of democracy. Such bodies of citizens have
provided valuable feedback to the Commission and have flagged issues of concern or
alarm.
The ECI’s conduct of the Parliamentary Election-2019 invited serious controversy
and criticism and its very fairness was questioned, with adequate reasons, by several
organisations. The Association for Democratic Reforms, the Constitutional Conduct
Group (CCG) of former civil servants and the Forum for Electoral Integrity were among
the several groups that were compelled to draw public attention to the lack of integrity
of EVM voting and ECI’s departure from neutrality. Many political parties, mainstream
and digital media houses and civil society groups also voiced serious apprehensions
at the manner in which the ‘model code of conduct’ was being violated by the ruling
party without adequate retribution from the ECI. The Election Commission responded
to these justified criticisms with a very alarming silence or jumped aggressively to de-
fend its unsatisfactory handling, even when patent infirmities were specifically pointed
out by several former civil servants who have also conducted/supervised elections.
The response of ECI to all these serious public concerns was indifferent bordering
on hostility. So, myself along with some colleagues took the initiative to consult other
anxious civil society groups and apolitical platforms. In 2019 and 2020, seminars and
public discussions were held by groups like the Forum for Electoral Integrity, People
First, Delhi Science Forum, Constitutional Conduct Group, Aman Biradari Trust and
the Centre for Financial Accountability. Of the suggestions that emanated, a unanimous
one was to constitute a body of eminent and experienced persons with domain knowl-
edge on issues relating to elections. Thus, the Citizens’ Commission on Elections (CCE)
was constituted to delve deeper into critical aspects concerning elections, call for expert
advice where necessary and come up with appropriate findings and suggestions to en-
sure that elections are conducted with fairness and integrity.
The CCE went into specific areas/themes concerning elections:
i. Electronic Voting [EVM/VVPATs] and its compliance with Democracy
Principles.
ii. Scheduling and processes of elections and compliance of Model Code of
Conduct.
iii. Role of media including social media, fake news, etc.
iv. Integrity and inclusiveness of the Electoral Rolls.
v. Criminalization, money power and Electoral bonds.
319
vi. Autonomy of the ECI and its functioning before, during and after the election.
The CCE came across severe flaws in all these areas before, during and after Parlia-
mentary Elections-2019. Reports have been prepared on all these areas/themes and
would be released in phases. But in “Electronic Voting [EVM/VVPATs] and its compli-
ance with Democracy Principles”, the flaws appear to be near-fatal to electoral democ-
racy. Therefore, we are dealing with this critical issue first by releasing the report on
this theme for larger public discussion. The study was mentored by Dr Sanjiva Prasad,
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Delhi in collaboration with his col-
league Dr Subhashis Banerjee, Professor, Computer Science, IIT, Delhi.
The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs primarily on the touch-
stone of whether and how far their use complied with ‘democracy principles’ men-
tioned in the enclosed summary and is available in detail in the main report. In short, it
insists on absolute transparency in facilitating the voter to exercise his or her choice and
in ensuring that these selections are, indeed, reflected in the stored vote and counted as
such — without the slightest deviation whatsoever. These principles also mandate that
the voting procedure is easily understandable and verifiable by the voter and open to
audit without complications even when relevant technology is utilised. There should be
absolutely no scope for error or misrepresentation of the elector’s choice.
The group has relied on depositions and expert opinions of several national and
international experts and was informed of the reasons why even the most advanced
countries do not prefer the use of EVMs during polls. Among the domain knowledge
holders who submitted deposition before this CCE group were Ronald L. Rivest of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA; Alex Halderman of the
University of Michigan, USA; Poorvi L. Vora and Bhagirath Narahari of George Wash-
ington University, USA; Alok Choudhary of North-western University, USA Sandeep
Shukla, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur; Douglas W. Jones of
the University of Iowa, USA; Nasir Memon of New York University (Brooklyn), USA;
Philip B. Stark of the University of California, Berkeley, Vanessa Teague, Associate Pro-
fessor, School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Cyber
security, Australia; MG Devasahayam, former civil servant; Bappa Sinha of Free Soft-
ware Movement of India, Subodh Sharma of Computer Science and Engineering and of
the School of Public Policy, IIT, Delhi; S Prasanna, Advocate, Delhi, Venkatesh Nayak,
RTI activist, KV Subrahmanyam, Professor, Computer Science, Chennai Mathematical
Institute, Chennai, Poonam Agarwal, media-person and Anupam Saraf, Professor and
Future Designer.
These experts along with Dr Sanjiva Prasad and Dr Subhashis Banerjee of IIT, Delhi
are the best brains on the subject across the globe and it would not be possible to put
together another group to match this vast and varied expertise.
The report has devoted considerable time and expertise in scrutinising the technical
architecture of EVMs and the accompanying VVPATs. The ECI does not appear to safe-
guard against the possibilities of ‘side-channel attacks’, i.e. hacking electronic devices
through electromagnetic and other methods. Even the ‘software guard extensions’ of
sophisticated Intel processors have proved vulnerable to interference and tampering.
Just a few EVMs can swing election results for a constituency. That the processor chip
in the EVM is only one-time programmable is also in doubt. In fact, latest EVMs use the
320
MK61FX512VMD12 microcontroller supplied by an US based multinational, which has

a programmable flash memory.
Further examination is possible only when the ECI makes the EVM design and pro-
totype available for public technical audit. It is noted that none of the ECI’s experts
has credentials in computer security and the Commission reposing trust in many other
external entities and organisations, that could lend themselves to breach of complete
security. After tracking the various stages of the EVM’s movement within the election
setup — before and during polls, subsequent storage, counting and declaration of re-
sults — the report opines that there are certain intervals during which the machines
could be accessed without authority or tampered with.
The findings reveal that there is, indeed, no guarantee that the voter’s choice has
been reflected with total fidelity in all cases and thus submit that immediate steps be
taken to rectify the ECI’s current procedures, irrespective of the scale and extent of pos-
sible error or manipulation. Besides, domain experts have clearly stated that the present
‘quality assurance’ and testing strategies of the ECI certainly do not rule out scope for
mischief or manoeuvring of results.
The VVPAT system was introduced to ensure that voters were able to see and check
physically paper slips that emanated from the EVMs and printers attached to them.
The Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPAT as an additional stage to as-
sure voters about the complete fidelity of their votes but the current procedure of vot-
ing does not sync with this objective and leaves gaps that could be manipulated. This
paper trail has, for instance, been rendered ineffective as the ‘marked slips’ pop up for
too brief a time for the voter to verify her/his vote before it moves away to its sealed
box. Besides, the ECI refuses to cross check the tally of counting VVPAT paper-slips
with electronic results on the grounds of being unnecessary and time consuming, even
though the total time taken is considerably less than the time spent in counting the
traditional papers received in ballot boxes. Even though VVPAT slips of votes cast are
bound to be retained for one year after polls, the ECI has destroyed these slips of the
2019 polls, leading to grave apprehensions about its bona fides. Rules regarding man-
datory recount of EVM results and the compulsory counting of the VVPAT paper slips
are absolutely unavoidable.
Main report as well as the Executive Summary addresses all the concerns and appre-
hensions in the public mind about the fairness and integrity of India’s elections and has
arrived at these conclusions:
a. Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the present EVM/VVAPAT
system is not verifiable and therefore is unfit for democratic elections.
b. That an EVM has not yet been detected to have been hacked provides no guaran-
tee that it cannot be hacked. Thus, elections must be conducted assuming that the EVMs
may possibly be tampered with.
c. In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than even what the civil society
and the political parties demand (30% and 50% respectively) to ensure verification and
reliable ascertainment of results.
d. There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic vote count before the results are
declared. The audit may in some cases - depending on the margin of victory - require a
321
full manual counting of VVPAT slips.

e. The electronic voting system should be re-designed to be software and hardware
independent in order to be verifiable or auditable.
End-Note
The fallacy of first-past-the-post system combined with blind cum opaque electronic
...
voting along with money and media power in elections could create a ruling establish-
ment that would be autocratic, kleptocratic and oligarchic.
Constitution of India has high Institutions of Democratic Governance:
..
ECI, mandated to conduct free and fair elections with integrity
Government, to facilitate this with laws and rules
Parliament, to enact such laws
Supreme Court, to ensure ‘democracy principles’ through oversight
President of India in whose name the entire system of governance operates
All these have failed India’s electoral democracy. No wonder India is now being
widely perceived as a flawed and failing democracy moving fast towards autocracy and
authoritarianism. It is time ‘We, The People’, who are the ultimate sovereign, moved
in to save India’s precious democracy. For this to happen the electorate needs to be in-
formed of the way the ECI is functioning and elections are being conducted.
This is what The CCE has done and we place the Report before the “People of India”
for discussions, debate and deliberations out of which Deo Volente an electoral system
of impeccable integrity would emerge to take India towards a robust and vibrant de-
mocracy.
[Note: For a detailed and overarching narrative on the context, backdrop
and the functioning of the CCE as well the circumstances leading to its
formation, please see page Nos 33-42 ]
322
Report of the Citizens’ Commission

on Elections
Executive Summary
Based on depositions by:
Poonam Agarwal, Journalist, The Quint. Deposition.
M. G. Devasahayam, IAS (Retd). Deposition
Venkatesh Nayak, RTI Activist. Deposition
Prasanna S., Advocate. Deposition
Anupam Saraf, Professor and Future Designer. Deposition
Subodh Sharma, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Delhi. Deposition
Sandeep Shukla, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur. Deposition
Bappa Sinha, Technologist, Free Software Movement of India. Deposition
Poorvi L. Vora, Professor, Computer Science,
George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. Deposition (Joint Submission)
Alok Choudhary, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern
University, Evanston, Illinois, USA (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
J. Alex Halderman, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
Douglas W. Jones, Associate Professor, Computer Science, University of Iowa,
Iowa City, Iowa, USA (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
Nasir Memon, Professor, Computer Science and Engineering,
New York University (Brooklyn), New York, USA
(joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
Bhagirath Narahari, Professor, Computer Science, George Washington University,
Washington, DC, USA (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
R. Ramanujam, Professor, Computer Science, Institute of Mathematical Sciences,
Chennai, India (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
323
Ronald L. Rivest, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Philip B. Stark, Professor of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, USA
K. V. Subrahmanyam, Professor, Computer Science, Chennai Mathematical Institute,
Chennai, India (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
Vanessa Teague, Associate Professor, School of Computing and Information Systems,
University of Melbourne, Australia (joint submission with Poorvi Vora)
Depositions were also invited from the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the
members of its technical committee, Professors D. T. Shahani (IIT Delhi), Rajat Moona
(IIT Bhilai) and D. K. Sharma (IIT Bombay). However, no deposition was received. The
CCE also sent a questionnaire to the ECI, members of its technical committee and some
former Chief Election Commissioners; only one response was received.
1 Democracy principles
The democracy principles that any voting process for public elections should adhere
to are:
1. The voting process should be transparent in a manner that the general
public can be satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded and counted.
3. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps in the voting
process. If special expert knowledge is required then all should be able to select
their own experts.
4. There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and ascertainment of
the results reliably without too much special knowledge.
5. An election process should not only be free and fair, but also be seen to be
free and fair.
6. Election Commission should be in full control of the entire voting process,
and the public at large should be able to verify.
7. Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting, should be in sync with
changing technologies and technological practices, and be subject to public
scrutiny/examinability.
In this report we examine to what extent the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) along
with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) based system used in India com-
ply with the democratic principles and make some recommendations.
324
2 Concerns with the EVM

1. In an EVM, where votes are recorded electronically by press of a button, and the
voter cannot examine what has been recorded, there is no way to provide a guar-
antee to a voter that her vote is cast as intended (recorded correctly in the EVM),
recorded as cast (what is recorded in the EVM is what is collected in the final tally)
and counted as recorded. This casts doubts on a purely EVM- based system.
2. It is well known that theoretically establishing the correctness of a system as
complicated as an EVM is a computationally intractable problem. It is also well
known that Quality Assurance (QA) testing is never adequate to establish the
correctness of an EVM, and such tests can detect only a small fraction of possible
software or hardware errors (follows a common maxim that tests do not constitute
a proof of correctness). Also, pre-determined and pre-set test patterns are known to
be inadequate for verification of the integrity of an EVM. The present EVM system
is not verifiable and therefore is unfit for democratic elections.
3. If the correctness of an EVM cannot be established then it is practically impossible
to predict whether an EVM can be hacked or not. In particular, that an EVM has not
yet been hacked provides no guarantee whatsoever that it cannot be hacked. Thus
elections must be conducted assuming that the electronic voting machines may pos-
sibly be tampered with.
4. Voter-verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is one possible to way to make the
voting system auditable. Using VVPAT a voter can in principle verify that her vote
is cast as intended, and a suitably designed end-of-poll statistical audit can possibly
determine that the collection and counting are correct. This, however, is crucially
dependent on the following four requirements :
(b) That the VVPAT slips are in one-to-one correspondence with the electronic
records. Otherwise, it needs to be clearly defined which of the two is the legal
definition of a vote.
(b) That the VVPAT system is truly voter-verified. The correct VVPAT
protocol is to allow a voter to approve the VVPAT slip before the vote is cast,
and to provide an option to cancel her vote if a discrepancy is noticed. It also
requires a clear protocol for dispute resolution if a voter complains that a
VVPAT printout is incorrect. The ECI’s VVPAT system is not truly voter-ver-
ified because it does not provide the necessary agency to a voter to cancel her
vote if she thinks it has been recorded incorrectly. Also, in case the voter raises
a dispute, there is no way for her to prove that she is not lying. As such, penal-
izing a voter in such a situation is not correct.
(c) There must be compliance audit, verifiable by all candidates and interested
members of the general public, to ensure the integrity of the VVPAT slips.
The VVPAT slips may be trustworthy at the time of voting, but it is neces-
sary to ensure that they remain trustworthy later while auditing. Only then a
subsequent statistical audit can establish the correctness of the voting process.
There has to be sufficient guarantees against spurious injection or deletion of
325
votes after polling and before counting when the EVMs and VVPATs are in
custody of ECI, without requiring any trust assumptions. Otherwise, the mere
agreement of electronic and VVPAT counts cannot rule out spurious vote in-
jections or deletions in both.
(d) There must be post-election audit of the EVM counts against manual
counting of the VVPAT slips.
It is incorrect to assume that the prevalence of faulty (or hacked) EVMs is homoge-
neous across the population, independent of the margin of winning votes. In fact, it
may be sufficient to tamper only a few EVMs to swing an election if a contest is close.
Thus, in practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than even what the civil society
and the political parties demand (30% and 50% respectively) to ensure verification and
reliable ascertainment of results.
3 Recommendations
1. The decision making processes within the ECI need to be much more logical,
rigorous and principled compared to what it was for the 2019 parliamentary
elections.
2. EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The electronic voting system should
be redesigned to be software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable
or auditable. This does not imply that software or hardware cannot be used, but
that the correctness of the election outcome cannot be entirely dependent on their
working correctly.
3. The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-verified. The voter
should be able to approve the VVPAT printout before the vote is finally cast, and
be able to cancel if there is an error.
4. The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines during the entire time
after polling and before counting and auditing must be ensured in a manner that is
verifiable by all (and especially the candidates). There should be no trust require-
ment on the custody chain.
5. There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote count before the results are
declared. The audit should not be based on ad hoc methods but by counting a
statistically significant sample of the VVPAT slips according to rigorous and well
established statistical audit techniques. The audit may in some cases - depending
on the margin of victory - require a full manual counting of VVPAT slips.
6. There should be legislation to decide what is to be done if the audits reveal a problem.
Such legislation should ideally be based on well-established statistical procedures
and not on subjective decision of a few officials.
7. There is a definite need to move away from certification of voting equipment and
processes and demonstrate that the outcome of an election is correct irrespective of
machines and trust on custody chains of EVMs. Two ways to do this are by adopt-
ing rigorous and well established strategies for risk-limiting audits or by using a
provably end-to-end verifiable cryptographic protocol, or both. The ECI should
326
explore the possibilities.

8. Finally, the voting system design should be subjected to independent (of the gov-
ernment and ECI) review and the integrity of the election process should be sub-
jected to independent audit. The findings should be made public. In particular, all
design details should be transparent and publicly available.
327
The Report
Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System
India’s parliamentary election is the largest in the world, with 543 constituencies and
well over 1 million voters per constituency on the average, and voting in India is con-
ducted electronically since 2004. However, there is considerable doubt about the verifi-
ability of Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) solu-
tion and its compliance with democratic principles. This inevitably generated disquiet
during the elections, especially during the 2019 parliamentary elections.
In what follows we present a brief interim analysis. In Section 1 we examine the
compliance of EVM based voting with democratic principles. In Section 1.1 we briefly
capture the current EVM design and the ECI’s processes for conducting the elections.
In Section 1.2 we examine and analyse the concerns with the EVM. In Section 2 we ex-
amine the issues related to the trustworthiness of the custody chain and post-election
audits. In Section 3 we make our final recommendations.
1 Compliance of EVM- based voting with

democracy principles
1.1 The EVM design and ECI’s processes
The deposition by Bappa Sinha [16] summarises the ECI’s EVM design and the
associated processes.
328
1.1.1 EVM features
..
Figure 1: The schematic of ECI’s EVM (original diagram from ECI’s EVM & VVPAT manual).
The main features of the design are:

It is a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting protocol.
The EVM consists of a control unit (CU) which is placed on the presiding officer’s
desk. The CU is connected to the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)
printer which is then connected to the ballot unit (BU). The VVPAT printer and
.
the BU are kept in the voter booth. The VVPAT status display unit (VSDU) is kept
with the presiding officer and displays the status of the VVPAT printer.
The different components authenticate each other using digital certificates. The
system is designed to stop functioning if paired with unauthorised components.
The communication between components is encrypted. It is a standalone system
supposedly with no external communication channels, either wired or through
.
radio. It only has designated interfaces for input and output of data according to
specific protocols.
As per ECI mandate it should be stand-alone (not computer-controlled) and “one
time programmable” (OTP).
1.1.2 The voting process

The voting process using the EVM is described as follows:
1. A voter is allowed to proceed to the voting booth after eligibility and identity
checks by polling officials.
2. For a vote to be cast the presiding officer must first enable the BU by pressing
a button on the CU.
3. The voter casts the vote by pressing a button on the BU selecting a candidate.
Once a button is pressed a light-emitting diode (LED) next to the button lights
up and there is a long beep indicating that the vote has been recorded.
329
4. The VVPAT simultaneously prints a small slip of paper that carries the symbol,
name and serial number of the candidate selected by the voter. This slip is
visible for seven seconds in the viewing window after which it drops off in to a
secure box.
5. Once a vote has been cast, the BU becomes inactive and does not respond to any
more button presses, till the presiding officer schedules the next vote by again
enabling the BU from the CU.
6. There is a mandatory 12 second delay before the CU can enable the next vote to
be cast.
7. The key-presses are time stamped.
.
1.1.3 Design, engineering and manufacturing processes
The EVM software was developed by a select group of engineers from Bharat
.
Electronic Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL)
independent of each other.
.
Testing is done according to the software specification by multiple indepen-
dent testing groups.
The production group carries out production testing in the factory according
.
to a Quality Assurance (QA) plan. Samples from production batches are test-
ed by independent QA groups.
BEL and ECIL are responsible for packaging and shipping the EVM systems
to the states as directed by the ECI. Container trucks or sealed trucks with
.
proper locking arrangements are used for transporting EVMs and VVPATs.
Paper seals are put on the containers.
.
All movement of EVMs are scheduled and monitored using an EVM Track
ing Software (ETS) based on Global Positioning System (GPS).
On receipt of the EVMs, the district election officers (DEOs) are supposed to
video-graph the process of receipt of EVMs and then store them in strong
rooms at the district headquarters.
1.1.4 Administrative processes
EVM Preparation : ECI allocates EVMs to states 200 days prior to polling. The EVMs
are dispatched 180 days prior to polling and are tracked using the GPS based ETS
software. There is a first level checking of the EVMs 3-6 months prior to polling
where the internal parts are checked and the CU is sealed. The EVMs are as-
signed to constituencies using a first-stage randomization software 3 weeks prior
to polling. In a second stage randomization the EVMs are assigned to polling
booths two weeks before polling. Finally, after the last date for candidate with-
drawal, the ballot paper is fixed on the BU, the candidate names are entered in an
alphabetical order, a mock poll is conducted and the BU is sealed.
Polling day processes: The serial numbers of the EVM components are shared with the
candidates and the polling agents so that they can inspect before commencement
330
of the mock poll. A mock poll of at least 50 votes is conducted in each polling
station and the EVM and VVPAT tallies are compared in presence of the polling
agents. After the mock polling is over all buttons of the CU other than those used
for polling are covered with paper seals. These paper seals are signed by the poll-
ing agents.
After polling is over the presiding officer presses the close button, after which
no votes can be cast. The complete EVM unit is sealed and signed. Polling agents
are allowed to put their own seals. The representatives of the candidates are al-
lowed to travel behind the vehicle that carries the EVMs to the counting storage
rooms. The counting storage rooms are sealed and guarded by the Central Re-
serve Police Force (CRPF). Candidates are allowed to put their own seals on the
strongroom.
Counting day processes : First the EVM serial numbers, seals, the start and end times
as recorded are verified by both election officials and polling agents. The CUs
that do not display the result because they were not closed properly, or in case
the total number of votes reported by the CU does not match that reported by
the presiding officer, are kept aside for scrutiny. After announcement of results
candidates or counting agents can apply for VVPAT counts for the returning of-
ficer to decide.
Because of the above systems and processes the ECI and several other com-
mentators [16] believe that electronic voting using ECI’s EVM is safe. In particu-
lar, they believe that though there can be no formal guarantees against hacking,
hacking is practically impossible because of the tight processes and the secure
custody chain of control. Further, they believe that since the EVM is not con-
nected to network it cannot be hacked remotely.
1. 2 Concerns with the EVM and our analysis

While banning electronic voting the German Constitutional Court made the
following observation:
The use of voting machines which electronically record the voters’ votes and elec-
tronically ascertain the election result only meets the constitutional requirements
if the essential steps of the voting and of the ascertainment of the result can be
examined reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject...The leg-
islature is not prevented from using electronic voting machines in elections if
the possibility of a reliable examination of correctness, which is constitutionally
prescribed, is safeguarded. A complementary examination by the voter, by the
electoral bodies or the general public is possible for example with electronic vot-
ing machines in which the votes are recorded in another way beside electronic
storage.
Several depositions [3, 14, 18, 12, 11, 10, 7] have raised concerns that the EVM based
.
voting may not measure up to the standards laid down by the German Constitutional
court. Specifically:
The democratic principles that any voting process for public elections should
adhere to are [3]:
1. The voting process should be transparent in a manner that the general public
331
can be satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded and counted.

3. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps in the voting process.
If special expert knowledge is required then all should be able to
selecttheir own experts.
4. There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and ascertainment of the
results reliably without any special knowledge.
5. An election process should not only be free and fair, but also be seen to be free
and fair.
6. Election Commission should be in full control of the entire voting process, and
the public at large should be able to verify.
7. Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting, should be in sync with
.
changing technologies and technological practices, and be subject to public
scrutiny examinability.
The compliance of the ECI’s EVM+VVPAT based voting system to the above
principles hinges crucially on the verifiability of the EVM and the voting and
counting process. Much of the elaborate and complex processes of Sections 1.1.3
.
and 1.1.4 are required precisely because public verifiability of the election process
is doubtful and the requirement of trust on various authorities is inevitable.
Verifiability cannot be established by inviting people to hack the hardware system.
ECI’s challenge for demonstrating hacks is not meaningful, not only because
sufficient time and access to tools were denied, but also because something has
not yet been hacked provides no guarantee whatsoever that it cannot be hacked
[14]. Indeed, there are numerous examples of EVM hacking all over the world,
including an earlier version of the Indian EVM [14, 5].
It appears that possibilities of side-channel attacks [4] have not even been con-
sidered [3, 14]. There are numerous examples from all over the world of hacking
electronic devices through electromagnetic and other channels [4], including of
the Software Guard Extensions of sophisticated IntelTM processors [8]. In view of
such possibilities the claims that the EVM has no external communication chan-
nels appear to be naive, especially considering that so much is at stake. After all,
.
with modern data analytics it may require targeting the EVMs in just a few poll-
ing stations to swing the election results for a constituency [14, 15, 18].
The OTP (one-time programmable) aspect of the EVM is doubtful [16, 3, 14],
because, in a response to an RTI query, it was revealed that the latest EVM uses
the MK61FX512VMD12 microcontroller (from an US based multinational) which
has a programmable flash memory. However, Sandeep Shukla [14] points out
that it cannot be written to if the JTAG pins are fused and memory lock bit is
set. Unfortunately, this is impossible to verify since the details are not publicly
.
available [7] and the EVM design and prototype has not been made available for
public audit.
Experts declaring it safe does not make the EVM+VVPAT verifiable. Besides, none
of ECI’s experts have credentials in computer security [14]. In addition to experts,
332
ECI seems to be reposing trust in many other entities and organisations - includ-
.
ing hardware manufacturers, software developers and testers, system assemblers
and unmodelled custody chains - and is thus not entirely in control [3, 18, 11].
Many claims of the ECI and its experts do not stand up to scrutiny. Some examples are
‘EVM is unhackable’ [14, 15, 18, 12], ‘functionality tests and mock polls are suf-
ficient’ [12, 18], ‘randomization of EVM allocations makes the process safe’ [18],
‘safe because candidate order is not known when EVM is sealed’ [18], ‘mutual
authentication of EVM components makes it safe’ [18], ‘ECI’s procedures cannot
be circumvented’ [3, 18, 11], ‘ECI’s VVPAT protocol makes the voting process
.
verifiable’ [18, 12, 11]; all these claims have been convincingly challenged in the
cited depositions received by the CCE.
Testing is never adequate to declare an electronic system as complicated as an EVM
failsafe and verified [18, 12]. An EVM system composed from its components
can exist in one of a very large number of internal states, which, almost surely,
is an exponential function of the configuration parameters. Examination of such
large systems is an intractable problem, which often compels the examiners to
rely on weaker forms of verification such as quality assurance (QA) methods -
for instance, testing. However, well documented studies have shown that such
weaker notions of verification can only detect a fraction of software errors (fol-
lows a common maxim that tests do not constitute a proof). In particular, it may
be impossible to determine with reasonable amount of computation or testing
whether such systems can ever reach a compromised state, perhaps due to hack-
ing, where the democratic principles are violated [12]. Also pre-determined and
.
preset test patterns are known to be inadequate for verification of the integrity of
a hardware-software codesign of a system as complex as an EVM [18].
Thus elections must be conducted assuming that the electronic voting machines
may possibly be tampered with [18, 12]. The long time window - over the cycle of
design, implementation, manufacture, testing, maintenance, storage and deploy-
ment - may provide ample opportunity for insiders or criminals to attempt other
means of access [18]. There is an overwhelming requirement of trust on such
.
custody chains; such (often implicit) assumptions of trust in various mechanisms
make the election process unverifiable [18, 12, 11].
ECI’s VVPAT system is not voter-verified in the true sense [18, 12, 11]. The correct
VVPAT protocol is to allow a voter to approve the VVPAT slip before the vote
is cast, and providing an option to cancel her vote if there is a discrepancy [18].
There is no clear protocol for dispute resolution if a voter complains that a VVPAT
printout is incorrect, as there is no non-repudiation of a cast vote [12]. Also, there
is no guarantee that every VVPAT slip that is counted has been verified by a
legitimate voter, or that every voter-verified slip is counted. The VVPAT audit
can at best ensure that the electronic and VVPAT tallies match, but that by itself
- without compliance audit [17] based protection against spurious vote addition
.
or deletion in a manner verifiable by all candidates provides no real guarantee
[12, 18, 11].
The overall lack of transparency and public auditability, which are crucial for
democratic principles of public elections, are worrisome [16, 3, 14, 18, 12, 11, 10].
333
The non-verifiability of the EVM based voting protocol makes it impossible to

rule out unpredictable manipulations by unpredictable entities, including by for-
eign players. It is essential that all aspects of an election may be observed and
independently-verified by the public to engender trust [18, 7, 14].
2 EVM/VVPATs before and during polling, storage,

counting and declaration of results
2.1 Trustworthiness of the custody chain of EVMs

Several depositions have raised concerns regarding the efficacy of the processes de-
.
scribed in Sections 1.1.3 and 1.1.4 for maintaining the integrity of the polling process.
Specifically in the Lok Sabha Elections 2019 :
The ECI and the manufacturers-cum-suppliers of EVMs – ECIL and BEL–appear
to have been evasive in response to RTI queries [7]. In addition, the information
on the audits conducted by STQC (Standardisation Testing and Quality Certi-
.
fication Directorate, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) and
CFSL (Central Forensic Science Laboratory) have also been sketchy and evasive
[7].
The reluctance by the authorities to share information publicly – despite the Central
Information Commission’s (CIC) recommendation made in 2018 that informa-
.
tion relating to the software used in EVMs be made public in the larger public
interest – is surprising and worrisome [7].
There were discrepancies in the voter turnout/votes polled data on the Electronic
Voting Machines (EVMs) and the votes counted data on EVMs in over 373 con-
stituencies [1, 3]. The four highest discrepancies were of 18,331, 17,871, 14,512 and
.
9,906 votes where the EVM votes were in surplus. These numbers are clearly too
large to be explained by inadvertently counted mock polling data.
Not only have there been no explanations forthcoming from the ECI regarding
.
the discrepancies, but the ECI also pulled down the data after an explanation was
sought [1].
.
About 2 million EVMs were stated to be missing from the election commission.
The ECI had no explanation for this [3, 18].
After the final vote was cast there were video reports from at least 10 different
places of new EVMs being moved into strong rooms. ECI said these were reserve
EVMs, but provided no evidence for this, and no explanation for why they need to
be moved just before counting rather than at the time of voting, when there was,
in some cases, weeks between voting and counting. They also provided no expla-
nation as to why, as required by the EC rules, there were no security officers ac-
companying these vehicles, and why these vehicles were often un-numbered, un-
official vehicles. Doubts arise as to whether these are part of the 2 million missing
EVMs. There have also been reports of irregularities in the counting process [3].
334
2.2 VVPAT counting

2.2.1 The controversy
.
The issue of how many EVMs need to be checked by comparing the electronic tally with
a manual VVPAT slip tally has also been mired in controversy.
In its letter dated February 13, 2018, the ECI directed state chief electoral officers to mandatorily
verify VVPAT paper slips in only one randomly selected polling station in each
.
assembly constituency. The statistical basis for this directive was however unclear
[3, 10].
At the request of the Election Commission, Abhay Bhatt of Indian Statistical Institute,
Delhi, and others provided a report describing how many EVMs should be cross-
checked and why. The report recommends the cross-checking of only 479 EVMs
across the country, independent of how many total EVMs there are (some reports
mention that they considered a total of 10.35 Lakh EVMs). It says that, if a frac-
tion of 2% or more of the EVMs are faulty, cross-checking 479 chosen at random
across the country will be sufficient to detect this fact with virtual certainty [3, 10,
18, 11]. This was also supported by Rajiv Karandikar of the Chennai Mathematical
Institute [3].
In response to petitions in the Supreme Court from representatives of the civil
society and opposition parties that the then standard of cross-checking one EVM
per assembly constituency was not sufficient, the EC used the Bhatt Report to claim
that their approach resulted in checking 4,125 EVMs over the entire country and
was hence more than sufficient. However, the Supreme Court ordered the Election
Commission to increase the number of cross-checked EVMs to five per Assembly
constituency in order to assuage the concerns of the petitioners (this corresponds
to 20,625 EVMs across the country). The court later turned down another set of
petitions filed by civil society groups and opposition parties to count 50% of EVMs
per constituency, saying that this was not necessary. The ECI claimed that manual
.
VVPAT counting in 50% of the constituencies will delay the announcement of re-
sults [3, 10, 18].
The rationale behind the SC’s directive for cross checking only 5 EVMs per assembly
.
constituency against manual VVPAT counts was never explained. It does not seem
to have any statistical basis [3, 10, 18].
Not cross-checking sufficient number of EVMs even after widespread public suspicions,
.
and 21 opposition parties as well as civil society asking for it, diminishes public
faith in the process [3].
The SC also failed to direct what ‘decision rules’ must be followed by the ECI in
the event of discrepancies between manual counting and electronic counting.
[3, 10].
335
2.3 The analysis
Figure 2: Sample size required as per hypergeometric distribution to detect at least one faulty EVM with 99% probability
in a population with 1% faulty EVMs. In this particular example, it is seen that increase of population size beyond about
10,000 (N/n>20) has little or no impact on the sample size. The figure has been taken from [13].
Figure 3: Defining population. The figure has been taken from [13].
Figure 4: Variation of sample size with proportion of faulty EVMs fixing the population size to N = 100. The figure has
been taken from [13].
. In probability theory and statistics, the sufficiency of sampling is usually determined
by the hypergeometric distribution. It is a discrete probability distribution that de-
scribes the probability of k successes (random draws for which the object drawn has
336
a specified feature, in this case a defective EVM) in n draws, without replacement,

from a finite population of size N that contains exactly K objects with that feature,
wherein each draw is either a success or a failure. [This is very similar to the binomial
.
distribution that describes the probability of k successes in n draws with replace-
ments.]
In an analysis using the hypergeometric distribution, Shetty [13] shows that if 1% of
the EVMs are assumed to be defective (give a mismatch with the VVPAT count),
then, for a 99% probability of detecting at least one defective EVM, the sample sizes
required, for various population sizes are given as per Figure 2. Figure 3 defines
.
population. Figure 4 shows how the sample size must vary with the proportion of
faulty EVMs.
Quoting Shetty [13]
Studying Figures 2 and 3 together, it is obvious that if the EVMs used in an As-
sembly Constituency are defined as the population, the population size (N) will
be very small; the sampling fraction (n/N) will be very big; and the sample size
(n) will vary considerably across Assembly Constituencies. The same is true if
the EVMs used in a Parliamentary Constituency are defined as the population.
If the EVMs in a State as a whole are defined as the population, there is con-
siderable variation in population size from the very small (Sikkim) to the very
big (Uttar Pradesh). For the nine smaller States with population size less than
10,000 EVMs, the sampling fraction (n/N) will be quite big and the sample size
will vary considerably across the States. For the 20 bigger States with popula-
tion size greater than 10,000 EVMs, the sample size will ‘hit a plateau’ in the
450s and further increase in population size will have little or no effect on it.
.
If the EVMs used in India as a whole are defined as the population, due to the
‘plateau effect’, the sample size is just one more than that for U.P.
In view of the above, in most cases (almost all) ECI’s prescribed sample size of “one
EVM per assembly constituency” will fail to detect a faulty EVM with a very high
probability. See [13] for details. Using a similar analysis Vora et al. [18] show that
.
with a 2% rate of faulty EVM, the SC’s directive of checking 5 EVMs per assembly
constituency will fail to detect a faulty EVM in roughly 50% of the cases.
The Bhatt report is clearly based on the profoundly mistaken premise of taking
the whole country as one population. At a 2% fault rate the Bhatt approach is de-
signed to detect only if roughly 20,000 EVMs are faulty. It completely misses the
.
point that swinging a few tens of thousands of votes, with far fewer faulty EVMs, is
sufficient to swing a single Lok Sabha seat [3, 18, 10, 11, 14].
Note that, if the margin between the winner and the second highest vote getter is
small, fewer EVMs need to be rigged, and, to detect this, more need to be checked.
If the ‘population’ has to be defined at the level of an assembly constituency, the
number of EVMs to be cross checked will depend on the margin, and, while it can
be smaller than 30%, it can be larger than 50% as well. For example, in the extreme
case of the margin being only one vote, a complete manual count will be necessary.
In view of the above, the civil society and opposition party concerns that 5 EVMs per
337
.
constituency are not sufficient appear to be reasonable.
Thus, in practice, election outcomes may be changed by tampering significantly
fewer EVMs than even what the civil society demands consider, and it is incorrect
to assume that faulty (or hacked) EVMs are distributed homogeneously across the
population without considering the margins. However, with rigorous risk-limiting
audit procedures that consider the margins [6, 2, 18, 17], it should be possible to
audit election outcomes without necessarily manually counting all VVPAT slips.
Complete manual counting should be last resort.
3 Final recommendations
The analysis in the above two sections clearly demonstrates that the decision mak-
ing processes within the ECI need to be much more logical, rigorous and principled
compared to what it was for the 2019 parliamentary elections. Ad hoc systems and
processes without adequate analysis of the properties and the guarantees should be
avoided. Only then can elections using electronic means adhere to standard democratic
principles, appear to be free and fair, and engender confidence in election outcomes.
Specifically, we make the following recommendations for the future:
Software and hardware independence
The electronic voting system should be re-designed to be software and hardware
independent in order to be verifiable or auditable. EVMs cannot be assumed to be
tamper-proof. As defined by Rivest [9], a voting system is software (hardware) inde-
pendent if an undetected change in software (hardware) can not lead to an undetectable
change in the election outcome. Any solution that relies cru cially on the correctness of
the EVM is not software and hardware independent [18, 12].
End-to-end (E2E) verifiability
One way to achieve software and hardware independence is to use E2E verifiable
systems with provable guarantees of correctness [18, 12, 11, 2]. The overall correctness
of voting is established by the correctness of three steps: cast-as-intended indicating
that the voting machine has registered the vote correctly, recorded-as-cast indicating the
cast vote is correctly included in the final tally, and counted-as recorded indicating that
final tally is correctly computed. There must also be guarantees against spurious vote
injections [12]. These guarantees should be publicly verifiable.
ECI should explore the possibility of using an E2E verifiable system [2].
Re-design of the VVPAT system
The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-verified [18, 11, 12]. The
voter should be able to approve the VVPAT printout before the vote is finally cast, and
be able to cancel if there is an error.
Moreover, in case a voter disputes that the vote has been incorrectly recorded, there
must be a clear method of determination either in favour of the voter or in f a v o u r o f
the authorities [12]. This may not be possible in a pure DRE based system like the ECI’s
338
EVM, because the machine may not make the same error when tested and because it is
not possible to determine, without doubt, whether it did originally make the error. In
this case, the voter cannot be penalized.
End-of-poll audits
To be compliant with democratic principles there is a definite need to move away
from certification of voting equipment and processes and demon strate that the out-
come of an election is correct irrespective of machines and custody chains of EVMs.
Two ways to do this are by adopting rigorous and well established strategies for com-
pliance and risklimiting au dits [6, 17, 2] or by using a provably end-to-end verifiable
cryptographic protocol, or both [2, 18, 12]. In any case, the ECI needs to change the
currently prescribed policy for VVPAT based audit with more rigorous risk-limiting
audit based sampling strategies [6] before the results are announced.
Also there must be a clear pre-announced protocol for deciding the outcome - in cluding pos-
sible re-polling - if there is a mismatch between the VVPAT and the elec-
tronic tallies [3].
Legislation
There has to be legislation to deal with the cases when the audit, and subsequent
recount, reveal a problem. Legislation will also be required to regulate when, and if,
a candidate can request a hand count. Best practices suggest that such legislation be
based on established statistical principles, as opposed to the judgment of individual
election officials, to the extent possible [18].
Independent review
The voting system design should be subjected to independent (of the government
and ECI) review and the integrity of the election process should be subjected to inde-
pendent audit. The findings should be made public.
Transparent processes
Finally, the election processes need to be completely transparent and should not
have too many requirements of trust on authorities and experts, including on ECI [3, 10,
18, 12, 11]. All design details should be publicly avail able. Also, there should be more
public consultations, and public and civil society concerns should be transparently and
fairly handled.
Finally, if we opt for electronic elections and bring computer science and statistics
into public life, then we cannot leave their disciplinary rigour behind.
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ers/1u5qjNmqNJM77SK6qlc5utfHmi5jTTBo?usp=sharing.
13. K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty. Winning Voter Confidence: Fixing India’s Faulty
VVPAT-based Audit of EVMs. https://www.thehinducentre.com/publications/policy-watch/
article25607027.ece.
14. Sandeep Shukla. Deposition by Sandeep Shukla. https://drive.google.com/drive/fol

ders/1YPQHYw5ozmNWkekKlFNyTDfe1V0sseq?usp=sharing.
15. Sandeep K. Shukla. Editorial: To use or not to? embedded systems for voting.
ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst., 17(3):58:1–58:2, May 2018.
16. Bappa Sinha. Deposition by Bappa Sinha. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/

1ZADKm2Ciryu4Gmo m7qO-MMyf8ECSKib?usp=sharing.
340
17. Philip B. Stark and David A. Wagner. Evidence-based elections. IEEE Secur. Priv.,
10(5):33–41, 2012.
18. Poorvi L. Vora, Alok Choudhary, J. Alex Halderman, Douglas W. Jones, Nasir
Memon, Bhagirath Narahari, R. Ramanujam, Ronald L. Rivest, Philip B. Stark, K. V.
Subrahmanyam, and Vanessa Teague. Deposition by Poorvi Vora et al. https://drive.
google.com/drive/folders/ 1x00pJHVhR1K7uLCdFuPIsiTDKp4cuQ2?usp=sharing.
341
A Citizen’s
Perspective
‘Democracy Principles’
in India’s Elections
By
M. G. Devasahayam*
Elections are the essence of democracy and are meant to translate the consent of the
citizens into governmental authority. There are broadly fivetypes of voting systems in
use around the world:
i. Paper Ballots (PB). Vote recorded on paper and counted by hand.
ii. Direct Recording EVM. Vote recorded in memory. Counted electronically.
iii. Direct Recording EVMs with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
iv.Vote recorded in memory and printed on paper. Counting done electronically
and by hand facilitating verification/auditing BEFORE declaring result.
v. Machine-readable Paper Ballots that are scanned and electronically counted
using Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) technology.
vi. Internet-based Voting or Online Voting. Most vulnerable, not suited to India.
There are other types also. India abandoned i) above and adopted ii) and now in the
* Mr. M.G. Devasahayam is former Army and former IAS Officer and is presently Coordinator, Citizen’s Commis-
sion on Election; Convener, Forum for Electoral Integrity; Member, Constitutional Conduct Group and Chairman,
People-First.He is a writer, columnist and author of Books “India’s Second Freedom - An Untold Saga”; “JP in Jail-An
Uncensored Account”; “JP Movement, Emergency and India’s Second Freedom” and “A Drop of Love-Memoir of
Saint Teresa.”
342
process of implementing iii). But though VVPATs have been installed in every EVM
counting continues to be done electronically. This violates fundamental ‘democracy
principles.’
‘Democracy Principles’ in elections in the Indian context are:
i. The election process should be verifiable in a manner that the public can be
satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded and counted.
ii. The process be subject to public scrutiny/examinability.
iii. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps in the voting process
with out special expert knowledge.
iv. There should be transparency in the counting of votes and ascertainment of the
results reliably without special knowledge.
v. The entire process should not only be free and fair, but also be seen to be free and fair.
vi. The Election Commission should be in full control of the entire voting process
Under the PB system voters could examine and verify the accuracy of the ballot-
paper, candidate’s name and symbol and verify whether it has been correctly marked.
Examinability gives knowledge and that gives satisfaction that he/she has transferred
the sovereignty to the candidate of his/her choice. In the case of an election dispute
physical reconstruction of the vote for authentication is possible. Vote counting was
open and transparent.
In EVM voting everything is done inside a machine in an opaque manner without
examinability, verifiability, knowledge, and satisfaction as to whether sovereignty has
been transferred to the candidate of the voter’s choice. Under the EVM system all that
a voter does is to press a button, see a light and hear a sound. All that the voter has is a
chance to look at a VVPAT slip for seven seconds. He/she has no idea whether the vote
has been correctly recorded and counted.
According to experts, end-to-end verifiability of the vote cast, vote recorded, and
vote counted, independent of the hardware, continues to be the biggest bugbear of In-
dia’s elections.
Under Electronic system ECI has lost control

There is another serious dimension to this problem. Under the ballot papersystem,the
ECI had full control and supervision over the manufacturing of ballot-boxes, printing
of ballot-papers its despatch and counting of votes. Not so with EVMs. Public Sector
Undertakings (PSUs) Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bengaluru, and the Electronic
Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad, manufacture EVMs and they are not
under the control or supervision of the ECI. Instead, they are under the direct control of
the UnionGovernment headed by a Minister from the ruling party. These entities share
the confidential software programme with foreign chip manufacturers to copy it on to
micro-controllers used in the EVMs. When these foreign companies deliver micro-con-
trollers fused with software code to the EVM manufacturers, neither the manufacturer
nor the ECI officials nor the technical advisers can read back their contents because they
are locked.
What is worse, even the PSUs seem to have lost control of EVMs on election duty and
343
private engineers have taken over the critical tasks of checking and maintaining EVMs
and VVPATs, starting from First Level Checking till the end of counting.It is clear,
therefore, that EVM voting does not comply with any of the ‘democracy principles’
which are paramount.
Article 324(1) of the Constitution of India vests with the Election Commission “the
superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and
the conduct of, all elections to Parliament and to the Legislature of every State and
of elections to the offices of President and Vice President”. Under PB system EC had
‘control’ over the entire conduct of election, but under EVM system it has almost
completely lost control. Therefore, elections conducted under EVM system ab initio
becomes unconstitutional.
Election Commission’s position

Despite this reality the ECI has been persistently and consistently defending, protect-
ing and cherishing EVMs. Successive Chief Election Commissioners (CEC) have been
openly claiming that these machines are robust, un-hackable and cannot be tampered
with. Some of them even went to the extent of serenading it as ‘infallible.’ (1to 6).
More recently, in early November, 2020 amidst disputes raised during Bihar elec-
tions regarding theintegrity of EVMs, the Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of
EVMsmade this open statement:“It has been clarified time and again that EVMs are
absolutely robust and tamper-proof.Even the Supreme Court has upheld their integrity
more than once.” (6& 7) Notice was issuedto the ECI on November 23, 2020 followed
by reminder on December 7,2020 to provide evidence of such “upholding of EVMs in-
tegrity by the Supreme Court.”
The ECI did not respond even after one month and some of us moved the Delhi High
Court to give suitable direction to the ECI. On December 31,2020the ECI responded by
quoting an innocuous observation of the Supreme Court on April 8, 2019 in the Writ
Petition (C) No. 273/2019 N Chandrababu Naidu &Ors VersusUnion of India &Anr: At
the very outset the Court would like to observe that neither the satisfaction of the Election Com-
mission nor the system in vogue today, as stated above, is being doubted by the Court insofar
as fairness and integrity is concerned.It is possible and we are certain that the system ensures
accurate electoral results(7).
But, the ECI deliberately concealed what the Supreme Court pronounced in M.G.
Devasahayam &Ors. Versus Union of India &Anrin Writ Petition (C) No. 23/2019 on
that very day : We express our reluctance to go into the issues regarding the integrity of the
EVMs which have been raised at a belated stage. The petition was filed in the month of December
2018 raising various technical issues which are not possible to be gone into at this stage(8).
The Apex Court made the obiter dicta on the “fairness and integrity” of the“system
in vogue today…ensuring accurate electoral results…” without even “going into the is-
sues regarding the integrity of the EVMs”. And the ECI flaunts it as Gospel truth!
While so, in December 2020 in response to a detailed questionnaire on the subject
sent by the Convener of CCE, a former CEC, Mr N. Gopalaswamy sent this brusque
and dismissive reply: My quick response to your Q.s on EVM. The EVMs were reliable and
are reliable. The addition of VVPAT has only strengthened that conclusion... On the issue of the
344
number of polling stations per constituency that should be taken up for the VVPAT cross-check-
ing, the ECI decided on 1 and I am sure the ECI had not decided it at its whims and fancies but
had based it on expert opinion rendered to it. You can seek a copy of the expert opinion to satisfy
yourself. Anyway,the SC in its wisdom raised it to 5 per AC and that is the norm now. Finally,
the issue of reliability of the EVMs has been debated and discussed ad nauseum and so one more
discussion is unnecessary in my view.But if it is your wish, go ahead by all means.
EVM/VVPATs before and during polling, storage,

counting and declaration of results
Replies to Right to Information (RTI) queries reveal that about 2 million EVMs were
stated to be missing from the Election Commission(9). The records of the two public
sector companies who manufacture EVMs say that they have been paid Rs 116 crore
more than what the ECI says they have been paid according to declared contracts, rais-
ing the question of what work this extra payment was for, and who made it.
The ECI says the EVMs can be programmed only once, making hacking unlikely.
However, there are reports that it can be programmed several times. There are other
reports saying that the EVM machine can be manipulated by connecting it to cell phones,
blue-tooth devices, replacing parts of it, and other forms of manipulation, apart from
physical replacement of it by other EVMs.
After the final vote was cast there were video reports from at least 10 different plac-
es of new EVMs being moved into strong rooms(10).The ECI said these were reserve
EVMs, but provided no evidence for this, and no explanation for why they need to be
moved just before counting rather than at the time of voting, which was, in some cases,
weeks later. They also provided no explanation as to why, as required by the EC rules,
there were no security officers accompanying these vehicles, and why these vehicles
were often un-numbered, unofficial vehicles. Doubt arises as to whether these are part
of the 2 million missing EVMs! There have also been reports of irregularities in the
counting process.
Media source said that it had deep-dived into two sets of data shared by the ECI: first,
the voter turnout/votes polled data on the EVMs and second, the votes counted data
and had found serious discrepancies in the two sets of data in 373 constituencies which
went to polls in the first four phases of the election(11).When this source raised the issue
of discrepancies with the ECI the ticker mentioning “final voter turnout” mysteriously
disappeared from the EC’s website (eciresults.nic.in). When asked why the ticker and
the data have been removed from the website, there was no response.
Machine-voting has no Integrity

Integrity of EVMs has been challenged from the time they were introduced in 1999. It
flared up after Parliament election-2009 and EVMs were exposed on many grounds: the
whole world has discarded similar EVMs; use of EVM is unconstitutional and illegal;
EVM software and hardware are not safe; EVMs are sitting ducks; insider fraud, storing
and counting are concerns; the ECI is clueless on technology and there is trust deficit.
345
BJP’s trouble-shooterSubramanian Swamy(now an MP) challenged the EVM in the

Delhi High Court and got a judgment in January 2012, wherein the Court expressed
reservations on EVM with this ruling: Dr Swamy is right to the extent that it cannot be
ruled out that EVMs may be vulnerable to frauds. There may be security issues as well.
Since there was no relief, Dr Swamy took it to the Supreme Court and got the order to
have VVPAT in every EVM vide its judgment dated October 8, 2013. This ipso facto
meant that EVM should be used for voting and all the printed slips in the VVPAT ma-
chine should be counted before declaring results.
Pursuant to the order of the Supreme Court and other directives the ECI arranged for
all EVMs to be accompanied with VVPAT for the 2019 general elections. Main purpose
was to bring in accuracy, verifiability and transparency in the casting and counting of
votes. Without counting of VVPAT paper slips in a significant percentage of polling sta-
tions in each assembly constituency, the objectives of verifiability and transparency in
the democratic process would remain unrealized.
But, in defiance of this basic principle,vide its letter dated February 13, 2018 the
ECI directed state chief electoral officers to mandatorily verify VVPAT paper slips in
only one randomly selected polling station in each assembly constituency. This being
around 0.5% sample size which is pathetically low, defeated the very object of install-
ing VVPATs in all EVMs which tantamount to non-implementation of Supreme Court
Order.
Hence on April 10, 2018 the Forum for Electoral Integrity (FEI), wrote a detailed
letter to the ECI explaining the need for a much higher sample for verification so that
EVM-voting adheres to basic ‘democratic principles.’The FEI suggested that VVPAT
slips must be simultaneously counted for a sample size of at least 25% of the polling sta-
tions in an assembly constituency with the samples drawn randomly from the different
strata and verified with the electronic count. If any variation was found, then the en-
tire VVPAT slips in the constituency should be counted and tallied with the electronic
count before declaring the result. This would have brought about substantial degree of
integrity in the 2019 Parliament election. But that was not to be!
The ECI’s reply dated May 1, 2018 signed by the Deputy Election Commissioner
(DEC) in charge of EVM was typically bureaucratic and only gave technical, admin-
istrative, legal, and physical security arguments in favour of EVMs. Not a whimper
about democracy principles and electoral integrity emphasized upon in FEI’s letter.
This mater, therefore, went before the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) of retired
civil servants many of whom have conducted, monitored, and observed elections dur-
ing their service. This CCG held a well-attended conclave on the subject in Delhi on
June 8, 2018 and thereafter on July 4, 2018 submitted a memorandum on the subject to
the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC).On the CEC’s advice a brainstorming session
on the subject was held July 21at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore. This
was followed by some more interaction between the ECI and the CCG.
While so, an expert opinion on statistical sample size from Dr SK Nath, former Direc-
tor General, Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) and an international consultant was
sent to theECI. The ECI formed an expert committee and invited Dr Nath to participate.
The first meeting of the committee was held on October 4, 2018 at the Indian Statisti-
cal Institute (ISI), New Delhi. Its representatives said that taking election in the whole
346
country as single event, the sample size needed for entire country (10.35 lakh EVMs)
was only 479 and that the sample size may be treated as constant as it doesn’t vary
much with population size. Faced with such absurdity the Committee collapsed.
Summary disposal by Supreme Court

Concerned with the hostility of the ECI towards ‘democracy principles’ and the lack
of integrity of EVM-voting, a Writ Petitionwas filed in the Supreme Courtduly sup-
ported by Dr Nath’s expert opinion taking Assembly constituency as population with
a 98% confidence level of tamper-free and a bias-free election. Taking average of 240
polling stations per assembly constituency (which is mostly the case) at least 92 polling
stations have to be cross verified by manual counting which works out to be well over
30%. Petition contended that such cross-verification and counting of VVPAT slips is es-
sential in the interests of ‘Democracy Principles’ that elections should adhere to.
A Supreme Court (SC)bench presided over by Chief Justice of India admitted our
WP in early January 2019 and issued Notice to the ECI. Faced with irrefutable facts, the
ECI avoided filing a counter and when it did, it was the same parrot-like narration of
the technological and administrative arrangements without even touching upon the de-
mocracy principles of examinability, verifiability, knowledge of the voter and transpar-
ency in counting. At this stage 21 political parties entered the scene by filing a separate
WP seeking 50% VVPAT slip count.
The DEC filed a common counter affidavit making blatantly false claims(12). Among
other falsehoods, the affidavit claims that there had not been any mismatch in the
VVPAT and EVM tallies conducted in the past two years, and that the ECI had only re-
ceived one complaint about a VVPAT recording an incorrect vote since 2013. The DEC
also made the absurd claim that 50% VVPAT verification would delay the counting pro-
cess by up to five or six days whereas even under paper ballot system with 100% count-
ing almost all results including large parliament constituencies were declared within 10
to 16 hours of start of counting.
But the ‘height of perjury’ goes to the false claim of a non-existent report of the ISI in
favour of a miniscule sample size. The DEC’s affidavit notes that a three-member com-
mittee authored the study. The so-called ISI Report, taking election in the entire country
as a single event, claimed that tallying of 479 randomly selected booths was enough to
verify the fairness of the elections above 99.99 confidence level!
On verification it transpired this “Committee” was set up by the DEC–by writing
a letter, not to the Director of ISI, Kolkata but to the head of its Delhi unit, asking for
“associating with the commission and collaborating towards resolving the issues elabo-
rated above...”. It did not ask ISI to form an expert committee; it only asked the Delhi
unitheadto collaborate with the ECI in examining the issue. An RTI reply shows that
this letter addressed to Delhi unit head was received but the ISI has no further record
of any action taken or the formation of a formal “ISI” committee as per the Standard
Operating Procedure (13). The composition of the body seems to be a private decision
worked out by theDEC and Delhi unit head, without any ISI process and the report,
therefore, is a private one and not that of the ISI.
Tallying a large number of VVPAT slips with electronic count is to convince peo-
347
ple of the integrity and fairness of the elections. Even without any demand,the ECI
should have done this suo moto. Not only they did not do this but went to the ex-
treme extent of filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court (based on a non-existent ISI
Report) suggestinga near zero sample size of a just 479 randomly chosen booths (out
of total 10. 35 lakh booths i.e. 0.03%). The ECI did this despite widespread public
suspicion about EVM voting and 21 opposition parties as well as civil society seek-
ing relief. This showsthe ECI’s insincerity towards its constitutional mandate and
total disregard for elementary principles of democracy.
As against this let us see what the former CEC S.Y. Quraishi who introduced VVPATs
during his tenure has to say (14):
I was heading the CEC when VVPAT was introduced in 2010. When EVM controversy was
quite high in 2010, we had an all-party meeting where all political parties agreed to VVPAT.
Some political parties are still questioning EVM and demanding voting through ballot papers.
I suggested two models. First was that the winner and runner up may appeal for recounting
of two EVM machines where they suspect something. The second model was to do the reverse,
instead of counting on EVMs, count on VVPAT machines. Actually,counting of VVPAT and
EVM machines take nearly 20 to 25 minutes each. So, instead of counting on EVM, let’s count
VVPAT slips, both would take same time, but the confidence level would go up among the
contesting candidates. Let’s do it on a pilot basis in some constituency. Reversing the process,
which means counting VVPAT slips, would enhance transparency and credibility of the elec-
toral system.Counting of ballot papers is a long process. It was a big paper sheet. Opening it,
checking it and then counting takes a much longer time. Whereas VVPAT is a 3-inch slip and
hardly takes much time. Counting through a VVPAT machine or through an EVM, both take
almost the same time. So, in the end there would not be much difference whether we count EVMs
or VVPAT slips. I discussed it with some officials of the EC and suggested these changes in the
process to increase the credibility of the electoral system.
Yet, strangely enough, when the case came up for hearing on April 8, 2019, the Su-
preme Court summarily disposed of the matter.Herewith is the operative portion of the
order:
...our considered view is that having regard to the totality of the facts
of the case and need to generate the greatest degree of satisfaction in all
with regard to the full accuracy of the election results, the number of EVMs
that would now be subjected to verification so far as VVPAT paper trail is
concerned would be 5 per Assembly Constitu ency or Assembly Seg-
ments in a Parliamentary Constituency instead of what is provided by
Guideline No. 16.6, namely, one machine per Assembly Constituency or
As sembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency…
There was not a word about ‘democracy principles’ and the ‘decision rules’ that
must be followed by the ECI in the event of discrepancies between manual counting
and electronic counting. Five VVPAT machines per Assembly constituency arbitrarily
determined by the SC just increased the sample size from microscopic 0.5% to minis-
cule 2% whereas we had asked for reasonable 30% and political parties 50%!A review
petition was filed against this orderwith strong evidence of EVM-VVPAT fraud and
malfunctioning in the first three phases of Election-2019 as well as perjury committed
by the DEC regarding the “ISI Report”.This petition also had solid grounds--factual,
348
constitutional and legal. Yet the bench headed by the CJIarbitrarily dismissed it on May
7, 2019without even listening to the senior advocates who had lined up for argument!
This paved the way for the conduct of Parliament Election-2019 in an unfair manner
without adhering to even basic “Democracy Principles.” This is in total violation of Ar-
ticles 324 and 142 of the Constitution.
In utter desperation 21 political parties pleaded with the ECI to at least count the mea-
sly 2% VVPAT slips upfront and do the verification before the main electronic count.
It would have served some purpose if this had been done front-end as requested. But
the ECI rudely rejected this very genuine demand and pushed the “verification” to the
back-end well past midnight. In the event, NOT even one VVPAT slip was counted and
matched before the entire electronic count was done, results announced and everything
including singing and dancing was over. There has been an avalanche of reports about
mismatch and excess counting in many booths and constituencies. Except for routine
and bureaucratic replies, theECI maintained a stony silence and just did not respond to
the outcry.
Faced with such unfair election and deeply perturbed by the massive discrepancies
between the votes polled and votes counted, the Association for Democratic Reforms
(ADRs) and the Common Cause filed a WP in the Supreme Court. Here is a relevant
extract:
That as per the research conducted by a team of experts with the petitioner organiza-
tion there have been serious discrepancies between the number of voters in different
constituencies (i.e., the voter turnout data collated and provided by the Election Com
mission) and the number of votes counted. That the study of the discrepancy patterns
in all the constituencies based on the data made available on the main website of the
..
Respondent No.1 (EC) and so also the ‘My Voters turnout App’ has given the following
conclusions:
The Master summary of 542 constituencies shows discrepancies in 347 seats.
..
195 seats are without discrepancies whatsoever.
The discrepancies range from 1 vote (lowest) to 101323 votes @ 10.49% of the
total votes (highest).
There are six seats where the discrepancy in votes is higher than the winning
margin.
The total volume of discrepancies amounts to 7,39,104 votes put together.
The WP also stated that even though the results for all constituencies were declared
by the EC on May 23, 2019, the Commission itself admitted on June 01, 2019 that the
Index forms of all 542 Parliamentary Constituencies were expected to reach them from
Returning Officers shortly thereby admitting that up to June 01, 2019 the EC had not
received the actual data and that the declaration of results was not on the basis of re-
corded data by the Returning Officers. This is a fatal flaw that not only questions the
integrity of the election but also the very legality of the Parliament constituted thereof!!
Notice has been issued to the ECI and nothing is known as to when it will come up for
hearing!
Such unfair Parliament-2019 election led to a bizarre happening during the Haryana
349
Assembly election that followed in October 2019. Two days before the polling date,
there was a video showing Bakshish Singh Virk, BJP candidate for the Assandh con-
stituency addressing a campaign meeting thus:
You will have to pay for a five-second mistake for the next five years. We will come
to know where a person has voted. You should not have any wrong perception about
it. Many people do not tell deliberately to whom they voted, but if you ask us who you
voted for, we shall tell you that too, because Modiji’s and Khattarji’s eyes are very s
harp. May you press any of the buttons, all the votes will go to the ‘lotus’ (BJP’s sym
bol) as we have fixed all the EVMs.” (15)
Except giving a routine notice to Virk and despatching a special observer to that con-
stituency ECI did nothing. Bihar election in November 2019 also had similar complaints
and allegations which were summarily rejected by the ECI.
And, due to the ECI’s adamant behaviour as well as excessive secrecy and opacity, sus-
picion about EVM-VVPAT fraud refuses to die down and the fairness and integrity of
India’s election and democracy have come under serious suspicion among the public
which is widespread.
End-Note
Combined with the fallacy of thefirst-past-the-post system and the totally blind and
opaque electronic voting, money and media power in elections could create a ruling
establishment that would be autocratic, kleptocratic and oligarchic. We have seen this
trend clearly emerging from the way the government, formed out of the Parliament
election-2019, has been functioning and the way it responds to genuine people’s strug-
gles and protests. The massive farmer’s movement is a case in point. In the event India
may be heading towards a ‘failed state’ as described by Robert Rothberg in his seminal
Book When States Fail: Causes and Consequences:
Failed states offer unparalleled economic opportunity - but only for a privileged
few. Those around the ruler or ruling oligarchy grow richer while their less fortunate
brethren starve. Immense profits are available from an awareness of regulatory ad
vantages and currency speculation and arbitrage. But the privilege of making real
money when everything else is deteriorating is confined to clients of the rul
ing elite.... The nation-state’s responsibility to maximize the well-being and pros
perity of all its citizens is conspicuously absent, if it ever existed. Corruption flour
ishes in many states, but in failed states it often does so on an unusually
destructive scale. There is widespread petty or lubricating corruption as a
matter of course, but escalating levels of venal corruption mark failed states.
This triple-whammy cannot be countenanced in the world’s ‘largest democracy’ which

is home to one-sixth of the human race.
References
1. https://indiaevm.org/evm_tr2010.pdf
2. https://haindavakeralam.com/blatant-lies-navin-chawla-hk11230
350
3. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/elections/news/ec-declares-it-has-complete-
faith-in-infallibility-of-evms/articleshow/57679110.cms
4. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/vvpats-are-inconsequential-be
cause-evms-are-completely-hacklable
5. https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/lok-sabha-2019/story/west-bengal-former-
chief-election-commissioner-evm-hacked-1475900-2019-03-12
6. https://thewire.in/politics/elections-2019-election-commission-evm
7. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/24904462/
8. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/24904462/
9. https://www.dnaindia.com/india/video-evms-are-robust-tamper-proof-
scupheld-its-integrity-more-than-once-ec-2855609
10. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/congress-questions-reliability-
ofevms-168914
11. https://thewire.in/government/evm-missing-rti-court-case-frontline
12. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/ceo-allays-apprehensions-as-evm-
security-row-rages-on/story-fQi3hPzYhkBK3tkRh3btZK.html
13. file:///C:/Users/Devasahayam/Downloads/vvpat%20(1).pdf
14. https://www.thestatesman.com/exclusive-interviews/count-vvpat-slips-not-
evm-tallies-1502941534.html
15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzGXvUhf31E
351
ANNEXURE
Some questions for the former

Chief Election Commissioners, present
CEC and Election Commissioners as
Annexure
well as the Members of the Technical
Advisory Committee of ECI
regarding the security and integrity
of EVM voting and VVPAT counting
1 In view of the fact that electronic recording and counting are black-box (opaque) and
hence nontransparent, what guarantees do the voters have that their votes are re-
corded as intended and counted as recorded? Are they able to examine and verify
their votes and ascertain the results reliably, which is a fundamental requirement of
electoral democracy?
2 ECI’s steadfast claim that the EVM is tamper proof and sound appears to be deeply
problematic. It is well known in literature that the correctness verification of a sys-
tem as complex as an EVM is computationally intractable [Mercuri, 1992]. It is also
well known that it is not possible to know every vulnerability; neither is it possible in
general to determine how a software or hardware module will perform in all cir-
cumstances [Rivest, 2008]. In particular, it is well known that it is impossible to test
for every situation, and testing and quality assurance can never provide complete
guarantees [Vora, 2017, 2019]. In fact, there have been scathing criticism of an earlier
version of the ECI’s EVM design – which was based on a similar hardware-design
principle – at reputed computer science forums [Halderman, 2011, Wolchok et al.,
2010]. What then is the scientific basis for the statement that EVM based voting is cor-
rect and tamper-proof?
352
3 Security by obfuscation is not acceptable in modern computer security analysis
[Shukla, 2018]. Why then is the EVM design and implementation not available for
public scrutiny?
4 Conventional wisdom on electronic voting suggests that elections relying on electronic

voting machines should be conducted assuming the machines can be tampered with,
and must rely on end-to-end verifiability [Bernhard et al., 2017] and risk mitigating
audits [Stark and Wagner, 2012]. There should be no need to repose trust in any single
authority or custody chain for the correctness of elections in a democracy. Yet, not all
of ECI’s processes are verifiable or publicly auditable. Why?
5 There are several cryptography based electronic voting systems that are end-to-end
verifiable [Bernhard et al., 2017] and software independent [Rivest, 2008]. Why has
the ECI not considered one such?
6 The correct VVPAT protocol is to allow a voter to approve the VVPAT slip before the
vote is cast [verifiedvoting.org, Goggin et al., 2008], and to cancel her vote if there is a
discrepancy. The voter should be able to cancel the vote before it is cast without having
to interact with anyone. The VVPAT system deployed by ECI does not follow the
above principle– because there is no way to revoke the button press and destroy
the VVPAT slip– and is hence not truly voter-verified. Does this not require urgent
fixing?
7 In case of a challenge the VVPAT system does not support unambiguous dispute
resolution with a clear determination of whether a voter’s claim is correct or not, be-
cause an EVM can potentially behave differently when observed during further test-
ing [Vora, 2019]. In fact, there is no way to prove that it will not. Also, there is no way
for the voter to establish that she is not lying. This protocol appears to be fundamen-
tally flawed and violates principles of natural justice. In view of this, is a stringent
punishment for voters unable to prove a reported discrepancy not unsound?
8 Matching the VVPAT tally and the electronic count for an EVM can only ensure
parity, but cannot rule out the possibility of simultaneous spurious vote injection or
deletion in both. Also, there can be no guarantee – without reposing faith in the cus-
tody chain – that every VVPAT slip that is counted indeed corresponds to a valid vote
cast according to the protocol, or, conversely, that every valid slip is counted. Is this
sound?
9 Elementary statistical analysis [Shetty, 2018] shows that ECI’s prescribed sample
size of “one EVM per assembly constituency” will fail to detect a faulty EVM with a
very high probability. In fact, a simple statistical analysis using the hypergeometric
distribution reveals that with a 2% rate of faulty EVM, the Supreme Court’s direc-
tive of checking 5 EVMs per assembly constituency will fail to detect a faulty EVM
353
in roughly 50% of the cases. Why is the ECI persisting with such an obviously faulty
protocol?
10 Several irregularities have come to light: there were discrepancies in the voter
turnout votes polled data on the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and the votes
counted data on EVMs in over 373 constituencies with the EVM votes in surplus by
large margins [Agarwal, 2019]; not only were there no explanation for the above but
the ECI also pulled down the data after an explanation was sought [Poonam Agarwal,
2020]; an RTI filing revealed that 20 lakh EVMs claimed to be delivered by the manu-
facturers are not in the possession of the EC [The Wire Staff, 2019]; another reveals
that the micro-controller chip used in EVMs is not one-time programmable as claimed
by the EC [Vinita Deshmukh, 2019, Shukla, 2018]. These belie the ECI’s claims of a
tamper proof device and process. Why is the ECI not taking cognizance of so many
public concerns?
11 Finally, is the Election Commission in full control of the entire electoral process like
the design and manufacture of EVM/VVPAT, manufacture of microprocessor and
their burning in to EVM, writing and installation of software, counting methods and
other technical functions as envisaged under Article 324 of the Constitution of India?
References
Poonam Agarwal. EVM Vote Count Mismatch In 370+ Seats and EC Refuses to Ex-
plain. https://www.thequint.com/news/india/lok-sabha-election-results-2019-mis-
match-invotes-polled-and-counted-in-evm-on-multiple-seats, 2019. [Online May 31,
2019].
Matthew Bernhard, Josh Benaloh, J. Alex Halderman, Ronald L. Rivest, Peter Y. A.
Ryan, Philip B. Stark, Vanessa Teague, Poorvi L. Vora, and Dan S. Wallach. Public evi-
dence from secret ballots. In Electronic Voting - Second International Joint Conference,
E-Vote-ID 2017, Bregenz, Austria, October 24-27, 2017, Proceedings, pages 84–109, 2017.
doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-68687-5\ 6. URL https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-3-319-68687-56.
Stephen N. Goggin, Michael D. Byrne, Juan E. Gilbert, Gregory Rogers, and Jerome
McClendon. Comparing the auditability of optical scan, voter verified paper audit trail
(vvpat) and video (vvvat) ballot systems. In Proceedings of the Conference on Electron-
ic Voting Technology, EVT’08, USA, 2008. USENIX Association. ISBN 8888888888888.
Alex Halderman. Security Problems in India’s Electronic Voting System. https://

crcs.seas.harvard. edu/event/alex-halderman-security-problems-india\OT1\textquo-
terights-electronicvoting-system, 2011.
Rebecca T. Mercuri. Physical verifiability of computer systems. In In International

Computer Virus and Security Conference, 1992. URL http://www.notablesoftware.
com/PENN2008/PhysVerify.pdf.
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Poonam Agarwal. Why Did EC Destroy VVPAT Slips of 2019 LS Polls in
Such a Hurry? https://www.thequint.com/news/india/
why-did-election-commission-destroy-evmvoting-machine-vvpat-slips-of-2019-lok-
sabha-polls, 2020. [Online February 8, 2020].
Ronald L. Rivest. On the notion of software independence in voting systems. Philo-
sophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering
Sciences, 366(1881):3759–3767, 2008. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2008.0149. URL https://roy-
alsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsta.2008. 0149.
K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty. Winning Voter Confidence: Fixing India’s Faulty VVPAT-
based Audit of EVMs. https://www.thehinducentre.com/publications/policy-watch/
article25607027.ece, 2018. [Online November 27, 2018].
Sandeep K. Shukla. Editorial: To use or not to? embedded systems for voting.
ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst., 17(3):58:1–58:2, May 2018. ISSN 1539-9087. doi:
10.1145/3206342. URL http://doi.acm.org/ 10.1145/3206342.
Philip B. Stark and David A. Wagner. Evidence-based elections. IEEE Secur. Priv.,
10(5):33–41, 2012. doi: 10.1109/MSP.2012.62. URL https://doi.org/10.1109/
MSP.2012.62.
The Wire Staff. Whereabouts of 19 Lakh EVMs Not Known, Reveals RTI-Based Court
Case. https://thewire.in/government/evm-missing-rti-court-case-frontline, 2019.
[Online May 22, 2019]. verifiedvoting.org. Verified Voting. https://verifiedvoting.org.
Vinita Deshmukh. Election Commission’s Claim that Micro-controller of EVMs Is
One-time Programmed May Be Far from Truth, Reveals RTI. https://www.moneylife.
in/article/election-commissionsclaim-that-micro-controller-of-evms-is-one-time-pro-
grammed-may-be-far-from-truthreveals-rti/57358.html, 2019. [Online June 5, 2019].
Poorvi L Vora. The great EVM debate: Convincing the losers that they lost. https://
scroll. in/article/832003/the-great-evm-debate-convincing-the-losers-that-they-lost,
March 2017. [Online March 17, 2017].
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versation.com/howthe-worlds-largest-democracy-casts-its-ballots-115879, April 2019.
[Online April 30, 2019].
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Sai Krishna Sakhamuri, VasavyaYagati, and RopGonggrijp. Security analysis of india’s
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355
(TRUE COPY)
ANNEXURE: P11 356
Compliance of EVM voting with basic and essential

requirements of ‘Democracy Principles’ and integrity and
credibility of electronic voting and counting in Electoral
Democracy-Posers
Dated: 02 May 2022
To,
Sh. Sushil Chandra,
Chief Election Commissioner,
Election Commission of India,
Nirvachan Sadan, New Delhi.
Sh. Rajiv Kumar
Election Commissioner
Sh. Anup Chandra Pandey
Election Commissioner
Subject: Compliance of EVM voting with basic and essential

requirements of ‘Democracy Principles’ and integrity and
credibility of electronic voting and counting in Electoral
Democracy-Posers thereof
Dear Sirs,
As you are aware “Election” and “Democracy” have become

synonymous. As of now the only way for ‘We, the People’ to choose
our representatives to govern ourselves is through the electoral
process. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states as
much: “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of
government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine
elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be
held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
357
We already have the ‘Social Contract’ theory propounded by political

philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, through which democracies have emerged and evolved, that
state power is justified and lawful only when consented to by majority
of the governed. This consent can be derived only through an honest
and genuine electoral process of polling votes and counting them.
Furthermore, in an election citizen transfers his/her ‘sovereignty’ to
his elected representative for a certain period of time. There is no
gainsaying therefore that conducting free, fair and transparent
elections is a sacred duty and responsibility.
“We, the people, who gave ourselves the Constitution” have given this
duty and responsibility to the Election Commission of India (ECI)
under Article 324. To carry out this duty without fear or favour,
‘People’, have also bestowed the Commission the status of the
Supreme Court along with legal and plenipotentiary powers. In a
catena of judgments Supreme Court has further strengthened it by
ruling that “conducting free and fair elections is the basic feature of
the Constitution” and this is the responsibility of ECI. For this ECI is
principally answerable to the People of India.
It is therefore imperative that ECI should address every concern of the

people pertaining to impartiality, fairness, and credibility of elections
and even a shadow of a doubt cast over the integrity of the electoral
process must be removed to the complete satisfaction of the electorate.
This is not being done and over the last several years, there is ample
material in the public domain, which has led to questions being posed
regarding the sanctity of the electoral process mainly due to the severe
flaws and misuse of Electronic Voting Machines (“EVMs”).
As a pointer, it is alarming to note that a large number of EVMs are

reportedly missing, which raises grave concerns regarding the
integrity of the electronic voting machines and the possible misuse of
these missing EVMs to manipulate election results and steal people’s
mandate. Despite the issue festering for over three years all ECI has
done is to issue some denial but has not bothered to resolve the issue
by conducting a comprehensive audit to allay the suspicions. It is
because of this during the recent UP Assembly election there were
rumours and reports of truck-loads of EVM moving around freely
without authorisation. Someone close to the ruling party even claimed
358
that “at least 200 EVMs have been changed… arrangements will be
made overnight.”
But this is only the tip of the iceberg and there are many more serious
issues and questions concerning the suitability of the EVM/VVPATs to
conduct fair elections with integrity to uphold Electoral Democracy.
Through this Memorandum, we, a representative group of concerned
civil society members including technical professionals, academicians
and former civil servants would like to place certain posers before the
ECI that has bearing on the very survival of India as an Electoral
Democracy. And we would expect an urgent response to each from the
ECI:
1. It is common knowledge that EVM voting does not comply

with basic and essential requirements of ‘Democracy
Principles’ i.e., each voter having the direct knowledge and
capacity to verify that his/her vote is cast-as-intended;
recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded. It also does not
provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and
spurious vote injections. Thus, elections must be conducted
assuming that the EVMs may possibly be tampered with and
results manipulated. How then elections conducted with EVMs
be democratic and India continue to be considered as Electoral
Democracy?
2. Design and implementation of ECI-EVMs as well as the results
of both software and hardware verification are not public and
open to independent review. VVPAT system does not allow the
voter to verify the slip before the vote is cast. According to top
experts, due to absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the
present EVM system is not verifiable and therefore by its very
design itself is unfit for democratic elections. In the event does
ECI have the technical competency to design EVMs? Are the
current Technical Teams fully qualified? How are its members
selected–through their Institutions adopting a rigorous process
359
or just a whimsical pick-and-choose method? Which was the

technical team that designed the original EVMs and the
VVPATs? Was at any point in time the original design of EVM
was altered resulting in dilution of its safeguards?
3. With reference to EVMs-VVPATs, in the ECI’s opinion what
output constitutes a “vote” cast by a voter at the polling booth
within the meaning of that term in Section 61A of the
Representation of the People Act, 1951? Is it the VVPAT slip
that is printed or is it only the totality of “votes” recorded by the
Control Unit (CU) of the EVM? If it is the former, why should
all VVPAT slips not be counted? If it is the latter, why should
all individual votes recorded by the CU along with the time
stamp not be counted and tallied with the VVPAT slips?
4. What constitutes a vote? With the introduction of VVPAT in all
EVMs there are two votes now–one recorded in the EVM
memory and one printed by the VVPAT. And Rule 56D(4)(b) of
the Conduct of Election (Amendment) Rules, 2013 provides for
the primacy of the VVPAT slip count over the electronic tally of
ballots cast and calculated on the EVMs. Why then is ECI
consistently refusing 100% counting of VVPAT slips and keep
on counting only the EVM memory, which is not the real vote?
5. ECI is responsible for ensuring 100% secrecy of voting within
each constituency by randomising the vote counting which is
essential for conducting elections in a free and fair manner as
mandated in Article 324 of the Constitution of India and Section
128 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. This is not
being done thereby exposing the weak and vulnerable sections
of society to intense pressure by candidates and political parties
hell-bent on winning the election at any cost. This has led to
360
‘voter manipulation and suppression? Why has ECI allowed

this?
6. In an EVM, a vote is recorded electronically by press of a
button. But the voter cannot examine what has been recorded,
there is no way to provide a guarantee to a voter that her/his
vote is cast as intended (recorded correctly in the EVM),
recorded as cast (what is recorded in the EVM is what is
collected in the final tally) and counted as recorded. Due to the
absence of end-to-end (E2E) verifiability, is the present EVM
system verifiable? Can such a system be fit for democratic
elections?
7. Is the EVM-VVPAT connected to any external device after the
elections are announced? If yes, then what are those external
devices, and what is the communication protocol used? If not,
then how and at what stage the information regarding candidate
names and symbols are uploaded to VVPAT?
8. Does the VVPAT have a programmable memory? If yes, then at
what stages in the election process it is accessed by any external
device? If not, then where are the names and symbols of the
candidates stored in the VVPAT for it to print the same in the
VVPAT slip later?
9. What is the name and postal address of the suppliers of
microcontrollers installed in the EVMs used in every election
after the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections? What is the name and
model no. of these microcontrollers?
10.Why has the ECI not disclosed suo motu all reports of the
Technical Evaluation Committees that have approved the
original design and every subsequent modification of EVMs
and VVPAT machines?
361
11.Why has the ECI not disclosed suo motu, the operational
manual of Symbol Loading Units in the manner of operational
manuals of EVMs and VVPAT machines on its website?
12.Has the ECI taken a decision on the September 2018
recommendation of the Central Information Commission that
certain software-related details of EVMs and VVPATs must be
disclosed in order to increase public trust in the entire machine
voting system? If not, what are the reasons for delay of 4 years?
13.The ECI’s VVPAT system is not truly voter-verified because it
does not provide the necessary agency to a voter to cancel
her/his vote if she/he thinks it has been recorded incorrectly.
Also, in case the voter raises a dispute, there is no way for her
to prove that she/he is not lying. The present Rule of penalising
her is draconian. Does it not militate against the very idea of
universal franchise and citizen’s sovereignty?
14.Based on the Supreme Court’s order, the ECI tallies the VVPAT
slips with a pathetically low number of 5 EVMs (2%) in each
Assembly segment. Even this is not done upfront but at the
fag-end of the counting process by which time the results are
publicly known and celebrated. Why this deceiving and
meaningless exercise? This means the election results are
declared and governments formed without 100 percent
post-election audit of the EVM counts against manual counting
of the VVPAT slips, to ensure verification and reliable
ascertainment of results. Can this be called Electoral
Democracy by any means?
15.Immediately after the Parliament election-2019, several civil
society organisations had pointed out the serious discrepancies
between the number of voters in different constituencies (i.e.,
the voter turnout data collated and provided by the ECI) and the
362
number of votes counted. The Master summary of 542

constituencies shows discrepancies in 347 seats; discrepancies
range from 1 vote (lowest) to 1,01,323 votes @ 10.49% of the
total votes (highest); in 6 seats where discrepancy in votes is
higher than the winning margin and the total volume of
discrepancies is in the nature of 73,9104 votes put together.
What did the ECI do to clarify and resolve this serious issue so
that the integrity of the people’s mandate in this election is not
in doubt?
16.RTI replies reveal that EVM patent of Public Sector
Undertakings (PSUs) Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL),
Bengaluru, and the Electronic Corporation of India Limited
(ECIL), Hyderabad, that manufacture the EVMs have expired.
Also, the VVPATs manufactured by these PSUs do not have
patent rights. There are also reports of the latest state-of-the-art
EVMs under the ‘supervision’ of ECI. With ECI maintaining
complete secrecy one does not know from where the present set
of EVMs and VVPATs come from and what are their levels of
integrity. Will the ECI be transparent enough to reveal the
sources from where EVMs and VVPATs are being procured
now and their design as well as functional integrity?
17.Article 324 of the Constitution provides that the power of
superintendence, direction and control of elections to parliament
and state legislatures, shall be vested in the ECI. EVMs and
VVPATs contain two EEPROMS (Electrically Erasable and
Programmable Memory) in which the voting data is stored.
BEL and ECIL are not under the control or supervision of ECI.
These PSUs share the confidential software programme with
foreign chip manufacturers to copy it onto micro-controllers
used in the EVMs which are then burnt in and ECI has no
363
control over it. Recently ECI, by actively promoting and

legislating linkage of Aadhar with EPIC, has subjugated the
constitutional authority issued Voter ID to the ID card issued by
UIDAI, a government-controlled entity thereby losing
supervision and oversight over the voter’s list, the very basis of
free and fair elections. With the electoral roll as well as the
voting/counting process out, where then is the “control and
supervision” of ECI over the process and mechanism of the
elections mandated under Article 324?
Most of these posers are based on the Report of the Citizens’

Commission on Elections (CCE)-Volume I released in early, 2021 that
relied on the depositions made by some of the top international and
national experts on the subject who have made substantial research in
election matters. Link:
https://reclaimtherepublic.co/category/report/cce-report/. The Report
was sent to the ECI and there was no response. This was followed by
the Book-“Electoral Democracy: An Inquiry into the Fairness and
Integrity of Election in India,” (PARANJOY, Delhi-2022) released in
early 2022. The Book, edited by MG Devasahayam (one of the
signatories of this Memorandum) was also sent to ECI. For this also
there was no response.
It is earnestly hoped that this Memorandum will not receive the same
fate, and we would receive a response within a reasonable period of
time.
Yours Truly,
Endorsed by:
Technical Professionals and Academicians
1. Harish C. Karnick, former Professor and Head of Computer

Science, IIT Kanpur
2. Subhasis Banerji, Professor of Computer Science, IIT,
Delhi/Ashoka University
364
3. Supratik Chakraborty, Professor, Computer Science and

Engineering, IIT, Mumbai
4. Monica Katiyar, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering,
IIT, Kanpur
5. Manmohan Pandey, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, IIT
Guwahati
6. Amit Singh, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, IIT, Mumbai
7. Shiva Shankar, Visiting Professor, Mathematics, IIT Bombay
8. Dipankar, former Professor, Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay
9. Abhijit Mitra, former Professor, IIIT, Hyderabad
10.Dr V.Vasanthi Devi, Former Vice-Chancellor, Manonmaniam
Sundaranar University, Tamil Nadu
11.Anil Sadgopal, Bhopal, Former Member, Central Advisory
Board of Education.
12.Prof Jagdeep Chokker, Former Dean and Director-in-Charge,
IIM, Ahmedabad
13.Navdeep Mathur, Professor, IIM, Ahmedabad
14.Sandeep Pandey, Visiting Professor, IIM, Ahmedabad
15.Nandini Sundar, Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of
Economics, Delhi University
16.Saumya Chakrabarti, Professor of Economics, Visva Bharti
University, Santiniketan.
17.Koel Das, Associate Professor, IISER, Kolkata
18.Karen Gabriel, Associate Professor, English, St. Stephen’s
College, Delhi University
19.Nandita Narain, Associate Professor, St. Stephen’s College,
Delhi University
20.Mamata Upadhyay, Associate Professor, Political Science,
Kumari Mayawati Govt. Girls’ PG College, Badalpur, Uttar
Pradesh
365
21.Tanu, Ph.D., JNU, Assistant Professor, Economics

22.Dileep Kumar, Assistant Professor, Poona College of Pharmacy,
Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune
23.Amrendra Narayan Bharat, Assistant Professor, Physics, Veer
Kunwar Singh University, Bihar
24.Mrityunjay Kumar Yadvendu, Assistant Professor, Sociology,
Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar
25.Shreekumar, Ph.D., IISc, Bengaluru, former Faculty, NIT,
Surathkal, Karnataka
26.Satinath Choudhary, retired Professor of Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering, United States
27.Pritam Singh, Professor, Oxford Brookes Business School,
Oxford, United Kingdom
28.Harbans Mukhia, former Professor of History and Rector, JNU,
Delhi
29.Arun Kumar, former Professor of Economics, JNU, Delhi
30.Vivekanandan, former Professor, JNU, Delhi
31.Shivi Upadhyay, Ph.D. Scholar, Delhi University
32.Cyril Mathew, Electronics Engineer, TREELabs, Mumbai
33.Praveen Jha- Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and
Planning and Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies,
SSS, JNU
34.Avinash Kumar- Assistant Professor- Centre for Informal Sector
and Labour Studies, SSS, JNU
35.Prof Rahul Mukherji, Executive Director, South Asia Institute,
Heidelberg University, Germany
36.Prof Santosh Mehrotra, Visiting Professor, University of Bath
Centre for Development Studies, UK
37.Sudhir Vombodkere Ph. D
366
38.Kabir Kumar Mustafi. Ex- Headmaster, Bishop Cotton School,

Shimla
39.Niloufer Bilimoria, Co-Convenor, Khushwant Singh Literary
Festival.
40.Dr Nimala Manuel, Ph. D, Former Principal, Women’s
Christian College, Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu
41.Dr KP Subramanian, Former Professor, Anna University,
Chennai
42.Fr Joe Arun, Director, Loyola Institute of Business
Administration, Chennai
43.Dr KM Parivelan, Associate Professor, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai
44.Dileep Kumar, Assistant Professor, Poona College of Pharmacy,
Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune
Former Senior Civil Servants
1. P. Ambrose IAS (Retd.)

2. Mohinderpal Aulakh IPS (Retd.)
3. Balachandran IAS (Retd.)
4. Gopalan Balagopal IAS (Retd.)
5. Chandrashekar Balakrishnan IAS (Retd.)
6. Sharad Behar IAS (Retd.)
7. Sundar Burra IAS (Retd.)
8. Gurjit Singh Cheema IAS (Retd.)
9. T.R. Colaso IPS (Retd.)
10.Anna Dani IAS (Retd.)
11.Surjit K. Das IAS (Retd.)
12.Vibha Puri Das IAS (Retd.)
13.R. Dasgupta IAS (Retd.)
367
14.Pradeep K. Deb IAS (Retd.)

15.G. Devasahayam IAS (Retd.)
16.P. Fabian IFS (Retd.)
17.Suresh K. Goel IFS (Retd.)
18.K. Guha IAS (Retd.)
19.S. Gujral IFoS (Retd.)
20.Meena Gupta IAS (Retd.)
21.Wajahat Habibullah IAS (Retd.)
22.Sajjad Hassan IAS (Retd.)
23.Clement Ilango (IAS Retd.)
24.Brijesh Kumar IAS (Retd.)
25.Ish Kumar IPS (Retd.)
26.Sudhir Kumar IAS (Retd.)
27.Subodh Lal IPoS (Resigned)
28.Harsh Mandar IAS (Retd.)
29.Lalit Mathur IAS (Retd.)
30.Aditi Mehta IAS (Retd.)
31.Sonalini Mirchandani IFS (Resigned)
32.Deb Mukharji IFS (Retd.)
33.Shiv Shankar Mukherjee IFS (Retd.)
34.Gautam Mukhopadhyaya IFS (Retd.)
35.Pranab S. Mukhopadhyaya IAS (Retd.)
36.Nagalsamy IA&AS (Retd.)
37.Surendra Nath IAS (Retd.)
38.Joy Oommen IAS (Retd.)
39.Amitabh Pande IAS (Retd.)
40.Maxwell Periera IPS (Retd.)
41.Rajesh Prasad IFS (Retd.)
42.R. Raghunandan IAS (Retd.)
43.K. Raghupathy IAS (Retd.)
368
44.JP Rai IAS (Retd.)

45.Sharda Prasad IAS (Retd.)
46.P. Raja IAS (Retd.)
47.Babu Rajeev IAS (Retd.)
48.Prasadranjan Ray IAS (Retd.)
49.Satwant Reddy IAS (Retd.)
50.Vijaya Latha Reddy IFS (Retd.)
51.Manabendra N. Roy IAS (Retd.)
52.K. Samanta IPS (Retd.)
53.Sankaran IC&CES (Retd.)
54.EAS Sarma IAS (Retd)
55.C. Saxena IAS (Retd.)
56.Ashok Vardan Shetty IAS (Retd.)
57.Avay Shukla IAS (Retd)
58.Selvaraj IRS (Retd.)
59.Ardhendu Sen IAS (Retd.)
60.Ashok Kumar Sharma IFoS (Retd.)
61.Ashok Kumar Sharma IFS (Retd)
62.Navrekha Sharma IFS (Retd.)
63.Tara Ajai Singh IAS (Retd.)
64.Vinay Tandon, IFoS (Retd)
65.Hindal Tyabji IAS (Retd.)
66.Michael Vedhasiromony IAS (Retd.)
67.Ramani Venkatesan IAS (Retd.)
68.Rudi Wajri IFS (Retd.)
Contact for Correspondence:
Advocate Shashank Singh,
Flat No 386, Seemant Vihar,

369
Sector 14, Kaushambi,
Ghaziabad–201010.
Phone: +91- 96-544-13-791
Email: shashanksinghadvocate@gmail.com;
shashank.singh008@gmail.com
370
Date: Mon, 2 May 2022 at 10:15
Subject: Civil Society concerns and posers on EVM voting and

VVPAT counting… URGENT and IMPORTANT
To: <cec@eci.gov.in>, <schandra@eci.gov.in>, <ecrk@eci.gov.in>,

<ecacp@eci.gov.in>
Cc: <decus@eci.gov.in>, <shashanksinghadvocate@gmail.com>
Dear Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners,
Attached herewith is a comprehensive Memorandum on the above

subject from 112 Technical Professionals, Academicians and former
senior Civil Servants representing a cross section of Civil Society.
Reading it will reveal as to how critical the posers are for India’s
electoral process and indeed the very survival of Electoral Democracy.
We hope that this communication and Memorandum will engage the

immediate attention of the Election Commission and we would
receive a response as early as possible within a reasonable period of
two to three weeks.
With warm regards,
Yours Truly,
M G Devasahayam
Coordinator, Citizens’ Commission on Elections
Convener, Forum for Electoral Integrity
02 May, 2022
Attached: File-ECI-Poser-EVM-VVPAT
371
Date: Mon, 16 May 2022 at 11:41
Subject: Civil Society concerns and posers on EVM voting and

VVPAT counting –A gentle reminder– URGENT and
IMPORTANT
To: <cec@eci.gov.in>, <ecrk@eci.gov.in>, <ecacp@eci.gov.in>
Cc: <decus@eci.gov.in>, <shashanksinghadvocate@gmail.com>
Dear Mr. Rajiv Kumar,
Please accept our compliments on your elevation as CEC. We are very

much encouraged by your statement on the occasion of your assuming
charge of this august office. Link:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ec-not-to-shy-away-from-to
ugh-decisions-pursue-reforms-through-consultation-says-cec-rajiv-ku
mar/articleshow/91578351.cms#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=1
6526231683820&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co
m
Please see the email below and the attachment. Our attached
Memorandum sent to CEC and Election Commissioners on 2nd May
2022 falls within what you have said in the statement. Contents of the
Memorandum seriously impact the very integrity of India’s electoral
process. We await early response from you and the engagement of our
team, that has top experts, with ECI as soon as possible.
Regards,
M G Devasahayam
(TRUE COPY)
372
524

CIVIL ORIGINAL WRIT JURISDICTION
I.A. NO. ________ OF 2023
IN
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. _______ OF 2023
IN THE MATTER OF:

ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS ….PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. .RESPONDENTS
APPLICATION FOR DIRECTIONS
TO,
1. That the Petitioner trust has filed the present Public Interest
Litigation under Article 32 of the Constitution of India seeking
directions from this Hon’ble Court to ensure that voters can
individually and severally verify that their vote has been ‘recorded
as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’ and issuance of ancillary
directions in this regard.
373
525
2. That the contents of the petition may be read as part and parcel
of the present application and they are not being reproduced
herein for the sake of brevity.
3. It is submitted that till the Election Commission can put in place

the necessary infrastructure and practices and procedures to
ensure that all voters can individually and severally verify that their
vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’ on an
all India basis in the next lok sabha elections; in the interregnum,
to ensure robustness of electoral results and accurate reflection of
the will of the people, the Election Commission may be directed to
count all VVPATs in the upcoming State Elections as VVPATs alone
are the votes that the voters have verified as being ‘recorded as
cast’.
4. That no prejudice will be caused to the Respondents if the same is

directed by this Hon’ble Court who are constitutionally mandated
to ensure that the will of the people is accurately and verifiably
reflected at each election.
PRAYER
In light of the facts and circumstances stated herein it is most
respectfully prayed that this Hon’ble Court may be pleased to:
I. Direct Election Commission of India to put in place the
necessary infrastructure and practices and procedures on a
pilot basis in the upcoming State Elections to ensure that
voters can individually and severally verify that their vote has
been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’; &/or,
374
526
II. Direct Election Commission of India to count all VVPATs in

the upcoming State Elections as VVPATs alone are the votes
that the voters have verified as being ‘recorded as cast’;
III. Pass such other and further directions as this Hon’ble Court
may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of
this case
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KINDNESS THE PETITIONER-APPLICANTS

HEREIN SHALL ALWAYS BE DUTY BOUND
THROUGH
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
COUNSEL FOR PETITIONERS
FILED ON:13.03.2023
NEW DELHI
375
PRASHANT BHUSHAN
ADVOCATE
RESI:. OFFICE: . CHAMBER
B-16, SECTOR -14, NOIDA 6/6 JANGPURA-B , OPP. BHOGAL MARKET 301, NEW LAWYERS CHAMBER
DIST. GAUTAM BUDH NAGAR NEAR MOTHER TERESA MISNIRIES SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
(U.P.) - 201 301 MATHURA ROAD NEW DELHI -110001
PH : 0120-2512632, 2512693 NEW DELHI-110 014 PH: 011- 23070301,2307064
E-MAIL: prashantbhush@gmail.com MOBILE NO.: 9811164068
Dated: 22.03.2023
To,
The Registrar
Supreme Court of India,
New Delhi-110 001
Sub: Diary No. 10857 of 2023 titled Association for Democratic Reforms Vs.
Election Commission of India & Anr.
Dear Sir/Madam
With respect to Defect No. 1 communicated by Registry on 20.03.2023 in

Diary No. 10857 of 2023 qua maintainability, it is submitted that:
1. Prayers in the present Petition are different;

2. Issues with respect to integrity of EVMs were not adjudicated on
merits;
3. The nature of injury caused or likely to be caused to the public is
given in para B to G of Grounds.
Sincerely
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
Counsel for the Petitioner
376
SECTION: PIL
(CIVIL ORIGINAL JURISDICTION)
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. __________ OF 2023
IN THE MATTER OF:
ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS …..PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. .….RESPONDENTS
FILING INDEX
S.NO. PARTICULARS COPIES C.FEE
1. WRIT PETITION WITH AFFIDAVIT 1 520/-
2. ANNEXURE P1 TO P11 1 NIL
3. APPLICATION FOR INTERIM DIRECTION 1 100/-
4. VAKALATNAMA 1 10/-
TOTAL RS. 630/-
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
COUNSEL FOR THE PETITIONER
301, NEW LAWYERS CHAMBER
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
NEW DELHI 110001
CODE NO.: 515
NEW DEHI:
DATED: 13.03.2023
DOL RAJ BHANDARI, REGD. CLERK, I.D. NO. 3745, MOB. NO. 9868255076
377376
528527
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANE.

JAGDEEP CHHOKER, FOUNDER/TRUSTEE ASSOCIATION
FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS THE PETITIONER
13TH MARCH 2023
13TH MARCH, 2023

378
377
379
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. 434 OF 2023
IN THE MATTER OF:
ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS ...PETITIONER
Versus
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA& ANR. …RESPONDENTS
COUNTER AFFIDAVIT ON BEHALF OF RESPONDENT NO. 1/

ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA
PAPER – BOOK
(KINDLY SEE INSIDE THE INDEX)
(VOL- I PAGE NO. 1 – 464)
ADVOCATE FOR THE RESPONDENT NO.1: AMIT SHARMA

CC 1781
INDEX
S. No Particulars pages
1. Counter Affidavit on behalf of the Respondent 1 - 123
No.1/ Election Commission of India
2. ANNEXURE C/1: 124 - 131
True copy of the Press Note dated 20.07.2011
issued by the Election Commission of India
3. ANNEXURE C/2: 132 -139
4. ANNEXURE C/3: 140-151
True copy of the Notification dated 14.08.2013
published in the Official Gazette of India
5. ANNEXURE C/4: 152 - 153
6. ANNEXURE C/5: 154 -169
True copy of the Letter/Instructions dated
24.09.2014 issued by the Election Commission of
India
7. ANNEXURE C/6: 170-
True copy of the Order dated 02.01.2017 passed
by this Hon’ble Court in Conmt. Pet. (C) No. 303
of 2016 (filed in Civil Appeal No. 9093 of 2016)
8. ANNEXURE C/7 171
True copy of the Letter of Intent dated 21.04.2017
issued by the Election Commission of India to
Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics
Corporation of India Limited
9. ANNEXURE C/8 172-174
by this Hon’ble Court in Conmt. Pet. (C) No. 303
of 2016 (filed in Civil Appeal No. 9093 of 2016)
10. ANNEXURE C/9 175-
11. ANNEXURE C/10 176-227
True copy of the Status Paper dated 09.05.2017
published by the Election Commission of
12. ANNEXURE C/11 228-229
13. ANNEXURE C/12 230-234
by this Hon’ble Court in W.P. (Crl.) No. 41 of
2017, W.P. (C) No. 209 of 2017, W.P. (C) No. 225
of 2017 and SLP (C) No. 13598 of 2017
14. ANNEXURE C/13 235-269
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/16/4/2017-EMS,
dated 30.08.2017, issued by the
ElectionCommission of India
15. ANNEXURE C/14 270-274
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/7/2017-EMS,
dated 30.08.2017, issued by the Election
Commission of India
16. ANNEXURE C/15
True copy of the Letter/Instructions dated 275
India
17. ANNEXURE C/16 276-277
India
18. ANNEXURE C/17 278
India
19. ANNEXURE C/18 279-281
India
India
21. ANNEXURE C/20 283-308
India
22. ANNEXURE C/21 309-310
by this Hon'ble Court in W.P. (C) No. 983 of 2017
23. ANNEXURE C/22 311-312
True copy of the Circular No. 51/8/16/9/2017-
EVM(P&L), dated 09.11.2017, issued by the
by this Hon'ble Court in Writ Petition (C) No. 1012
of 2017
25. ANNEXURE C/24 314-342
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/VVPAT/2017-
EMS dated 05.12.2017 issued by the
ElectionCommission of India
26. ANNEXURE C/25 343-354
by the Hon'ble High Court of Gujarat in Special
Civil Application No. 22074 of 2017
by this Hon'ble Court in SLP (C) Diary No. 41165
of 2017 (Mohd. Arif Rajput Vs. Election
Commission of India Nirvachan Sadan&Ors.)
28. ANNEXURE C/27 356-359
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/VVPAT-
INST/2018-EMS dated 13.02.2018 issued by the
True copy of the Letter No.
51/8/VVPAT/2018/EMS dated 08.03.2018 issued
by the Election Commission of India
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/16/4/2018-EMS,
dated 18.06.2018, issued by the Election
Commission of India
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/16/4/2018-
EMPS, dated 28.09.2018, issued by the Election
Commission of India
32. ANNEXURE C/31 363-367
True copy of the Letter No. 51/8/T&A/2018-
EMPS, dated 09.10.2018, issued by the Election
Commission of India
33. ANNEXURE C/32 368-378
True copy of the Judgment and Order, dated
12.10.2018, passed by this Hon’ble Court in Writ
Petition (C) No. 935 of 2018 (Kamal Nath Vs.
Election Commission of India &Ors.) and Writ
Petition (C) No. 1000 of 2018 (Sachin Pilot Vs.
Election Commission of India &Ors.)
34. ANNEXURE C/33 379-417
True copy of the Report dated 22.03.2019
submitted by the Indian Statistical Institute,
Delhi along with the covering letter
35. ANNEXURE C/34 418-430
True copy of the Judgment and Order, dated
08.04.2019, passed by this Hon’ble Court in Writ
Petition (C) No. 273 of 2019(N. Chandrababu
Naidu Vs. Union of India &Anr.)
36. ANNEXURE C/35 431-434
A true copy of the Judgment and Order dated
07.05.2019 passed by this Hon’ble Court in
Review Petition (C) No. 1084/2019 in W.P. (C)
No. 273/2019
37. ANNEXURE C/36 435-455
25.03.2010 passed by the Hon’ble Rajasthan
High Court in C.P. Joshi Vs. Kalyan Singh
Chouhan [S.B. Election Petition No. 1/2009]
38. ANNEXURE C/37 456-462
05.02.2004 passed by the Hon’ble Karnataka
High Court in Michael B. Fernandes vs. C. K.
JafferSharief
39. ANNEXURE C/38 463-464
30.09.2022 passed by this Hon’ble Court in
Madhya Pradesh Jan Vikas Party vs. Election
Commission of India, SLP (Civil) No. 16870/2022
(PAGE NOS. 465 TO 962 CONTD., IN VOL-II)

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779 854
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923 962
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123
FILED BY
AMIT SHARMA,
ADVOCATE FOR THE RESPONDENT NO.1
CC 1781
124 ANNEXURE C/1

NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW DELHI-110001
No. ECI/PN/44/2011 Dated: 20th July, 2011
PRESS NOTE
Electronic Voting Machines- Field trial of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)
system in five locations in the country.
Commission invites public involvement
The Commission vide its Press Note dated 14th June, 2011, announced the details
of the conduct of field trial of the VVPAT system in simulated election in the districts of
Leh (Jammu & Kashmir), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Cherrapunjee i.e. East Khasi
Hills (Meghalaya), East Delhi District (NCT of Delhi) and Jaisalmer ( Rajasthan).
In wider fulfillment of the objectives of the field trial, the Commission has
requested the National and State Parties to extend necessary cooperation by getting
involved in the trial process actively and also witness the trial in order to have a first hand
experience of the system. The Commission has also requested the individuals, who have
been engaged with the Commission on the issue of EVM-VVPAT, to witness the trial in
any of the five locations of their choice. The Commission is sending its officials and the
members of the Technical Expert Committee to observe the performance of the system
during the said trial.
In addition to the above, the Commission has decided that any groups or
individuals from among the civil society, media, technology & academic associations,
interested formations and the public at large will be allowed to vote in the simulated
election and witness any of the events that are part of the field trial.
In order to facilitate such involvement, the details of place, time/date etc.
alongwith name and designation of officials in charge of the events in respect of the
above trials are given below: -
125
Details of date, time and venue of field trial of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) systme
Jam m u & Kashm ir Kerala Meghalaya NCT of Delhi

S.No. Activities Schedule Rajasthan (Jaisalm er)
(Ladakh) (Thiruvananthapuram ) (Cherrapunjee) (East Delhi District)
First Level Checking of Date 21/07/11 21/07/11 22/07/11 21/07/11 21/07/11
1 EVMs and VVPAT Location District HQs. District HQs. R.O. HQ. Shohra District HQs. District HQs.
system s Time 9.00 AM to 5.00 PM 9.00 AM to 5.00 PM 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM 9.00 AM to 5.00 PM 9.00 AM to 5.00 PM
Date 22/07/11 22/07/11 23/07/11 22/07/11 22/07/11

Preparation of EVMs
2 and VVPAT system s
Location District HQs. District HQs. R.O. HQ. Shohra District HQs. District HQs.
Time From 9.00 AM From 9.00 AM From 8.00 AM From 9.00 AM From 9.00 AM
Date 23/07/11 23/07/11 25/07/11 23/07/11 23/07/11

Dispersal of polling
3 Location District HQs. District HQs. R.O. HQ. Shohra District HQs. District HQs.
parties
Time From 9.00 AM From 9.00 AM From 8.00 AM From 9.00 AM From 9.00 AM
Date 24/07/11 24/07/11 26/07/11 24/07/11 24/07/11

4 Sim ulated Poll Location List enclosed List enclosed List enclosed List enclosed List enclosed
Time 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM 7.00 AM to 3.00 PM 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM
Date 25/07/11 25/07/11 27/07/11 25/07/11 25/07/11

Location District HQs. District HQs. R.O. HQ. Shohra District HQs. District HQs.
5 Counting of votes 8.00 AM to till 8.00 AM to till 7.00 AM to till 8.00 AM to till 8.00 AM to till
Time completion of completion of counting completion of counting completion of counting completion of counting
counting of votes of votes of votes of votes of votes
Name of District Election Officer (DEO)/Deputy Commissioner DC) and Returning

Officer (RO)
Sl.No. Name of District DEO/DC RO

1 Leh Mr. T. Angchok, DC, Leh Mrs T Dolma
Cell No.-09419139028 Cell No.-09419878999
2 Thiruvananthapuram Mr P.M. Francis Mrs P.K. Giriraj
Cell No.-09447700222 Cell No.-09846672365
Tel. No.-0471-2731177 Tel. No.-0471-2324120
3 East Khasi Hills Sh J Lyngdoh Sh J D Suchiang
Cell No.-09436102916 Cell No.-09436106618
4 East Delhi District Sh R.K. Misra Smt Usha Chaturvedi
Cell No.-09650291010 Cell No.-09999490996
5 Jaisalmer Sh M P Swamy Sh. Baldev Singh
Cell No.-09415065347 Cell No.09414411506
Tel. No.02992-252201 (O) Tel.No.02992251621 (O)
126
List of Polling Stations for field trial of VVPAT System
Name of State: Jammu & Kashmir

Name of District: Leh
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 48-Leh Assembly Constituency
Details of Polling Stations:
Sl.No. Polling Station No. Name of Polling Station Location of Polling Station
1 48 Ranbirpur Govt. M/S Building
2 49 Thiksay-A Govt. H/S Building
3 50 Thiksary-B Govt. P/S Building
4 52 Shey Govt. H/S Building
5 53 Shey-Yoknos Govt. P/S Building
6 54 Saboo Govt. M/S Building
7 55 Palam Govt. P/S Building
8 56 Choglamsar Govt. P/S Building
9 57 Tashi-Gatsal-A Govt. M/S Building
10 58 Tashi-Gatsal-B Private Building
11 59 Gompa-Ganglas Govt. M/S Building
12 60 Sankar-Yourtung Govt. P/S Building
13 61 Sankar Private Building
14 62 Zangsti-Gongsum Govt. M/S Building
15 63 Changspa-A Govt. P/S Building
16 64 Tukcha Govt. P/S Building
17 65 Skyanos-A Distt. Panchayat Office
18 66 Skampari-A New Office Complex
19 67 Skampari-B New Office Complex
20 68 Skyanos-B Auditorium Hall
21 69 Skara Govt. M/S Building
22 70 Skalzang-Ling-A Govt. M/S Building
23 71 Skalzang-Ling-B Govt. M/S Building
24 72 Shenam Govt. P/S Building
25 73 Housing Colony-A Govt. M/S Building
26 74 Housing Colony-B Community Hall
27 75 Housing Colony-C Degree College
28 76 Housing Colony-D Degree College
29 77 Spituk Govt. M/S Building
30 78 Phey Govt. P/S Building
31 153 Stok Govt. H/S Building
32 154 Chuchot Yokam-A Govt. M/S Building
33 155 Chuchot Yokam-B Panchayat Ghar
34 156 Chuchot Shama Govt. H/S Building
35 157 Chuchot Gongma Govt. H/S Building
36 158 Matho Govt. H/S Building
127
Name of State: Kerala
Name of District: Thiruvananthapuram
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 133-Vattiyoorkavu Assembly
Constituency
Sl.No. Name of Polling Station

1 St. Gerotees Higher Secondary School, Nalanchira
2 Govt. U.P.S. Kudappanakunnu
3 Concordia Luthern Higher Secondary School, Peroorkada
4 Govt. G.H.S.S. Peroorkada
5 Govt. U.P.S. Kusavarkal
6 P.S. Nadarajapillai Memorial H.S.S. Peroorkada
7 FLMSC LPS. Vettikonam
8 G.H.S. Kachani
9 L.P.S. Machampara
10 Govt. Central Polytechnic, Vattiyoorkavu
11 Govt. U.P.S. Kulasekharam
12 B.V.H.S.S. Kodunganur
13 St. John’s U.P.S. Vattiyoorkavu
14 Vidyathiraja English Medium School, Valiyavila
15 Govt. LPS. Thirumala
16 Rajakesavadas N.S.S.H.S.S., Sasthamangalam
17 Govt. LPS. Kanjirampara
18 Senath Day English Medium School, Pangode
19 Govt. H.S. Vattiyoorkavu
20 Govt. Model Girls H.S.S. Pattom
21 Govt. Vocational H.S.S. Muttada
22 Sri Pattom Thanupilla Memorial UPS, Kuravankonam
23 Salvation Army H.S.S. Kawdiar
24 Holy Angels (Mary Mount) ISC School, Nanthancode
25 Govt. City Vocational H.S.S., P.M.G. Junction
26 St. Mary’s H.S.S. Pattom
27 Arya Central School, Pattom
28 Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pattom
29 Govt. UPS. Kumarapuram
30 Govt. Engineering College, Barton Hill
31 Vidyadiraja UPS, Pattur
32 Govt. UPS. Kunnukuzhi
33 Sri Ramakrishna Smaraka School, Nettayam
34 Kshethra Pravesana Smaraka UPS, Peroorkada
35 Govt. LPS, Oolamapara
36 Govt. LPS. Sasthamangalam
128
Name of State: Meghalaya
Name of District: East Khasi Hills
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 28-Sohra (ST) Assembly Constituency
Sl.No. Polling Name of Polling Location of Polling Station

Station No. Station
1 4 Mawkdok ‘A’ Tirot Singh Memorial Secondary School (East Wing)
2 5 Mawkdok ‘B’ Tirot Singh Memorial Secondary School (West Wing)
3 7 Ladmawphlang R.K.M.L.P. School,
4 8 Sohrarim Tirot Singh Syiem U.P. School,
5 9 Laitryngew ‘A’ M.P.K. memorial School (East Wing)
6 10 Laitryngew ‘B’ M.P.K. memorial School (West Wing)
7 11 Laitmawsiang Community Hall, laitmawsiang
8 18 Pomsohmen R.K.M.L.P. School
9 19 Pdengshnong Community Hall
10 20 Maraikaphon Community Hall
11 21 Khliehshnong ‘A’ Community Hall (East Wing)
12 22 Khliehshnong ‘B’ Community Hall (West Wing)
13 28 Lewmawiong ‘A’ Govt. LP School (East Wing)
14 29 Lewmawiong ‘B’ Govt. LP School (West Wing)
15 32 Laitlyngkot ‘A’ Govt. LP School (East Wing)
16 33 Laitlyngkot ‘B’ Govt. LP School (West Wing)
17 34 Laitlyngkot- Kyntiew Shaphrang Sec. School (East Wing)
Nongthymmai ‘A’
18 35 Laitlyngkot- Kyntiew Shaphrang Sec. School (West Wing)
Nongthymmai ‘B’
19 6 Tyrna Govt. L.P. School
20 7 Laittyra M.E. School
21 12 Mawlong ‘A’ Mawlong Umwai M.E. School (East Wing)
22 13 Mawlong ‘B’ Mawlong Umwai M.E. School (West Wing)
23 14 Laitkynsew M.E. School
24 16 Mawsahew M.E. School
25 18 Nongwar R.K.M.M.E. School
26 20 Disong R.K.M.L.P. School
27 21 Sohlab Roman Catholic L.P. School
28 22 Ichamati L.P. School
29 23 Saikarap R.C.L.P. School
30 32 Mawsmai Community Hall
31 33 Mawpun ‘A’ Govt. Normal Training School (East Wing)
32 34 Mawpun ‘B’ Govt. Normal Training School (West Wing)
33 35 Mawkisyiem Community Hall
34 36 Mawmluh R.K.M. Secondary School
35 37 MeSEB – MCCL Recreation Hall
36 38 Kutmadan Presbyterian L.P. School
129
Name of State: NCT of Delhi
Name of District: East Delhi District
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 59-Vishwas Nagar Assembly
Constituency
Sl.No. Polling Station No. Name/Location of Polling Station

1 32
2 33
3 35 Govt. Co.Sr. Sec. School, Karkari Mod, Vishwas Nagar,
4 37 New Delhi.
5 40
6 55
7 56
8 58 Govt. Sarvodaya Boys School, Kiran Vihar, Delhi.
9 59
10 62
11 65
12 66
13 67 Govt. Sarvodaya Boys School, Suraj mal Vihar, Delhi.
14 68
15 69
16 73
17 76
18 77 M.C. Primary School, Anand Vihar, Delhi.
19 78
20 79
21 98
22 100
23 108 Govt. Co-Ed Sr. Sec. School, I.P. Extn. Delhi.
24 109
25 110
26 142
27 143
28 144 Govt. Co-Ed Sr. School, Preet Vihar. Delhi.
29 145
30 147
31 88
32 89
33 90 R.S.K.V. Mandawali, Delhi.
34 91
35 101
36 127
130
Name of State: Rajasthan
Name of District: Jaisalmer
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 132-Jaisalmer & 133-Pokran Assembly
Constituencies
Sl.N Polling Name of Polling Station Location of Assembly
o. Station Polling Constituency
No. Station
1 2 Rajkiya Prathmik Vidyalay Daya Bhag
Tanotwas Ramgarh
2 4 Rajkiya Prathmik Vidyalay
3 13 Rajkiya Prathmik Vidyalay Khueyala Khueyala
4 24 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Habul
5 26 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Sonu
6 37 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Sultana
7 47 Rajkiya Uchch Prathmik Vidyalaya Khinya
8 49 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Parewar
9 64 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya
10 70 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Mohangar
11 81 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Hamira 132-Jaisalmer
12 91 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Chandhan Assembly
13 101 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Badodagaon Constituency
14 105 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Dabla
15 120 Gandhi Bal Mandir Prathmik Vidyalaya
16 122 Imanual Middan School Indra Colony
17 124 Samudayik Sabha Bhawan Babar Magra
18 126 Rajkiya Balika Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Jaisalmer
19 135 Rajkiya Prathmik Vidyalaya Malka Prol
20 140 Rajkiya Uchch Prathmik Vidyalaya Megwala
Vas
21 156 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Kanoi
22 261 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Mulana
23 289 Rajkiya Uchch Prathmik Vidyalaya Fatehgarh
24 305 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Devda
25 47 Rajkiya Sanskrit Madhyamik Vidyalaya Ramdevra
26 49 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya
27 57 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Lanwa
28 60 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Ujla
29 65 Rajkiya Balika Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya
30 70 Rajkiya Uchch Prathmick Vidyalya No.3 Pokran 133-Pokran
31 73 Rajkiya Uchch Prathmick Vidyalya No.2 Assembly
32 79 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Gomta Constituency
33 83 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Lathi
34 86 Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya Dholiya
35 106 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Sankada
36 154 Rajkiya Uchch Madhyamik Vidyalaya Bhaisda
131
Apart from the detailed arrangements made at the locations, if any
group/individual finds any difficulty in duly associating with or in witnessing the events
of the field trial of VVPAT, they may contact Sh. K.N. Bhar, Secretary (Tel.No. 011-
23052014) at the Election Commission of India, Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New
Delhi-110001.
(YASHVIR SINGH)
DIRECTOR
// True Copy//
ANNEXURE C/2
132
NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW DELHI – 110 001
No. ECI/PN/ 59 /2012 Dated: 25 July, 2012
PRESS NOTE
Subject: Electronic Voting Machines – Second field trial of Voter Verifiable Paper
Audit Trail (VVPAT) system in five locations in the country – regarding.
Several political parties had requested the Commission that the possibility of introducing
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail along with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) may be
examined. The Commission had asked manufacturers of EVMs – BEL and ECIL to develop a
VVPAT. The prototype VVPAT system was field tested in Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir,
Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Cherrapunjee in Meghalaya, East Delhi district in NCT of Delhi
and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan in July, 2011. After this field trial, it was felt that further improvement
is needed in the VVPAT system. BEL and ECIL have now produced prototypes of improved
VVPAT system which have been demonstrated to the Commission's Technical Expert Committee on
EVMs. On the recommendation of Technical Expert Committee on EVMs, the Commission has
decided to undertake another field trial of the improved prototype VVPAT system in the same five
places where it was held in July, 2011. Accordingly, the second field trial of improved prototype
VVPAT shall be held in these five places according to the calendar of events given below:-
Sl. Name of State Name of Place Training Training FLC of Preparation Dispersal of Date & Hours Counting of Computerisation of
N of poll of EVMs & of EVMs & polling of poll votes data and statistical
o. and officials VVPAT VVPAT parties analysis of the
counting engaged systems systems same, preparation
personne for of report by DEO
l voters’ & CEO and
training submission of the
same in the
Commission
1 NCT of East Delhi 16.7.12 27.7.12 26.7.12 27.7.12 28.7.12 28.7.12 29.7.12 3.8.12
Delhi & 8.00 AM to 8.00 AM
26.7.12 4.00 PM onwards
2 Kerala Thiruvanant 26.7.12 27.7.12 27.7.12 27.7.12 27.7.12 28.7.12 29.7.12 3.8.12
hapuram 8.00 AM to 8.00 AM
4.00 PM onwards
3 Jammu & Ladakh 9.8.12 10.8.12 10.8.12 10.8.12 10.8.12 11.8.12 12.8.12 17.8.12
Kashmir 8.00 AM to 8.00 AM
4.00 PM onwards
4 Rajasthan Jaisalmer 8.8.12 8.8.12 9.8.12 9.8.12 10.8.12 11.8.12 12.8.12 17.8.12
8.00 AM to 8.00 AM
4.00 PM onwards
5 Meghalaya Cherapunjee 23.8.12 24.8.12 24.8.12 24.8.12 24.8.12 25.8.12 27.8.12 31.8.12
7.00 AM to 8.00 AM
3.00 PM onwards
133
In wider fulfillment of the objectives of the field trial, the Commission has requested the
National and State Parties to extend necessary cooperation by getting involved in the trial process
actively and also witness the trial in order to have a firsthand experience of the system. The
Commission has also requested the individuals and groups, who have been engaged with the
Commission on the issue of EVM-VVPAT, to witness the trial. The Commission is sending its
officials and the members of the Technical Expert Committee to observe the performance of the
system during the said trial.
In addition to the above, the Commission has decided that any groups or individuals from
among the civil society, media, technology & academic associations, interested formations and the
public at large will be allowed to vote in the simulated election and witness any of the events that
are part of the field trial.
In order to facilitate such involvement, the details of place, time/date etc. alongwith name
and designation of officials in charge of the events in respect of the above trails is enclosed.
(Padma Angmo)
Deputy Secretary
134
Name of District Election Officer (DEO)/Deputy Commissioner (DC)
and Retruning Officer (RO)
Sl. No. Name of District DEO/DC RO

1 Leh Sh. Tsering Anchok Smt. Tashi Dolma
Cell No. 09419139028 Cell No. 09419114677
Tel. No. 01982-25010
2 Thiruvananthapuram Smt. P.K.Girija Smt. Sheeba George
Cell. No. 09447700222 Cell. No.09446203628
Tel. No. 0471-2731177 (O) Tel. No. 0471-2731230 (O)
3 East Khasi Hills Sh. Sanjay Goyal Sh. D. M. Wahlang
Cell No. 09436313316 Cell No. 09436160954
Tel. No. 0364-2224003 (O) 09856022111
Tel. No. 0364-2500782 (O)
4 East Delhi District Sh. B.M.Mishra Sh. Raj Kumar
Cell. No. 09999926659 09868185298
5 Jaisalmer Smt. Suchi Tyagi Sh. Ramesh Chand Jainth
Cell No. 09414082800 Cell No. 08764231790
Tel. No. 02992-252201 (O) Tel. No. 02992-251127 (O)
135
List of Polling Stations for field trial of VVPAT System
Name of State: Jammu & Kashmir

Name of District: Leh
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 48-Leh Assembly Constituency
Sl.No. Polling Station No. & Name Building in which located

1. 52-Shey H/S Building
2. 53-Shey-Yoknos P/S Building
3. 54-Saboo M/S Building
4. 56-Choglamsar P/S Building
5. 57-Tashi-Gatsal P/S Building
6. 58-Tashi Thongmon P/S Building
7. 59-Gonpa-Ganglas M/S Building
8. 60-Sankar-Yourtung P/S Building
9. 61-Sankar Private Building
10. 62-Zangsti-Gogsum H/S/S Building
11. 63-Changspa-A P/S Building
12. 64-Tukcha P/S Building
13. 65-Skyanos-A Panchayat Office
14. 66-Skampari-A New Office Complex
15. 67- Skampari-B New Office Complex
16. 68-Skynanos-B Auditorium Hall
17. 69-Skara M/S Building
18. 70-Skalzang Ling-A M/S Building
19. 71-Skalzang-Ling-B P/SBuilding
20. 72-Shenam P/S Building
21. 73-Housing-Colony-A M/S Building
22. 74-Housing-Colony-B Committee Hall
23. 75-Housing-Colony-C Degree College
24. 76-Housing-Colony-D Degree College
25. 154-Choshot-Yokma-A H/S Building
26. 155-Choshot-Yokma-B Panchayat Ghar
27. 156- Choshot Shama H/S/S Building
28. 157-Choshot Gongme H/S Building
136
Name of State: Meghalaya
Name of District: East Khasi Hills
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 1. 26-Shella Assembly Constituency
2. 28-Sohra (ST) Assembly Constituency
Sl.No. P.S. No. & Name Building in which located

26-Shella Assembly Constituency
1. 6-Tyrna Govt. L.P. School, Tyrna
2. 7-Laittyra M.E. School, Laittyra
3. 12-Mawlong "A' Mawlong Umwai M.E. School (East Wing), Mawlong
4. 13-Mawlong 'B' Mawlong Umwal M..E. School ( West Wing), Mawlong
5. 14-Laitkynsew M.E. School, Laitkynsew

6. 18-Nongwar R.K. M.M.E. School, Nongwar
7. 22-Ichamati L.P. School, Ichamati
8. 33--Mawsmai Community Hall, Mawsmai
9. 34-Mawpun 'A' Govt Normal Training School ( East Wing), Mawpun
10. 35-Mawpun'B' Govt. Normal Training School (west Wing), Mawpun
11. 36-Mawkisyiem Community Hall, Mawkisyiem
12. 37-Mawmluh R.K.M. Secondary School, Mawmluh
13. 38-MeSEB-MCCL Recreation Hall, MeSEB-MCCL
14. 39-kutmadan Presbyterian L.P. School, Kutmadan
28-Sohra (ST) Assembly Constituency
15. 7-Ladmawphlang R.K.M.L.P. School, Ladmawphlang
16. 8-Sohrarim Tirot Sing Syiem U.P. School, Sohrarim
17. 9-Laitryngew 'A' M.P.K. Memorial School ( East Wing) Laitryngew
18. 10-Laitryngew 'B' M.P.K. Memorial School ( West Wing) Laitryngew
19. 18-Pomsohmen R.K.M.L.P.School, Posohmen
20. 20-Pdengshnong Community Hall, Pdengshnong
21. 21-Maraikaphon Community Hall, Maraikaphon
22. 22-Khliehshnong 'A' Community Hall (East Wing), Khliehshnong
23. 23-Khilehshnong'B' Community Hall (West Wing), Khliehshnong
24. 25-Mawkma Presbyterian L.P. School, Mawkma
25. 30-Iewmawiong 'A' Govt.L.P. School (East Wing) Iewmawiong
26. 31-Iewmawiong 'B' Govt. L.P. School(West Wing) Lewmawiong
27. 34-Laitlyngkot'A' Govt. L.P. School (East Wing), Laitlyngkot
28. 34-Laitlyngkot'B' Govt. L.P. School (West Wing), Laitlyngkot
137
Name of State: Rajasthan
Name of District: Jaisalmer
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 132-Jaisalmer Assembly Constituencies
S.No Polling Building in which located
Station No.
1 29 Govt. Sr. Secondary School, Sonu
2 59 Govt.Secondary School, Deva
3 89 Govt. Secondary School, Hameera
4 96 Govt. Secondary School, Bhagu ka Gaon
5 99 Govt. Sr. Secondary School, East part New Hall , Room No.14, Chandhan
6 100 Govt. Sr. Secondary School, East part New Hall , Room No.12, Chandhan
7 102 Govt. Secondary School, Sodhakore
8 109 Govt. Sr. Secondary School, Badoda Gaon, North Part
9 111 Govt. Sr. Secondary School, Badoda Gaon, South Part
10 114 Govt. Secondary School, Dabla
11 117 Govt. Secondary School, Bhoo
12 122 Govt. Secondary School, Pithla
13 128 Govt. Secondary School, Kishan Ghat
14 132 Emmanuel Mission School, Indira Colony, South West Part Jaisalmer
15 136 Govt. Girls Sr. Secondary School, Room No.01, Jaisalmer
16 137 Govt. Girls Sr. Secondary School, South Part Lab Room Jaisalmer
17 139 Govt.SecondarySchool, Sutharpara North Part, Jaisalmer
18 140 Govt.SecondarySchool, Sutharpara, Middle Part Jaisalmer
19 144 Amar Shahid Sagar Mal Gopa Sr. Secondary School, Jaisalmer
20 159 Govt. Secondary School, Baramsar
21 163 Govt. Secondary School, Roopsi North Part
22 168 Govt. Secondary School, Damodara
23 171 Govt. Secondary School, North Part Kanoi
24 172 Govt. Secondary School, Kanoi South Part
25 182 Govt. Secondary School, Sam
26 221 Govt. Secondary School, Dedha
27 223 Govt. Secondary School, Sipla
28 291 Govt. Sr. Secondary School, Devikot
138
Name of State: NCT of Delhi
Name of District: East Delhi District
S. Polling Building in which located
No Station No.
1 1 RSBV, Jheel Khurenja, Geeta Colony, Delhi
5 5 Vivekanand Mahila College, Vivek Vihar, Delhi
9 9 Maharaja Aggresain College, Vasundhara Enclave, Delhi
13 13 RSBV, No-2, Madhuban Road, Shakarpur, Delhi-92
16 16 SRSBV, No-2, Madhuban Road, Shakarpur, Delhi-92
17 17 SBV (Jai Prakash Narayan), East Vinod Nagar, Mayur Vihar Phase-II, Delhi-91.
21 21 SKV (Sharda Sen), Block-20, TrilokPuri, Delhi
25 25 SBV Karkari Road, Vishwas Nagar Delhi
139
Name of State: Kerala
Name of District: Thiruvananthapuram
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: 133-Vattiyoorkavu Assembly
Constituency
Sl.No. P.S. Building in which located

No.
1 43 SMVHSS Thirvananthapuram (Northern portion of East Building, Ground)
2 53 Sanskrit College Thiruvananthapuram (Southern Portion of West Building)
3 54 Sanskrit College Thiruvananthapuram (Western Portion of South Building
4 55 College of Fine Arts (East Portion of South East Building, BFA Hall)
5 58 S M V HSS Thiruvananthapuram (Southern portion of of east building (Ground)
6 63 Sanskrit High School, Fort (Southern portion of Main Building)
7 65 Sanskrit High School, Fort (Northern portion of Main Building)
8 68 Fort High School TVM (Southern portion of east building)
9 71 Govt. Cotton Hill MGHSS Thiruvananthapuram (Eastern portion of assembly hall)
10 72 Govt. Cotton Hill MGHSS Thiruvananthapuram (Eastern portion of office building)
11 73 Govt. Cotton Hill MGHSS Thiruvananthapuram (Eastern portion of west building)
12 74 Govt. Cotton Hill MGHSS Thiruvananthapuram (Middle portion of west Building)
13 75 Govt. Model HS Thiruvananthapuram (PTA Building, Southern portion of Ground Floor)
14 76 Govt. Model BHSS Thiruvananthapuram (Ground Floor of PTA Building, Northern part)
15 82 Govt. Model BHSS Thiruvananthapuram (Middle portion of Ground Floor of PTA
building)
16 88 Sree Swathithirunal Sangeetha Academy Tvm (Western Building No.1)
17 89 Sree Swathithirunal Sangeetha Academy Tvm (Western Building No.2)
18 90 Govt. BHS Chalai (Middle portion of south building)
19 91 Govt. BHS Chalai (Eastern portion of south building)
20 92 Thamizh HSS Chalai (Northern portion old building)
21 93 Thamizh HSS Chalai (Southern portion of main building)
22 94 Thamizh HSS Chalai (Middle portion of old building)
23 95 Govt. BHS Chalai (Northern portion of West building)
24 105 Central HS Attakulangara (Southern portion of main building)
25 106 Central HS Attakulangara (Middle portion of middle building)
26 107 Central HS Attakulangara (Middle portion of west building)
27 128 Govt. Girls Higher Secondary School Manacaud (Western Portion of Assembly Hall)
28 129 Govt. Girls Higher Secondary School Manacaud (Eastern Portion of Assembly Hall)
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/3
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/4
152 OF INDIA
ELECTION COMMISSION
Dated:- 07.09.2013
No ECI/PN/25/2013
PRESS NOTE
Assembly Constitue-ncy to"Nagaland
Sub:-Bye-election from Sl-Noksen (ST)
Paper Audit Trail (WPAT)
Legislative l'.r.-ntf-Utt of Vot"t Verifiable
,yri.- for the n.ri iitt by the Commission in Elections - regarding'
district of
A of election history was made in the remote Tuensang
piece
Nagaland with the successful culmination
of counting of votes today, i.e' on 7th
September, 2013 for the bye-election to 5l-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency'
where poll was held on 4th Septemb er,2073 using,
for the first time eve6 the voter
VerifiablePaperAuditTrail(WPAT)systemwithElectronicVotingMachines.
UndertheVVPATSystem,newlydevelopedbytheElectronicsCorporationoflndia
direction of the Election
Limited and Bharat Electronic Limited' under the
a printer is attached to the
commission and its Technicar Experts committee,
ballotingunitofthevotingmachineandiskeptalongwiththeballotingunitinside
when a voter casts his vote by pressing of the
the screened voting compartment.
candidate,s button against the name and symbol
ofthe candidate ofhis choice' apart
the red light glowing against the name and symbol

of that candidate, the printer
from
number' name and symbol of
also generates a paper slip containing the serial
candidate for whom the vote has been cast.
This paper slip remains visible to the
printer and after sufficient time gets
voter through a window covered by glass on the
automaticallycutandfallsintotheboxpermanentlyattachedbelowtheprinter.This
enablesthevotertoverifuandsatisffhimselfthatthevotecastbyhimforthe
candidate of his choice has been actually recorded
correctly for that candidate' In
caseofanydoubt,thesepaperslipscanbecountedatthetimeofthecountingof
the control unit of the voting
votes and tallied with the number of votes recorded in
machine.
Thepollon4thseptember,2013aswellasthecountingofvotestodaywent
offsmoothlyandwithoutanyproblem'Atthetimeofcounting,thenumberofvotes
153
each of the two contesting candidates
tallied
displayed in the voting machines against
printers of the WPAI system on actual
with the paper slips generated by the
counting ofthese PaPer sliPs'
had 12088 electors distributed across
51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency
2lpoltingstations(includingoneauxiliarypollingstation).Thetwocandidateswho
bye-election were - shri c.M. chang
of Naga People's Front and
contested the said
ShriLumaonenChangoflndianNationalCongress.Thecountingofvoteswas
conducted by the Returning Officer
of 5l-Noksen (ST) A'C' in the presence of
The
Agents of both the contesting candidates'
commission,s observers and counting
details ofvotes cast ate as under :
:12088
a) TotalNo.ofelectors
papers) : 8553
b) Totai No. ofVotes polled (including postal ballot
Total No. ofpostal ballot papers rejected : 3
c)
votes' whereas Sh' Luma Onen Chang
Sh' C.M. Chang (NPF) secured 5708
and, accordingly' Sh' C'M' Chang (MF) was declared elected
(NC) got 2845 votes
by the Returning Offrcer'
JJAIPURIAR)
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/5
154 BY SPEED POST/FAX

K.N.BHAR
SECRETARY
No. 51/8/VVPAT/2014-EMS Dated: 24 th September, 2014
To
The Chief Electoral Officers of
1. Haryana, Chandigarh.
2. Maharashtra, Mumbai.
Subject: Instructions on the use of EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail system (VVPAT) -
reg.
Sir,
I am directed to state that the Commission has decided to use Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trail system (VVPAT) alongwith Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the following assembly
constituencies during the ensuing General Election to the Legislative Assemblies of Haryana and
Maharashtra, 2014.
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The Rule 49A of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, provides that the “Every electronic voting
machine (hereinafter referred to as the voting machine) shall have a control unit and a balloting unit and
shall be of such designs as may be approved by the Election Commission. Provided that a printer with a
drop box of such design as may be approved by the Election Commission may also be attached to a voting
machine for printing a paper trail of the vote, in such constituency or constituencies or parts thereof as
the Election Commission may direct”. Pursuant to the said rules, the Election Commission has approved the
printers as developed by the manufacturing companies viz. ECIL and BEL.
The Rule 49B[4(c)] of the said Rules provides that where the printer for paper trail is used under
the proviso to rule 49A, set the printer as per the number of contesting candidates set in the Control Unit
by –
i) loading in the printer the serial numbers and names of candidates and symbols allotted to them
as given on the balloting units under clause (a);
ii) loading paper in the printer; and
iii) sealing the printer in such manner as may be directed by the Election Commission”.
The Rule 49E [1, 2 &7] of the said Rules provides that –
(1) The Control Unit, the Balloting Unit of every voting machine used at a polling station, and the printer
for paper trail where used, shall bear a label marked with—
(c) the serial number of the unit of voting machine; and
agents and other persons present that no vote has been already recorded in the voting machine, and where
the printer for paper trail is used that the drop box of the printer is empty.
(7) Where the printer for paper trail is used, the printer shall also be kept along with the balloting unit in
the voting compartment and shall be connected to the EVM in the manner as directed by the Commission.
The Rule 49MA of the said Rules provides that –where printer for paper trail is used, upon casting
the vote by pressing the button under clause (b), the elector shall be able to view through the transparent
window of the printer, kept alongwith the balloting unit inside the voting compartment, the printed paper
slip showing the serial no, name and the symbol of the candidate for whom he has cast his vote before
such paper slip gets cut and drops in the drop box of the printer.
156
The Rule 49T(1) of the said Rules provides that .—(1) As soon as practicable after the closing of the
poll, the presiding officer shall close the control unit to ensure that no further votes can be recorded and shall
detach the balloting unit from the control unit, and from the printer where the printer is also used.
Taking into consideration the provisions made under Rules 49A, 49B [4(c)], 49E [1, 2 &7], 49M
(A), 49 T (1) by the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules, 2013 the Commission has directed that the
following instructions on use of VVPAT system with EVM shall be strictly followed in the aforesaid
election: -
1. Training of Master Trainers: It is necessary to provide very good quality training to all election
officials. “Hands-on” training should be organized for Presiding Officers, Polling officers, Returning
Officer, Assistant Returning Officers, Sector Officers and counting personnel.
2. Training of polling personnel and counting personnel: - Immediately after the second
randomisation of polling personnel in respect of the Assembly Constituencies in which the
VVPAT will be used training for the polling personnel should be conducted. The Master
Trainers will impart training to the field officials. The training should include theoretical inputs and
also hands on training. Every officer should get an opportunity to operate the EVMs with the
VVPAT system and learn the process of recording the vote using VVPAT. Separate training on
counting of printed ballot slips from the VVPAT system and tallying the count of printed ballot slips
with the electronic count in the EVMs using the modified Form 17C should also be given. Questions
should be encouraged and all doubts should be cleared in the training. Detailed operational manual of
VVPAT will be made available by the manufacturers of EVM. Copies of the operational manual
should be given to all officers during training. Copies of operational manual should also be available
at the polling station on the poll day. Complete training process should be videographed.
3. Awareness about use of VVPAT: Awareness should be created amongst the political parties and
electors of the Assembly Constituencies, where VVPAT to be used, about the purpose and use of
VVPAT. For this purpose a demonstration of VVPAT system should be organized by the Returning
Officers for all Candidates and Political Parties. The demonstration will be done by Engineers of
VVPAT manufacturers. Demonstration of VVPAT system should also be organized for voters at
suitable locations in the constituencies. A simple poster on method of voting on EVMs with VVPAT
should be prepared and pasted at prominent places in all villages of the constituencies. This poster
should also be pasted at two or three places in each polling station in such a manner that voters
waiting in the queue are able to read the instructions in the poster. Pamphlets on the method of
voting using EVMs with VVPAT should be printed and distributed to voters along with Photo Voter
slips before the poll. A copy of the sample Pamphlet is attached at Annexure-V. Each voter should
be given detailed instructions on the method of voting on EVMs with VVPAT on the poll day when
his or her signatures/thumb impressions are obtained in the register of Voters in Form 17 A by a
polling officer. The CEO, DEO and RO should also organize programmes for awareness about use of
EVMs with VVPAT on Doordarshan and All India Radio.
157
4. First Level Checking of VVPAT system: If the First Level Checking of EVMs has already been
completed it need not be repeated alongwith the First Level Checking of VVPAT systems. Some
spare EVMs from reserved may be used for this purpose. The FLC of VVPAT shall be done in the
presence of representatives of the National and State Political parties. During this FLC in addition to
the normal FLC procedure, political party representatives will also be asked to check the printed
ballot slip in VVPAT for each vote cast, before it is cut and falls in the drop box of the VVPAT
printer, in the manner a voter is supposed to check the printed ballot slip in a real election. After the
mock poll, the printed ballot slips of each VVPAT printer shall be counted to compute the result
independent of the electronic result in the CU and the result of the printed ballot slips shall be tallied
with the electronic result of the CU. The tally should be shown to those present in the FLC. The
whole process shall be videographed. FLC should also be treated as an opportunity for training the
representatives of the political parties in the use of EVMs with VVPAT system.
5. Preparation of EVMs and VVPAT system for Poll: EVMs shall be prepared for poll according to
the instructions of the Commission on preparation of EVMs for polls in the usual manner. After
preparation of EVM, the VVPAT system shall be prepared for poll in the following manner as
mentioned in Rule 49 B (4) (c) (i) – (iii) of the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules, 2013 : -
a. VVPAT system consists of one VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) and one VVPAT
Printer unit.
b. Fresh Paper roll shall be installed in VVPAT printer unit by following the procedure given in
the user manual for VVPAT system.
c. Serial numbers and names of candidates and symbols allotted to them shall be loaded in
VVPAT unit with the help of engineers of manufacturer i.e. ECIL/BEL.
d. A test printout of the Serial numbers and names of candidates and symbols loaded shall be
checked with the ballot paper placed on Ballot Unit. Thereafter, switch OFF the Control Unit
and the latches of Paper Roll Compartment shall be sealed by using thread seals and
address tags.
(Switching OFF of Control Unit before sealing of paper roll compartment should be
ensured)
e. New power pack (battery) shall be connected to the VVPAT unit. The door of the battery
compartment must be properly shut. However, it is not sealed as the power pack can be
replaced, if low battery status is indicated in VSDU, during the poll.
f. Thereafter one vote to each candidate will be given to check that the VVPAT is correctly
printing the paper slips in respect of all the candidates.
g. VVPAT units should be randomly allocated to polling stations. For this purpose serial
numbers of VVPAT printers shall be written on separate paper slips. These paper slips shall
158
be put in a big jar and mixed. After that the slips shall be taken out one by one and allocated
to polling stations.
h. The VVPAT unit will then be kept in the carrying case provided and taken to the polling
station along with the EVM.
6. Additional Polling Official: While constituting polling parties, care should be taken to provide one
extra polling official in each polling station to handle the VVPAT unit. The duty of this polling
official will be to watch the VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) continuously during the entire poll
process. He will bring any error messages to the notice of the Presiding Officer immediately. One
additional power pack battery will be provided to every polling party. In case of low battery error
message the battery will be changed. For any other error message the VVPAT printer unit will be
changed. It may be noted that change of paper is not allowed during poll.
7. Dispersal of polling parties:- At the time of dispersal of polling parties, two copies of the following
shall be handed over to the Presiding Officers:
i) Trouble shooting instructions given at Annexure-III
ii) List of additional items of Polling materials given at Annexure-IV
8. Conduct of Mock Poll and sealing of EVMs and VVPATs in the Polling Stations: During the
mock poll in the polling stations, the Ballot Unit(s) and VVPAT unit should be placed in the Voting
Compartment and Control Unit and VSDU on the table of the Presiding Officer/Polling Officer who
will operate the Control Unit after being properly connected. One polling officer should be present in
the Voting Compartment along with polling agents to watch operations on the Ballot Unit and the
printed ballot slip by the VVPAT Printer unit. This polling officer will keep a record of the votes
cast. After the mock poll, Presiding Officer will ascertain the result in the Control Unit and count the
ballot slips in respect of each candidate in the presence of the polling agents and confirm that the
result tallies with the votes polled in respect of each candidate. The Presiding Officer shall ensure
that the data of mock poll is cleared in the Control Unit, without fail, and also remove all the printed
paper (ballot) slips from the drop box in the VVPAT unit. These printed-paper slips of the mock poll
shall be kept in an envelope made of thick black paper. The envelope will be sealed with the seal of
the presiding officer. The Presiding Officer and the polling agents present shall put their signatures
on the envelope. The number and name of the polling station and number and name of Assembly
Constituency alongwith the date of poll shall be written on the Envelope. Words- “Printed paper slips
of Mock Poll” shall also be written on the envelope. The envelope shall then be kept in the special
plastic box provided for the purpose. The plastic box shall be sealed with a Pink Paper Seal placed
all around in such a manner that opening of the box shall not be possible without breaking the seal.
The number and name of the polling station and number and name of Assembly Constituency
alongwith the date of poll shall be written on the plastic box. The Presiding Officer and Polling
Agents present shall put their signatures on the pink paper seal. This plastic box containing printed
paper slips of the mock poll shall be kept along with other documents relating to elections by the
159
Returning Officer and shall be preserved till the period of filing of Election Petitions is over or in
case an election petition is filed, till the final disposal by a Competent Court. Polling agents present
will be allowed to verify that the drop box of VVPAT unit is empty. Thereafter, Presiding Officer
will prepare and sign the mock poll certificate (Annexure-I) in the revised format of Mock Poll
Certificate enclosed herewith and seal the Control Unit as per procedure laid down in the Presiding
Officers’ Handbook. The Presiding Officer shall also prepare the VVPAT system as under:
(i) The lower part of the VVPAT unit i.e. drop box shall be sealed with the Address Tag before
actual poll starts.
(ii) After that BU and VSDU shall be connected to the VVPAT printer and connect the VVPAT
printer to the Control Unit.
(iii) Switch ON the Control Unit, after making all connection.
This is a very critical step and this should be emphasised during training. Observer should visit
maximum number of polling stations on the poll day to check that everything is being done in the
manner prescribed by the Commission.
9. Complaint about incorrect printing of particulars on paper slip: If any voter alleges about the
wrong printing of particulars of a candidate and/or symbol of that candidate on paper slip printed by
the printer on pressing of concerned blue button on the Balloting unit to which the printer is
connected, the Presiding Officer of the polling station should provide him a ‘Form of Declaration’
(Annexure-II) to lodge a complaint and follows the procedure prescribed under rule 49MA, which
reads as under:
“49MA. Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed on paper slip.-(1) Where
printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote under rule 49M alleges that
the paper slip generated by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other than the
one he voted for, the presiding officer shall obtain a written declaration from the elector as to the
allegation, after warning the elector about the consequence of making a false declaration.
(2). If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1), the presiding officer shall
make a second entry related to that elector in Form 17A, and permit the elector to record a test vote
in the voting machine in his presence and in the presence of the candidates or polling agents who
may be present in the polling station, and observe the paper slip generated by the printer.
(3). If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the facts immediately to the
returning officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the direction
that may be given by the Returning Officer.
(4). If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under sub-rule (1)
matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the presiding officer shall-
(i) make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form 17A
mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test votes has been
recorded;
160
(iii) make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part I of Form 17C.”.
10. Action in case of certain contingencies during poll: Certain contingencies may arise during the
polling process, which may require certain actions. These are as follows:-
a. In case the CU or the BU does not work properly replacement of the whole EVM including
CU, BU and VVPAT is required. Fresh mock-poll is also required to be done on the
replaced set of CU, BU and VVPAT, following the same procedure as it was done
earlier, prior to start of actual poll. The printed paper slips of the mock-poll shall be
taken out and kept in the Black Envelope and shall be kept in the same plastic box, in
which printed paper slip of mock-poll done prior to start of actual poll are kept.
b. In case the VSDU is showing “Low Battery”, the power pack battery of VVPAT should be
replaced. It should be ensured that before taking out the power pack battery of VVPAT
control unit must be switched OFF and after installing new power pack battery in
VVPAT, control unit should be switched ON. Control Unit should not be switched ON
without installing power pack in VVPAT.
c. In case there is any other error, like “Paper Low” error, the VVPAT will stop printing and the
error shall be displayed on the VSDU. In such case the VVPAT unit is to be replaced (No
mock-poll is required to be taken, if only VVPAT is replaced). It should be noted that
vote is not recorded in the CU electronically unless the paper slip has been printed by
VVPAT and also has been cut so that it falls in the drop box. Therefore, if VVPAT has
not printed the paper slip, or the printed paper slip has not been cut, the last voter whose
paper slip has not been printed by VVPAT or has not been cut should be allowed to cast his
vote after the VVPAT has been replaced. In case the printed paper slip has not been cut and is
hanging from the paper roll, no effort should be made to make it fall into the drop box. It
should be allowed to remain hanging as it is not to be counted at the time of counting of the
printed-paper slips. The details of such an occurrences should be clearly recorded in the
Presiding Officers dairy in the following format:-
i. The date and time of the occurrence.
ii. The name of the voter and his serial number in the part in the electoral roll, who was
allowed to cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT.
iii. Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went away without
casting his vote.
iv. The Total number of votes cast before the occurrence.
11. Counting of Votes: Counting of votes shall be done according to rule 56C of the Conduct of
Elections Rules, 1961. After the entries made in the result sheet of election are announced, any
candidate, or in his absence, his election agent or any of his counting agents may apply in writing to
161
the Returning Officer to count the printed paper slips of VVPAT unit in respect of any polling station
or all polling stations. On such application being made, the Returning Officer shall pass a speaking
order on whether the counting of paper slips shall be done or not. While deciding the matter the
Returning Officer shall give due consideration to the following: -
a) Whether the total number of votes polled in that polling station is more or less than the margin of
votes between winning candidate and candidate making the application,
b) Whether EVM met with any defect and was replaced at that polling station during poll,
c) Whether there was any complaint about VVPAT not printing the paper slips or complaints under
rule 49MA by any voter, in that polling station during the poll.
12. If the Returning Officer decides to allow counting of the paper slips of any polling station or all
polling stations such decision of the Returning Officer shall be recorded in writing and shall contain
the reasons therefor.
13. The following procedures shall be strictly followed in case it is decided to count the printed slips of
VVPAT : -
a. VVPAT unit(s) of the respective polling station(s) shall be brought to the Counting table(s).
b. Address tag(s) of the drop box of the VVPAT unit(s) shall be cross checked to ascertain that
it actually pertains to the same polling station, address tag of VVPAT unit should be removed
and ballot paper slips shall be taken out from the drop box. Care should be taken that no
printed paper slip is left in the drop box. Empty drop box should be shown to all counting
agents.
c. In case a VVPAT unit was replaced during poll at any polling station, all the VVPAT units
used at that polling station should be brought to the counting table and printed paper slips
from all of them should be taken out before beginning the counting of printed paper slips for
that polling station.
d. In case a VVPAT unit was replaced, it may so happen that an uncut fully or partially printed
paper slip is hanging and has not got cut and dropped in the drop box and still connected to
the paper roll. This uncut printed paper slip should not be torn and should not be counted
because the vote is not recorded electronically in the CU unless the printed paper slip is cut.
In such an event the last voter whose printed paper slip was not cut would have been given an
opportunity to cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT and the printed paper slip of the
vote cast by him shall be in the next VVPAT printer used in that polling station.
e. The drop box of the VVPAT printer will also have slips of self test report. These are easily
identified, as they do not have either the name or the symbol of any candidate and are of
larger length. These self-test report slips are to be preserved alongwith the printed-paper slips
as part of the record but they are not to be counted.
f. Pigeonholes will be prepared to put ballot paper slips of the respective candidates.
162
g. After all the ballot paper slips are put in the respective pigeon holes, bundle of 25 paper slips
of respective candidates will be prepared for counting purpose.
h. Printed-paper slips will then be counted by the counting staff.
i. The result of the count of ballot slips will be announced loudly in the counting hall and
shown to the counting agents.
j. If there is discrepancy between the count of votes displayed on the control unit and the count
of printed-paper slips in respect of any Polling Station, the result sheet will be amended as
per the printed-paper slips count.
k. The Returning Officer shall announce the amendments so made by him and declare the result.
14. Sealing of Control Units and VVPAT units: After the result is announced, whether the printed
paper slips of VVPAT were counted or not, the printed paper slips will be taken out of the drop box
of the VVPAT Printer unit and stored in the following manner: -
a. The printed-paper slips shall be kept in a paper envelope made of thick black paper. The
envelope shall be sealed with red wax with the bilingual secret seal of the Commission
provided to the RO for sealing of the documents. Following shall be written on the envelope: -
i. The name of election;
ii. The number and name of Parliamentary constituency;
iii. The number and name of Assembly Segment;
iv. The particulars of polling station in respective boxes;
v. Unique serial number of the Control Unit & VVPAT units in respective boxes;
vi. Date of poll; and
vii. Date of counting.
b. The envelope will then be kept in a special plastic prepared box supplied by the
manufacturers of VVPAT for this purpose. The plastic box shall be sealed with a pink paper
seal in such a manner that the box cannot be opened without breaking the seal. The Returning
Officer shall put his signature on the pink paper seal. Following shall be written on the plastic
box: -
i. The name of election;
ii. The number and name of Parliamentary constituency;
iii. The number and name of Assembly Segment;
iv. The particulars of polling station in respective boxes;
v. Unique serial number of the Control Unit & VVPAT units in respective boxes;
vi. Date of poll; and
vii. Date of counting.
c. These Plastic boxes shall be kept with all the statutory documents relating to that election till
the statutory time limit for filing an election petition is over or in case where and election
163
petition is filed till the final disposal of the election petition by a competent Court. The plastic
boxes shall not be opened or destroyed without obtaining the permission of the Commission.
d. The VVPAT printers after taking out the printed paper slips shall be kept in a separate
strong room and should not be kept in the strong room where EVMs are stored, so that
even if there is any election petition is filed from the constituency, the VVPAT units can
be taken out for use, if required, without opening the strong room having EVMs.
e. It should be ensured that the Thermal Paper Roll and Battery (Power Pack) are taken
out from the VVPAT, before keeping the VVPAT units in the Strong Room.
15. The Power Pack and Paper Roll for use in the VVPAT is supplied by the manufacturer, therefore
three sets of these material may be procured from the manufacturers. Apart from this adequate
numbers of black paper envelope and plastic boxes may also be procured for storing the Printed
Paper Slips of VVPAT after counting of votes for each polling station irrespective of whether these
printed slips have been counted or not.
The above instructions shall be brought to the notice of all concerned.
Yours faithfully,
(K.N. BHAR)
Copy to
1. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director
Bharat Electronics Limited
Nagavara, Outer Ring Road
Bangalore-560045.
2. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director

Electronics Corporation of India Limited
Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.
3. Zonal Secretary/Under Secretary

164 Annexure-I
Mock Poll Certificate
This is certified that I, ……………… Presiding Officer at the Polling Station No……….of
……………………..Assembly Constituency (or the ……………………………Assembly segment under
……………………………Parliamentary Constituency) conducted the mock poll at ……….. AM today, the
poll day i.e. ………………(date), following scrupulously all the instructions issued by the Election
Commission of India, using –
CU of Serial No. (as printed on back-side of the CU)……………………………………………
BU of Serial No. (as printed on back-side of the BU)……………………………………………
VVPAT Unit of Serial Number (if used)…………………………………………………………
1. A total of ……… votes were cast for each candidate and also for NOTA.
2. It was verified that the LED light was getting lit up against the correct candidate/NOTA button,
when the button was pressed and beep sound was properly heard.
3. The candidate-wise detail of votes polled during mock-poll and result displayed, is as under:
S. No. Name of the Candidate Number of votes Number of votes Number of Printed Votes Cast and
cast during mock displayed in CU Paper Slips, as per Result displayed
poll on checking the counting on & Printed Paper
result checking mock poll Slip count (if
result (if VVPAT VVPAT used)
used) Tallied with each
other (YES/NO)
NOTA
Total
4. I have cleared the memory of the EVM after the mock poll and verified that the memory
has been cleared, by pressing the Total button and seeing the Total is shown as ‘0’.
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General/Bye-Election to……………………………………………………………………………….
Sl. No. and Name of Parliamentary/Assembly Constituency………………………………………….
No. and Name of Polling Station………………………………………………………………………
FORM OF DECLARATION BY ELECTOR UNDER RULE 49MA OF CONDUCT OF

ELECTIONS RULES, 1961
1. I hereby solemnly declare and affirm under sub-rule (1) of Rule 49 MA of the Conduct of
Elections Rules 1961 that the paper slip generated by the printer attached to the Balloting Unit has
shown the name and/or symbol of a candidate other than the candidate for whom I voted by pressing
the concerned blue button against the name and symbol of the candidate of my choice on the
Balloting Unit. I am ready to cast a test vote again to show that the allegation made by me is true and
bonafide.
(2). I am aware of the penal provisions of Section 177 of the IPC that I shall be liable to be punished
with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to one
thousand rupees, or with both, if the declaration given by me in para 1 above to the Presiding Officer
appointed under Section 26 of the RP Act, 1951 is found to be incorrect.
Signature/Thumb impression of the Elector

Name of the Elector…………………………….
Father/Mother/Husband’s Name……………….
Part No. of elector roll………………………….
Sl. No. of elector in that Part……………………
Sl. No. in Register of Voters (Form 17A)……….
Dated………………..
Certified that the above declaration was made and subscribed by the elector above named
before me.
Signature of the Presiding Officer

…………………………………
Dated…………
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169 ANNEXURE - V
PLEASE COME AND VOTE
“ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA HAS INTRODUCED VOTER

VERIFIABLE PAPER AUDIT TRAIL TO ENABLE YOU AS A VOTER
TO PHYSICALLY VERIFY THE VOTE CAST BY YOU”
PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING

WHEN YOU GO TO CAST VOTE
WHEN YOU PRESS CANDIDATE’S BUTTON ON BALLOT UNIT

PLEASE WATCH:
5 (!(!$+#$#(!!$()#(#'((#"$,$)&
#(
55 !'$(('"("+((%%&'!% %&#(,%&#(& %(

!$#'!!$()#( #(+#$+$(%&#(&'$+#'&!
#)"&#"#',"$!$(#($,$)&$#
555 !'(#!'$($(%'$)#+#,$) '(,$)&*$(
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/6
\214ITEM NO.55 COURT NO.5 170

SECTION XIV
CONTEMPT PETITION (C) NO. 303/2016
IN
VERSUS
(WITH APPLN. (S) FOR APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO FILE CONTEMPT
PETITION AND OFFICE REPORT)
WITH
CONTEMPT PETITION (C) NO. 745/2016 IN C.A. NO. 9093/2013
CORAM : HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJAN GOGOI
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE L. NAGESWARA RAO
For Petitioner(s)
CC 303/2016 Mr. Manoj Prasad, Sr. Adv.
Mr./Ms. Ambika Ray, Adv.
CC 745/2016 Mr. Sarvesh Bisaria, Adv.
Mr. Ashish Azad, Adv.
Mr. Nishant Bhardwaj, Adv.
Mr. Parkash Chandra Sharma, Adv.
For Respondent(s) Mr. Ashok Desai, Sr. Adv.
Mr. S.K. Mendiratta, Adv.
Page No. 1 of 2

O R D E R
Having heard the learned counsels for the parties,
we direct the Election Commission of India to bring on
record the approximate time within which the entire system
of VVPAT can be introduced subject to grant of sanction and
release of funds as and when required. We also request the
learned Solicitor General of India to assist the Court
insofar as sanction and release of funds is concerned.
List the matters after eight weeks.
[VINOD LAKHINA]
COURT MASTER [ASHA SONI]
COURT MASTER
Page No. 2 of 2
// True Copy //
171 ANNEXURE C/7
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/8
x’1
ITEM NO.44 COURT NO.4
172 SECTION XIV
CONMT.PET.(C) NO. 303/2016
IN
C.A. NO. 9093/2013
VERSUS
(WITH OFFICE REPORT)
WITH
CONMT.PET.(C) NO. 745/2016 IN C.A. NO. 9093/2013
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RANJAN GOGOI
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE NAVIN SINHA
For parties: Mr. Ranjit Kumar, SG
Mr. Neeraj Kishan Kaul, ASG
Mr. S.S. Ray, Adv.
Mr. Ashok Panigrahi, Adv.
Mr. Ankit Roy, Adv.
Mr. Sri Om Swarup, Adv.
Ms. Anil Katiyar, Adv.
Mr. Ranjit Kumar, SG
Mr. S.S. Ray, Adv.
Mr. M.K. Maroria, Adv.
Mr. Manoj Prasad, Sr. Adv.
Ms. Ambika Ray, Adv.
Mr. Ashutosh Dubey, Adv.
Ms. Sarvesh Bisaria, Adv.
Mr. Prakash Chandra Sharma, Adv.
2
Mr. Ashok Desai, Sr. Adv.
Mr. S.K. Mehndirata, Adv.
O R D E R
The contempt petitions are closed in terms of the
signed order.
[VINOD LAKHINA]
COURT MASTER [ASHA SONI]
COURT MASTER
[SIGNED ORDER IS PLACED ON THE FILE]
1
IN
BACKWARD & MINORITY COMMUNITY
EMPLOYEES FEDERATION
(BAMCEF) ...PETITIONER(S)
VERSUS
SYED NASIM AHMAD ZAIDI ...RESPONDENT(S)
WITH
IN
[SWAMI ISHAVARDAS SINGH VS. NASIM ZAIDI]
173
ORDER
1. During the pendency of the present
contempt petitions certain developments
have taken place as evident from the
relevant information placed by Shri Ranjit
Kumar, learned Solicitor General appearing
for the Union of India as well as Shri
Ashok Desai, learned Senior Counsel
appearing for the Election Commission of
India.
2
2. From the materials laid before the
Court it appears that on 19 th
April, 2017
the sanction of the President of India for
purchase of 16,15,000 Voter Verifiable
Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) at an estimated
cost of Rs.3,173.47 crore (excluding taxes
and freight as applicable) from M/s Bharat
Hyderabad has been conveyed to the Election
3. Pursuant to the above, on 21 st
April, 2017, the Election Commission of
India has placed orders with M/s Bharat
Hyderabad for purchase of 8,07,500 VVPAT
units from each of the aforesaid firms
indicating September, 2018 as the outer
limit for procurement of the said units.
3
4. Shri Ashok Desai, learned Senior
Counsel for the Election Commission of
India has also placed a set of written
instructions received by him from the
Election Commission of India which
indicates that all the VVPAT machines
should be available by September 2018 and
such machines should be available for
deployment in the next General Elections to
constitute 17 th
Lok Sabha. Paragraphs 3 and
4 of the written instructions which deal
with the above are as follows:
â¬ S 3. It is submitted that on
this schedule it is anticipated
that the all VVPATs machines
should be available by
September, 2018 and should be
able to be deployed by and be in
situ by February, 2019. As a
result all VVPAT Units would be
available by March, 2019 which
is the expected commencement
date of next General Elections
to constitute 17 th
Lok Sabha.
4. That for General
Elections for Parliament alone
4
there are more than 10,00,000
polling stations and as such
equal
required.
number
A
of VVPATs
margin is
are
however,
174
necessary in case there are
simultaneous elections in some
constituencies and also for
reserves.
5. In view of the aforesaid
developments that have taken place we are
of the view that the present Contempt
Petitions ought not to be entertained any
further. We accordingly close the contempt
petitions in the light of the developments
noticed and mentioned above.
....................,J.
(RANJAN GOGOI)
...................,J.
(NAVIN SINHA)
NEW DELHI
APRIL 24, 2017
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/9
175
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi-110 001
PRESS NOTE
No. ECI/PN/37/2017 Dated: 9th May, 2017
ECI EVMs are Non-Tamperable
The Election Commission, through media, has learnt about a so called

demonstration of tampering of ‘look-alike’ EVM. In this context it should be
understood that it is possible for anyone to make any electronic gadget
which ‘looks-like’ ECI EVM and demonstrate any Magic or Tampering. Very
simply put, any 'look-alike'' machine is just a different gadget, which is
manifestly designed and made to function in a ‘tampered’ manner and has
no relevance, incidence or bearing on the Commission's EVMs. It is common
sense that gadgets other than ECI EVMs can be programmed to perform in a
pre-determined way, but it simply cannot be implied that ECI EVMs will
behave in the same manner because the ECI EVMs are Technically Secured
and function under an elaborate Administrative and Security Protocol. Such
so called demonstration on extraneous and duplicate gadgets which are not
owned by the ECI cannot be exploited to influence our Intelligent Citizens &
Electorate to assail or vilify the EVMs used by the Commission in its
electoral process.
Election Commission of India (ECI) has scheduled an All Political

Parties meeting on 12th May 2017 for EVM Issues and other Electoral
Reforms. The Status Paper on ECI EVMs is available on ECI’s website
(http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/current/StatusPaperonEVM_09052017.pdf)
which gives details of Safety and Security Measures taken by ECI to make
ECI EVMs non-tamperable.
(Dhirendra Ojha)
Director
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/10
176
Electronic Voting Machines in India: A Status Paper 1

177
Electronic Voting Machines in India: A Status Paper

2
178
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
The Journey of EVMs in India 3
Socio-Political Feedback 8
Legal Interventions & Court Cases 9
Indian EVM : Design and Manufacturing Protocol 11
EVM safety and Security: Technical & Administrative 13
Technical Experts Committee (TEC) 27
Evolution and Incorporation of Technology in EVMs 29
International Comparison 30
VVPAT 35
Recent Issues and Controversies 37
Present Status 39
Conclusion 40
Annexures 42

179
Abbreviations & Acronyms
AC Assembly Constituency
BEL Bharat Electronic Limited
BU Balloting Unit
CU Control Unit
DRM Direct Recording Machines
ECI Election Commission of India
ECIL Electronics Corporation of India Limited
EMB Election Management Body
ERC Electoral Reforms Committee
EVM Electronic Voting Machine
HC High Court
IIT Indian Institute of Technology
OTP One Time Programmable
PC Parliamentary Constituency
PSU Public Sector Undertaking
SC Supreme Court
TEC Technical Experts Committee
VVPAT Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail

4
180
Introduction:
• India is the largest Participatory Democracy of the world, with about 850 million
registered voters. The Constitutional mandate of superintendence, direction and control
of Elections to the Parliament and the State Legislative Assemblies has been conferred
on the Election Commission of India.
• The Election Commission of India is an independent Constitutional entity, which

has successfully conducted regular elections to the Parliament and various State
Legislative Assemblies for the past 66 years in a free, fair, participative, informed and
credible manner. The Commission is widely acknowledged as a ‘’Global Gold Standard’’
in Election Management across the World, setting ever-higher standards of efficient
and professional conduct of Elections.
• The Commission has been at the forefront of embracing, adopting and implementing
the latest technological advancements in improving and fine-tuning the election
processes and systems. The Commission has taken the pioneering initiative of
introducing Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for recording, storing and counting of
votes across the length and breadth of the Country in a transparent, credible and
secure manner, backed by appropriate legal support. The use of EVM demonstrates
the Commission’s unflinching resolve to continually improve, upgrade and strengthen
the Electoral Process in the country.
• The Commission has successfully used EVMs in conducting 107 General Elections
to the State Legislative Assemblies and 3 Lok Sabha Elections over the last 23 years.
The List of States, along with the years in which 100% EVMs were used in the
Assembly Elections is placed at ANNEXURE - 1.
• 55.41 crore (554 million) voters exercised their franchise in 2014 Lok Sabha elections
using EVMs.
• Since the very inception of the EVMs in 1982, as a positive electoral reform on the
electoral scene in India, blames and aspersions have been cast on the EVMs from
various quarters including political. Recently, after the announcement of the results
of the five State Assembly Elections in March 2017, again certain allegations have
been leveled against the EVMs. A group of thirteen political parties met the Commission
on 10 April 2017 and expressed certain reservations about the use of EVMs.

181
• It needs to be emphasized that the wide range of technical security, administrative
protocols and procedural safeguards mandated by the Commission robustly ensures
the integrity, non-tamperability and credibility of the EVMs. The stringent procedures
and well-defined poll processes prescribed by the Commission protect the EVMs
against any sort of manipulation.
• It is also significant to highlight that the Commission is committed to the 100%

coverage of VVPATs in all future elections to the Parliament and State Assembly
Elections. The requisite funds for the procurement of adequate number of VVPATs
and latest generation (M3) EVMs have been sanctioned by the Government and
machines are expected to be manufactured and delivered by BEL and ECIL to the
ECI by September 2018 as committed by the manufacturers.
• At the present juncture, when EVMs are once again encumbered with yet another
debate on its efficacy and robustness, it is imperative to hold consultations with
stakeholders.

2
182
The Journey of EVM in India
• Voting system in India has gone through multiple changes. During the first two General
Elections to the Lok Sabha in 1952 and 1957, each candidate was allotted a separate
ballot box pasted with the symbol of the candidate. The names and symbols of the
candidates were not printed on the ballot paper and voters had to drop an pre-printed
ballot paper in the ballot box of the candidate of their choice. This system ignited
fears of tampering, booth capturing, and manipulation in the minds of the various
stakeholders and was soon replaced. In 1960-61, a marking system on the ballot
paper was introduced during the mid-term elections to the Legislative Assemblies in
Kerala and Odisha and this system continued till the 1999 Lok Sabha elections.
• Before introduction of the EVM, the ubiquitous Ballot papers were used to cast
votes in the Indian Elections, with considerable success. The use of ballot papers was
time consuming, prone to malpractices like booth-capturing and ballot-box stuffing,
large number of invalid votes due to wrong/incorrect marking, subject to prolonged
counting drills, more disputes and delayed result announcement besides being an eco
logically straining and non environment friendly method.
• However, in comparison, EVM has substantial comparative and noticeable advantages.
i. The manner of voting by EVMs is much more simpler and voter-friendly as

the voter is merely to press the button on BU for casting his votes in favour
of the candidate of his choice.
ii. Under the EVM system, there is no invalid vote, whereas in the ballot paper
system large number of ballot papers were invalidated and in some cases, the
number of such invalid ballot papers was even more than the winning margin
of the elected candidate.
iii. It is auditable, transparent, accurate, secure and helps reduce human error.
iv. It gives faster results in hours, which is particularly relevant in large countries
like India having Constituencies of several hundred thousand voters, where
counting used to take days and weeks earlier.
v. In addition, EVM voting saves time, energy and money, not to speak of the
millions of trees it saves in the process.

183
vi. Earlier crores of ballot papers were printed requiring hundreds of tonnes of
paper for printing the same and the printing of ballot papers had to be
undertaken in large number of Government Presses for very long periods,
involving hundreds of election officials in each constituency.
vii. Additionally, the innovative use of advancements in modern electronics for

voting in the country provides for a fulsome endorsement of the creativity,
inventiveness and pioneering acumen of the Indian society at large and serves
to enhance the image and prestige of the country in the international arena.
• As can be easily appreciated, the weight of cumulative comparative experience of

conducting elections for over 7 decades, both with ballot papers and EVMs, and the
numerous undeniable merits in the use of EVMs, render the EVMs as a preferred
instrument of casting votes.
• Quite evidently, the use of ballot papers was a traditional, anachronistic and archaic
voting method. In order to overcome the aforementioned problems associated with
the erstwhile practice of using ballot papers, and also to keep updated with the
advances of technology, the ECI mooted the idea of EVM in 1977.
• In 1977, Mr. S.L. Shakdhar, the then Chief Election Commissioner of ECI, during a
tour in Hyderabad requested the Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) to study
the possibility of using an electronic device for conducting elections. The Electronics
Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), Hyderabad, a PSU of the Atomic Energy Ministry,
was assigned the task to design and develop an electronic gadget for conducting
elections. In 1979, a proto-type was developed and its operation was demonstrated by
the ECI before the representatives of political parties on 6th August, 1980.
• The Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bengaluru, a Defense Ministry PSU, had also
developed a “microcomputer based voting equipment, which they had used for the
elections for the various unions of the company”. In January 1981, BEL approached
ECI for manufacturing EVMs and on 29th July, 1981, the Commission held a meeting
with the representatives of BEL, ECIL, the Ministry of Law and Chief Electoral
Officers of some states regarding use of EVMs in elections.
• On 19th May, 1982, the ECI issued directives under Article 324 of the Constitution
of India for the use of EVMs and conducted elections at fifty polling stations using

4
184
the machines in a bye-election in 70-Parur Assembly Constituency (AC) of Kerala on
an experimental basis. The EVMs were further used in 10 Bye-elections across the
country in 1982-83. However, due to the absence of any specific law prescribing the
use of EVMs, the election was challenged in a petition (Election Petition 01 of 1982
filed by A.C. Jose) and on 5th March, 1984, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India held
that EVM cannot be used in an election unless a specific provision is made in law for
its use. Consequently, the law was amended by the Parliament in December 1988 and
a new Section 61A was included in the Representation of the People Act 1951, there
by empowering the ECI to use EVM. The amendment came into force on 15th
March, 1989. The Supreme Court upheld the Constitutional validity of Section
61A in its judgment in AIADMK versus Chief Election Commissioner and Others
{(2002 UJ(1)387}.
• However, doubts and speculations regarding this new entrant in the voting system of
India persisted in the political atmosphere of the country. In order to gain popular
trust and affirm the integrity of the new electronic voting system, the Government of
India instituted an Electoral Reforms Committee (ERC) in January 1990, consisting
of representatives from several national and state-level political parties under the
chairmanship of Mr. Dinesh Goswami. The ERC recommended the examination of
EVM by a team of technical experts.
• Consequently, a Technical Expert Committee was formed under the chairmanship of

Mr. S. Sampath , Chairman, RAC, DRDO with eminent scientists like Dr. P.V. Indiresen
(IIT, Delhi), Dr. Rao C. Kasarbada (ER&DC, Trivandrum) in the list among others.
The members of the TEC have always been renowned professionals of technical
excellence and eminent academic/research record. In April 1990, the Expert
Committee unanimously recommended the use of EVMs without any further loss
of time marking it technically sound, secure and transparent. On 24th March, 1992,
necessary amendments to the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961 were notified by the
government vis-à-vis the use of EVMs.
• In 1998, a general consensus was reached on the use of EVMs for conducting Indian
elections. In 1998, EVMs were used in 16 Legislative ACs across three states of Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Delhi. The use of EVMs further expanded in 1999 to 46
Parliamentary Constituencies (PC), and later, in February 2000, EVMs were used in
45 ACs in Haryana state assembly polls. In 2001, the state assembly elections in

185
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, and West Bengal were completely conducted using
EVMs. All state assembly elections thereafter witnessed the use of this machine. In
2004, the EVMs were used in all 543 PCs for the elections to the Lok Sabha. A new
technologically advanced voting system completely replaced the erstwhile voting
method of using ballot papers. Since 2000, India has witnessed 107 State Assembly
Elections and 3 General Elections to the Lok Sabha (2004, 2009, and 2014) where
votes were cast and recorded using the EVMs (Annexure 1)
• A number of technological changes were made in the EVMs in 2001 and the
machines were further upgraded in 2006. The pre-2006 era EVMs are known as ‘M1
EVMs’, while EVMs manufactured between 2006 to 2010 are called ‘M2 EVMs’. The
next generation of EVMs, produced since 2013 are known as ‘M3 EVMs’.
• The latest addition to the Indian EVM is the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
(VVPAT), which was introduced in 2013, as an additional measure of transparency
in the EVM-based voting system. The task of developing a VVPAT model was
assigned by the Commission to the EVM manufacturers under the expert guidance
of the Technical Expert Committee (TEC). A prototype was manufactured and field
trials were conducted in Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Delhi, Cherapunjee (Meghalaya),
Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) and Leh (Jammu & Kashmir) in July 2011. Following the first
field trials, the Commission directed the manufacturers to re-design the VVPAT.
• A second field trial was conducted in July-August 2012 after the new model was
manufactured. On 19th February, 2013, the final model was approved by the TEC.
The model was demonstrated to the political parties in a meeting on 10th May,
2013. The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 were amended and notified on 14th
August, 2013, thereby, allowing the ECI to use VVPATs along with EVMs. On 4th
September, 2013, VVPATs were first used in the bye-election for 51-Noksen AC in
Nagaland.
• In the meanwhile, on 8th October, 2013, in a Public Interest Litigation matter, the
Hon’ble Supreme Court directed the ECI to introduce the VVPAT system in a phased
manner. In 2013, the ECI had procured 20,000 VVPATs which were used in different
elections. In 2017 during the recently concluded State Assembly Elections, 53500
VVPATs were used in 33 ACs in Punjab, 6 ACs in Manipur, 3 ACs in Uttarakhand, 30
ACs in Uttar Pradesh, and 40 ACs in Goa.

6
186
EVM in Indian Elections
Date Chronology of Events
1977 ECI mooted the idea of EVM
1979 A proto-type was developed
6th August, 1980 Demonstration by ECI before the representatives of political parties
January 1981 BEL approached ECI for manufacturing EVMs
29th July, 1981, ECI held a meeting with the representatives of BEL, ECIL, the
Ministry of Law and Chief Electoral Officers of some state
19th May, 1982 EVMs first used in 70-Parur AC in Kerala
1982-83 EVMs used in 10 Bye-elections in different parts of the Country
5th March, 1984 Supreme Court of India held that EVMs cannot be used in
elections without a specific provision in law.
December 1988 A new Section 61A was included in the Representation of the
People Act 1951 (The Supreme Court upheld the validity of section
61A in 2001)
15th March, 1989 The amendment came into force
January 1990 Electoral Reforms Committee (ERC) formed by Government of
India
April 1990 Technical Experts Committee recommended the use of EVMs
24th March, 1992 Necessary amendments to the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961
were notified by the Government
1998 A general consensus was reached on the use of EVMs for conducting
Indian elections.
1999-2004 EVMs used in different state assembly elections
2004 - 2014 EVMs used in three consecutive elections to the Lok Sabha
14th August, 2013 The Conduct of Elections Rules 1961 were further amended and
notified to provide for VVPATs
4th September, VVPAT was first used in a bye-election for 51-Noksen AC in Nagaland
2013,
8th October, 2013 Hon’ble Supreme Court directed the ECI to introduce the VVPAT
system in a phased manner
2013 – present Limited number of VVPATs introduced in phases by ECI
April 2017 Approval received for purchase of 16,15,000 VVPATs at a cost
of Rs. 3173.47 Crore during 2017-18 and 2018-19. All required
VVPATs will be procured by the Commission by September, 2018,
subject to manufacturing exigencies.

187
Socio-Political Feedback
• The use of EVMs meant an amalgamation of technology and trust, tradition and
modernity, like moving away from horse-drawn carriage to motor vehicles.
• In 1982, when EVM was first used in Kerala, a candidate Sivan Pillai challenged its use
even before the election. But, Kerala High Court did not entertain his challenge and
EVM was introduced as a pilot project. Interestingly, Mr. Pillai, the challenger, won
the election when the result was declared. However, Mr. Pillai’s opponent challenged
the introduction of EVMs thereafter. The said election was re-conducted with paper
ballots after Supreme Court ruling in 1984.
• However, the 1984 SC ruling against EVMs had been on a legal technicality, and not
about their fundamental suitability, and the legal glitch was corrected through amendment
of the Representation of the People Act 1951 in 1988.
• The introduction of EVMs for voting in India was met with certain reservations
considering the large scale illiteracy and socio-economic backwardness plaguing large
parts of the country. It was often asserted by the naysayers that the multitudes of
poor, illiterate, down-trodden, especially in the rural areas, would face hardships and
problems in accessing the EVMs and may get dis-enfranchised out of ignorance,
lack of voting education or awareness. However, the concerted and focused information,
education and communication programmes launched by the Commission, especially
to spread awareness and familiarity with the EVMs and its commitment to reach the
last elector, effectively nullified all reservations and doubts in this regard. It is
heartening to see the cross-section of Indian society eagerly and positively embracing
the EVMs and actively and enthusiastically participating in the electoral process by
casting their votes on EVMs.
• Since the advent of EVMs on the electoral scene certain aspersions on its use have
been cast from various quarters, including political parties and individuals. To meet
the challenge raised against the EVMs, the ECI, as an extra-ordinary measure, threw
an open challenge to all stakeholders between 3rd and 7th August, 2009 to come
forward and prove if the ECI-EVMs could be tampered. None of them could prove
that EVMs could be tampered.
• In 2017, after the results of the 5 State Assembly elections were declared, some political
parties have again cast aspersions on the credibility of EVMs.

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Legal Interventions and Court Cases
• Since 2001, the issue of possible tampering of EVM has been raised before various
High Courts. Some of these are mentioned below:
(a) Madras High Court-2001

(b) Kerala High Court-2002
(c) Delhi High Court-2004
(d) Karnataka High Court- 2004
(e) Bombay High Court (Nagpur Bench)-2004
• Analysis: All the aforementioned High Courts after going through various aspects
of the technological soundness and the administrative measures involved in the use
of EVMs, have held that the EVMs are credible, reliable and totally tamperproof. In
some of these cases, even the Supreme Court has dismissed appeals filed by some
petitioners against High Court orders.
• In 2004, this matter was placed before the Delhi High Court by advocate Pran Nath
Lekhi who had alleged that EVMs were tampered with to favour UPA in the election
results. But HC found no merit in the petition. In this context, the Hon’ble Karnataka
High Court held that “This invention is undoubtedly a great achievement in the electronic and
computer technology and a national pride”. The order was delivered on a plea filed in 1999
by a defeated candidate who had challenged the role of EVM machines in Yelahanka
parliamentary constituency. The court studied the safety features and examined BEL
scientists and ruled that machines were tamper-proof and any attempt to doctor them
cannot be kept away from the public eye.
• Both the Karnataka High Court and the Madras High Court observed that use of
EVMs in election has several advantages over the system of ballot paper/ballot box
election. The Hon’ble Madras High Court also categorically ruled out any question of
tampering of the EVMs. The following observations made by the Madras High
Court may be taken note of:
“There is also no question of introducing any virus or bugs for the reason that the EVMs cannot
be compared to personal computers. The programming in computers, as suggested, has no bearing
with the EVMs. The computer would have inherent limitations having connections through Internet
and by their very design, they may allow the alteration of the programme but the EVMs are
independent units and the programme in EVM is entirely a different system.”

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• The Bombay High Court (Nagpur Bench) examined certain witnesses who claimed to
be experts in the field of electronics and electronic gadgets. These witnesses, however,
admitted before the Court that tampering of EVMs was not possible unless the
persons new entire things and had free access to the machines.
• In one of the cases, the Hon’ble High Court of Kerala in its order dated 6th February,
2002 had recorded its appreciation on the efficiency of the EVM mechanism. The
judgment of the Kerala High Court in the said Election Petition was upheld by the
Hon’ble Supreme Court in Civil Appeal (AIR 2003 SC 2271). It is admitted before
various courts that the data or technique brought in use of EVM in India were not
subject to piracy as nobody knows anything about the contents of any type or has any
unauthorized or free access to EVM.
• In Oct 2013 to bring about greater transparency the Hon’ble Supreme Court directed
ECI to introduce VVPAT in phased manner.
• Till date, 33 (thirty-three) cases have been filed in the various Courts (including various
High Courts and Supreme Court) , where the issues pertaining to EVMs have been
agitated. Of these, 26 (twenty six) petitions have already been rejected by the Courts
and the remaining are under judicial process.

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Indian EVM: Design and Manufacture Protocol:
• Indian EVMs and VVPATs are manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited (PSU
under Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India) and Electronics Corporation of
India Limited (PSU under the Department of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India). The
software of EVMs is developed in-house by a selected group of Engineers in BEL
and ECIL independently from each other. This select software development group
of few engineers design and develop the source code. After completion of software
development, testing and evaluation of the software is carried out by another
independent testing group in the PSUs as per the software requirements specifications
(SRS). This ensures that the software has really been written as per the requirements
laid down for its intended use only. The original source code for the EVM is stored
by PSUs under controlled conditions at all times and is not accessible to anyone
outside the software development group of PSUs.
• In M1 and M2 EVMs manufactured till 2010, Machine code compiled from source
programme code was given to the micro controller manufacturer for writing in ONE
TIME PROGRAMMABLE (OTP) micro controllers. From this machine code, the
exact original source code cannot be read. For such OTP microcontrollers, the code
once programmed cannot be modified and cannot be read by any means. The techno-
logical advancements permit the writing of the machine code into the chips at PSU
premises, hence in M3 (post 2013) EVMs, the program is burnt into the chip at PSU
premises itself. Due to absence of requisite facilities to produce micro-controllers in
India these are procured from manufacturers abroad.
• Up on receipt of machine code, the micro controller manufacturer verifies against any
modifications during transit and programs this code in the micro controller in the
OTP area and initially provides engineering samples of programmed chip to PSUs
for evaluation. These samples are then assembled into the EVM, evaluated and
verified for authenticity of code and functionality at great length. Bulk production
clearance by PSU is given to micro controller manufacturer only after successful
completion of this verification.
• During production of EVMs in the factory, functional testing is carried out by

production group as per the laid down Quality plan and performance test procedures.
Samples of EVMs from production batches are regularly checked for functionality by
Quality Assurance Group, which is an independent unit within the PSUs.

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• Post supply to ECI, the EVMs are kept, transported and used under strict administrative
and secure conditions. When used for elections they are operated and kept in full view
of stake holders and media scrutiny.
• The EVM software is so designed that it allows a voter to cast the vote only once.
The vote can be recorded by a voter from the ballot unit only after the Presiding
Officer enables the ballot unit from Control Unit. On press of “candidate” button by
voter, the voter sees lighting of red LED near the candidate button, and a long beep
is heard signifying that vote has been recorded. The CU machine is designed not to
receive any signal other than that from BU. It cannot respond to any outside signal
(nor receive any signal from outside at any time). The next vote can be recorded only
after the Presiding Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit for the next voter.
In between, the BU becomes dead to any signal from outside (except from the
Control Unit). Vote stuffing is not possible due to a specially designed feature that CU
cannot accept another vote in less than 12 seconds. Votes are date and time stamped,
and no votes can be cast before or after the poll.
• Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail system (VVPAT) was introduced in 2013 to
provide even greater transparency to the poll process. The VVPAT is an additional
unit attached to the EVM, which prints a small slip of paper that carries the symbol,
name and serial number of the candidate voted by Voter, which is visible for 7 (seven)
seconds in the viewing window. The voter after pressing the button on BU can view
the printed slip on VVPAT through the viewing window and thus can verify that the
vote is recorded for the Candidate of his/her choice. These paper slips are automatically
cut and stored in a sealed compartment of VVPAT and can be used later to cross
check the votes in CU as per the prescribed procedure by ECI. The printing of slip
in VVPAT is an additional verification to the voter, besides glowing of LED near
candidate button and the beep in EVM system. VVPATs are being introduced in
phased manner. At present 53500 VVPATs are available with ECI for use in
Elections. Pursuant to the approval of the Government, ECIL and BEL have
committed to manufacture and supply 16,15,000 VVPAT machines required for
conduct of General Elections to Lok Sabha 2019 to the Election Commission by
September 2018.

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EVM Safety and Security Features:
• The machines are non-tamperable, both due to technological measures, and
also due to strict administrative and security procedures laid out by ECI,
whereby no access to EVM/VVPAT is allowed to any unauthorized person. Hence,
these are protected from any tampering/manipulation whether before the polls, or
during the polls, or after the polls, in storage or transportation from manufacturer to
the State/District or vice versa, or when transported from one state to another.
• Technological safeguards that contribute to non-tamperability of EVM

are the following.
i. EVM used by the Commission is a stand-alone non-networked, one time-

programmable (OTP) machine, which is neither computer controlled, nor
connected to the internet or any network; and hence, cannot be ‘Hacked’.
ii. The machine is electronically protected to prevent any tampering/manipulation.

The programme (software) used in these machines is burnt into a One Time
Programmable (OTP)/Masked chip so that it cannot be altered or tampered
with.
iii. The software of EVMs is developed in-house by a selected group of

Engineers in BEL (Defence Ministry PSU) and ECIL (Atomic Energy
Ministry’s PSU) independently from each other.
iv. After completion of software design, testing and evaluation of the software
is carried out by an Independent Testing Group as per the software requirements
specifications (SRS). This ensures that the software has really been written as
per the requirements laid down for its intended use only.
v. After successful completion of such evaluation, machine code is given to the

micro controller manufacturer for writing in the micro controllers. From this
machine code, the source code cannot be read. Source code is never handed
over to anyone outside the software group of PSUs.
vi. Micro controller manufacturer initially provides engineering samples to PSUs

for evaluation. These samples are assembled into the EVM, evaluated and
verified for functionality at great length. Bulk production clearance by PSU is
given to micro controller manufacturer only after successful completion of
this verification.

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vii. The source code for the EVM is stored under controlled conditions at all
times. Checks and balances are in place to ensure that it is accessible to
authorized personnel only.
viii. During production in the factory, functional testing is done by production

group as per the laid down Quality plan and performance test procedures.
ix. The software is so designed that it allows a voter to cast the vote only once.
The vote can be recorded by a voter from the ballot unit only after the
Presiding Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit. The machine does
not receive any signal from outside at any time. The next vote can be recorded
only after the Presiding Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit. In
between, the machine becomes dead to any signal from outside (except from
the Control Unit).
x. Samples of EVMs from production batches are regularly checked for

functionality by Quality Assurance Group, which is an independent unit
within the PSUs.
xi. Certain additional features were introduced in M2 generation of EVMs

(Post-2006) such as dynamic coding between Ballot Unit (BU) and Control
Unit (CU), installation of real time clock, installation of full display system
and date and time stamping of key-pressing in EVM.
xii. The Report of the Expert Committee for the Technical Evaluation of the
Upgraded EVMs in 2006 has concluded that any tampering of CU by coded
signals by wireless or outside or Bluetooth or WiFi is ruled out as CU does
not have any radio frequency (RF) receiver and data decoder. CU accepts
only specially encrypted and dynamically coded data from BU. Data from any
outside source cannot be accepted by CU.
• Administrative Procedures laid by ECI for handling of EVMS are stringent.

The Commission has put in place an elaborate administrative system of security
measures and procedural checks-and-balances aimed at prevention of any possible
misuse or procedural lapses. These safeguards are implemented by ECI transparently
with the active and documented involvement of Political Parties, Candidates and their
Representatives at every stage, so as to build their confidence on efficacy and
reliability of EVMs. All these functions and procedures are implemented through the

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District Election Officers (DEOs), Returning Officers (ROs), Assistant Returning
Officers (AROs) and other officers and officials of the State Government concerned,
who are on deemed deputation to the ECI and are under its superintendence,
direction and control in so far as election related duties are concerned. These
safeguards are:
i. Before every election, a first level checking (FLC) is done for every EVM to
be used in the election by the engineers of the manufacturers in the
presence of political parties’ representatives. The entire FLC process is
carried out at the District level under the supervision of the DEO concerned.
Any malfunctioning EVM i.e. EVM either not switching on or not displaying
results etc., is kept separately and is not used in the election.
ii. Manufacturers certify at the time of FLC that all components in the EVM
are original. After this, the plastic cabinet of Control Unit of the EVM is
sealed using a “Pink Paper Seal”, which is signed by representatives of
political parties and stored in strong rooms. After this stage, the plastic
cabinet of control unit of the EVMs cannot be opened. There is no access
to any component of inside of EVMs.
iii. Mock poll with a few votes is conducted on every functioning EVM at the
time of FLC. Additionally, at the time of FLC, at least 1000 votes are cast
by the representatives of political parties on each of the 5% of EVMs
randomly selected by them. A printout of the results of this mock poll as
well as a sequential print out of every vote polled during the mock poll at the
time of First Level Checking of EVMs are taken out for at least 5% of
EVMs and shown to the representatives of political parties. Representatives
of political parties are allowed to pick machines randomly for this purpose.
In rest of the machines, numbers of votes polled during the mock poll are
to the satisfaction of the representatives of political parties. Representatives
of political parties are allowed to do mock poll themselves. It is all
documented by DEOs/ROs.
iv. Subsequently, stored EVMs are randomized by computer software twice,

once for allocation of machines to assembly constituencies and
second to polling stations in the presence of candidates or their
representatives before they are distributed for use in individual polling
stations. The randomization is carried out through EVM Tracking Software
(ETS) by the DEO in the presence of the representatives of political parties/

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candidates and Central Observers deputed by the ECI for complete
transparency. The lists of EVM containing serial number of EVM allocated
to particular polling station are provided to the political parties/candidates.
v. During the process of Candidate setting on the EVMs, Ballot Paper is fixed
on the Ballot Unit and the EVMs are prepared for the number of candidates
in fray in a particular constituency. It must be noted here that the arrangement of
names in the ballot paper, and hence the Ballot Unit, is in alphabetical order,
first for the National & State Recognized parties, followed by other State
Registered Parties, and then by Independents. Thus, the sequence in which
the candidates appear on the Ballot Unit is contingent on the names of the
candidates and their party affiliation and cannot be ascertained beforehand.
This arrangement of sequencing names of candidates in ballot paper
effectively precludes the possibility of any pre-determined manipulation of
software for rigging the votes. Hence, the serial number of the
candidates of any particular political party will vary in each constituency
and cannot be determined beforehand thereby ruling out any possibility
of manipulation.
vi. Once the candidate setting is done, the Ballot Unit of the EVM is also
sealed with thread/Pink Paper seals so that nobody has access to the inside
of the Ballot Unit too. These Pink seals also bear signatures of representatives
of political parties/candidate.
vii. During the time of EVM Preparation and Candidate Setting, a mock poll is
again conducted on each EVM by the RO and his designated officers in the
presence of the candidate or his agents for complete transparency. Mock poll
on each of the 5% randomly picked EVMs is then also done with 1000 votes.
A printout of the results of mock poll as well as a sequential print out of
every vote polled during the mock poll at the time of Preparation of EVMs
and candidate setting are also taken out for at least 5% of EVMs and shown
to the representatives of political parties/candidates. Representatives
of political parties/candidates are allowed to pick machines randomly
for this purpose.
viii. On the poll day, a mock poll by casting at least 50 votes is conducted at every
polling station by the Presiding Officer in the presence of the representatives
of the candidates/polling agents with their signature and a mock-poll
certificate to that effect is obtained from every Presiding Officer.

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ix. After the mock poll is over, another thread seal and green paper seals are put
on the Control Unit to block access to all buttons on the CU, except those,
which are used for the conduct of poll. These paper seals and thread seals
are allowed to be signed by the polling agents. After the poll is over,
the Presiding officer presses the “Close” button on the CU in the presence
of polling agents. Thereafter, no votes can be polled in the EVM.
x. After this, the entire EVM is sealed. Candidates and their agents are allowed
to put their signatures on the seals, which they can check for the intactness
of the seal before counting. Candidates/representatives travel behind vehicles
carrying EVMs from polling stations to counting storage rooms.
xi. In addition to this, the strong rooms where EVMs are stored, for counting
are also sealed and secured fully by Central Armed Police Force (CAPF)
guards round-the-clock. The candidates and their representatives are
allowed to put their own seals on the strong rooms. They are also allowed
to keep a watch round the clock on the strong room. Security forces are
deployed in three layers around storage rooms with Central Armed Police
Forces (CAPF) guarding the inner ring.
xii. FLC, Preparation of EVMs before poll, mock poll, etc., are mandatorily
conducted in the presence of the representatives of candidates or political
parties and duly documented.
xiii. Coupled with randomization of EVMs, the polling officials deputed to the
Polling Stations are also randomized through a 3 stage randomization process.
• Storage and Transportation Protocols:
Election Commmission of India ensures the storage and transportation of EVMs/

VVPATs remain under the strict control of ECI at all times through the following
procedures and instructions:
A. DURING NON-ELECTION PERIOD:
[Non-election period means, after passage of the Election Petition (EP) period (i.e. 45-days
from the date of declaration of the result of the last election) and upto the announcement of
next election in the constituency.]

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Physical Verification of EVMs: During non-election period, 100% physical verification of
EVMs is carried out by the District Election Officers (DEOs) annually. For this purpose, the
Commission issues a direction for opening of EVM-warehouses. On receiving direction from
the Commission, the DEOs take the following course of action:-
a) CEO/DEO shall ensure that EVM-warehouses, in which EVMs pertaining

to any election petition or court cases are stored, shall not be opened for the
purpose of physical verification of EVMs.
b) DEO shall nominate an Election authority for the purpose of opening of

EVM-warehouse [except EVM-warehouse mentioned at (a) above] and for
conducting physical verification of EVMs.
c) National and State recognized political parties shall be informed in writing, at

least 24 hours in advance, about the date and time of opening and closure
of EVM warehouse. Their authorized representatives shall be allowed to
remain present at the time of opening and closure of the warehouse. A
report shall be prepared in this regard and signature of the authorized
representatives of political parties shall also be taken on the report.
Storage of EVMs
i. EVM should be stored in Treasury, wherever possible.
ii. Where not stored in the Treasury, EVMs must be stored in a separate
warehouse where nothing other than EVM is kept.
iii. Normally the EVMs should be stored at District Head Quarters.
iv. However, if it is not possible to store the EVMs at District HQs, then EVM
storage warehouse should not be at a place below Tehsil headquarters.
v. No EVM shall be kept outside the EVM warehouse (i.e. all the EVMs should
be kept in EVM warehouse and not at any other place) for any purpose without
specific approval of the Commission
vi. EVM storage warehouse must not have more than one (1) entry point. If
there are any other doors or windows in the warehouse, they should be sealed
using brick-masonry or concrete.

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vii. Entry of EVM storage warehouse must be secured by a double lock system,
which should be held jointly by two separate officers, to be nominated by the
DEO.
viii. Warehouse must be free from dampness, pests, rodents etc. Proper fire-fighting
arrangement must be made available. Warehouse should be free from flood/
water logging risk/cracks/leakage/broken window etc. To provide an inlet/
outlet for air-circulation to avoid foul smell in strong rooms, exhaust fan may
be installed, subject to the following conditions:-
a) Exhaust fan shall be installed on the front side of the strong room,
where security guards are posted and not on the rear side;
b) Exhaust fan shall be installed at the highest point feasible, below the
roof;
c) A strong iron grill shall be installed at the vent/passage where

exhaust fan will be installed.
d) EVMs must be kept in a safe manner.
ix. Adequate security arrangement must be made at warehouse by deputing police/

security guard round the clock.
Movement of EVMs: During non-election period, EVMs shall not be moved in or out of
the EVM warehouse without specific approval of the Commission. In case of intra or inter
State shifting of EVMs, on the direction of the Commission, the following shall be strictly
followed:
i. The CEO will communicate the direction of the Commission on shifting of

EVMs to the DEO concerned.
ii. DEO(s) will issue written order to the officer in-charge for opening of
EVM-warehouse to shift the required number of EVMs.
iii. On receiving the written order of the DEO, the nominated Officer shall
identify the EVMs to be moved out and make an entry of the details of such
EVMs in the Master Stock Register/Movement Register and shall take a written
acknowledgement from the officer, who is receiving the EVM, as proof of
having received the EVMs.

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Protocol for Repairs:
EVMs found defective during the poll period or non-poll period and requiring
electronic repairs are sent to the manufacturers BEL and ECIL for repairs and are
tracked under ETS. The repaired EVMs are allocated by the Commission once the
report of repair is received from the manufacturer.
EVM Tracking Software (ETS):

The Commission has introduced an ETS as a modern inventory management system
where the identity and physical presence of all EVMS/VVPATs is tracked on real
time basis by the Election Commission of India and any movement of these
machines ordered by ECI has to mandatorily be through this system.
B. DURING ELECTION PERIOD:
Physical Verification of EVMs: If there is a general election during the year, the
DEO shall carry out 100% physical verification of EVMs during the First Level
Checking of the EVMs and send the report to the Commission through Chief Electoral
Officer in the prescribed format.
Storage of EVMs
Pre-Poll Storage: After FLC and first randomization of EVMs, EVMs shall be handed
over to the Returning Officer/Assistant Returning Officer concerned. The Returning
Officers shall follow the following guidelines:-
i) RO/ARO shall store the EVMs, allocated for his constituency, in a strong
room in the presence of representatives of National/State Level Political
Parties, under videography. EVMs meant for training and awareness of voters
shall be kept in a separate strong room so that strong room having EVMs
(including reserve EVMs) meant for poll need not be opened before
preparation of EVMs. Reserve EVMs are those EVMs which are used to
replace a malfunctioning/defective EVM on the poll day. The Reserve EVMs
are duly prepared with Candidate setting and ballot paper fixing like other
EVMs earmarked for polls and are subjected to the same standards of security
and storage protocols.
ii) Thereafter, RO shall open the strong room having EVMs (including reserve
EVMs) meant for poll at the time of preparation of EVMs (candidate
setting) in the presence of candidates/their representatives, under videography.

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iii) After preparation of EVMs at RO level, EVMs including reserve EVMs shall
again be kept in strong room in the presence of candidates/their representatives,
under videography.
iv) Thereafter, RO shall open the strong room having EVMs (including reserve
EVMs) on the day of dispersal of polling parties in the presence of candidates/
their representatives, under videography.
v) After completion of poll on the Polling Day, the polled EVMs shall be
escorted back to the strong room for storing in double lock system in the
presence of candidates/their representatives, under videography.
• Procedure to be followed for storing polled EVMs in strong room:
(i) All Presiding Officers or the Collecting Parties should deposit the voting
machines and election papers and materials at the storage centres without any
avoidable delay. Any officer who defaults in this respect will make himself
liable to disciplinary action.
(ii) Returning Officer may earmark inside the storage room or building, specified
parts of the floor space in the form of squares in advance for stacking the
voting machines received from particular polling stations. The arrangement
for this should follow the serial number of polling stations.
(iii) All Balloting unit(s) and control unit received from one polling station must
invariably be kept together at one place on the same square. The control
unit should be kept on top of the Balloting unit(s). One copy of the Part I
of Form-17 C, as filled by the concerned Presiding Officer of each polling
station, should be kept on top of the control unit pertaining to the polling
station. Sealed envelope containing the declarations made by the Presiding
Officers before the start of the poll and at the end of the poll should also
be kept in the strong room with polled EVMs. The duplicate copy of the
account of votes recorded and the paper seal account should be kept under
your safe custody along with the Presiding Officers Diary and other records
like Register of Voters(17A), reports of Sector/Zonal magistrates, Additional
inputs provided by the Presiding Officer (refer ECI instruction in this regard)
etc. Under no circumstance, these papers/records should be put in strong
room where polled EVMs are kept.

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(iv) Sufficient space should be left between rows of voting machines as they
are being stacked so that other machines received subsequently out of turn
(from the point of view of serial numbers of the polling stations) may be
kept at their appropriate allotted space without the necessity of having to
shift any of the voting machines received and stacked in earlier point of time.
(v) If any of the contesting candidates so desires, he may be permitted to post

an agent to keep watch at the place where the voting machines are stored pending
the counting and allow him to affix his own seals to the doors and windows
of the building in which voting machines have been stored in addition to the
seals that may be affixed by you. It should also be ensured that immediately
after all the voting machines have been received and stored, the room is
locked forthwith. Thereafter, no one is allowed to go in until the morning of
the day fixed for counting. If during this interval, for some unavoidable reason,
the room has to be opened you should send for the candidates or their authorized
representatives by giving them intimation in writing and open the room in
their presence and immediately after the purpose for which the room is
opened is over, this room should be closed and sealed and the candidates or
their representatives should again be allowed to put their seal on the door
lock and windows.
(vi) Whenever it is necessary to open the room in which the voting machines are
stored, proper entries should be made in the logbook giving details of the
persons entering the room, the purpose of such entry, time of entry, time of
exit, signature of the guards, etc.
These instructions will also apply mutatis mutandis to the storage of the
voting machines during the interval between the original count and the
recount, if any.
Post-Poll Storage: The following instructions shall be strictly followed for the security
and safety of strong rooms where the polled EVMs are kept for counting of votes –
i The strong rooms should have double lock system. One key should be kept
with District Election Officer and the other with Returning Officer of
concerned assembly constituency.
ii Three cordoned security arrangements should be made round the clock for
the strong rooms having polled EVMs kept for counting of votes. The CPF
should man the innermost perimeter security immediately outside the strong
room and the State Armed Police should man the outermost perimeter security.

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iii All contesting candidates should be intimated in writing to depute their
representatives to keep a close watch on security arrangement of strong
room. They should be allowed to stay outside the inner perimeter at a
location, which enables them to view the entry points of the strong room. As
far as possible, facilities such as proper shade, drinking water, etc. shall be
provided to them. If there is no direct view to the entry point of the strong
room, CCTV may be arranged at such location, from where they can see the
strong room door on CCTV. In such a case, they may be taken periodically
to the inner perimeter in batches, to see, verify and satisfy themselves regarding
the security of strong room. The CCTV display of Strong Room shall be
arranged on a large TV screen at the place earmarked for the representatives
of Political Parties and agents of the candidates, so that they can continuously
monitor the Strong Room.
iv A control room adjacent to the strong room SHOULD BE operative round

the clock.
v A Gazetted officer along with a senior police officer should be put on duty
round the clock for monitoring the security arrangements of strong room.
vi There should be sufficient arrangement of fire extinguishers near and inside

the strong room.
vii There should be an arrangement round the clock for the security of unused
EVMs also.
viii No one should be allowed to enter the inner perimeter without adhering the
following protocols:-
a) The log book shall be maintained by the CPF in which entry should
be made about date, time, duration and name(s) of person(s) crossing
the second security ring i.e. the middle perimeter. This includes visits
by the Observers or DEOs or SPs or candidates or their agents or
any other person.
b) Video cameras should be provided to the CPF contingent to record

all visits made by such visitors.
ix It should be ensured that there is uninterrupted power supply at the strong

room locations during the entire period wherein EVMs are stored. CEO
may address the Chairman of Electricity Board concerned separately regarding
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this. Local Electricity Board officials should be asked to ensure the same.
Contingency arrangement of stand-by generators should be made to ensure
uninterrupted power supply.
x The phone nos. of CEO, Addl. CEOs, DEC in-charge in the ECI and the
DEO/SP/COP/ROs concerned should be given to the candidates, who may
provide the same to their representatives, keeping vigil at the strong room
location(s). The candidates may advise their representatives to contact the
officials, in case of any emergency.
xi All the entry points (doors etc.) of strong rooms should be under constant
videography using the web-cams and laptops available. If there are other
doors of the strong room, they should also be covered by the web-cams/
videography.
xii Returning Officers should visit the storage campus (upto the inner perimeter
only) every day in the morning and evening and check the log book and
videography and send a report to the DEO on the status every day. In case
of strong rooms located in the district headquarters, the DEO should do the
same. Where the strong rooms are situated outside the District Headquarters,
DEO should visit the same as frequently as possible and at least once in 3 to
4 days.
xiii No vehicle, including that of any official or ministers or any other political
functionary, should be allowed inside the secured campus where the EVMs
are stored. Alighting point for the vehicles should be marked clearly ahead
of the outer security perimeter itself beyond it, it should be a pedestrian zone
only.
xiv DEOs and SPs shall be personally responsible for security of strong room
within the district and meticulous implementation of the protocol. The copy
of this Manual should be made available to all candidates, DEOs, ROs and
CPF commandant.
xv On the day of counting of votes, the strong room shall be opened in the
presence of candidates/their representative, RO and Observer under
videography.
xvi After completion of counting of votes, Control Units shall be sealed as

per existing instruction of the Commission. Thereafter, EVMs (Balloting
Units and Control Units) shall be shifted back to Strong Room for safe storage.

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• Under rule 94(aa) of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, the guidelines of
the Commission on retention period of the EVMs after using in election and
for using the same in the subsequent elections, are as under:
A. Every Voting Machine (EVM) used in an election and kept in the custody of
the District Election Officer shall be kept untouched, under the standard
protocol of security, till confirmation of Election petition position from the
High Court concerned after the completion of the period for filing Election
Petition i.e. 45 days from the date of declaration of the result.
B. In the case of elections, where no election petition has been filed or no other
court cases are pending, after the aforesaid period, the EVMs may be allowed
to be used by the Election Commission for any future election or any other
purpose like movement, physical verification of EVMs, etc.
C. In case of any election where election petition has been filed, the following
action shall be taken:-
(i) If the EVMs are the subject of the election petition, the EVMs used
at all Polling Stations in the constituency concerned shall continue to
be kept in the safe custody of the District Election Officer, till such
time the Election Petition is finally disposed of by the Courts.
(ii) If the EVMs are not the subject of the election petition, an
application may be moved to the concerned Court for allowing the
EVMs concerned to be taken out of the strong room for any future
election or any other purpose like movement, physical verification
of EVMs etc.
(iii) In case EVMs not involved in any Election Petition/Court Case are
stored with the EVMs involved in Election Petition/Court Case,
with the Court’s permission, the following procedure shall be
followed for segregating the EVMs not involved in any election
petition/court case form the EVMs involved in EP/Court case:-
(a) A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having

EVMs involved in EP/Court Case shall be given to the
petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court Case and the
representatives of all political parties in writing at least 72
hours in advance, requesting them to remain present at the
time of opening of strong room.

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(b) The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the
District Election Officer, Petitioners/respondents of the
EP/Court case and representatives of Political Parties.
(c) The EVMs not involved in any EP/Court Case shall be

segregated from the EVMs involved in EP/Court Case for
taking out of the strong room. A list of EVMs being so
taken out from the strong room shall be prepared.
(d) The EVMs, which are not involved in any EP/Court Case,
should alone be taken out of the Strong room.
(e) The entire process shall be videographed.
(f) A copy of the list of EVMs being taken out from the strong
room and copy of videography shall be given to the peti
tioner/respondent of the EP/court case and acknowledge-
ment taken.
D. If any other Court Case is pending, like, booth capturing, etc., in which any
EVM is involved, the EVM concerned or the EVM(s) used at such Polling
Station(s) concerned may also be kept till the final disposal of the said case.
E. After the final disposal of the election petitions or other court cases, as the
case may be, referred to above, the EVMs can be used for subsequent elections.
Thus, the technological security features along with administrative

safeguards defined by ECI, together make EVMs non-tamperable,
leaving nothing to chance, whether in manufacturing, storage,
transportation or during use in elections. While design features like
using OTP chips, technical safeguards like non – connectivity of EVMs
with computers, internet, wireless or wired for any unwanted commu-
nication, and numerous internal precautions like encoding to protect
data integrity, the administrative safeguards rule out any possibility of
tampering by offering transparency via 24x7 scrutiny by party
representatives and their participation in sealing and signing important
spaces during election.
In this way the Indian EVM used by ECI is unique in the world and
non-tamperable under the control and custody of ECI.

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Technical Experts Committee (TEC)
• Composition of First Technical Expert Committee on EVMs
• Central Government appointed the Electoral Reforms Committee in January,

1990 (Goswami Committee) consisting of representative of several recognized
National and State Parties.
• The Electoral Reforms Committee felt that the machines should be tested by
technical experts with a view to removing any doubts or misapprehensions in
the minds of the public with regard to credibility of the working of the
machines and desired that a clearance from the technical experts to the effect
that doubts and misapprehension entertained about the credibility of the
machines were not well founded should be obtained.
• An Expert Committee for the evaluation of the electronic voting machines

was constituted under the chairmanship of Professor S. Sampath, Chairman
Technical Advisory Committee, Defence Research & Development
Organization DRDO), Ministry of Defence, Professor PV Indiresan of the
IIT Delhi and Dr. Rao C. Kasarabada, Director, Electronic Research &
Development Centre (ERDC), Trivandrum.
• The Committee, after a review of the material presented to it, technical

presentation by the manufacturers, meeting election administrators and
technical experts and also detailed laboratory tests, came to the conclusion
that the electronic voting machine is a secure system. The expert committee,
therefore, unanimously recommended, in April, 1990, the use of the
electronic voting machines without further loss of time.
• Composition of Second Technical Expert Committee
• The Commission constituted the Second Technical Expert Committee in

December, 2005 comprising Prof. P.V. Indiresan, Prof. D.T. Shahani of IIT
Delhi and Prof. A.K. Agarwala of IIT Delhi to get the upgraded EVMs (Post
2006 EVMs) evaluated before finally accepting these machines for actual use
in elections.
• Expansion of Technical Expert Committee

In November, 2010, the Commission expanded its Technical Expert Committee by
including two more experts, namely, Prof D.K. Sharma from Department of Electrical

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Engineering, IIT Bombay and Prof. Rajat Moona from Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, IIT of Kanpur (now, Director IIT Bhilai)
The current composition of TEC is as below:
1. Prof. D.T. Shahani of IIT Delhi

2. Prof Rajat Moona, Director IIT Bhilai
3. Prof Dinesh Sharma of IIT Bombay
4. Prof. A.K. Agarwala of IIT Delhi
• The members of the TEC are eminent professionals and renowned specialists in their
respective areas of expertise. The members of TEC have an illustrious academic
record with proven technical excellence with numerous creditable and pioneering
achievements to their credit. The fact that they hail from different Centres of
Excellence in public domain, further adds to their calibre, competence and credibility.
The honorary contribution made by the TEC towards the design and development of
EVMs/VVPATs has also been recognized by the Hon’ble President of India.
• Role of Technical Expert Committee on EVMs:

ECI has maintained an independent Technical Expert Committee to help evaluate
specific technical features, designs and performance improvement of EVMs.
The role of TEC has been to:
i. Give technical advice to build specifications and design of newer versions of

EVMs/VVPATs so that they incorporate latest Technology both in Hardware
and Software Design and Improving Robustness against Tampering
ii. Examine design proposals of manufacturers on EVMs and offer recommen-

dations for improvement
iii. Mentor designs process wherever asked.
iv. Examine concerns raised on EVMs tamperability.
v. Any other advice that Commission may seek or any other technical work that
the Commission may entrust from time to time.
• The Commission holds regular intensive and extensive meetings with the TEC and
reviews the design, technical specifications and related issues of the EVMs/VVPATs
or any other technical matter emerging from time to time.

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Evolution & Incorporation of Technology in EVMs:
• EVMs being electronic machines, are based on a fast evolving technology, both in
software and hardware. With use of EVMs in Polls, many useful suggestions have
come from public and political parties, and ECI has responded by incorporating
newer features with every version of EVM produced. Also, from time to time,
contemporary software practices as matured over time, contemporary components
as improved over time and contemporary security practices were taken into account
to ensure that EVMs of each version had the best of all practices being used.
Nonetheless, the non-tamperability of EVMs is of supreme consideration in all
versions. To that extent safety features have been used based on the technologies
available at that time and customized for the needs of the EVMs. This along with
ECI’s strict administrative practices on use of EVMs have ensured truthful
operations of EVMs over years.
• On advice of Technical Expert Committee (TEC), certain features were introduced

in EVMs from time to time, based on available technology and state-of-the-art for
hardware and software. While improvements have been brought in the designs of
EVMs which were enabled by the availability of advanced technology in Electronics
and which have led to incorporation of many features in newer EVMs, EVMs of
earlier versions also had such key features built in. Notwithstanding all this, the
non-tamperability of EVMs has been of supreme consideration in all versions of
EVMs. This along with ECI’s strict administrative practices on use of EVMs have
ensured truthful operations of EVMs over years.
• Some new features added by TEC in M2 (Post 2006) EVMs due to technological
advancements:
(i) Dynamic Coding between Ballot Unit and Control Unit.

(ii) Real time clock
(iii) Time stamping of key presses
• Some new features added by TEC in M3 (post 2013) EVMs due to latest advancements
in technology:
(i) Mutual authentication among all components of EVMs such as BU, CU and
VVPAT
(ii) Automated self-diagnostics

(iii) Battery life predication

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International Comparison:
• A point is raised from time to time that several foreign countries have discontinued
the use of voting machines and why India is using EVMs.
• With the rapid advances in technology over the years, Election Management Bodies,
professionals, experts, and activists (particularly Green Activists) have mooted the
idea of using paperless electronic voting methods in different parts of the world in
order to overcome the disadvantages of manual marking of paper ballots. The
marriage between technology and election management goes back to at least 1892,
when the first ‘lever voting machine’ was used in New York, after using the paper
ballot for a long time. In the 1960s, punch-card machines were introduced in the USA,
and the first EVM was introduced there in 1975. Electronic Voting has moved quite
ahead since then.
• Types of Electronic Voting:

The process of electronic voting can be of three types:
(i) Direct Recording Machines placed at designated polling station,

(ii) Internet Voting
• Remote Online Voting

• At Designated Polling Stations
(iii) Optical Scanners
• Stand-alone
• Networked for centralized counting of results
• EVMs used in India fall under the first type of stand-alone direct recording machines
with no possibility of any kind of network connectivity where voters cast their votes
at an assigned polling station on the day of election under strict administrative security
ensured by the ECI.
• Even though ECI EVMs are also direct recording machines ECI EVMs are completely
different from any of the EVMs used internationally either for direct recording or for
internet voting or for optical scanning. This is clearly highlighted in the comparative
analysis of ECI EVMs with the DRMs used in countries like Germany, Netherland,
Ireland, and USA as follows:

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• The Netherlands
Electronic Voting was used in The Netherlands in between 1990-2007. The voting
machines were manufactured by a private Dutch-company called NEDAP
(Nederlandse Apparaten Fabriek NV). In 2006, the government ordered an independent
testing of the voting machines. Two independent commissions, The Voting Machines
Decision-making Commission and the Election Process Advisory Commission
(EPAC) were also established on December 19, 2006 and January 18, 2007, respectively,
to review the security and reliability features of NEDAP machines.
Following the observations of the two Commissions, the use of NEDAP machines
and electronic voting was discontinued in 2007 on the following grounds:
• The Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (MOIKR) of The Netherlands

lacked adequate technical knowledge vis-à-vis the NEDAP machines, leading
officials to depend on external actors for the conduct of elections.
• Technology vendors became part of the decision making process and the
ministry was not in a position to exercise effective oversight.
• The Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research (Toegepast

Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek, TNO) certified and tested these
machines following “outdated standards” which were not immune to
modern IT and security threats.
• Moreover, the certification and testing reports were not made public depriving
independent experts to verify the analysis.
• The legal framework, particularly the necessary security requirements, was

inadequate to deal with the specificities of the electronic voting process.
(For a comprehensive report on electronic voting in The Netherlands, see link:

https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/5_Netherlands.pdf)
• Germany:
In Germany, the e-voting machines manufactured by NEDAP were used in between
2005 – 2009 before it came under criticism and finally discontinued. The Bundesver-
fassungsgericht (the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany) ordered the discon-
tinuation of the use of NEDAP machines in 2009 because of the below-mentioned
reasons:

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• The use of Nedap electronic voting machines violated the principle of the
public nature of elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and
20.2 of the Basic Law) that requires that all essential steps in the elections are
subject to public examinability unless other constitutional interests justify an
exception.
• It also observed that “it must be possible for the citizen to check the essential
steps in the election act and in the ascertainment of the results reliably and
without special expert knowledge”.
(See the judgment in the following link: http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/

SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2009/03/cs20090303_2bvc000307en.html;
jsessionid=FEA71E86E2CEE030FF7AAAC90572279C.2_cid383)
• Ireland:
NEDAP machines were used in Ireland in between 2002 – 2004. The use of these
machines was questioned following which two independent commissions were set up.
The two Commissions on the Secrecy, Accuracy and Testing of the Chosen Electronic
Voting System, concluded the NEDAP machines could not be used in elections in
Ireland on the following grounds:
• Inadequate technological safeguards
• Insecure transfer of data by the use of CDs
• Absence of a comprehensive independent end-to-end testing, verification

and certification by a single accredited body
• Inconsistencies in physical security of machines across constituencies
• Absence of a clear policy guideline via-a-vis storage, transport, set-up, use

and disposal of voting equipment; and
• Absence of comprehensive electronic register to record the identity, location

and movement of the electronic voting devices.
(See links: http://www.umic.pt/images/stories/publicacoes1/00Index.pdf; http://

www.umic.pt/images/stories/publicacoes1/Part%200%20Index.pdf)

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• United States of America:
In 2000, after the dispute on the voting method in the USA presidential elections,
the voting method was reviewed (Esteve, Goldsmith, & Turner, 2012: 185). Accordingly,
Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Systems (like the widely used AccuVote TS
developed by Premier Election Solutions, commonly called Diebold) were introduced.
DRE Systems uses “one of three basic interfaces (pushbutton, touchscreen or dial)”
through which “voters record their votes directly into computer memory. The voter’s
choices are stored in DREs via a memory cartridge, diskette or smart card…Some
DREs can be equipped with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) printers...”
Currently, in the USA, the Direct Recording Machines are used in 27 states, among
which paper audit trails are used in 15 states. The other voting methods include:
Optical Scan Paper Ballot Systems, Ballot Marking Devices, and the Punch Card
Ballot.
(See link: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/)
• Other countries:
In Brazil, the machines used in elections are called ‘electronic ballot boxes’ which are
stand-alone direct electronic recording systems. In Venezuela, SATIS (Smartmatic
Auditable Election Systems) voting machines are used which were fully implemented
across the nation in 2004. (Esteve, Goldsmith, & Turner, 2012: 185)
• India:
Indian EVMs are truly unique compared to the e-voting machines used in other parts
of the world for the following reasons:
• ECI-EVMs are stand-alone non-networked machines
• The ECI-EVMs are manufactured in two PSUs namely ECIL and BEL,
unlike machines used in other countries, which were manufactured entirely
by private entities. Hence there is no chance of involvement of vested interest
of private players or technology vendors in decision making or production
of the ECI-EVMs.
• ECI-EVMs have been time and again successfully verified and certified by an
independent Technical Experts Committee after an end-to-end testing process.
STQC under Ministry of Information and Technology, an accredited third
party entity, conducts standardization and certification of ECI EVMs
produced by manufacturers, unlike the machines used in Netherlands,

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• In ECI EVMs data is stored internally and not transferrable by any device,
unlike other countries where voting data recorded in the DRM is transferred
by means of CD, etc.
• Commission has evolved full end to end security protocol and administrative
safeguards for the use, storage, transportation and tracking of ECI EVMs,
unlike in other countries where NEDAP machines were used.
• Unlike MOIKR of Netherlands, the Commission is fully backed by a

Technical Expert Committee comprising of eminent professors.
• Every EVM has a unique number attached to it, which is recorded in the
Election Commission’s database through EVM Tracking Software. This
number of the EVM can always be cross-checked against the database.
• The software used in these EVMs is One Time Programmable (OTP), which
can’t be re-written after manufacture.
• The ECI-EVMs are always under strict, uniform, high profile administrative
and physical security as per legal framework across the country.
• Section 61 A of the Representation of the Peoples Act 1951 allows the use
of EVMs by ECI. The different High Courts across the country have also
upheld the use of EVMs time and again in various judgments and the Karnataka
High Court in 2004 declared ECI-EVMs as “national pride” because of its
transparency and robustness.
• Following the direction of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, the ECI has
introduced the technology of VVPAT in order to ensure public examinability.
The Commission is committed to implement VVPATs nation-wide by 2019.
Thus there will be 100% voter verifiability and auditability of every vote cast
as opposed to lack of such facility in the NEDAP machines which was
struck down by the German Supreme Court as un-Constitutional. Whereas
Indian Supreme Court has upheld the validity of use of EVM for conducting
elections in the country.
• Thus any comparison of ECI-EVMs with machines used elsewhere is

misplaced.

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VOTER VERIFIABLE PAPER AUDIT TRAIL (VVPAT)
• In a meeting of all political parties held on 4th October, 2010, the parties expressed
satisfaction with the EVM but some parties requested the Commission to consider
introducing Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail for further transparency and verifiability
in poll process. In India, the demand of VVPAT to increase transparency was floating
in the air for some time after such a tool was first demonstrated in New York City in
March 2001 and first used in Sacramento, California in 2002. The demand was
referred to the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) by the ECI.
• Introduction of VVPAT implied that a paper slip is generated bearing name and
symbol of the candidate along with recording of vote in Control Unit, so that in case
of any dispute, paper slip could be counted to verify the result being shown on the
EVM. Under VVPAT, a printer is attached to the balloting Unit and kept in the voting
compartment. The paper slip remains visible on VVPAT for 07 seconds through a
transparent window. The Commission referred the matter to its Technical Expert
Committee (TEC) on EVMs for examining and making a recommendation in this
regard. The Expert Committee had several rounds of meetings with the manufacturers
of EVM, namely, BEL & ECIL, on this issue and then had met the political parties
and other civil society members to explore the design requirement of the VVPAT
system with the EVM.
• On the direction of the Expert Committee, the BEL and ECIL made a prototype and
demonstrated before the Committee and the Commission in 2011. On the recom
mendation of the Expert Committee on EVM & VVPAT system, the Commission
conducted simulated election for the field trial of VVPAT system in Ladakh (Jammu
& Kashmir), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Cherrapunjee (Meghalaya), East Delhi
District (NCT of Delhi) and Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) in July 2011. All stake holders
including senior leaders of political parties and civil society members participated and
witnessed enthusiastically in the field trial. After 1st field trial of the VVPAT system,
Commission made a detailed reassessment of the VVPAT system to further fine tune
the VVPAT system. Accordingly, the manufacturers developed 2nd version of
VVPAT prototype. The same was again subjected to 2nd field trial in the said five
locations in July-August 2012.
• In the meeting of the Technical Expert Committee held on 19th February, 2013, the
Committee approved the design of VVPAT and also recommended the Commission
to take action on amendment of the rules for using VVPAT. The model was demon
strated to all the political parties in an all-party meeting on 10th May, 2013. The
Government of India notified the amended Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 on
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14th August, 2013, enabling the Commission to use VVPAT with EVMs. On 4th
September, 2013, the Commission used VVPAT with EVMs first time in bye-election
from 51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of Nagaland.
• On 8th October, 2013, the Hon’ble Supreme Court ordered introduction of VVPAT
in phases in its judgment on a PIL and asked Government to sanction funds for
procurement. As directed by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, the ECI introduced
the VVPAT system in a phased manner so that full implementation could be achieved
by 2019. In 2013, the ECI procured 20000 VVPATs. On 25th November, 2013,
VVPATs were used in 10 ACs in Mizoram; on 4th December 2013, it was used in one
AC in Delhi; and thereafter in subsequent elections.
• The following table gives us the journey of VVPAT in India at a glance:

4th Oct 2010 An all-party meeting held. Agreement on incorporation of VVPATs
along with EVMs.
July 2011 Field trial conducted after the prototype was manufactured, in
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Delhi, Cherapunjee (Meghalaya),
Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) and Leh (Jammu & Kashmir).
July-Aug 2012 A second field trial was conducted
19th Feb 2013 Final model was approved by TEC
10th May 2013 The Model was demonstrated to all political parties
14th Aug 2013 The conduct of Election Rules 1961 was amended and notified
4th Sep 2013 Election Commission of India used VVPAT along with EVMs in a
bye-elections for 51-Noksen AC in Nagaland
8th Oct 2013 Hon’ble Supreme Court directed ECI to introduce the VVPAT
system in a phased manner. full implementation to be achieved by
2019
25th Nov 2013 VVPATS were used in 10 ACs of Mizoram
4th Dec 2013 VVPAT was used in one AC in Delhi and thereafter in subsequent
elections
Feb-Mar 2017 52000 VVPATs were used in 33 ACs in Punjab, 6 ACs in Manipur, 3
ACs in Uttarakhand, 30 ACs in Uttar Pradesh and 40 ACs in Goa
April 2017 Approval of Government received for purchase of 16, 15,000
VVPATs at a total estimated cost of Rs.3173.47 Crores
• So far, VVPATs have been used in 266 Assembly Constituencies and 9 Parliamentary
Constituencies. In Goa elections in 2017, VVPAT was employed in all 40 LACs. ECI
employed about 53,500 VVPATs in five States where elections were held recently.

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Recent issues and controversies:
• After the declaration of the state assembly elections results in March 2017, some
political parties have raised doubts about the fairness of the election process through
the EVM, tagging it as tamperable, and hence an unreliable voting gadget.
• On 10.04.2017, representatives of thirteen (13) political parties met the Commission

and submitted a joint representation expressing concerns about the transparency of
voting method with the use of the EVM. Leaders of some of these parties either
met or, wrote to the Election Commission of India (ECI), expressing their
apprehensions and presenting their arguments against the use of EVM for casting
and recording popular votes. Some excerpts from the petitions and representations
made to the Commission are reproduced here:
• ‘’In view of the above, it is earnestly prayed that (a) To consider replacing/
substituting the current State CEO and Collector/DRO, Bhind. This is a
minimum expectation to instill the faith in Indian democratic polity. (b) ECI
may direct impartial and unimpeachable experts to revisit and re-verify the
authenticity of all voting machines being deployed in the two bye-elections in
MP, which must be done transparently in the presence f authorized
representatives of political parties and/or candidates. (c)…. it is necessary
that the entire process should be reexamined thoroughly and all agencies and
persons involved in the maintenance, operationalization and data feeding in
the machines and all other performing duties and responsibilities including
storage before use of EVMs in further elections and all parties should be
taken in confidence…”. (Letter dated 01.04.2017 from All India Congress
Committee)
• “With regard to the Bhind incident, kindly allow us to examine that particular
machine in the presence of your officers. There are serious apprehensions
that its software has been changed.’’ (Letter dated 03.04.2017 from Aam Aadmi
Party)
• “It is in the paramount interest of all political parties concerned, that these
incidents/allegations should be impartially investigated and the truth about
the same be placed before the people of India…It is imperative that the
Election Commission of India which has a Constitutional mandate to conduct
national and State elections in a fair, free and impartial manner, take urgent
note of the concerns and apprehensions raised by major political parties…

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till such time, the issues of tampering and malfunctions of the EVMs are
addressed and the tamper-proof and flawless functioning of EVMs is
technologically established and endorsed globally, to the satisfaction of the
political parties, the forthcoming elections should be conducted under the
old paper ballot system.” (Representation on behalf of Political Parties dated
10.04.2017)
• Two more incidents were brought to the knowledge of the Commission -

one pertaining to the recently concluded Bye-elections in Bhind (Madhya
Pradesh) and the other one relating to Dholpur (Rajasthan). The incidents
were enquired and the facts are as follows:
• The first incident pertained to the bye-election to Ater AC in Bhind

District of Madhya Pradesh in Mar-Apr 2017, wherein it was claimed
that on pressing 4 (four) different buttons on the machine, only the
symbols of one party were printed. A detailed enquiry into the
reported allegations of EVM tampering to favour a specific political
party was conducted by the Commission. The Enquiry report clearly
pointed out that the allegations were totally unsubstantiated and
baseless. The confusion was created due to the non-adherence of
the prescribed protocols and instructions of the Commission at a
mock demonstration by the competent officers, due to which the
previously stored data in VVPAT was not erased. However, the alle
gation of every button press yielding the same symbol were found
to be untrue. Nonetheless, the Commission took a serious view of
the procedural lapses and non-compliance of extant instructions
and initiated prompt action against the district level officers for the
lapse. The detailed Press Note released by the Commission in this
regard is available on the Commission’s website and is also placed at
ANNEXURE-2.
• The second incident relates to the factually incorrect and misleading

news about 18 tampered and malfunctioning EVMs in Dholpur
Bye-elections in Rajasthan. The matter was duly enquired and
contrary to the allegations, only 2 EVMs out of 231 deployed in
Dholpur AC (which is less that 1%) were found defective and
changed. The Press Release issued by the Commission regarding this
issue is also available on the website, as also placed here at
ANNEXURE-3.

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Present Status:
• Hon’ble Supreme Court in its order dated 8 Oct 2013 has observed that
EVMs with VVPAT system ensures the accuracy of the voting system. With
an intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the
confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT
systems because vote is nothing but an act of expression which has immense
importance in democratic system. The apex court appreciated the efforts and
good gesture made by the ECI in introducing VVPATs and permitted the
ECI to introduce the same in a gradual stages or geographical wise in the
ensuing general elections. The Court also directed the Government of India
to provide required financial assistance for the procurement of units of
VVPATs for the implementation of VVPAT system in a phased manner.
• Amidst the ongoing debate on the EVM, the ECI not only reaffirmed its
faith on the transparency, credibility, non-tamperability and robustness of the
machines, but also stressed on the immediate deployment of VVPATs for
safeguarding the integrity of the voting system as well as strengthening
confidence of the voters. In order to ensure the compliance of Hon’ble
Supreme Court order The Chief Election Commissioner of India vigorously
pursued the allocation of funds to the manufacturers for the timely
manufacture and supply of required quanity of VVPATs to the ECI for
ensuring 100% VVPAT coverage at all polling stations. The Election
Commission also vigorously reviewed the production capacity of the
manufacturers impressing upon them the need to strictly adhere to the schedule
by enhancing their manufacturing capacity.
• Based on Commission’s continuous follow up the funds have since been

allocated on 19 April 2017 amounting to Rs 3173.47 crore for purchase of
16,15,000 VVPATs and orders have been issued to the manufacturers. It is
pertinent to mention that Rs 1939.95 crore has been sanctioned and released
by the Government for the manufacture of M3 EVMs. The manufacturers
have committed to manufacture the EVMs and VVPATs and supply to ECI
by Sep 2018.
• The Commission is committed to using VVPAT machines along with EVMs

in all future elections to be conducted under its superintendence and
direction for the Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies.

219
Conclusion:
• As is evident, the EVM used in Indian elections have gone through a long
journey of evolution amidst challenges and has emerged as an effective
machine of electoral reform over the years since its introduction. It has
enhanced public confidence as well as legitimacy of Indian elections in the
eyes of the world.
• The Indian EVM stands as one of the most credible, non-tamperable and
transparent machine amongst all such machines used in other parts of the
world. Indian EVMs have attracted the attention of many Afro-Asian
countries also. Till date, no one could actually demonstrate that EVMs in
possession of ECI and used by it, can be tampered with or manipulated.
What has been demonstrated or claimed to have been demonstrated is on a
privately assembled “look-alike of ECI-EVMs” and not the actual ECI-EVM
used by ECI. Recently, on an allegation of EVMs yielding votes for only one
political party in Bhind (Madhya Pradesh) and Dholpur (Rajasthan), the ECI
promptly conducted an enquiry which found out that such allegations were
found to be baseless.
• Today, the ECI once again completely reaffirms its faith in the non-tamperability
of the EVMs of ECI in view of the technical security features and the stringent
administrative protocols and procedural safeguards which are mandatorily to
be followed during and after the polls. In conclusion, it will be pertinent to
refer to the verdict of the Karnataka High Court in this respect, which
observed that EVM in India is a “national pride” and the fact that Indian
elections are widely internationally acknowledged as the “Global Gold
Standard”.
• The Commission and electoral system stakeholders have taken a conscious

decision that EVM is the right answer to the formidable task of election
management and the huge logistical challenges it throws. The ECI hopes that
once the VVPATs cover all the polling booths in the country, the confidence
and transparency will be further enhanced.
• The Commission firmly believes that the introduction of VVPAT machines

with the EVMs in all future elections will bring utmost transparency and
credibility in the EVM-based voting system in our country and conclusively
put to rest all misinformed doubts and misgivings regarding these machines.

40
220
• The Commission will launch a comprehensive, concerted and nation-wide
voter education and awareness programme under its flagship SVEEP initiative,
to educate, orient and inform the voters about the functioning, usage and
advantages of the VVPAT machines and their immense utility in reinforcing
the transparency, credibility and authenticity if the voting process. The
Commission earnestly solicits the cooperation and collaboration of all the
vital stakeholders, particularly the political parties, to join hands in spreading
awareness about the advantages of VVPAT machines. The Commission is
confident that the collaborative efforts of all the stakeholders in the electoral
process will lead to continuous improvements in the electoral management
and make our system more transparent, participative, informed and credible.
• The Commission firmly believes in an open, constructive and comprehensive

dialogue with all crucial stakeholders in the electoral process and the political
parties are a critical stakeholder of the democratic edifice in the country.
Considering the recent issues regarding use of EVMs, the Commission
offered to convene an All Party Meeting. The objective behind the said meeting
is to facilitate threadbare discussions and detailed deliberations amongst the
important players in the electoral arena on this vital issue, so that all views
and counter-views are placed on the table and thrashed out transparently and
cogently. The Commission sincerely solicits the views and suggestions of the
various political parties on further improvement in the electoral system.
ANNEXURE – 1

221
ANNEXURE – 1
Name of State/UT Elections in which EVMs used
States Year Year Year Year
Andhra Pradesh 2004 2009 2014
Arunachal Pradesh 2004 2009 2014
Assam 2001 2006 2011 2016
Bihar 2000 2005 2010 2015
Chhattisgarh 2000 2003 2008 2013
Goa 2002 2007 2012 2017
Gujarat 2002 2007 2012
Haryana 2000 2005 2009 2014
Himachal Pradesh 2003 2007 2012
Jammu & Kashmir* 2000 2004 2009 2014
Jharkhand 2000 2005 2010 2014
Karnataka 2004 2008 2013
Kerala 2001 2006 2011 2016
Madhya Pradesh 2003 2003 2013
Maharashtra 2004 2009 2014
Manipur 2002 2007 2012 2017
Meghalaya 2003 2008 2013
Mizoram 2003 2008 2013
Nagaland 2003 2008 2013
Orissa 2000 2004 2009 2014
Punjab 2002 2007 2012 2017
Rajasthan 2003 2008 2013
Sikkim 2004 2009 2014
Tamil Nadu 2001 2006 2011 2016
Tripura 2003 2008 2013
Uttar Pradesh 2002 2007 2012 2017
Uttarakhand 2002 2007 2012 2017
West Bengal 2001 2006 2011 2017
Delhi 2003 2008 2013 2015
Puducherry 2001 2006 2011 2016
TOTAL: 107 State Assembly Elections
EVMs were also used in all constituencies in General Elections to Lok Sabha in 2004,
2009 and 2014.
42
222
ANNEXURE – 2
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi – 110 001.
No.PN/34/2017 Dated: 7thApril, 2017
PRESS RELEASE
Subject: Enquiry report on Bhind (MP) Episode
Special Enquiry team led by Shri Bhanwar Lal, Chief Electoral Officer, Andhra Pradesh has
submitted its report to the Commission. The team has found no anomaly or tampering in
EVM and VVPAT used during demonstration in Ater (Bhind) on 31st March, 2017. The enquiry
was instituted by Election Commission of India to enquire in to all aspects of various allegations
raised in the media and by the political parties.
2. The technical examination of the Ballot Unit (BU), Control Unit (CU) and VVPAT of
31stMarch demonstration, oral examination of the officials present during the demonstration,
data retrieved from the CU have conclusively established that during the demonstration, 4
buttons of BU were pressed in the following order:
Button No. Symbol Name of Candidate
03 Handpump Raju Pal

04 Lotus SatyaDev Pachori
01 Hand Ambuj Shukla
Therefore it is clear that on pressing of various buttons on EVMS during the demonstration,
corresponding symbols were displayed.
3. The team in its report concluded that it is completely false to say that at multiple times slips
of lotus were printed on pressing different buttons during the demonstration on 31st March
as alleged.
4. The lapse related to non-deletion of the pre-loaded data of Govind Nagar AC of Kanpur
Nagar from where VVPATs (not EVMs) were received and reloading with the symbols/data
of dummy candidate before demonstration as per the laid down protocol of the Commission
necessitate appropriate action by the Commission.
The conclusion of the enquiry committee on the allegations are as follows:

223
1. The EVMs used in the demo in Bhind was not brought from UP. However, the
VVPAT used in the demonstration was brought from UP. Since the VVPATs are limited in
number and had been used by all the poll going states during the last 5 states elections, the
distribution of VVPATs for 10 states bye-elections was made by the Commission by allocating
VVPATs from different poll-gone states to different poll-going states. In this case, the VVPAT
was allocated from UP and brought from Govind Nagar AC of Kanpur Nagar,UP.
2. Bringing the VVPAT from UP is not in violation of law. As per the law, only the
EVMs used in the Poll and the VVPAT slips contained in the box are required to be preserved
for the period of 45 days in a secured manner for the purpose of Election Petition, if any.
There is no bar on the movement of VVPATs machines as the same are not required to be
preserved for Election Petitions as the paper slips printed through the VVPAT and contained
in the Box are required to be preserved separately. In this case, however, further precaution
was taken to move only the reserve VVPATs used as substitutes during poll on which no
restriction applies.
The Committee has recommended that the enquiry conclusively establishes that
1. The accuracy of the functioning of the EVMs and VVPATs including the said EVM/
VVPAT is beyond doubt.
2. Commission may like to fix responsibility on DEO and RO for the lapses brought out in
the enquiry reports.
3. Commission may like to prescribe check list for handling each activity relating to EVM/
VVPAT which should be mandatorily adhered to by the electoral authorities and the same
should be monitored through MIS online by the Commission. The existing instructions issued
from time to time may be compiled in the form of these checklists. The said revised checklists
laid down by the Election Commission of India regarding handling of various activities on
EVMs/VVPATs, must be rigorously followed by the entire electoral machinery from the level
of Presiding Officer to the CEO.
4. Commission may like to reiterate that there should be no room for casualness in handling
the electoral matters, least of all, such unwarranted remarks, as the sanctity of electoral pro-
cess forms the foundation of India’s democracy.
-----sd-----
(DhirendraOjha)
Director

44
224
ANNEXURE – 3

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi – 110 001.
ECI/PN/35/2017 Dated 11th April, 2017
PRESS-NOTE
Sub: Clarification on Dholpur bye poll.
A section of media has reported that 18 EVMs malfunctioned during Dholpur,

Rajasthan bye-poll held on 9th April 2017. The reports also say that the votes given to one
party were going to another party.
In this connection the report has been sought from Chief Electoral Officer of Rajasthan
and CEO has confirmed that only 2 EVMs out of 231 deployed have been changed due to
some snag during the poll process, which is less than 0.1 percent.
The Chief Electoral Officer has also informed that no complaint of mismatch in the voting
has been reported from anywhere by any voter or candidate/political party during the entire
polling period.
It is also clarified that the ECI does not have constitutional mandate to conduct rural
and urban local bodies’ elections.
In the light of above, the reports appeared in a section of media have been found to
be incorrect and baseless.
-----SD----
(Dhirendra Ojha)
Director

225

46
226

227

48
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/11
228
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi
PRESS NOTE
No.ECI/PN/39/2017 Dated: 12th May, 2017
Subject: Meeting of all Political Parties on issues related to EVM/VVPAT and other Electoral reforms
The Election Commission held a meeting with all recognised National and State Political
parties today at Constitution Club, New Delhi to discuss the following issues:
(i) EVMs and VVPATs.
(ii) Making Bribery in Elections a Cognizable Offence.
(iii) Disqualification on Framing of Charges for the Offence of Bribery in Elections
(iv) Suggestions on VVPAT Recount Rules.
07 National Parties and 35 State Parties attended the meeting.
In his inaugural address, Chief Election Commissioner Dr. Nasim Zaidi, underlined the
contribution of all political parties and stated that systemic improvements and progressive
measures aimed at improving the electoral processes and systems have been evolved by the
Commission in cooperation with all political parties.
CEC referred the queries raised by some political parties about the incidents of alleged
EVM manipulation at Bhind and Dholpur during the recently concluded Bye-elections, and
reiterated that baseless perceptions were generated about these incidents and there was no case
of biased vote results.
Commission highlighted the wide range of technical, administrative protocol and

procedural safeguards that fortify the EVMs and VVPATs against any sort of manipulation or
tampering. He said that Commission is open to hear suggestions on how to further improve
integrity and credibility of EVMs.
CEC also informed the political representatives that the Commission will hold a
challenge and offer opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that EVMs used in the
recently concluded Assemblies elections were tampered OR that EVMs can be tampered even
under the laid down Technical & Administrative Safeguards.
1
229
CEC stated that the Commission will ensure 100% coverage of VVPATs in all future
election to the Parliament and State Assembly Elections. That VVPATs slips of a percentage of
EVMs to be determined by ECI will be counted. ECI will soon evolve a framework in this
regard. To make the election process more transparent, the Commission has made proposal for
electoral reforms on misuse of money power and bribery during elections. The Commission
has also made proposal for amendments in the Income Tax Act and in the RP Act, 1951, for
enhancing transparency in the funding of political parties.
Dr. Nasim Zaidi urged the political parties to ensure their continuous and qualitative
participation at all crucial preparatory steps for elections like FLC, Randomization of
EVM/VVPAT/Polling personnel, EVM Preparation/candidate setting, Mock Poll, EVM
Sealing etc. CEC also stressed that continuous involvement is the shared responsibility of all
the stakeholders including the political parties.
CEC conveyed neutral stand and equidistance of ECI from all political parties as it has
no favourite which has enhanced India’s reputation in the eyes of Global Community.
A detailed presentation on EVM was presented by Shri. Sudeep Jain, Director General
of ECI explaining therein its secured design feature, development process, stakeholders’
participation at various levels, and administrative processes making the EVMs secure.
Representatives of the political parties presented their views & suggestions on each of
the agenda items.
Commission assured the political parties that their concerns & apprehensions regarding
EVMs have been taken note of and would be duly considered & addressed through
forthcoming challenge and further necessary actions. In respect of other Electoral Reforms,
their views/suggestions would be examined and further action would be initiated appropriately.
-sd/-
(Dhirendra Ojha)
Director
// True Copy //
2
ANNEXURE C/12
230
CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION
SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION (C)NO.13598 OF 2017
M/S. RESHMA VITHALBHAI PATEL ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
UNION OF INDIA & ORS. ... RESPONDENT(S)
AND
WRIT PETITION (CRL.) NO.41 OF 2017
MANOHAR LAL SHARMA ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. ... RESPONDENT(S)
WITH
WRIT PETITION (C) NO.209 OF 2017
ATATUR REHMAN ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
WITH
BAHUJAN SAMAJ PARTY NATIONAL TREASURER ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
O R D E R
Signature Not Verified

1. In the counter affidavit filed on behalf of the
Digitally signed by
SARITA PUROHIT
Date: 2017.08.16
Election Commission of India, it is sought to be asserted

16:27:41 IST
Reason:
1
as under : 231
“4.10 Thereafter, pursuant to release of the
requisite funds by the Government of
India on 19.04.2017, the Election
Commission of India published a Status
Paper on EVMs and VVPATs on its website
dated 09.05.2017, wherein inter-alia,
the commitment to 100% coverage of
VVPATs in all future elections was
reiterated.
Thereafter, an all Political

Parties meet was conducted by the
Election Commission of India on
12.05.2017, which was attended by 07
National Parties and 35 State Parties,
wherein the Election Commission of
India informed the political parties
present that it would ensure 100%
coverage of VVPATs in all future
elections to the Parliament and State
Assembly Elections, and that VVPATs
slips of a percentage of EVMs (to be
determined by the Election Commission
of India) would be counted.
Thereafter, after the conclusion

of the EVM challenge on 03.06.2017, the
Election Commission of India issued a
Press Note on 03.06.2017 itself,
wherein it reiterated its commitment to
hold all future elections mandatorily
with VVPATs.”
2. The above statement of the Election Commission of
India contained in the counter affidavit acknowledges, that
all prayers made in the group of petitions, stand fulfilled
and satisfied. It is also apparent, that the Government of
India has sanctioned funds for the purchase of the VVPAT
Units, needed during the course of the elections, which are
to take place in the immediate future. The position
expressed leaves no room for any doubt, that all future
2
232
elections will be held by using VVPAT. The above stance is
reiterated during the course of hearing by the learned
counsel representing the Election commission of India.
3. In view of the above, we are of the considered view,
that the present bunch of matters does not require any
further adjudication at our hands. All the cases clubbed
together, are accordingly disposed of in terms of the
counter affidavit filed by the Election Commission of
India, duly supported by the Government of India.
......................CJI.
[JAGDISH SINGH KHEHAR]
........................J.
[ADARSH KUMAR GOEL]
........................J.
[D.Y. CHANDRACHUD]
New Delhi;
9th August, 2017.
3
ITEM NO.1 & 4 233
COURT NO.1 SECTION III
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (C) No(s).13598/2017
(Arising out of impugned final judgment and order dated 12-04-2017

in WPPIL No.72/2017 passed by the High Court Of Gujarat At
Ahmedabad)
MS. RESHMA VITHALBHAI PATEL Petitioner(s)

VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA THROUGH THE JT. SECRETARY & ORS. Respondent(s)
WITH
W.P.(CRL.) NO.41/2017(PIL-W)
W.P.(C) NO.209/2017 (PIL-W)
W.P.(C) NO.225/2017 (X)
Date : 09-08-2017 These petitions were called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ADARSH KUMAR GOEL
HON'BLE DR. JUSTICE D.Y. CHANDRACHUD
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Nizam M. Pasha,Adv.

In SLP 13598/2017 Mr. Dilip Patel,Adv.
Mr. Rafik Lokhandwala,Adv.
Ms. Pragya Baghel,AOR
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Manohar Lal Sharma, In-person(Not present)

in WR 41/2017
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Asad Alvi,Adv.

In WC 209/2017 Mrs. Saba Asad,Adv.
Mr. Faiz Rizvi,Adv.
for Mr. Satya Mitra,AOR
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Shail Kr. Dwivedi,Adv.

In WC 225/2017 Mr. Siddharth Krishna Dwivedi,Adv.
Ms. Vibha Dwivedi,Adv.
Ms. Nidhi Dwivedi,Adv.
for Mr. G.V. Rao,AOR
For Respondent(s) Mr. K.K.Venugopal,Attorney General for India

(UOI) Mr. Abhinav Mukherji,Adv.
Ms. Rukhmini Bobde,Adv.
Mr. Anish Kumar Gupta,Adv.
Mr. S.S. Shamshery,Adv.
4
234
Mr. Chandra Shekhar Suman,Adv.
Mr. R.K. Rajwanshi,Adv.
for Mr. Mukesh Kumar Maroria,AOR
for Election Mr. Amit Sharma,Adv.

Commission of India Mr. Dipesh Sinha,Adv.
Ms. Ayiala Imti,Adv.
Mr. Annam D.N. Rao,AOR

Mr. A. Venkatesh,Adv.
Mr. Rahul Mishra,Adv.
Mr. Sudipto Sircar,Adv.
Mr. Sanjay Kapur,Adv.

Ms. Harleen Bains,Adv.
Ms. Shubhra Kapur,Adv.
No.3 Mr. Adarsh Upadhyay,Adv.

Mr. Amit Kumar Singh,Adv.
Mrs. Hemantika Wahi,AOR

Ms. Jesal Wahi,Adv.
Ms. Puja Singh,Adv.
Ms. Shodhika Sharma,Adv.
Mr. Sunil Fernandes,AOR

Ms. Astha Sharma,Adv.
Ms. Anju Thomas,Adv.
Mr. Adit S. Pujari,Adv.

O R D E R
The special leave petition and writ petitions are
disposed of in terms of the signed order.
(Sarita Purohit) (Renuka Sadana)

Court Master Assistant Registrar
(Signed order is placed on the file)
// True Copy //
5
ANNEXURE C/13
235
NO. 51/8/16/4/2017-EMS Dated: 30th August, 2017
To
The Chief Electoral Officers Of

All States and Union Territories
Subject: Instructions on First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs (FLC)
Sir/Madam,
In supersession of the existing instructions in the subject matter, the Commission has directed
that henceforth, the following instructions on the First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs shall be
strictly followed:
OVERALL RESPONSIBILITY OF FLC District Election Officer shall be responsible for

overall FLC process and shall ensure strict adherence & compliance of FLC instructions. District
Election Officer shall appoint an Addl./Dy. DEO fully trained with FLC process as FLC supervisor.
1. FLC when to be done:
1.1. FLC of EVMs and VVPATs shall be done before every bye-election and general election to
State Legislative Assembly and House of the People (Lok Sabha) or in any elections where
EVMs are used in future.
1.2. FLC of EVMs (Control Units and Balloting Units) and VVPATs shall commence
(a) within one month of occurrence of vacancy in case of bye-election.

(b) at least P-120 days in case of General Election to State Legislative Assembly.
(c) at least P-180 days in case of General Election to Lok Sabha.
1.3. FLC is to be done sufficiently in advance so that all checks are carried out without any
undue haste in the presence of representatives of political parties.
1.4. FLC of EVMs and VVPATs shall be completed, as far as possible, well before the issue of
notification calling the election.
236
2 Schedule of FLC:
2.1. Depending on the number of EVMs and VVPATs to be checked in FLC, the CEO shall
prepare a schedule for the FLC of EVMs in consultation with EVM manufacturers (ECIL &
BEL).
2.2. The above schedule shall be made available to the Commission for approval by P-130 days
in case of General Election to State Legislative Assembly and P-190 days in case of General
Election to Lok Sabha.
3. FLC to be done in the presence of representatives of political parties:
3.1. The schedule for FLC shall be communicated to every national and state level recognized
political party at the district headquarters under intimation to the parties at State headquarters,
in writing by the DEO at least one week before the beginning of the FLC in the district.
3.2. On the day of the FLC, representatives of all national and state level recognized political
parties authorized by the District President of the party shall be encouraged to be present.
3.3. A register shall be kept at FLC hall by the DEO in Annexure –1 in which signatures of all
political parties shall be taken every day as token of their presence.
4 Arrangements in the premises of FLC:
4.1. FLC shall be carried out in a large, well-lit, well ventilated and dust free hall. Non-heating
high illumination LED lights may be installed so that each table is brightly lit.
4.2. The hall must be spacious to accommodate the EVMs and VVPATs to be checked, officials
nominated by the DEO, engineers of BEL and ECIL and also representatives of political parties.
The requirement of tables, chairs and labours shall be assessed in consultation with BEL and
ECIL.
4.3. FLC area shall be barricaded and sanitized by police before the hall is used for FLC. It
shall be ensured that the hall is free from any other electronic device or components of
electronic devices, except those permitted by the Commission for the purpose of recording FLC
process etc.
4.4. There should be adequate arrangement of fire extinguishers and fire alarm inside and
outside the hall as FLC teams use highly inflammable thinners to clean the EVMs.
237
4.5. FLC area shall have the facilities of drinking water, toilet, first aid etc., including toilets for
women.
4.6. There shall be only one entry and exit point to the hall, which shall be guarded by armed
police force round the clock.
4.7. Every hall shall have a door frame metal detector (DFMD) & entry shall be permitted only
through DFMD. Every person who enters the hall shall be frisked at every entry. If a person
makes multiple entries in the hall, he/she shall be frisked each time the entry is made.
4.8. Entry to this hall shall be only on production of Identity Card of the authorized
officials/passes issued by the District Election Officer.
4.9. Nobody will be allowed to carry any electronic device inside the hall including cell phones,
camera and spy pens etc. Similarly, nobody will be allowed to carry anything out of the FLC
hall. A collection center for electronics items like cell phones, camera etc. shall be made outside
the hall. Only two mobiles, to be used by the election officials nominated by the DEO, shall
be allowed for marking of FLC-OK or FLC-Reject using Mobile App developed by the
Commission for this purpose. Security personnel will not allow any other equipment to be
carried into the FLC hall by the engineers except those mentioned in FLC Standard Operating
Procedure (SoP).
4.10. Arrangement of Web-casting/CCTVs/videography:
Web-casting must be done of the entire FLC process for monitoring by DEO/CEO/Commission
only. The line feed of webcasting must be closely monitored at the Control Room at DEO and
CEO level and report submitted to ECI.
4.11. A log book shall be maintained for entry and exit of every person including the officers,
representatives of political parties etc.
4.12. A separate log book (i.e. duty roaster) shall also be maintained for armed police force
deployed for FLC hall for recording the names, designation, shift duties, take over and
handover charges etc.
4.13. The Commission will send an inspection team comprising of officers of ECI/CEO,
alongwith engineers of the manufacturers to inspect the FLC hall and preparedness of FLC 3-5
days before start of FLC. DEO shall accompany this team to assess preparedness first hand.
238
5 Manpower in FLC:
5.1. FLC shall be carried out only by authorized engineers of BEL and ECIL. BEL and ECIL
shall be fully responsible for the integrity, efficiency and competence of their engineers.
5.2. List of engineers deputed by BEL and ECIL for carrying out FLC will be randomized by
the Commission for allotment of the State. District-wise allocation shall be done by CEO and
this list alongwith engineers cell numbers shall be intimated to DEO.
5.3. Manufacturers shall depute Sr. level engineers at State headquarters as well as each district
headquarters to supervise FLC.
5.3a One manager shall be appointed by BEL/ECIL for 4-5 districts & this manager shall
remain in the field for daily supervision & coordination.
5.4. No engineers, technicians or other technical staff except authorized engineers/technical

staff of BEL and ECIL shall be allowed to enter the FLC hall.
5.5. Sufficient unskilled labour shall be deployed for cleaning, unpacking and packing EVMs
and VVPATs. The requirement of labour can be assessed in consultation with the
manufacturers.
6 Work to be done during FLC:
At the time of FLC, the following activities must be undertaken:
Cleaning of machines: Removal of address tags, Ballot Papers, cleaning of superscriptions on

CU & BU, clearing of earlier poll data, dusting of CU & BU etc. These activities are carried-
out in the secured place at the FLC venue under close supervision of FLC in-charge and
Engineers deputed by manufacturers.
Visual Inspection of EVM & VVPAT: Physical inspection of Carrying Cases, EVM, VVPAT ,
Connecting Cable, Connector, Latches etc. to ensure no structural damage or breakage of plastic
parts, latches, switches etc.
Full functionality checks:
 Checking of all switches in Control Unit, Balloting Unit, doors (flaps), sealing
provisions, scratches on acrylic screen etc.
239
 Response of all switches, confirmation tests for efficacy of Control Unit, Balloting Unit
etc. – BEL and ECIL engineers shall carry out test prescribed by the manufacturers as
per the SoP to confirm that all components of the EVM are original.
 The plastic cabinets of both Control Unit and Balloting Unit of the EVMs shall be
opened by the BEL/ECIL engineers in the presence of political party representatives at
the time of FLC and the PCB and other components of EVMs will be shown to them.
BEL and ECIL engineers will certify in Annexure-2 that all the components of the
EVMs are original.
 If any EVM is found to be defective, it will be kept aside and sent to the factory of BEL
and ECIL for repairs within 7 days of completion of FLC in the district. CEO shall
club despatches from more than 1 district to economise transport..
 No electronic repair of the machine shall be carried out in the field. Changing of
electronic components of the machines in the field is strictly prohibited.
 Detailed Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) mentioning the step-by-step instructions
of checking of the machine is attached at Annexure-3. Copy of this SoP shall be pasted
prominently at FLC Hall. These instructions include a list of equipment and spares,
which the engineers shall be allowed to carry with them in FLC hall.
Conduct of Mock Poll:
 Casting of 1 (one) vote against each of the 16 candidate buttons, observation of result
and clearing of mock poll data will be done for each EVM (BU+CU).
 Additionally, mock-poll in 1% of EVMs of 1200 votes, in 2% of EVMs of 1000 votes
and in 2% of EVMs of 500 votes shall be done and a printout of the results, as well as
sequential print-out of every vote polled, shall be taken out and shown to the
representatives of political parties.
 Representatives of political parties shall be allowed to pick machines randomly for the
purpose of mock-poll. Signatures of representatives of political parties shall be taken in
a register in Annexure-4, as a token of having seen the print out and confirmation that
there is no discrepancy between the votes polled during the mock poll and results in the
sequential print out.
240
 In rest of the machines, number of votes polled during the mock poll should be to the
satisfaction of the representatives of political parties.
 Representatives of political parties shall be allowed to do the mock poll themselves, if
they so desire.
 Signatures of representatives of political parties shall be taken in a register in Annexure
–5 as a token of having done mock poll themselves.
 In case of VVPATs, mock-poll with 6 votes against each of the 16 candidate buttons
shall be done, followed by observation of result and tally of electronic count and printed
paper slips of VVPATs for each VVPAT.
 Signatures of representatives of political parties shall be taken in a register in
Annexure-6, as a token of having seen the print outs and confirmation that there are no
discrepancies between the VVPAT paper slips count and electronic count/print outs of
EVM.
7 Sealing of plastic cabinet of Control Unit of EVMs with pink paper seal:
7.1 In order to ensure that the Control Unit of the EVM cannot be opened after First Level
Checking of the EVMs, the Control Unit shall be sealed with the ‘Pink Paper Seal’ supplied by
the Nasik Security Press, in the presence of the representatives of the Political Parties present at
the time of FLC. The Pink Paper Seal shall be affixed on the portion between the Candidate Set
Section and the Result Section of the Control Unit.
7.2 FLC Supervisor shall ascertain that the EVM (BU & CU) and VVPAT are checked
properly and are FLC-OK in all respect before affixing his signature on the Green FLC-OK
stickers to be pasted on the machines. Further, he must be fully satisfied with the FLC process
before using Pink Paper Seal for sealing the FLC-OK CU.
7.3 After fixing the Pink Paper Seal, the Engineer of the Manufacturer shall put his signature
on the Pink Paper Seal; the representatives of the Political Parties shall also be allowed to put
their signature on the said seal with party name in abbreviation below the signature.
7.4 The representatives of the Political Parties present should be allowed to note down the
serial number of the pink paper seal affixed on the Control Unit.
241
7.5 A register in Annexure–7 shall be maintained to note down the serial number of the pink
paper seal used on the Control Unit by clearly mentioning the unique ID number of Control
Unit and the Pink Paper Seal number. Signatures of representatives of political parties will also
be obtained on this register.
7.6 Photocopy of this register shall be given free of cost to all National and State level
recognized political parties as soon as FLC is over.
7.7 Photocopy of this register shall also be given to all contesting candidates as soon as last
date of withdrawal of candidature is over.
7.8 Photocopy of this register should also be available at the time of candidate setting and at the
time of counting, and should be shown to candidates and their representative and
acknowledgement taken on the register.
8 Supervision of FLC:
8.1. FLC shall be carried out under the direct and close supervision of District Election Officer.
8.2 The DEO shall nominate one officer not below the rank of Additional/Deputy DEO as FLC-
Supervisor to supervise the entire process of FLC. This officer shall be present in the FLC hall
for the entire duration of FLC. FLC Supervisor shall submit a certificate in Annexure-8 to the
CEO concerned through DEO before starting of FLC to the effect that all arrangements for FLC
have been done as per ECI instructions.
8.3. District Election Officer shall invariably conduct a daily inspection of the FLC venue & FLC
process to ensure that the FLC is being carried out as per the instruction of the Commission.
The process of FLC shall be webcast & continuously recorded. Video CD will be kept in the
custody of DEO.
8.4. Webcast cameras shall be installed in the FLC hall in such a manner that the process of FLC can
be fully seen on webcast.
8.5. Control Room shall be set up at CEO office for monitoring through webcast whether FLC
instructions & procedures are being fully followed.
242
8.6. CEO shall depute teams to conduct surprise inspection of FLC process in the districts from time
to time. The report of such inspection undertaken by CEO shall be submitted to the
Commission.
8.7. After completion of the FLC of all the BUs, CUs and VVPATs and updating of FLC-status in
the ETS, DEOs shall submit a Certificate to this effect to the CEO in the format given at
Annexure-9 and CEO will submit a consolidated certificate for all the districts to the
Commission.
9 Security measures for EVMs after FLC of EVMs:
9.1. Comprehensive arrangements should be made for round-the-clock security of the strong
rooms having EVMs after First-Level-Checking.
9.2. Minimum one section of Armed personnel of State Police + State Armed Police shall be
deployed for 24 X 7 security of Strong room having FLC done EVMs/VVPATs
9.3. The entry point of strong room having EVMs after FLC shall have 24 X 7 CCTV coverage
round the clock.
9.4. There should be sufficient arrangement of fire extinguishers and fire alarm near and
inside the strong room.
9.5. A log book shall be maintained by the security personnel in which entry should be made
about date, time, duration and name(s) of anyone entering near the strong rooms. This
includes visits by the Observers or DEOs or SPs or Political Parties/candidates or their
agents or any other person.
10 Recording of FLC Status in EVM Tracking Software:
FLC status (FLC-OK or FLC-Failed) of the BUs, CUs and VVPATs for which FLC has been
completed by the Engineers, shall be updated in the ETS using ‘Shifting/FLC/Randomisation’
mobile-app on day-to-day basis. In respect of FLC-OK CUs serial number of the Pink-Paper
Seal is also required to be entered, while entering serial number of Pink-Paper Seal, it should be
ensured that only numerical number is to be entered not the alphabet pre-fixed to the numerals
(i.e. if the serial no. of pink paper seal is X 123456, only 123456 will be entered as serial no. of
pink paper seal). In case of VVPATs, the box number will always be ‘0’.
243
These instructions shall be brought to notice of all District Election Officers,
State Political Parties and other stake-holders and strict compliance ensured.
244
Annexure-1
(Attendance Register for Political Parties-FLC Hall)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of FLC hall:
Date:……………………….
S.No. Name of Name of Identity Signature of Remarks, if

National/State representative of document No. representative any.
Party political party with date
with party
affiliation
Note: If the representative of a party is absent the proof of due service of notice to the party should be
pasted in the register.
(Name and signature of engineers of BEL/ECIL with ID No.)
(Name, designation, signature of officers nominated by District Election Officer)

245
Annexure-2
(Certification of EVMs by BEL/ECIL)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of hall:
Date:
It is certified that tests prescribed by BEL/ECIL to ascertain that all components are original were
carried out on the EVMs listed below on……………... (date). On the basis of these tests it is certified
that all components of the EVMs listed below are original.
CU Identification No. BU Identification No.
(Name & signature of BEL/ECIL engineers with ID No.)
(Names of Representatives of political parties with their party affiliation and signature)

246
Annexure-3
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE FOR FLC
OF M-2 EVMs & VVPATs
1. TOOLS TO BE CARRIED BY ENGINEERS
a) Decoder Printer with accessories;
b) Screw Drivers, forceps, nose pliers;
c) Multi-meter;
d) VVPAT AC-DC adapter;
e) Symbol loading jig with Accessories (Power cable, 9 pin symbol loading cable and 9 pin PC
interface cable); or PC / Laptop with preloaded symbol loading application; and
f) RTC Jig for clock setting;
2. SPARE-PARTS AND OTHER MATERIAL TO BE BROUGHT BY ENGINEERS
a) Flaps;
b) Close Caps;
c) Latches;
d) Cables (BU, VVPAT & VSDU);
e) Buttons (Ballot, Total, Close, Result, Clear & Candidate);
g) [spare parts mentioned above (a) to (e) should be 20% of the number of EVMs/VVPATs to
be tested]
f) High Resolution Photographs of component side of CU-PCB and BU-PCB;
g) FLC Stickers {FLC-OK (Green), FLC-Failed (Red)};
h) Temper seals;
i) VVPAT Stickers (Transportation, Working and Unlock before Switch ON);
j) Coin Cells (RTC Battery); and
k) Ballot Paper of Dummy symbols;

247
FLC OF EVMs (BU & CU)
3. CLEANING OF MACHINES: Removal of address tags, Ballot Papers, cleaning of

superscriptions on CU & BU, clearing of earlier poll data, dusting of CU & BU etc. under close
supervision of FLC in-charge and Engineers deputed by manufacturers.
4. VISUAL INSPECTION OF EVM & VVPAT:
a) Open Carrying cases of Control Unit (CU) and Ballot Unit (BU) and take out the units. Remove
all tags, pink paper seal, FLC stickers, wax seals and Ballot papers.
b) Physically check all buttons, toggle switch, connectors, and doors, sealing provisions, display
and plastic body of CU for damage / breakage. Replace the broken items with good items
wherever possible and discard others.
c) Similarly, check connecting cable, connector, latches, and flaps and slide Switch and plastic
body of BU for damage / breakage. Replace the broken items with good items wherever
possible and discard others.
d) Open cabinet of CU and carryout visual inspection of PCB. Hidden components or

unauthorized rework, if any, CU should be discarded and kept aside.
e) Similarly, open cabinet of BU and carry out visual inspection of plastic parts and other and PCB
for any damage, rework etc. and replace the damaged one if feasible. If any rework, BU should
be discarded and kept aside.
f) Check the number plate and number sticker pasted on the back of CU and BU for any
mismatch.
g) Record the serial numbers and defects of rejected units.
5. FUNCTIONALITY CHECK
a)Installation of Power Pack
i) Open Battery compartment of CU

ii) Insert power pack of EVM
iii) Align power pack connector with plug in CU, Press power pack after insertion
iv) Close Battery compartment
248
b) Cable Connections
i) Open connector compartment of CU

ii) Connect BU cable to BU interface connector of Control Unit
iii) Set slide switch position of BU to 1. Unmask all 16 buttons in BU.
c) Power ON Display Sequence
i) Switch ON EVM.
ii) Observe Power ON LED glowing green in CU.
iii) Observe the following series of display messages on CU during Power ON
 EVM IS ON
 DATE and TIME
 SL NO of the Control Unit
 NO OF CANDIDATES
 BATTERY STATUS
During Power ON, if any of the following defect is observed in CU, then reject that CU.
a) If one or more segments are missing or extra segment is displayed.
b) Check Beep after Switch ON. In case of no beep or continuous beep.
c) If Green LED is not glowing during Power ON.
d) Check the serial number displayed in CU. If it is not matching with the number given on the
number plate and Number sticker pasted on the back of CU.
e) Check the Date and Time on CU display. In case of wrong Date and Time, set Date and Time
with the help of time set jig as detailed in para-17.
6. CLEARING OF PREVIOUS VOTES
a) Open the outer door of Result compartment and then open the inner door. Press CLEAR
button to delete any votes stored in CU.
249
b) If CU displays INVALID, press RESULT button. If it still displays INVALID, press

CLOSE button.
c) Once CLOSE display sequence is completed, press RESULT button and wait till CU
displays “End”. Press CLEAR button. During Clear operation, observe CU displays “0”
votes for all candidates.
7. CANDIDATE SET OPERATION
a) Press CANDIDATE SET button for setting candidates. Observe “SET CANDIDATE –
“display in CU. Press 16th button in BU to set the number of Candidates to 16.
250
BALLOT OPERATION
a) Press BALLOT button in CU. BUSY LED in CU shall glow RED and READY LED in
BU shall glow GREEN.
b) Press first candidate button in BU. Observe LED by the side of the button glow RED.
c) Beep shall be heard. Observe Busy LED in CU and READY LED in BU goes OFF.
d) Follow the instructions “a” to “c” by casting votes for all 16 candidates in BU.
e) Press TOTAL. Check number of candidates 16 and total votes 16 in CU display.
8. CLOSE OPERATION
Press CLOSE button. Observe CU displays “POLL CLOSED”.
9. RESULT OPERATION
Press RESULT button and observe the votes cast against each candidate.
10. CLEAR OPERATION AT THE END OF POLLING
Press CLEAR button and wait till CU displays “0” votes for all the candidates. Press TOTAL
to confirm Total Votes 0.
11. REJECTED UNITS
a) Reject the units found defective during the functionality check.

251
b) Identify the defects and isolate them.
c) Record the serial numbers and defects of rejected units.
12. MOCK POLL ON EVMs RANDOMLY SELECTED BY POLITICAL PARTIES
1200 votes in 1% EVMs,
1000 votes in 2% EVMs; and
500 votes in 2% EVMs
shall be done and a printout of the results, as well as sequential print-out of every vote polled,
shall be taken out and shown to the representatives of political parties.
13. SEALING OF CONTROL UNIT
Seal the Control Unit with Pink Paper seal and affix signature of Engineer and
representative of DEO. The Sl. No. of Pink Paper Seal is to be recorded along with Sl.No. of CU in
a Register.
14. DOCUMENTATION
a) Paste the FLC-OK (Green) sticker on back side of FLC-OK CU and BU. Record the Serial
Number of Control Unit and Ballot Unit and affix signature on FLC sticker.
b) Note down total numbers of CUs and BUs that are accepted after FLC in the prescribed
format.
c) Paste the FLC-FAILED (Red) sticker on back side of FLC-FAILED CU and BU. Record
the Serial Number of Control Unit and Ballot Unit and affix signature on FLC sticker.
d) Consolidate Serial numbers of defective units and defects observed in the prescribed format.
Submit a copy of the same to FLC In-charge.
15. CHANGE OF COIN CELL
a) Remove top cover of CU, replace the old RTC cell with new one and re-fix the cabinet.
252
b) Put the tamper sticker on four screws on top side. Fix the RTC cell sticker on the back of the
Control Unit.
c) Note down total number of Control Units in which RTC cells were replaced in the
prescribed format.
Tamper Sticker RTC cell sticker
16. TIME SETTING

a) Bring the CU to “Result” mode. Hold simultaneously “Result” and “Print” buttons and
switch ON CU. CU shall display “Set Time” mode.
b) Connect the Time Set Jig with CU and press “Set” button in the Time Set Jig. Current Date
and Time is set in CU.
253
c) Switch OFF CU. Again, switch ON and confirm the Date and Time.
17. CLOSING OF FLC
Put all Units in respective carrying cases and, in turn, in bulk carrying cases and releases them
for proper storage. Ensure that the rejected Units are identified with suitable stickers and kept
separately.
254
FIRST LEVEL CHECK PROCEDURES FOR VVPAT
Connector with
Connector with Blue/Green latch
Red/Black latch
VVPAT Unit VVPAT Status Display Unit

with 5 meter cable (VSDU) with 5 meter cable
( to connect to CU) (to be connected to VVPAT)
Battery pack for the Thermal Paper Roll

VVPAT unit VVPAT Carrying Case
VVPAT AND ITS ACCESSORIES
18. PHYSICAL INSPECTION OF VVPAT

a) Open the Ballot Slip Compartment and check for any ballot slips inside. If any old printed slips
with election symbols is found, report to the FLC In-charge immediately.
b) Remove previously placed address tag and FLC stickers from the VVPAT.
c) Remove any paper slips from the VVPAT, if found inside. Remove battery pack from the
battery compartment, if any, present in the VVPAT.
d) Perform mechanical inspection by checking connector and battery compartment, LOCK-
UNLOCK switch and latching/Unlatching of latches.
255
19. INSTALLATION OF BATTERY
a) Open Battery Compartment of VVPAT by pressing both the latches together and pulling the
door outwards.
b) Observe the Battery Plug present inside Battery compartment.
c) Insert the VVPAT Battery by plugging into the battery plug.
d) Close the battery Compartment door.
20. INSTALLATION OF PAPER ROLL
a) Open the Paper Roll compartment by opening the side latches and by lifting the top cover.
Observe the Paper Roll Compartment which holds the Paper roll.
b) Remove “Spindle” from its position by pulling towards upward direction.
c) Insert “Spindle” into “Thermal Paper Roll”.
d) Place the “Thermal Paper Roll” with “Spindle” into its position (i.e Paper Roll compartment)
and press it towards down.
e) Insert “Thermal Paper Roll” edge into the “Guide -Paper Entry”. Ensure that the plain paper
should be on the top surface and the printed band should be on the lower Surface of the Paper.
f) Move the paper into the slot by rotating the paper feed knob clockwise.
Paper Roll Installation steps

256
21. SYMBOL LOADING
Dummy symbols prescribed for FLC and demonstration purpose shall be loaded using
Laptop/Computer/Symbol Loading Jig for 16 candidate buttons.
22. CABLE CONNECTIONS

a) Open connector compartment of VVPAT.
b) Connect cable from Ballot Unit to BU Interface connector matching the coloured latches
(red/black connector).
c) Connect cable from VSDU to VSDU interface connector matching the coloured latches
(blue/green connector).
d) Connect VVPAT cable to BU interface connector of Control Unit matching the coloured
latches (red/black connector).
23. Testing Process:

a) Test Preparation
 1 BU, VSDU and CU are needed.

 The VVPAT should be initialized and loaded with 16 dummy-symbols.
 Make connections and operate the VVPAT.
257
 The test has to be performed under standard conditions where a new battery (Voltage >
22 V) and a new paper roll are used.
i. Ensure Lock-Unlock switch at the back-side of VVPAT is in unlock (Vertical) position.
PAPER ROLL
LOCK IN UNLOCK
POSITION
ii. Switch on the CU.

iii. After the VVPAT is turned on, the POST slip and five self-diagnostics reports are printed. In
this case, the Diagnostics report should only be checked for PASS/FAIL status as self-
diagnostics test would have been carried out on these units.
iv. Before proceeding for mock-poll, check the status of each sensor in the diagnostics reports.
Proceed to next step only if the status of each sensor is shown as “PASS” in the diagnostics
report.
v. If the status of Battery in Battery report is indicated as “FAIL”, change the battery pack and
start the test again.
vi. Put the CU in clear state
vii. Press Ballot Button on CU and verify that the Busy LED glow Red on CU and VSDU. Ready
LED on BU glow Green indicating BU is ready for Voting.
viii. Cast vote for first candidate on BU. On the selection of candidate, VVPAT prints the selection
on ballot slip.
ix. The ballot slip is displayed behind a transparent window of VVPAT for 7 seconds. Verify the
candidate number, symbol and name of the candidate in the slip. After that, ballot slip will
automatically cut and fall into the Ballot slip compartment.
x. Repeat steps from vii to ix for all the other candidates on the Ballot Unit. Check whether
VVPAT prints the selected candidate information.
258
xi. Continue polling for minimum of 96 votes i.e. by giving 6 vote to each candidate button. Note
down the Ballot voted.
xii. Press Close button on CU to Close the Poll and note down the Result by pressing Result Button
on CU.
xiii. Takeout the printed ballot slips from drop box (ballot slip compartment) and segregate
candidate-wise.
xiv. Count the candidate-wise printed ballot slips and note down the count.
xv. Tally CU result with the ballot slip count.
xvi. Clear the votes by pressing Clear button in CU. Check whether Total Votes displayed is ‘0’.
b) FLC OK CRITERIA
The VVPAT is FLC OK, if all of the following are achieved

i. The total number of votes polled as displayed on the CU screen indicates equal to
number of votes cast, when TOTAL key is pressed.
ii. “PRINTER ERROR” “CHANGE PRINTER” should not be displayed on VSDU
during the mock-poll.
iii. “1-LOW BATTERY” “CHANGE BATTERY” should not be displayed on VSDU
during mock-poll.
iv. After conduct of mock-poll, the FLC-OK (Green) Sticker duly signed by the
Engineer and representative of the District Election Officer shall be pasted on the
left side of VVPATs whose results are obtained as ‘PASS’.
NOTE-1: IF ANY VVPAT DO NOT PASS THE ABOVEMENTIONED CRITERIA, FLC-
FAILED (RED) STICKER SHALL BE AFFIXED ON THAT VVPAT.
NOTE-2: PASTE THE FOLLOWING STICKERS, ON ALL VVPATs
1. “Transportation” 2. “Working” and 3. “Unlock before Switch ON”
`
259
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CANDIDATES TEST
i. Purpose
The purpose of this test is to verify that the VVPAT is working properly with maximum number of
candidates i.e. 64. The purpose is to test that the communication protocol between VVPAT, CU and
BUs.
ii. Test Applicability
This test is applicable to VVPAT along with CU and BUs connected as a system. This test is an
extended test of polling test and is performed only on 1% of the VVPAT lot.
iii. Test Preparation
One VVPAT with 64 symbols loaded, 4 BUs, 1VSDU and 1CU are needed. Make connections and
operate the VVPAT. This test can be conducted with used Battery pack and used Paper roll (should be
sufficient for printing 64 ballot slips).
iv. Test Procedure
i. Press BALLOT key to enable the Ballot and vote for any candidate in the first BU. A
total of 4 votes to be casted by voting to one candidate in each BU.
ii. Press Close button on CU to Close the Poll and note down the Result by pressing Result
Button on CU.
iii. Tally CU result with the ballot slip count.
iv. Remove all the ballot slips from VVPAT and clear the votes by pressing Clear button in
CU. Check whether Total Votes displayed is ‘0’
v. Acceptance Criteria
The test is successful if the following conditions are met:
i. No error message is displayed on CU during the balloting process.

ii. “PRINTER ERROR” “CHANGE PRINTER” is not displayed on VSDU during the test.
Note: - Since the test is performed with a used Battery pack, the VSDU can display
“1- LOW BATTERY” “CHANGE BATTERY” during the polling of 96 votes. In that
case change the battery pack and start the test again.
260
SAMPLE REPORT FORMAT
261
ERROR CODE : 2 -PRINTER ERROR
On press of Ballot key on CU, if the error code 2 displayed on VSDU along with sequence of
messages, then switch off CU. Note down the error code observed for Printer error in the Test format.
Error code details are given below:
 Printer Error 2.1 – Abnormal Head Temperature
 Printer Error 2.3 – Printer Timeout Error
 Printer Error 2.4 – Printer Low Voltage Error
 Printer Error 2.5 – Printer Incorrect Command Error
 Printer Error 2.6 – Cutter Error
 Printer Error 2.7 – Fall Error
 Printer Error 2.8 – Printer memory Error
 Printer Error 2.9 – Contrast Error
 Printer Error 2.10 – Length Error
 Printer Error 2.12 – Platen Open Error
 Printer Error 2.13 – No Paper Error
 Printer Error 2.14– Deplete Error
262
SAMPLE OF FIRST LEVEL CHECK REPORT FORMAT OF EVMs
EVM FAILED REPORT
Date:
Place:
District/State:
Sl.No. Unique ID of BU/CU Reason for Rejection Remarks
Signature: Signature:
Name: Name:
(BEL/ECIL Engineer) (DEO’s Representative)
263
SAMPLE OF FIRST LEVEL CHECK REPORT FORMAT FOR VVPAT
Date:
Place:
FIRST LEVEL CHECK REPORT - VVPAT
District / State:
Visual Post/ Symbol Link Check Votes PASS In case of

inspection Diagnostic Loading Ok / Ok / Not Polled / Failure, Defect
VVPAT
Ok / Not report Ok Not Ok Ok (96) FAIL observed
S.No. Serial
Ok / Not Ok * (Value of
Number
parameter
causing failure)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Signature: Signature:
Name: Name :
(BEL/ECIL Engineer) (DEO’s Representative)
264
Annexure-4
(Mock Poll Result Certification During FLC of EVMs)
Date: ……………..
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of hall:
It is certified that a printout of the result of mock poll as well as a sequential print out of every
vote polled during the mock poll has been taken out from ……… EVMs picked up by me. There are no
discrepancies between the votes polled during the mock poll and result in the print out.
Sl. Name of Name of Identity Signature of Remarks, if

No. National/State representative of document No. representative any.
with party
affiliation
265
Annexure-5
(Mock Poll by Representatives of Political Parties during FLC of EVMs)
Date:……………..
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of hall:
It is certified that I have done mock poll on………….. EVMs and I am fully satisfied with the
functioning of EVMs.

with party
affiliation
266
Annexure-6
(Mock Poll certification during FLC of VVPATs)
Date:……………..
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of hall:
It is certified that the results of the printed ballot slips of VVPATs (list of unique ID of
VVPATs attached) have been tallied with the electronic result of the respective Control Units.
There are no discrepancies between the electronic count of the Control Units and count of printed ballot
paper slips of VVPATs.

with party
affiliation
Name of Engineers of BEL/ECIL (Signature)
1.
2.
3.
(Signature)………………………………………………………………….
Name of FLC-Supervisor……………………………………………..
Designation………………………………………………………………..
267
Annexure-7
(Sealing of Control Unit of EVMs using Pink Paper Seal)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date:
It is certified that the sealing of the Control Units using Pink Paper Seals has been done in my
presence. I have put my signature on the Pink Paper Seals after sealing of the Control Units and I am
satisfied with the sealing of the Control Units.
Sl.No. Unique ID No. of Control Unit Pink Paper Seal Number
S.No. Name of Name of representative of Identity document Signature of

National/State political party with party No. with date representative
Party affiliation

268
Annexure-8
(Certificate on arrangement for FLC by DEO)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date:…………………..
S.No. Particulars (Yes/No)

1 Whether FLC hall is sufficiently large to accommodate the EVMs and
VVPATs to be checked, officials nominated by the DEO, engineers of
BEL and ECIL and also representatives of political parties.
2 Whether FLC Hall well-lighted, well ventilated and dust free.
3 Whether FLC area has been barricaded and sanitized by police
4 Whether adequate arrangement of fire extinguishers and fire alarm has
been made inside and outside the hall.
5 Whether hall is free from any other electronic device or components of
electronic devices
6 Whether facilities of drinking water, toilet, first aid etc are available
7 Whether there is only one entry and exit point to the hall and guarded
by armed police force round the clock.
8 Whether door frame, metal detector are installed
9 Whether arrangement for frisking has been made
10 Whether Identity Cards for entry into the FLC hall to the authorized
officials/Representatives of political parties have been issued by the
District Election Officer
11 Whether arrangement of webcasting have been made
12 Whether log book to record entry of every person has been kept at
FLC hall
13 Whether a separate log book (i.e. duty roaster) to be maintained for
armed police force deployed for FLC hall has been kept at FLC hall
14 Whether all required registers and formats are ready and kept in FLC
hall
15 Number of Armed Police Personnel in each shift
I have personally inspected the above arrangements.
(Name and Signature of District Election Officer)

269
Annexure-9
(Certificate on completion of FLC process)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date: …………………..
It is certified that FLC process has been completed on …………………….(date) as per

instructions of the Commission on First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs. I personally inspected
FLC on following dates:
The status of EVMs and VVPATs after completion of FLC is as under:
Name Available in the District FLC Ok Quantity FLC Reject Quantity

of BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT
District
The defective EVMs and VVPATs shall be shifted to the manufacturer (BEL/ECIL)
on…………………i.e. within 7 days from the date of completion of FLC process in the district.
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/14
270
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All Statcs ancl [Jnion I.cn.itorics.
2. 'l
hc Chairman_cum_Managing
I)ircctors of
a) liharat Ijiccrronics t.im-irj.
fir",_ri"*, _a
b) r Jlccrronics
corporarion,,t' ir;,;:l;n;,i.
lry,te.aba,i.
St, hj. ct: Inslruclion: orr lrVMs
& VVI)A i.s Ilcgarciing.
Sir/Madarn.
'l'hc Commission
had co working Group to rcvrsit thc
a
protocoJs for storagc, cxisting administrativc
t.r,"t't""u
lsportation, stock_ managcm
cnt ctc, of livMs and vvl)n.l.s
cn5ûrc cnd-to-cnd sccurity to
protocor for safc, sfioth
ana transparcnt movcmcnt
and WI)Al.s and thcir of rivMs
usc in transparcnt manncr.
Consir ing thc rcport of thc group,
commission has dircctcd thc
that hcnccforth, in addition
to tho LxistinS instructions tho
fol)owing instructi,ns shall bclollowcd-
1. Transportation of EVMs
pracc to anorhcr,, j::,TJi::::",,,", orrrvMs/wr,A..s riom onc
protocols shaiJ bc strictly

",.":1:::; statc' Intra-statc otc following
)'
lbllowcd:
[a) Movcmcnt of IjVMs &I VVI)Al's
should mandatorily be donc
through I.ivM 1'racking
sofiwarc (ri.r.SJ.
[b) (lontalncrizod trucks or scaiccl
trucks on which propcr )ocking
arrangcmonts can bc
madc shali only bc uscti
[or trrnsporting IiVMs and
VVI)A'l's, so that thcsc
iockcd and scalcd with papcr could bc
scals.
[cJ Arr trucks transporting I')VMs/vv,A1's^
sha]r bc scarod with Iock
and papcr scars.
[dJ Vchiclcs with (il'S tracking
only shourd bc uscd for
movcmcnt or Iiv M
[cJ I']o]itical l)artics shail be inf6p694 /vvlrA1..
in advanccd about
warchouscs while shifting
r
& scaring of
ljvMs and vvr)A.r.s. ,,u'o"n'nt,stocking
wovcr' if no rcprcscntativc
attcnds, thc work should
not stop.
[f] I)liO to vidco-graph thc wholc proccss
of transfcr/rcccipt of
I,)VM.
7
271
(i) Transportation
from Foctory to State
[a] (i.s tracking of vchicrcs shalr bc monitorcd on
dairy basis by thc I)istrict
Officcrs^ and randomly I.rcction
monitorcd by thc Chicf I,i)c
rcport shalt bc scnt by ,,,,, monitoring
thc chicf ritcctorat ,,r..".
(b) Iior transportation
,:;:::::::::,.1
of I')VMs/w,A'r's
[ncwly manufacturc or rcpaircd) from
to statc' tranr^portation Jrrangcmcnls factory
sha]r bc donc by thc
transportation chargcs manufacturcrs..r.hc
for shifring of rcpaircd IiVMs/vvr)A,r.s
Statc/tll,allocatcrl by thc from factory ro
Commission shall bc
borr nr,n" Statc/[J'r'
[c] Manufacturcrs shalr undcrtakc conccrncd.
I)uc l)iligcncc ,o.'.cmpan
ciing/cngaging transport
companics [or transportation
of IlvMs/wl)A'1,s.
[d] (ionsigncc Statc/tJ1'shall dcputc
its orficiar ar factc
thcir starc and forow rhc personncr from
sccurirv protocor ,". ,rr..rl;tl;,n.;::'
(ii) Inter State Transportation
(a) A nodar officor at starc as

wc, as l)issict rcvcr shalr bc
coordination [or smooth
appointcrl for constant
transportation of livMs
in donor and Lrorrowcr
[b]As far as possiblc, thc CIiOs Statcs.
shall cnsurc thc locat;
rivMs/VV,A'r's bv borrowing "i.l::r::::for.co'ccrion of
stare arc in a crusrcr
,,1::
[cJ I)l]Os shall cnsurc that
nor 'rjvMs/vvr)A,s undcr
arc transfcrrcd,,.." conflict in rjl's'
J.,t:;:J;:;::l'"
(iii) Intra State Transporaation
(a] I ntra-district allocation

aLs wcil as intcr-district allocations
to bc rlonc as pcr cxisting
instructions only.
[b] AII movcmcnts of liVMs/VVI)A.l.s
shall bc donc t hrough
pcrmission of thc commission. I')'l'S and with prior
[c] In casc of cxigcncics lii<c flood or firc thc ClJ0ll)ll0

may shift thc I,)VMs/WI)A.l.s
undcr intimation to thc
fl
(d,.os wi,, cnsurc
I.)VMs/WI)A'1,s, arrangcmcn
",,";;;i'::TI i:",:ff :ff: Til,:r transportins
t ol d is^tri ct transport, arra ngcmont
trvcr and rcccipt of IiVMs for propcr handing
/vvlrA.I.s.
272
2 Storage and Security

Arrangements for EVMs &
WPATs
Ia] I'hc authoriscd rcproscntatjvcs
ol.politlcal I)artics shall bc allowcri
to witncss thc
Annual l)hysical Vcrification
ol,ljVMs & VVI)A.l.s.
[bJ I)uty Iicgistcr o[ pcrsons cngagcd
in physicai vcrification to bc
maintaincd.,l.his
rcgistcr shall bc prcscrvcd
for 5 ycars.
Ic]
ovcr and taking ovcr of kcys Ilanding

to bc a part of C1,C.
(dl Main swrtch of thc warch
ousc/strong room shou,r bc instalrcd outsiac thc
warchouse/strong room and
thc crcctricity bc disconnoctod
aftcr sca)ing thc
warchouse/ strong room to
avoid short circuiting. No cxtcrna,y
powcrcd unit
should bc jnstallcd or kcpt
insidc thc strong room.
(c) Aftcr opcning thc strong
ro'm for counting o[ votcs, complctc
virrcography of taking
out/bringing back of Con
[.lnits sha]l bc rlonc. Agcnts
of candiriatcs should also
bc allowod to watch r,.,rn,ru,
g room through CC1'V
covcragc.
[f] A rog book must bc maintaincd for thc pcrsons
who havc becn allowcd/dcputcd
to
vicw tho CC'l V. I
[g] l'hc minimum sccurity rcquircmcnt
for strong room of polJcd IjVMs
I)latoon. A logbook shall must bc 0nc
b
pcriod.
(h) 2a*6sr,oricc Sccurity
,,
Irl.C till Ijp complction pcriod.
ffffi;l T."ij::j:'l
addition, (.C'l V lrom start
ot
[iJ Sccurity: Non I)oll [l)ost Ijl) to Irl.CJ _

Minimum 1/2 Scction
I;l,C to l)olling _ Minimum
1 Scction
I)oil to ljl) - Minimum 1 I)latoon
3. Randomizations of EVMs
& WpATs: Iiandomizations of
IiVMs & WI,At.s shall
bc donc through I.i1'S only.
4. Preparation of EVMS
& WpATs fCandidare Setting)
(a] In thc writtcn invitati.n,
convcying schcdulc for prcparation of IJVMs/vVI)A,,.
scnt to thc candidatcs, it to bc
sha, bc mcntionod that thcy/their
reprcscntativcs must be
273
prcscnt to ovcrscc proparation of IJVMs/VV,)A'r's^

anrr activciy participatc in thc
mock poli proccss.
[b) Manufacturcrs shaii proviac I'rotocol/chcck)ist on prcparation

of I.)VMs/VVI)A,r.s to
l)liO/ltO bcforchand for propor watch on work
of l,)nginccrs.
[cJ Manufacturcrs shall also dcputc Sr. Lcvcl l,)nginccrs
at statc and District ]cvcls for
supcrvision and coordination during prcparation
of IiVMs/WIrA.l.s.
Replacement of defective EVMS dWpATs
on poll Day
al Bruc scrf-adhcsivc stickr:rs (r3"X2") with rhc words,*cpracccr
I,VM, or ,*cpraccd
WPAI", shall be pastcrl on thc Grccn Stickcr pastcd
on IjVM/VVIrn.l rcpfacedlurUg
po11, for idcntification.
NAME OF STATE....
t .........................
NAME OF ACIPC....
No. & NAME OF pS.
Sticker)
(Sqmple of Blue
r
b) Red sclf-adhcsive stickors [:J,,X2,,] with thc
words ,t)cfcctivc I,,VM, or ,l)cfcctive
WPA,", shall bc pastod on thc Grccn Stickcr
pastcd on tho IiVM/W,)A.,. found
dcfcctivc aftcr Iil,C and bcforc start ofpoll
for idcntification.
(Sqmple ol Red Sticker)

c) Ilcturning .fficcrs shalr be rcsponsiblc for
cnsuring, pasting ofthcsc stickcrs.
4
274
6 Repairing of defective
EVMs & WpATs
(a) No IiVMsrzWI)Al.s,
whcthcr dcfcctive or dcfcct
lrcc'
frc shail bc transportcd
pcriod from .u.-un..-""i:;:":,:-, riuring thc
:"':ct
to thc counting day cxccpt
riVMs/w,A.,.s .",,,.:;T;;:::ff::::;::rns pols in subscqucnt phascs.
thc
such casc, the poriticar partics/can In
diclatcs shau nin
c informcd in writing
the purposc of shifting convcying
of such I,ivMs/VVI)A1.s.
(b) A', l)cfectivc IiVMs/w,A1's
nor ustd in thc poJr sha,
room/warcho uscs' prcfcrably
bc strrcd in a scparatc
in a separatc campus, ifpossiblc,
storcd aiong with working and sha, ncvcr bc
EVMs/VVI)A.l.s.
[c] IrvMs/rvr']{'r's found acfcctivc
during Irr,C shalr bc scnt
rcpair within 7 davs of
to thc manufacturers lbr
compretion of Irr,C in that
district. ,.hc crio sha, coordinatc
and club dcfcctivc I.iVMs/VVIrA.l.s
of multiplc district ror
dcspatch ro thc ractory.
[d) ]ivMs/wr)[.r.s found (l,,",,.,,.,"',,,;",;;::]prc, :'srricrs
sha, bc storcd i n,
;:::L:;:il,, ":::J",.,d;ffi:;X;lif
altcr mock poll (i.c. ciur. :
tng actual poill on poll-day
shall bc storcd alongwith
IivMs/wrrA1's. polrcci
[cJ I'O51'ltt.lrc1'lON IlljpArrts:

Aftcr c]ccrion all thc dcfcrctivo
]'lVMs & VVI'A'l's shall
scnt to tho rcspcctjvc bc
[actoryibr rcpairs.
[1] After rcpairs are carricd out,
thc tcsting protocol for
all rcpaircd machincs shall
cxactly the samc as for hc
ncw IrvMs/wr)A,r,s.
Onc Officcr in thc offir

cxc,usivc,y bc an ,rivM
,,,.":;,:.:.::;;;[::l"r:- #f].l;jr)v crior shall
(MaarrN Gupla)
[,nder Sccrctarv
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/15
275
ELECTION COMMISSION OF T]\DTA

NIITVACIIAN SADAN, ASTIOKA ROAD, NEW DI.ILIII_110001
No.5 1/8/V\rPA't'/20 1 7-liMS I)atcd; 1 911' Scptcmbcr, 2017
'I'o
'l'hc Chiof Iilcctoral Olficcrs o1,

all Slatcs and [Jnion 'l'cmitorics.
subjcol: l]nivcrsal usc of votcr vcrifiablc papcr Audit'l'rail (vvpAl) wilh IlvM in all
1'uturc Gcneral and rlyc-clcctions to tho slatc Lcgislativc Asscmblios and
Lok
Sabha at all polling stations rcgartling.
Sir,
I'hc IIon'brc Supromc court of India in ordcr, datocl 0g.10.2013 in thc

i1s civil
Appcal No. 9093 of 2013, pcrmitted thc l.rcl to introducc vv}rA'l.s in gratlual
slagcs in thc
gcncral clcctions and luflhcr addcd rhat rhc arca. Slatc
or aclual booth (s) arc 1o bc dccidcd by
thc Ilcl and thc Ilcl is rrcc to in.rplcmcnt thc samc in phasod
manncr. Sincc August 2013,
vv}'}A'l's arc bcing uscd with IrVMs co.linuousry, in soloctcd conslitucncics,
as pcr thc
availability of vVPA'I's. In tho mioting of political parrics hclcl
on 121r, May, 2017 thc ,
commission announccd r00% covcragc of vvr)A'r's in alr lirtr-rrc
cicolion 1o r,ok Sabha ancr
Statc Lcgislalivc Asscmblics.
Now, thc commission has dircctcd rhat hcncoforth, vvpA]' sha bc uscci with L,lVMs
at all thc polling stations in all tho fulurc Iilcclions to thc parliamcnr
and Stalc Lcgislalivc
Asscmblics conductcd using I.)VMs.
You arc, thcrcforc, rcqucstcd 10 cnsurc thal vVIrA'l's sharl

bc uscd wilh rivMs, in all
polling stations, during Gcneral and Ilyc-ercctions to
rhc stalc r,cgisralivc Asscmblics iurd Lok
Sabha.
'l'hc abovc
dircclion of thc Con.rmission shall bc broughl to lhc noticc
ol'all conccrnc6.
(Madhuiirdan ()upta)
Undc: Sccrctary
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/16
276
ELECTIOI{ COMMISSION OF INDIA
NIRVACITAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW DELHI_110001
No. 511817 12017-trMS Dated: 29th September, 2017
To
A11 States and[Jnion Territories.
Subject: Taking out EVMs including vvPATs for training and awareness purpose-reg.
Sir/Madam,
As per existing instructions of the Commission, after FLC is over, first randomization
of EVMs and WPATs is to be done to randomly assign EVMs and VVPATs to Assembly
Constituencies (ACs) and for Training and Awareness Programs. This should be done before
the start of training of polling personnel. Generally, first randomization is done after
announcement of election by the Commission. The Commission has already directed to use
100% WPATs in all elections to the House of the People and State Legislative Assemblies.
To ensure proper awa.reness on use of VVPATs with EVMs, the Commission has directed that
after FLC of EVMs and WPATs:
(i) EVMs and WPATs may be taken out for awareness purpose whenever needed even
before first Randomization subject to an upper ceiling of 5Yoof the total allocation to
the District. However, Training EVMs and WPATs will be taken out as is being
' followed till now i.e. during first randomizationof EVMs and VVpATs.
(ii) Political Parties should necessarily be invited to witness this process from opening of
Warehouse and re-sealing of warehouse after taking out the EVMs/WpATs for
awareness. Entire process to be videographed.
(iii) The list of such EVMs and VVPATs to be used for awareness purpose shall
immediately be given to the National and State Recognised Political Parties. This list
shall also be shared with the candidates/their agents, as and when they are finalized..
(iv) A sticker of Bright Orange colour mentioning "VOTER AWARENESS,, shall be
affixed on such EVMs and VVpATs.
(v) The abovementioned EVMs and WPATs shall be stored in a safe and secure
manner
in a separate roomlhali under lock and seal with proper security. Underno
circumstances, the safety and security of these EVMs and VVPATs shall be allowed
to be compromiseds.
(vi) Such EVMs and VVPATs shall be given only to the authorised qfficials
deputed by
the District Election Officer concerned.
a
I
277
(vii) The DEO shall ensure that the officials chosen for creation of EVMA/VPAT related
awareness/IEC campaign, as well as those nominated for handling these EVMs and
WPATs must be comprehensively trained on the usage and functioning of the EVMs
and VVPATs.
(viii) Proper log book shall be maintained.
(ix) Awareness EVMs/WPATs can be added to Training EVMsA/VPATs, if required.
(x) Both Training and Awareness EVMsA/VPATs can be added to poll day reserve, if
required, after due process of FLC, randomizations and Candidate Setting in the
presence of political parties/contesting candidates/their agents.
1y,
(Madfr,rrrAffi;n*ul
tlnder Secretary
Copy to:
1. The Chairman*cum-Managing Director,

Bharat Electronics Limited,
Nagavara, Outer Ring Road,
Bangalore-5 6004 5, Karn ataka.
2. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director,

Electronics Corporation of India Limited,
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/17
ELECTION COMMISSION
278 OF INDIA
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Dclhi-110001
No.51/8NVPAT/2017-EVM Dated: 11 th October, 2017
To
The Chief Electoral. Officers of

1. Gujarat, Gandhinagar
2. Himachal Pradesh, Shimla
Subject: Verification of VVPAT paper slips-regarding.
I am directed to intimate that the Commission has directed that in the

forthcoming General Elections to State Legislative Assemblies of Gujarat and
....
Himachal Pradesh, m~ndatory verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly
selected OI (one) polling station per Assembly Constituency shall be done on a
'pilot' basis. The above mandatory verification ofVVPAT paper slips ofOI (one)
polling station (randomly selected) will be in addition to th~ provisions of Rule
56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961.
Detailed instructions for this purpose will be issued separately.
The above direction of the Commission shall be brought to the notice of all
concerned.
Your lly,
(Madhusudan Gupta)
Under Secretary
// True Copy //
/_ , ANNEXURE C/18
279
-
/
_,.
//
/ NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW DELHI-110001
No. 51/8/VVPAT/2017-EMS /
To 6 b~ 9 Dated: 13'" ()ctober, 2017

1. Gujarat, Gandhinagar
2. Himachal Pradesh, Shimla.
Subject: V crification of VVP AT paper slips- Pilot Testing - regarding.
Sir,
I am directed to state that the Commission has mandated that VVP A Ts will b~ used
with EVMs at all polling stations in all future General/Bye-Elections to the Parliament and the
State Legislative Assemblies, including the upcoming General Elections to State Legislative
Assemblies of 1-Iimachal Pradesh and Gujarat at all Assembly Constituencies. Now, the
Commission has directed that in the General Elections to State Legislative Assemblies of
Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, mandatory verification of VVP AT paper slips of randomly
selected 01 (one) polling station per Assembly Constituency shall be done on a 'pilot' basis.
The above mandatory verification ofVVPAT paper slips of 01 (one) polling station (randomly
selected) will be in addition to the provisions of Ruic 56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules,
l 961.
For this 'pilot' verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling
station per Assembly Constituency, the following procedure shall be followed:
I. The verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling station
for each Assembly Constituency shall be taken up after the completion of the last round
of counting of votes recorded in the EVMs.

2. The random selection of 01 (one) polling station per Assembly Constituency shall be
done by Draw of lots, "by the Returning Officer concerned, in the presence of
candidates/their agents and the General Observer appointed by the Commission for that
'
Assembly Constituency.
3. The draw of lots must be conducted immediately after the completion of the last round
counting of votes recorded in the EVMs (Control Units) in the designated Counting
Hall for the particular Assembly Constituency.

4. A written intimation regarding the conduct of draw of lots for the random selection of
01 (one) polling station for verification of'VVPAT Slips shall be given by the Returning
Officer to the Candidates/their election agents well in advance.

5. The following procedure shall be followed for the conduct of draw of lots:
White colour paper cards of postcard size shall be used for conducting the draw of
lots. 280 I
Total number of such paper cards should be equal lo total number of polling stations
in the Assembly Constituency.
c. The paper cards shall have prc-prihtcd Assembly Constituency number, AC name
and date of polling on the top, and the polling station number in the centre. Each
11
digit of the polling station number shall be alkast 1 x 1"(1 inch by 1 inch) size and
printed in black ink.

d. The paper cards to be used for draw of lots should be four-folded in such a way that
polling station number is not visible.

e. Each paper card shall be shown to the candidates/their agents before folding and
dropping in the container.

f. The paper cards shall be kept in the big container and must be shaken before picking
up 01 (one) slip by the Returning Officer.

6. The verification of VVP AT paper slips shall be done in a 'VVP AT Counting Booth'
(VCB), specially prepared for this purpose inside the Counting Hall. The booth shall be
enclosed in a wire mesh just like a bank cashier's cabin so that no VVPAT paper slip
can be accessed by any unauthorized person. One of the Counting tables in the c ~mnting
Hall can be converted into the VCB and can be used for normal counting of round-wise
EVM votes before the count of VVPAT slips as per random selection after the. \
completion of round-wise EVM counting. I
I
7. lbe Verification count of the VVPAT paper slips of the randomly selected 01 (one)
polling station shall be conducted strictly in accordance with the instructions of the
Commission on counting of printed paper slips.

8. The Returning Officer shall personally supervise the counting ofVVPAT paper slips at
this booth. The General Observer concerned shall ensure close and careful obs.ervation
of t he entire exercise and ensure strict compliance of the Commission's instn1ctions.
9. The above process shall be fully videographed .

10. After completion of the above process, the Returning Officer shall give a. ce(tificate in
the annexed format.

The above direction of the Commission shall be bro\-1ght to the not ice of all concerned.
(Madhusudan Gupta)
Under Secretary
,
' Hi,
Anncxurc
Pilot Testing of Counting of paper slips of VVP AT of n1 randomly selected 281
polling station
Name of State: .... ........... .. ... ....... .... .............. ... .. ... .. .. . .. ...... ··········· ····· ······
No. and Name of Assembly Constituency: ... .............. .. ... ... , ..... ,. ...... ........... .. .. ..
Sl.No. and name of Polling Station: . .... . ............. . ...... . ............... .. .... .... ......... .. ..
Unique ID of Control Unit: ............ ... ............... ..·.... .. ... ...... ... ...... .. ....... ... , .... ..
lJnique ID of VVP A1' :... .... ...................... ................ ... .......... .. .......... .... .... ..
It is certify that pilot testing of counting of paper slips of VVP AT of O1 randomly selected
polling station has been conducted as per the instructions of the Commission.
------------------···· ·--·- -·----~-··-····---·. •----•·•· · ········-·•-· •-----·--·--·---··•·----·· ----·- ·- ·- ·--·· ·- · ········ ---···· -·•·- "·- ·-·· ··••···-· -•-# ·--· --- .
Name of Candidate No. of Votes Cast
. ...................................... .. ....... ...- --··· ..
-·•····---...........,.-···---
Discrepancy if any
- ·-·- -- --··- ·······-···-···········-As_pcr.EVM____._ __. . As .pcr .Paper_Slips ________.___ .._.., - --·- - -- 1
1.
NOTA
TOTAL VOTES
Signature of Counting Agents
1 ... .. ... .. . ... . .. . ...... ..
?
-··•• · ··· ········· ··· ···· ··
3 ... ... ... .. . .... ........ ..
Signature of Counting Supervisor
Signature of General Observer
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/19
282
ELE,CTIOI\ COMMISSION OF INDIA
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi-110001
No.51/8A/VPAT]20|7-EVM Dated: l3th OctobeL2}lT
To

All States and Union Territories.
Subject: Counting of Printed Paper Slips of WPATs in case of non-retrieval of

result from the Control Unit - regarding.
Sir/Madam,
I am directed to refer to para 17.4.6 of Chapter 17 (lnstructions Relating to Counting)

of 'Manual on Electronic Voting Machine and VVPAT' (January 2017), wherein it has been
mentioned that "In case, it is'not possible to retrieve the result from the CU even after using
printer, as instructed in para 17.4.4, the printed paper slips, where VVPAT is used, of the
respective VVPAT to be counted ......"
The Commission has already directed to use VVPAT at every polling station in all
elections to the House of the People and State Legislative Assemblies. Flence, in case of non-
retrieval of result from any Control Unit, the printed paper slips of the respective WPAT shall
be counted, as per counting procedure prescribed by the Commission, for counting of printed
paper slips.
A report regarding counting of printed ballot slips of VVPAT is to be sent to the

Commission in the following format through Chief Electoral Officer concerned for
information.
htro. 8d Name of Polling - U"it ID - IJnrit ID Total No. Total l*lo. of
Assembly Station "f
Control Llnit of
( of votes printed ballot
Constituency No. from which VV,PAT recorded slips taken
result could in EVM as out of the
not be per Item 6 drop box(es)
retrieved in Part-l of
Form -17C
4 5 6 7
(Madt ,rskYaitupta)
Under Secretary
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/20
283

Madhusudan Gupta
Under Secretary
No. 51/8/VVPAT/2017-EMS Dated: 16th October, 2017
To
All States and Union Territories.
Subject: Instructions on use of EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail system
(VVPAT) - Regarding.
Sir/Madam,
In supersession of earlier instructions, the Commission has directed thatthe
following instructions on use of VVPAT system with EVM shall be strictly followed in all
General/Bye-elections to the House of the People (Lok Sabha) and State Legislative
Assemblies:
1. Training of Master Trainers, Polling Personnel and storage Personnel:
Presiding Officers, Polling Officers, Returning Officer, Assistant Returning Officers,
Sector Officers and Counting Personnel must be given hands-on-training related to their
role/duties on use of EVMs with VVPATs. Every official should get an opportunity to
operate the EVM with VVPAT system and understandthe process of recording the vote using
VVPAT. Separate training should be given on counting of printed paper slips from the
VVPAT system and tallying the count of VVPAT paper slips with the count of the Control
Unit. A copy of VVPAT brochure (Annexure-I)should be given to all officers during
training and be available at polling station on poll day.A training session may be incorporated
in the training module of State Public Administration Institutions, on operation & use of
VVPATs.
2. Awareness about use of VVPAT:
A demonstration of VVPAT system should be organized by the District Election
Officers (DEOs) for political parties, Returning Officers and electors at suitable locations.
The Returning Officers (ROs) shall arrange demonstration of VVPAT system for candidates
and electors at suitable locations in the constituency. The poster “How to Cast Your Vote
Using EVMs and VVPATs” (Annexure-II) on method of voting with VVPAT should be
pasted at prominent places of the constituencies and at places in each polling station in a
manner that voters waiting in the queue are able to read the instructions. The DEO and RO
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should also organize programmes for awareness about use of EVMs with VVPAT on print
media and local cable-network etc.A short film on How to Cast Your Vote using VVPAT
with EVM shall be made in regional language for this purpose.
NOTE: ONLY FLC-OK EVMs & VVPATs WITH DUMMY SYMBOLs
SHALL BE USED FOR TRAINING, AWARENESS AND
DEMONSTRATION.
3. Preparation of EVMs and VVPAT system for Poll:
EVMs shall be prepared according to the instructions of the Commission on the
preparation of EVMs for polls. The VVPAT system shall be prepared for poll in the
following manner as mentioned in Rule 49B [4(c) (i) – (iii)] of the Conduct of Elections
Rules, 1961:
i) The VVPAT consists of VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) and VVPAT Printer unit.
A new battery power pack shall be connected to the VVPAT unit and shut the door of
the battery compartment, but no sealing is required on battery compartment as the power
pack can be replaced if low battery status is indicated on VSDU during the poll.
ii) A fresh paper roll shall be installed in the printer unit by following the procedure
mentioned in the user manual for VVPAT.
iii) Serial numbers, names of candidates and symbols allotted shall be loaded in VVPAT
with the help of engineers. A test printout shall be checked with the ballot paper in
Balloting Unit (BU).
iv) Then one vote to each candidate shall be givento check that the VVPAT is printing the
paper slips accurately.
v) Thereafter, switch off the CU and seal the latches of paper roll compartment using
thread seals and address tags.The candidates/their agents shall be allowed to affix their
signatures with party abbreviations on Address Tags.
vi) The units should be randomly allocated to polling stations and kept in the respective
carrying case.
4. Polling Parties:
One extra polling official must be provided to handle the VVPAT unit while
constituting polling parties, to handle VVPAT unit and also to watch VSDU continuously
during poll process. The official shall immediately inform the Presiding Officer of any
error noticed in VSDU.At the time of dispersal of polling parties, two copies of the Trouble
shooting instructions (Annexure-III) and List of additional items of polling materials
(Annexure-IV) shall be handed over to the Presiding Officers. Adequate numbers of black
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paper envelopes and plastic boxes may also be procured for storing the paper ballot slips
from the VVPAT.
NOTE: “The Polling parties shall strictly be instructed NOT TO TEST VVPAT at
the time of dispersal and before mock poll at polling station under any circumstance,
as ATs issued to the are alread he ed tested.”
5. Conduct of Mock Poll and sealing of EVMs and VVPATs in the Polling Stations:
During the mock poll, BU and VVPAT should be placed in the Voting Compartment,
where a Polling Officer should be present alongwith polling agents to observe. The CU and
VSDU should be placed on the table of the Presiding Officer/Polling Officer. This Polling
Officer will keep a record of the votes cast.
After the mock poll, Presiding Officer will ascertain the result in the CU, count the
VVPAT paper slips in the presence of the polling agents and confirm that the results tally for
each candidate. All mock poll data in CU and VVPAT paper slips from VVPAT must be
removed by the Presiding Officer and the empty drop box verified by the Polling Agents.The
mock poll VVPAT paper slips, should be stamped on their back side with rubber stamp having
inscription “ OC OLL LI ” thereafter these mock poll VVPAT paper slips shall be
kept in an envelope made of thick black paper and sealed with the seal of the Presiding
Officer.The sample image of the said stamp is as under:
(The dimensions of the stamp to be used for the purpose should be 3cms X 1.5 cms)
The Presiding Officer and polling agents must put their signatures on the envelope.
The number and name of the polling station, number and name of Assembly Constituency,
date of poll and the words “VVPAT paper slips of Mock Poll” shall be written on the
envelope.
This envelope must be kept in the special plastic box for mock poll and sealed with
a pink paper seal placed all around in such a manner that opening of the box will require
breaking of the seal. The number and name of the polling station, number and name of
Assembly Constituency and the date of poll shall be written on the plastic box. The Presiding
Officer and Polling Agents must put their signatures on the pink paper seal and keep the box
along with other documents relating to elections. Thereafter, Presiding Officer will sign the
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Mock Poll Certificate (Annexure-V) and seal the CU. The drop box of VVPAT should be
sealed with an address tag before the actual poll starts.
6. Complaint about incorrect printing of particulars on paper slip:
If any voter alleges about the wrong printing of particulars of a candidate and/or
symbol of that candidate on VVPAT paper slip printed by the printer on pressing of
concerned blue (candidate) button on the Balloting unit to which the printer is connected,
the Presiding Officer of the polling station should provide him a ‘Form of Declaration’
(Annexure-VI) to lodge a complaint and follow the procedure prescribed under rule 49MA,
which reads as under:
“ MA. Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed on paper slip. -
(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote
under rule 49M alleges that the paper slip generated by the printer has shown the name
or symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for, the presiding officer shall
obtain a written declaration from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the
(2) If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1), the presiding
officer shall make a second entry related to that elector in Form 17A, and permit the
elector to record a test vote in the voting machine in his presence and in the presence of
the candidates or polling agents who may be present in the polling station, and observe
the paper slip generated by the printer.
(3) If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the facts immediately
to the returning officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as
per the direction that may be given by the Returning Officer.
(4) If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under
sub-rule (1) matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then,
the presiding officer shall-
(i) make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in
Form 17A mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom
such test vote has been recorded;
(ii) obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against such remarks;
and
(iii) make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part I of Form 1 C.”.
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7. Action in case of certain contingencies during poll:
Certain contingencies may arise during the polling process, which may require certain
actions. These are as follows: -
a. In case the CU or the BU does not work properly, replacement of the whole
EVM including CU, BU and VVPAT is required. No mock poll is required to
be taken.
b. In case the VSDU is showing “Low Battery”, the power pack battery of VVPAT
should be replaced. It should be ensured that before taking out the power pack
battery of VVPAT, control unit must be switched OFF and after installing new
power pack battery in VVPAT, control unit should be switched ON. Control
Unit should not be switched ON without installing power pack in VVPAT.
c. In case there is any other error, like “Paper Low” error, the VVPAT will stop
printing and the error shall be displayed on the VSDU. In such case the VVPAT
unit is to be replaced. No mock-poll is required to be taken. Therefore, if
VVPAT has not printed the paper slip, or the printed paper slip has not been cut,
the last voter whose paper slip has not been printed by VVPAT or has not been
cut should be allowed to cast his vote after the VVPAT has been replaced. In
case the printed paper slip has not been cut and is hanging from the paper roll,
no effort should be made to make it fall into the drop box. It should be allowed
to remain hanging as it means that the vote has not been recorded in Control
Unit and as it is not to be counted at the time of counting of the printed-paper
slips. The details of such an occurrence should be clearly recorded in the
Presiding Officer’s dairy in the following format -
ii. The name of the voter and his serial number in the part in the electoral
roll, who was allowed to cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT.
iii. Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went
away without casting his vote.
In case of contingencies, the Presiding Officers mayalso refer to Annexure-III for

solutions.
8. Counting of votes and printed ballot slips:
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After announcement of result sheet entries, any candidate, their election agent or their
counting agents may apply in writing to the RO to count the printed VVPAT paper slips in
any or all polling stations. If such application is made, the RO shall pass a speaking order on
whether the VVPAT paper slips should be counted. If the RO decides to allow the counting
of the VVPAT paper slips of any or all polling stations, such decision of the RO must be
recorded in writing along with the reasons thereof. The RO shall give due consideration to
the following:
(a)Whether the total number of votes polled in that polling station is greater or lesser
than the margin of votes between winning candidate and candidate making the
application,
(b)Whether EVM had a problem and was replaced at that polling station during poll,
(c)Whether there was any complaint about VVPAT not printing or complaints by any
voter under Rule 49MA in that polling station during the poll.
9. Arrangements for counting of VVPAT paper slips:
(a) One of the Counting Tablesinside the Counting Hall shall be earmarked by the
Returning Officer as VVPAT Counting Booth (VCB) for Counting of VVPAT Paper
Slips.
(b) VCB shall be enclosed in a wire-mesh just like a Bank Cashier Cabin, so that no
VVPAT paper slip can be accessed by any unauthorised person.
10. Procedure to count VVPAT paper slips:
If the RO decides to count the printed paper slips of any polling station(s) on an appeal for
recounting of any polling station(s), the following procedures shall be strictly followed:
Step-1:
i) For keeping VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the Drop Box of the VVPAT, a
sufficiently sized container with lid, of dimensions 14 inch X 10 inch X 5 inch (length
x breadth x height), to easily accommodate around 1400 Printed Paper Slips, shall be
kept on the table of VCB. This Container should be made of sturdy transparent material
like plastic etc. Sample images of the Container are available in Annexure- VIII
ii) For keeping VVPAT paper slips of the respective candidates, a Pigeonhole Framework
shall be prepared in advance according to the number of candidates including NOTA,
with one additional pigeonhole for keeping self-test slips of the VVPAT, and shall be
kept on the table of VCB.
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(a) The minimum number of Pigeonholes in the Framework must be equal to the
number of candidates plus 2 (two).
(b) The size of each compartment (Pigeonhole) must be atleast 6 inch X 4 inch X 4
inch (length x breadth x height).
(c) The pigeonhole structure should be made of sturdy transparent material like plastic
etc, having a fixed base, to prevent any VVPAT paper slip from slipping
underneath.
(d) The symbol of each contesting candidate as per the Ballot Paper should be affixed
on the wall of the pigeonhole allotted to the particular candidates. The symbol
should be printed in black and white on a plain paper of minimum size
4 inch X 3 inch. Sample images of the Pigeonhole Framework are placed in
Annexure-VIII.
iii) Atleast 100 Rubber bands for making bundles of 25 VVPAT paper slips.
Step-2:
i) The VVPAT unit(s) of the respective polling station(s) should be brought to the VCB one
by one, as the case may be.
ii) In case a VVPAT unit was replaced during poll at that polling station, all the VVPAT
units used at that polling station should be brought to the VCB.
Step-3:
i) The printed paper slips shall be taken out from all the VVPATs used at the polling station,
before beginning the counting of VVPAT paper slips for that polling station.
ii) Before taking out the VVPAT Paper Slips from the drop box, the address tag(s) of the
drop box shall be crosschecked to ascertain that the VVPAT pertains to the respective
polling station.
iv) The VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the Drop Box of the VVPAT shall be first kept
in the container as per specification at step-1 (i).
v) After taking out the VVPAT paper slips from Drop Box, the Counting Supervisor shall
ensure that no VVPAT paper slip is left inside theVVPAT drop box and show the empty
drop box to the counting agents.
vi) In case a VVPAT unit was replaced, it may so happen that an uncut fully or partially
VVPAT paper slip is hanging and has not got cut and dropped in the drop box and still
connected to the paper roll. This uncut VVPAT paper slip should not be torn and should
not be counted because the vote is not recorded electronically in the CU unless the
VVPAT paper slip is cut. In such an event, the last voter whose VVPAT paper slip was
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not cut would have been given an opportunity to cast his vote after replacement of
VVPAT and the VVPAT paper slip of the vote cast by him shall be in the next VVPAT
used in that polling station.
vii) The drop box of the VVPAT will also have VVPAT slips of self-test report. These are
easily identified, as they do not have either the name or the symbol of any candidate.
These self-test report slips are to be preserved alongwith the VVPAT paper slips as part
of the record but they are not to be counted.
Step-4:
i) The VVPAT paperslips should be segregated one-by-one and put in respective pigeon
holes after showing each slip to the Counting agents. The paper slips bearing self-tests
report shall also be segregated and put in a separate pigeonhole provided for the purpose.
ii) Bundles of 25VVPAT paper slips of respective candidates shall be prepared for
counting purpose.
iii) VVPAT PaperSlips shall then be counted by the counting staff.
iv) Result of the VVPAT paper slips count shall be prepared in the format as per Annexure-
VII and attached to Part-II of Form 17-C.
v) The result of the count of VVPAT paper slips shall be announced loudly in the counting
hall and shown to the counting agents.
vi) As per Rule 56D(b) of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, if there is any discrepancy
between EVM count and paper slip count, the paper slip count shall prevail. Hence, if
there is discrepancy between the count of votes displayed on the Control Unit and the
count of printed-paper slips in respect of that Polling Station, the result sheet will be
amended as per the printed-paper slips count.
Step-5:
After completion of counting of VVPAT paper slips, the bundles of all the VVPAT Paper
Slips shall be kept back in the Drop Box of the respective VVPAT and door of the Drop Box
shall be sealed using address tags. The candidate(s)/their agents may also be allowed to affix
their signature with party abbreviation on the Address Tags.
11. Removal of Thermal Paper Roll and Power Pack from VVPAT units:
After the result is announced, thermal paper rolls and power packs shall be removed
from all the VVPAT units under videography and kept in separate strong room. In no case,
printed paper slips shall be taken-out of the Drop-Box of any VVPAT.
12. Storage of VVPATs after counting of votes:
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After completion of counting of votes, EVMs and VVPATs containing printed paper
slips in its Drop box, shall be kept in the same strong room.
a) The Strong room shall not be opened till completion of Election Petition (EP) period
i.e. till EP list is received from respective High Court.
b) After completion of Election Petition Period, the exact EP position should be
ascertained from High Court concerned before opening the strong room.
13. Storage of VVPAT Paper Slips after expiry of period of filing of Election Petitions:
After expiry of the period of filing of Election Petitions (EPs) i.e. 45-days from the
date of declaration of result, District Election Officers shall ascertain the position of EP
from the concerned High Court. After obtaining the status of EP from the High Court
concerned, the following action shall be taken:
A. Every VVPAT used in an election and kept in the custody of the District Election
Officer shall be kept untouched, under the standard protocol of security, till
confirmation of Election petition position from the High Court concerned after the
completion of the period for filing Election Petition i.e. 45 days from the date of
declaration of the result.
B. In the case of elections, where no election petition has been filed or no other court cases
are pending, after the aforesaid period, the VVPATsshall be available for use in any
future election or any other purpose like training, awareness, movement, physical
verification etc.
Before moving any VVPAT, printed paper slips shall be taken out from Drop-box of
the VVPATs as per procedure mentioned below:
i) A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having VVPATs shall be given
to the representatives of all political parties in writing at least 48 hours in advance,
requesting them to remain present at the time of opening of strong room.
ii) The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the District Election Officer and
representatives of Political Parties.
iii) The VVPAT paper slips shall be taken out from the Drop Box of VVPAT and kept
in a paper envelope made of thick black paper, sealed using red wax under the seal
of DEO. Name of election, number and name of assembly constituency, particulars
of polling station, unique serial number of the VVPAT unit, date of poll and date
of counting shall be mentioned on the envelope containing printed paper slips.
iv) The envelopes containing VVPAT paper slips shall be kept with all other statutory
documents relating to that election till the statutory time limit.
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v) Thorough checking of officials deputed for the removal of VVPAT paper slips and
their sealing must be ensured. All pockets need to be emptied before entering the
Sealing Room/Strong Room and thorough checking of officials leaving the sealing
room should be done in addition to DFMD/Metal Detector Checking.
vi) Once the VVPAT paper slips have been taken out, the VVPATs must be kept in
their separate designated warehouse. VVPAT should not be kept in the same
warehouse where EVMs arestored.
vii) To ensure there is no deliberate attempt to remove any paper-slips from sealing
room/strong room, the entire process should be conducted under high quality CCTV
recording/videography.
C. In case of any election where election petition has been filed, the following action shall
be taken:-
(i) If the EVMs or Counting of Votes are the subject of the election petition, the EVMs
andVVPATs used at all Polling Stations in the constituency concerned shall
continue to be kept in the safe custody of the District Election Officer, till such time
the Election Petition is finally disposed of by the Courts.
(ii) If the EVMs or counting of votes are not the subject of the election petition, an
application may be moved to the concerned Court for allowing the EVMs&
VVPATs concerned to be taken out of the strong room for any future election or
any other purpose like movement, physical verification etc.
(iii) In case VVPATs not involved in any Election Petition/Court Case are stored with
the VVPATs involved in Election Petition/Court Case, the following procedure
shall be followed for segregating the VVPATs not involved in any election
petition/court case from the VVPATs involved in EP/Court case:-
(a) A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having VVPATs involved
in EP/Court Case as well as non-EP VVPATs, shall be given to the
petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court Case and the representatives of all
political parties in writing at least 72 hours in advance, requesting them to
remain present at the time of opening of strong room.
(b) The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the District Election
Officer, Petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court case and representatives of
Political Parties.
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(c) The VVPATs not involved in any EP/Court Case shall be segregated from
the VVPATs involved in EP/Court Case for taking out of the strong room.
A list of VVPATs being so taken out from the strong room shall be prepared.
(d) The VVPATs, which are not involved in any EP/Court Case, should only be
taken out of the Strong room.
(e) The procedure mentioned in para 13 (B) above shall be followed for taking-
out the printed paper slips from all such VVPATs, following which the
VVPATs are available for any subsequent deployment/use.
(f) The entire process shall be videographed and videography must be preserved
for record.
The above instructions shall be brought to the notice of all concerned.
Copy to: -
1. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore,
Karnataka.
2. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of India Limited,
3. Zonal - Sr. Principal Secretary/Secretary/Under Secretary.
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294 Annexure-I
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297
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300
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301
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302 Annexure - II
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303 Annexure-III
HANDLING OF CU-BU-VVPAT FAILURES/ERRORS DURING POLL
PREPARATION OF POLLING OFFICIALS FOR FAULT HANDLING-SUGGESTIONS
Certain contingencies may arise during the polling process which may require certain actions. These are as follows: -
a. In case the CU or the BU does not work properly (i) Switch off the CU and don’t switch it on again (ii) Replace
the complete set of EVM and VVPAT by another set of BU, CU and VVPAT (iii) Continue the poll with the new
EVM set.
b. In ase Displa anel of the C displa s “Lin Error”: (i) Check that the cable connections are proper by visual
inspection (don’t remove and reconnect the connectors) (ii) If “Link Error” still persists, replace the complete set
of EVM and VVPAT.
c. In ase the AT tatus Displa nit D displa s “Error Code-1Repla e Batter ”: Switch off the CU
and replace the Power Pack of VVPAT printer. It should be ensured that in no case replacement of power pack is
done without switching off the CU.
d. In ase the D displa s “Error Code – Repla e rinter” and the residing Offi er has not pressed the
BU enable button: Switch off the CU and replace the defective VVPAT unit with the new VVPAT unit. It shall be
ensured that in no case replacement of VVPAT unit is done without switching off the Control Unit.
e. In case the Presiding Officer has pressed BU enable Button and the Voter has pressed the Candidate Button
of the Ballot nit and o plains that aper lip has not een printed or the aper lip printed the
VVPAT unit has not been cut and hanging against the display window then: (i) If the busy lamp of the CU is
not glowing and no Message/Error is displayed on VSDU, the complaint should be considered as baseless and
rejected; (ii) If busy lamp is glowing on the CU and no Message/Error is displayed on VSDU, the Voter shall be
requested to go into the Voting Compartment once again and press the Candidate Button on BU of his choice; (iii)
If busy lamp of the CU and VSDU are glowing and VSDU has no display message, please switch OFF the CU and
replace the VVPAT unit. (iv) The last voter whose paper slip has not been printed by VVPAT or has not been cut
should be allowed to cast his vote after the VVPAT unit has been replaced.
Please keep in mind that the vote is not recorded in the CU electronically unless the paper slip has been printed and
cut by VVPAT. If VVPAT has not printed the paper slip, or the printed paper slip has not been cut, the last voter
whose paper slip has not been printed by VVPAT or has not been cut should be allowed to cast his vote after the
VVPAT unit has been replaced.
f. In case the printed paper slip has not been cut and is hanging from the paper roll: Replace the Printer, but no
effort should be made to make it fall into the drop box. It should be allowed to remain hanging, as it is not to be
counted at the time of counting of the ballot slips. The details of such an occurrence should be clearly recorded in
the Presiding Officers diary in the following format:
ii. The name of the voter and his serial number in part in the electoral roll who was allowed to cast his vote after
replacement of VVPAT.
iii. Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went away without casting his vote.
g. In case a voter alleges after recording his vote that the printed paper slip generated by the printer has shown
the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for: Action should be taken as per provisions of
Rule 49MA of the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules, 2013:
(i) Obtain a declaration from the complainant in the Declaration Form (Annexure-VI) under his/her
signature/thumb impression; (ii) Proceed to the voting compartment along with the complainant and polling agents
present in the polling station at that moment; (iii) The voter shall be asked to cast a test vote in favour of any
candidate and make second entry related to that elector in the Form-17A; (iv) Observe carefully whether the Printer
has printed the paper slip correctly; (v) If the complaint of the elector is found genuine, the Presiding Officer shall
report the facts immediately to the RO and stop further polling at the station; (vi) If the complaint of the elector is
found false, make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form-17A mentioning
the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test vote has been recorded and obtain the signature or
thumb impression against such remark. Further make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part-I
of Form 17-C.
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304 Annexure-IV
CHECK LIST OF ADDITIONAL ITEMS OF POLLING MATERIALS TO BE

PROVIDED TO THE POLLING PARTY
1. Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) Printer Unit : 1 No.

2. VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) : 1 No.
3. Carrying Case for the VVPAT system : 1 No.
4. Envelope made of thick black paper : 2 Nos.
(For sealing printed paper slips of Mock Poll)
5. Plastic Box for Black Paper Envelope Sealing : 1 No.
6. Pink Paper Seal for sealing Plastic Box : 2 Nos.
7. Form of declaration by elector under rule 49MA : 10 copies
of the Conduct of Elections Rules
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305 Annexure-V
This is certified that I, ……………… Presiding Officer at the Polling Station No……….of
……………………..Assembly Constituency (or the ……………………………Assembly segment under
……………………………Parliamentary Constituency) conducted the mock poll at ……….. AM today, the
poll day i.e. ………………(date), following scrupulously all the instructions issued by the Election
Commission of India, using –
CU of Serial No. (as printed on back-side of the CU)……………………………………………
BU of Serial No. (as printed on back-side of the BU)……………………………………………
VVPAT Unit of Serial Number (if used)…………………………………………………………
1. A total of ……… votes were cast for each candidate and also for NOTA.
2. It was verified that the LED light was getting lit up against the correct candidate/NOTA button,
when the button was pressed and beep sound was properly heard.
3. The candidate-wise detail of votes polled during mock-poll and result displayed, is as under:
S. No. Name of the Candidate Number of votes Number of votes Number of Printed Votes Cast and
cast during mock displayed in CU on Paper Slips, as per Result displayed &
poll checking the result counting on Printed Paper Slip
checking mock poll count (if VVPAT
result (if VVPAT used)
used) Tallied with each
other (YES/NO)
NOTA
Total
4. I have cleared the memory of the EVM and also removed the printed paper slips of VVPAT
after the mock poll and verified that the memory has been cleared, by pressing the Total
utton and seeing the Total is sho n as .
5. At the time of mock poll the following polling agents representing the candidates whose names mentioned
against the names of such agents were present and I have obtained their signatures.
6. Poll Start Date and Time seen on the display of CU at the time of start of actual
poll……………………………………………….. (To be filled in case of Post-2006 EVMs).
Sl.No.Name of Polling AgentName of PartyName of candidate Signature of PollingAgent
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
or
At the time scheduled for mock poll no polling agent was present/the agent of only one contesting candidate was
present. After waiting for fifteen more minutes, I conducted the mock poll along with other polling staff at
…….….AM.
Signature of Micro-Observer (if posted at the polling station)
Date:
Time: Name & Signature of the Presiding Officer

Polling Station No………….
Polling Station Name…………………..
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306 Annexure-VI
General/Bye-Election to……………………………………………………………………………….
Sl. No. and Name of Parliamentary/Assembly Constituency………………………………………….
No. and Name of Polling Station………………………………………………………………………
FORM OF DECLARATION BY ELECTOR UNDER RULE 49MA OF CONDUCT OF

ELECTIONS RULES, 1961
1. I hereby solemnly declare and affirm under sub-rule (1) of Rule 49 MA of the Conduct of Elections Rules
1961 that the paper slip generated by the printer attached to the Balloting Unit has shown the name and/or
symbol of a candidate other than the candidate for whom I voted by pressing the concerned blue button against
the name and symbol of the candidate of my choice on the Balloting Unit. I am ready to cast a test vote again
to show that the allegation made by me is true and bonafide.
(2). I am aware of the penal provisions of Section 177 of the IPC that I shall be liable to be punished with
imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to one thousand
rupees, or with both, if the declaration given by me in para 1 above to the Presiding Officer appointed under
Section 26 of the RP Act, 1951 is found to be incorrect.
Name of the Elector…………………………….
Father/Mother/Husband’s Name……………….
Part No. of elector roll………………………….
Sl. No. of elector in that Part……………………
Sl. No. in Register of Voters (Form 1 A)……….
Dated………………..
Certified that the above declaration was made and subscribed by the elector above named before me.
…………………………………
Dated…………
24 | P a g e
307 Annexure-VII
ANNEXURE TO PART-II OF FORM 17-C
RESULT OF PRINTED PAPER COUNT
Polling Station No. ______ Unique ID of VVPAT : ___________
Sl.No. of Name of candidate Number of votes as Number of test votes to Number of

candidate per count of be deducted as per item 5 valid votes.
Printed Paper Slip of Part I (3-4)
of VVPAT
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Total
Whether the total number of votes shown above tallies with the total number of votes shown against item 6 of Part I or any discrepancy
noticed between the two totals.(YES/NO)
Place…………………..
Date…………………….
Name of candidate/election agent/counting agent Full signature
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Place…………………..
Date…………………….
25 | P a g e
308 Annexure-VIII
Sample Container -14 inch X 10 inch X 5 inch (length X breadth X height)
Sample Pigeonholes (Size of each compartment 6 inch X 4 inch X 4 inch)
// True Copy //
26 | P a g e
ANNEXURE C/21
WP(C) 983/2017 309

1
ITEM NO.37 COURT NO.1 SECTION X
Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s). 983/2017
PRAKASH JOSHI Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA Respondent(s)
(FOR ADMISSION)
Date : 30-10-2017 This matter was called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE A.M. KHANWILKAR
For Petitioner(s)
Mr. Kapil Sibal, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Vivek Tankha, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Aljo K. Joseph, AOR
Ms. Shelna K., Adv.
Mr. Varun Chopra, Adv.
For Respondent(s)
Mr. Amit Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Dipesh Sinha, Adv.
Ms. Ayiala Imti, Adv.
Mr. K.K. Venugopal, AG

Ms. Madhavi Divan, Adv.
Ms. Nidhi Khanna, Adv.
Mr. Ayush Puri, Adv.
Mr. Harish V. Shankar

Ms. Nisha Mohandas

O R D E R
Digitally signed by
CHETAN KUMAR
Date: 2017.10.30
18:51:39 IST
Reason:
Mr. K.K. Venugopal, learned Attorney General
submits that as far as Prayer (a) is concerned, the
Election Commission of India has already implemented
WP(C) 983/2017 310
2
the same. The situation is accorded to by Mr. Amit

Sharma, learned counsel for the Election Commission of
India. As far as Prayer (b) is concerned, it is urged
by Mr. K.K. Venugopal that guidelines have already been
brought by the Election Commission of India. The same
is disputed by Mr. Kapil Sibal and Mr. Vivek Tankha,
learned senior counsel appearing for the petitioner.
We leave it to the discretion of the Election
Commission of India, as we are not inclined to enter
into the said arena. As far as Prayer (c) is
concerned, it is submitted by Mr. K.K. Venugopal that
the Election Commission of India has issued appropriate
guidelines, and this Court may say that no
officer/official against whom disciplinary proceedings
have been initiated shall be posted in any key
positions.
Having heard Mr. K.K. Venugopal, we direct that

the Election Commission of India shall not post any
officer/official against whom the disciplinary
proceedings has been initiated in any key position in
any district.
As far as prayer (d) concerning installation of

CCTV cameras inside the polling booth to watch the
mobility of persons inside the polling booth and
display of such videograph alongwith the number of
votes poll outside the polling booth on a display board
is concerned, we are of the considered opinion that the
same is not permissible and accordingly, the said
prayer stands rejected.
The writ petition is accordingly disposed of.
(Deepak Guglani) (H.S. Parasher)

// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/22
311
NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW DELHl-110001
Dated: 9th November, 2017
No. 51/8/16/9/2017~EVM(P&L)
CIRCULAR
SUBJECT: First Level Checking (FLC) of EVMs and VVPATs: Deployment of Special
Team of ECI Officials for Quality Checks.
1. INTRODUCTION:
First Level Checking (FLC) of EVMs and VVPATs is done, by the authorised engineers of M/s Bharat
Electron ics Limited (BEL) and M/s Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), as the case may
be, before every Bye-election and General Election to State Legislative Assembly and House of the
People (Lok Sabha). At District Election Officer level FLC is to be done sufficiently in advance so that
all checks are carried out without any undue haste in. the presence of representatives of National
and State Recognised Political Parties. FLC of EVMs and VVPATs shall be completed, as far as
possible, well before the issue of notification calling the election.

As per the extent instructions of Commission, FLC of EVMs (Control Units and Balloting Units)
and WPATs shall commence: -

(a) within one month of occurrence of vacancy in case of bye-election.
(b) at least P-120 days in case of General Election to State Legislative Assembly.
(c) at least P-180 days in case of General Election to Lok Sabha.

,/
2. PURPOSE OF FLC: The purpose of FLC is to ensure the robustness and fitness of EVMs and
WPATs to be used in elections, so that only fully functional and defect free FLC OK EVMs and
VVPATs are used in elections. FLC rejected EVMs and VVPATs are sent to BEL/ECIL factory, as the
case may be, within 7 days of completion of FLC process. The close and continuous
involvement/participation of the representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties in RC
process serves to enhancing transparency and credibility of the EVMs and VVPATs usage. FLC process
includes:
2.1 Detailed Functional Checking:
(a) Vi sual Inspection of EVM and VVPAT

(b) Full Functionality te st s
2.2 Comprehensive Confidence Building:
(a) Opening of CU for originality of components
{b) Mock Poll involving the representatives of political parties
312
INSTRUCTIONS AND SOP ON FLC: Attached as Annexu re I.
4. Ql)ALITY CHECK BY TEAM OF ECI OFFICIALs:

It has been decided by the Comm ission that ECI Officials wm be sent for surprise FLC Quality
Checks during the pt week of every FLC process In all the foture elect ions.
S. REPORTING FORMAT FOR ECI OFFICIALS:
Attached as Annexure II .
6. ,0Os and DONT's for the ECI OFFICIALS:
I. DO's
i) Draw up your tour programs sufficiently ·in advance and intimate to the Chief Electoral
Officer and the concerned District Election Officers of the districts concerned.
ii) Note carefully the numbers of visits, duration of visits and the period of visits.
iii) Familiarize yourself with the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trial (VVPAT).
iv) Submit a report to the Commission within 24 hours of your return to the headquarters. In
addition, also send spot report (s) from time to time as consi~ered necessary.
/
v) Any shortcoming that medts immediate remedial action be reported to the Commission
without. any loss of time. Such information should not be deferred till the regular reports
are submitted.
vi) Maintain proper conduct in the districts as ECI Observers are keenly observed.
vii) Meet the DEO and ask for the report of the FLC
viii) Analyse the report submitted by the DEO
It OONT'S
i) Do not travel to the desi gnated district(s) with your families .
ii) Do not give any statement to the Press or Media.
iii) Do not make any unreasonable demands regarding accommodation, vehicles, sec\trity etc.
iv) Complete your duty as per direction of the Commission.
(Madhusudan upta)
Under Secretary
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/23
ITEM NO.33 313

COURT NO.1 SECTION PIL-W
Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s).1012/2017
MANUBHAI CHAVADA Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ORS. Respondent(s)
(FOR ADMISSION)
Date : 20-11-2017 This petition was called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
For Petitioner(s) Mr.Devadatt Kamat, Adv.

Mr.K.R.Koshti, Adv.
Mr.Aditya Bhat, Adv.
Mr.Rajesh Inamdar, Adv.
Mr.Javedur Rahman, Adv.
Ms.Anjana Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Gautam Talukdar, AOR
For Respondent(s) Mr.Amit Sharma, Adv.

Mr.Dipesh Sinha, Adv.
Ms.Ayiala Imiti, Adv.

O R D E R
Heard learned counsel for the petitioner.
The Writ Petition is dismissed.
(Satish Kumar Yadav) (H.S.Parasher)

AR-cum-PS Assistant Registrar
Digitally signed by
SATISH KUMAR YADAV
Date: 2017.11.21
14:33:45 TLT
Reason:
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/24
314
No.51/8/VVPAT/2017-EMS Dated: 5th December, 2017
To

All States & Union Territories.
Subject: Revised Instructions on use of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) with

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit trail (VVPAT) system – Regarding.
Sir/Madam,
I am directed to say that the para 11 of the Commission’s existing instruction of even
number dated 16th October, 2017 has been deleted and paras 13 (B) (iii) and 13 (C) (iii) (e) has
been slightly modified. The revised instructions after incorporating the necessary changes
alongwith the table of contents is enclosed herewith, for necessary action.
Copy to: -
1. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore,

Karnataka.
2. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of India Limited,

No.51/8/VVPAT/2017-EMS
315 Dated: 5th December, 2017
Instructions on use of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) with

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system.
CONTENTS
1. POLL PREPARATIONS WITH EVM & VVPAT .................................................................................................................... 2
1.1 TRAINING OF MASTER TRAINERS, POLLING PERSONNEL, COUNTING PERSONNEL AND STORAGE PERSONNEL: ........ 2
1.2 VVPAT DEMONSTRATION ............................................................................................................................................. 2
1.3 PREPARATION OF EVMS AND VVPAT SYSTEM FOR POLL (CANDIDATE SETTING) ......................................................... 3
1.4 CONDUCT OF MOCK POLL AND SEALING OF EVMs AND VVPATs IN THE POLLING STATIONS BEFORE START OF
ACTUAL POLL ...................................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.5 ROLE OF POLLING PARTIES: .......................................................................................................................................... 4
2. COMPLAINT & CONTINGENCY ISSUES ................................................................................................................................ 4
2.1 WRONG PRINTING COMPLAINT .................................................................................................................................... 4
2.2 HANDLING CONTINGENCIES DURING POLL: ................................................................................................................. 5
3. COUNTING AND STORAGE OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS ............................................................................................................ 6
3.1 APPLICATION FOR VVPAT PAPER SLIPS COUNTING ...................................................................................................... 6
3.2 ARRANGEMENTS FOR COUNTING OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS: .......................................................................................... 6
3.3 PROCEDURE TO COUNT VVPAT PAPER SLIPS: ............................................................................................................... 6
3.4 STORAGE of EVMs & VVPATs after counting of votes: ................................................................................................. 8
3.5 STORAGE OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS AFTER EXPIRY OF PERIOD OF FILING OF ELECTION PETITIONS: .............................. 8
Annexure- I ........................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Annexure- II .......................................................................................................................................................................... 19
Annexure-III .......................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Annexure-Iv .......................................................................................................................................................................... 22
Annexure-V........................................................................................................................................................................... 23
Annexure-VI ......................................................................................................................................................................... 25
Annexure-VII ...................................................................................................................................................................... 26
Annexure-VIII..................................................................................................................................................................... 27
Annexure-IX.......................................................................................................................................................................... 28
1|P a g e
PRE-POLL
316
1. POLL PREPARATIONS WITH EVM & VVPAT
Training of Master Preparation of EVM Conduct of Mock

VVPAT
Trainers, Polling and VVPAT for poll Poll with EVM and
Demonstration
Personnel, Counting at RO Level VVPAT at Polling
Personnel & Storage Station
Personnel
1.1 TRAINING OF MASTER TRAINERS, POLLING PERSONNEL, COUNTING PERSONNEL AND

STORAGE PERSONNEL:
 Presiding Officers, Polling Officers, Returning Officer, Assistant Returning Officers, Sector
Officers and Counting Personnel must be given hands-on-training related to their role/duties
on use of EVMs with VVPATs.
 Every official should get an opportunity to operate the EVM with VVPAT system and
understand the process of recording the vote using VVPAT.
 Separate training should be given on counting of printed paper slips from the VVPAT system
and tallying the count of VVPAT paper slips with the count of the Control Unit.
 A copy of VVPAT brochure (Annexure-I) should be given to all officers during training and
be available at polling station on poll day.
 A training session may be incorporated in the training module of State Public Administration
Institutions, on operation & use of VVPATs.
1.2 VVPAT DEMONSTRATION
 A demonstration of VVPAT system should be organized by the District Election Officers

(DEOs) for political parties, Returning Officers and electors at suitable locations.
 Further, the Returning Officers (ROs) shall arrange demonstration of VVPAT system for
candidates and electors at suitable locations in the constituency.
 he poster o to Cast our ote sing s and s (Annexure-II) on method of
voting with VVPAT should be pasted at prominent places of the constituencies and at places
in each polling station in a manner that voters waiting in the queue are able to read the
instructions.
 The DEO and RO should also organize programmes for awareness about use of EVMs with
VVPAT on print media and local cable-network etc. A short film on How to Cast Your Vote
using VVPAT with EVM shall be made in regional language for this purpose.
NOTE: Only FLC-ok EVMs & VVPATs with dummy symbols shall be used for
training, awareness and demonstration.
2|P a g e
317
1.3 PREPARATION OF EVMS AND VVPAT SYSTEM FOR POLL (CANDIDATE SETTING)
EVMs shall be prepared according to the instructions of the Commission on the preparation of
EVMs for polls. The VVPAT system shall be prepared for poll in the following manner as
mentioned in Rule 49B [4(c) (i) (iii)] of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961:
 The VVPAT consists of VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) and VVPAT Printer unit. A
new battery power pack shall be connected to the VVPAT unit and shut the door of the battery
compartment, but no sealing is required on battery compartment as the power pack can be
replaced if low battery status is indicated on VSDU during the poll.
 A fresh paper roll shall be installed in the printer unit as per the procedure mentioned in the
user manual for VVPAT provided by the manufacturer (Annexure IX)
 Serial numbers, names of candidates and symbols allotted shall be loaded in VVPAT with the
help of engineers. A test printout shall be checked with the ballot paper in Balloting Unit (BU).
 Then one vote to each candidate shall be given to check that the VVPAT is printing the paper
slips accurately.
 Thereafter, switch off the CU and seal the latches of paper roll compartment using thread seals
and address tags. The candidates/their agents shall be allowed to affix their signatures with
party abbreviations on Address Tags.
 The units should be randomly allocated to polling stations and kept in the respective carrying
case.
POLL DAY
1.4 CONDUCT OF MOCK POLL AND SEALING OF EVMs AND VVPATs IN THE POLLING
STATIONS BEFORE START OF ACTUAL POLL
 During the mock poll, BU and VVPAT should be placed in the Voting Compartment, where a
Polling Officer should be present along with polling agents to observe. The CU and VSDU
should be placed on the table of the Presiding Officer/Polling Officer. This Polling Officer will
keep a record of the votes cast.
 After the mock poll, Presiding Officer will ascertain the result in the CU, count the VVPAT
paper slips in the presence of the polling agents and confirm that the results tally for each
candidate.
 All mock poll data in CU and VVPAT paper slips from VVPAT must be removed by the
Presiding Officer and the empty drop box verified by the Polling Agents.
 The mock poll VVPAT paper slips, should be stamped on their back side with rubber stamp
having inscription
mock poll VVPAT paper slips shall be kept in an envelope
made of thick black paper and sealed with the seal of the
Presiding Officer. The sample image of the said stamp is as
under:
(The dimensions of the stamp to be used for the purpose should be 3cms X 1.5 cms)
3|P a g e

318
The Presiding Officer and polling agents must put their signatures on the envelope. The
number and name of the polling station, number and name of Assembly Constituency, date of
po and the ords VVPAT paper slips of Mock Poll sha e ritten on the envelope.
 This envelope must be kept in the special plastic box for mock poll and sealed with a pink
paper seal placed all around in such a manner that opening of the box will require breaking of
the seal.
 The number and name of the polling station, number and name of Assembly Constituency and
the date of poll shall be written on the plastic box.
 The Presiding Officer and Polling Agents must put their signatures on the pink paper seal and
keep the box along with other documents relating to elections. Thereafter, Presiding Officer
will sign the Mock Poll Certificate (Annexure-V) and seal the CU.
 The drop box of VVPAT should be sealed with an address tag before the actual poll starts.
1.5 ROLE OF POLLING PARTIES:
 One extra polling official must be provided to handle the VVPAT unit while constituting
polling parties. This polling official should handle VVPAT unit and also watch VSDU
continuously during poll process.
 The official shall immediately inform the Presiding Officer of any error noticed in VSDU. At
the time of dispersal of polling parties, two copies of the Trouble shooting instructions
(Annexure-III) and List of additional items of polling materials (Annexure-IV) shall be
handed over to the Presiding Officers.
 Adequate numbers of black paper envelopes and plastic boxes may also be procured for storing
the paper ballot slips from the VVPAT.
NOTE: The polling parties shall strictly be instructed not to test VVPAT at the time of
dispersal and before mock poll at polling station under any circumstance, as VVPATs
issued to them are already checked & tested.
2. COMPLAINT & CONTINGENCY ISSUES
2.1 WRONG PRINTING COMPLAINT
If any voter alleges about the wrong printing of particulars of a candidate and/or symbol of that
candidate on VVPAT paper slip printed by the printer on pressing of concerned blue (candidate)
button on the Balloting Unit to which the printer is connected, the Presiding Officer of the polling
station shou d provide him a orm of ec aration’ (Annexure-VI) to lodge a complaint and follow
the procedure prescribed under rule 49MA, which reads as under:
rocedure in case of comp aint a out particu ars printed on paper slip-
 Where printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote under rule
49M alleges that the paper slip generated by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a
candidate other than the one he voted for, the presiding officer shall obtain a written declaration
from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the elector about the consequence of making
a false declaration.
4|P a g e
319
 If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1), the presiding officer shall
make a second entry related to that elector in Form 17A, and permit the elector to record a test
vote in the voting machine in his presence and in the presence of the candidates or polling
agents who may be present in the polling station, and observe the paper slip generated by the
printer.
 If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the facts immediately to the
returning officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the
direction that may be given by the Returning Officer.
 If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under sub-rule
(1) matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the presiding
officer shall-
o make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form 17A
mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test vote has
been recorded;
o Obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against such remarks; and make
necessary entries regarding such test vote in item in art I of orm 1 C
2.2 HANDLING CONTINGENCIES DURING POLL:
Certain contingencies may arise during the polling process, which may require certain actions. These
are as follows: -
 In case the CU or the BU does not work properly, replacement of the whole EVM
including CU, BU and VVPAT is required. No mock poll is required to be taken.
 In case the is sho ing o attery the po er pac attery of shou d e
replaced. It should be ensured that before taking out the power pack battery of VVPAT, control
unit must be switched OFF and after installing new power pack battery in VVPAT, control
unit should be switched ON. Control Unit should not be switched ON without installing power
pack in VVPAT.
 In case there is any other error i e aper o error the i stop printing and the
error shall be displayed on the VSDU. In such case the VVPAT unit is to be replaced. No
mock-poll is required to be taken. Therefore, if VVPAT has not printed the paper slip, or the
printed paper slip has not been cut, the last voter whose paper slip has not been printed by
VVPAT or has not been cut should be allowed to cast his vote after the VVPAT has been
replaced. In case the printed paper slip has not been cut and is hanging from the paper roll, no
effort should be made to make it fall into the drop box. It should be allowed to remain hanging
as it means that the vote has not been recorded in Control Unit and as it is not to be counted at
the time of counting of the printed-paper slips. The details of such an occurrence should be
c ear y recorded in the residing fficer’s dairy in the fo o ing format -
o The date and time of the occurrence.
o The name of the voter and his serial number in the part in the electoral roll, who was
o Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went away without
casting his vote.
o The Total number of votes cast before the occurrence.
In case of contingencies, the Presiding Officers may also refer to Annexure-III for solutions.
5|P a g e
3. COUNTING AND STORAGE OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS
320
3.1 APPLICATION FOR VVPAT PAPER SLIPS COUNTING
After announcement of result sheet entries, any candidate, their election agent or their counting
agents may apply in writing to the RO to count the printed VVPAT paper slips in any or all polling
stations. If such application is made, the RO shall pass a speaking order on whether the VVPAT
paper slips should be counted. If the RO decides to allow the counting of the VVPAT paper slips of
any or all polling stations, such decision of the RO must be recorded in writing along with the reasons
thereof. The RO shall give due consideration to the following:
 Whether the total number of votes polled in that polling station is greater or lesser than the
margin of votes between winning candidate and candidate making the application
 Whether EVM had a problem and was replaced at that polling station during poll
 Whether there was any complaint about VVPAT not printing or complaints by any voter under
Rule 49MA in that polling station during the poll.
3.2 ARRANGEMENTS FOR COUNTING OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS:
 One of the Counting Tables inside the Counting Hall shall be earmarked by the Returning
Officer as VVPAT Counting Booth (VCB) for Counting of VVPAT Paper Slips.
 VCB shall be enclosed in a wire-mesh just like a Bank Cashier Cabin, so that no VVPAT paper
slip can be accessed by any unauthorised person.
3.3 PROCEDURE TO COUNT VVPAT PAPER SLIPS:
If the RO decides to count the printed paper slips of any polling station(s) on an appeal for recounting
of any polling station(s), the following procedures shall be strictly followed:
Step-1:
 For keeping VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the Drop Box of the VVPAT, a sufficiently
sized container with lid, of dimensions 14 inch X 10 inch X 5 inch (length x breadth x height),
to easily accommodate around 1400 Printed Paper Slips, shall be kept on the table of VCB.
This Container should be made of sturdy transparent material like plastic etc. Sample images
of the Container are available in Annexure- VIII
 For keeping VVPAT paper slips of the respective candidates, a Pigeonhole Framework shall
be prepared in advance according to the number of candidates including NOTA, with one
additional pigeonhole for keeping self-test slips of the VVPAT, and shall be kept on the table
of VCB.
o The minimum number of Pigeonholes in the Framework must be equal to the number of
candidates plus 2 (two).
o The size of each compartment (Pigeonhole) must be atleast 6 inch X 4 inch X 4 inch
(length x breadth x height).
o The pigeonhole structure should be made of sturdy transparent material like plastic etc,
having a fixed base, to prevent any VVPAT paper slip from slipping underneath.
o The symbol of each contesting candidate as per the Ballot Paper should be affixed on the
wall of the pigeonhole allotted to the particular candidates. The symbol should be printed
6|P a g e
321
in black and white on a plain paper of minimum size 4inch X 3 inch. Sample images of
the Pigeonhole Framework are placed in Annexure-VIII.
 At least 100 Rubber bands for making bundles of 25 VVPAT paper slips.
Step-2:
 The VVPAT unit(s) of the respective polling station(s) should be brought to the VCB one by
one, as the case may be.
 In case a VVPAT unit was replaced during poll at that polling station, all the VVPAT units
used at that polling station should be brought to the VCB.
Step-3:
 The printed paper slips shall be taken out from all the VVPATs used at the polling station,
before beginning the counting of VVPAT paper slips for that polling station.
 Before taking out the VVPAT Paper Slips from the drop box, the address tag(s) of the drop
box shall be crosschecked to ascertain that the VVPAT pertains to the respective polling
station.
 The VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the Drop Box of the VVPAT shall be first kept in the
container as per specification at step-1 (i).
 After taking out the VVPAT paper slips from Drop Box, the Counting Supervisor shall ensure
that no VVPAT paper slip is left inside the VVPAT drop box and show the empty drop box to
the counting agents.
 In case a VVPAT unit was replaced, it may so happen that an uncut fully or partially VVPAT
paper slip is hanging and has not got cut and dropped in the drop box and still connected to the
paper roll. This uncut VVPAT paper slip should not be torn and should not be counted because
the vote is not recorded electronically in the CU unless the VVPAT paper slip is cut. In such
an event, the last voter whose VVPAT paper slip was not cut would have been given an
opportunity to cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT and the VVPAT paper slip of the
vote cast by him shall be in the next VVPAT used in that polling station.
 The drop box of the VVPAT will also have VVPAT slips of self-test report. These are easily
identified, as they do not have either the name or the symbol of any candidate. These self-test
report slips are to be preserved along with the VVPAT paper slips as part of the record but
they are not to be counted.
Step-4:
 The VVPAT paper slips should be segregated one-by-one and put in respective pigeon holes
after showing each slip to the Counting Agents. The paper slips bearing self-tests report shall
also be segregated and put in a separate pigeonhole provided for the purpose.
 Bundles of 25VVPAT paper slips of respective candidates shall be prepared for counting
purpose.
 VVPAT Paper Slips shall then be counted by the counting staff.
 Result of the VVPAT paper slips count shall be prepared in the format as per Annexure-VII
and attached to Part-II of Form 17-C.
 The result of the count of VVPAT paper slips shall be announced loudly in the counting hall
and shown to the counting agents.
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 As per Rule 56D(b) of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, if there is any discrepancy
between EVM count and paper slip count, the paper slip count shall prevail. Hence, if there is
discrepancy between the count of votes displayed on the Control Unit and the count of printed-
paper slips in respect of that Polling Station, the result sheet will be amended as per the printed-
paper slips count.
Step-5:
 After completion of counting of VVPAT paper slips, the bundles of all the VVPAT Paper Slips
shall be kept back in the Drop Box of the respective VVPAT and door of the Drop Box shall
be sealed using address tags.
 The candidate(s)/their agents may also be allowed to affix their signature with party
abbreviation on the Address Tags.
3.4 STORAGE OF EVMs & VVPATs AFTER COUNTING OF VOTES:
After completion of counting of votes, EVMs and VVPATs containing printed paper slips in its Drop
box, shall be kept in the same strong room without removing Power Packs of Control Units and
Power Packs and Paper Rolls of VVPATs.
 The Strong room shall not be opened till completion of Election Petition (EP) period i.e. till
EP list is received from respective High Court.
 After completion of Election Petition Period, the exact EP position should be ascertained from
High Court concerned before opening the strong room.
3.5 STORAGE OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS AFTER EXPIRY OF PERIOD OF FILING OF ELECTION
PETITIONS:
After expiry of the period of filing of Election Petitions (EPs) i.e. 45-days from the date of
declaration of result, District Election Officers shall ascertain the position of EP from the concerned
High Court. After obtaining the status of EP from the High Court concerned, the following action
shall be taken:
 Every VVPAT used in an election and kept in the custody of the District Election Officer shall
be kept untouched, under the standard protocol of security, till confirmation of Election
petition position from the High Court concerned after the completion of the period for filing
Election Petition i.e. 45 days from the date of declaration of the result.
 In the case of elections, where no election petition has been filed or no other court cases are
pending, after the aforesaid period, the VVPATs shall be available for use in any future
election or any other purpose like training, awareness, movement, physical verification etc.
 Before moving any VVPAT, printed paper slips shall be taken out from Drop-box of the
VVPATs as per procedure mentioned below:
o A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having VVPATs shall be given to
the representatives of all political parties in writing at least 48 hours in advance,
requesting them to remain present at the time of opening of strong room.
o The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the District Election Officer and
representatives of Political Parties.
o Remove the Power Packs of Control Units and Power Packs and Paper Rolls of
VVPATs.
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o The VVPAT paper slips shall be taken out from the Drop Box of VVPAT and kept
in a paper envelope made of thick black paper, sealed using red wax under the seal
of DEO. Name of election, number and name of assembly constituency, particulars
of polling station, unique serial number of the VVPAT unit, date of poll and date of
counting shall be mentioned on the envelope containing printed paper slips.
o The envelopes containing VVPAT paper slips shall be kept with all other statutory
documents relating to that election till the statutory time limit.
o Thorough checking of officials deputed for the removal of VVPAT paper slips and
their sealing must be ensured. All pockets need to be emptied before entering the
Sealing Room/Strong Room and thorough checking of officials leaving the sealing
room should be done in addition to DFMD/Metal Detector Checking.
o Once the VVPAT paper slips have been taken out, the VVPATs must be kept in their
separate designated warehouse. VVPAT should not be kept in the same warehouse
where EVMs are stored.
o To ensure there is no deliberate attempt to remove any paper-slips from sealing
room/strong room, the entire process should be conducted under high quality CCTV
recording/videography.
 In case of any election where election petition has been filed, the following action shall be
taken:-
o If the EVMs or Counting of Votes are the subject of the election petition, the EVMs
and VVPATs used at all Polling Stations in the constituency concerned shall continue
to be kept in the safe custody of the District Election Officer, till such time the
Election Petition is finally disposed of by the Courts.
o If the EVMs or counting of votes are not the subject of the election petition, an
application may be moved to the concerned Court for allowing the EVMs& VVPATs
concerned to be taken out of the strong room for any future election or any other
purpose like movement, physical verification etc.
o In case VVPATs not involved in any Election Petition/Court Case are stored with the
VVPATs involved in Election Petition/Court Case, the following procedure shall be
followed for segregating the VVPATs not involved in any election petition/court case
from the VVPATs involved in EP/Court case:-
 A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having VVPATs involved
in EP/Court Case as well as non-EP VVPATs, shall be given to the
petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court Case and the representatives of all
political parties in writing at least 72 hours in advance, requesting them to
remain present at the time of opening of strong room.
 The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the District Election
Officer, Petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court case and representatives of
Political Parties.
 The VVPATs not involved in any EP/Court Case shall be segregated from the
VVPATs involved in EP/Court Case for taking out of the strong room. A list
of VVPATs being so taken out from the strong room shall be prepared.
 The VVPATs, which are not involved in any EP/Court Case, should only be
taken out of the Strong room.
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The procedure mentioned above shall be followed for taking-out power packs,
paper rolls and the printed paper slips from all such VVPATs, following
which the VVPATs are available for any subsequent deployment/use.
 The entire process shall be videographed and videography must be preserved
for record.
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ANNEXURE- I
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The VVPAT prints the selection of the voter on a 10cm X 5.6 cm long slip of paper
called Ballot Slip. The ballot slip will display:
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ANNEXURE-III
HANDLING OF CU-BU-VVPAT FAILURES/ERRORS DURING POLL

PREPARATION OF POLLING OFFICIALS FOR FAULT HANDLING-
SUGGESTIONS
Certain contingencies may arise during the polling process which may require certain actions. These
are as follows: -
a. In case the CU or the BU does not work properly i itch off the C and don’t s itch it on
again (ii) Replace the complete set of EVM and VVPAT by another set of BU, CU and VVPAT
(iii) Continue the poll with the new EVM set.
b. (i) Check that the cable connections are
proper y visua inspection don’t remove and reconnect the connectors ii If in rror sti
persists, replace the complete set of EVM and VVPAT.
c. In -1 :
Switch off the CU and replace the Power Pack of VVPAT printer. It should be ensured that in no
case replacement of power pack is done without switching off the CU.
d. In case t –
not pressed the BU enable button: Switch off the CU and replace the defective VVPAT unit with
the new VVPAT unit. It shall be ensured that in no case replacement of VVPAT unit is done without
switching off the Control Unit.
e. In case the Presiding Officer has pressed BU enable Button and the Voter has pressed the
the Paper Slip printed by the VVPAT unit has not been cut and hanging against the display
window then: (i) If the busy lamp of the CU is not glowing and no Message/Error is displayed on
VSDU, the complaint should be considered as baseless and rejected; (ii) If busy lamp is glowing
on the CU and no Message/Error is displayed on VSDU, the Voter shall be requested to go into
the Voting Compartment once again and press the Candidate Button on BU of his choice; (iii) If
busy lamp of the CU and VSDU are glowing and VSDU has no display message, please switch
OFF the CU and replace the VVPAT unit. (iv) The last voter whose paper slip has not been printed
by VVPAT or has not been cut should be allowed to cast his vote after the VVPAT unit has been
replaced.
Please keep in mind that the vote is not recorded in the CU electronically unless the paper slip has
been printed and cut by VVPAT. If VVPAT has not printed the paper slip, or the printed paper slip
has not been cut, the last voter whose paper slip has not been printed by VVPAT or has not been
cut should be allowed to cast his vote after the VVPAT unit has been replaced.
f. In case the printed paper slip has not been cut and is hanging from the paper roll: Replace
the Printer, but no effort should be made to make it fall into the drop box. It should be allowed to
remain hanging, as it is not to be counted at the time of counting of the ballot slips. The details of
such an occurrence should be clearly recorded in the Presiding Officers diary in the following
format:
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ii. The name of the voter and his serial number in part in the electoral roll who was allowed to
cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT.
iii. Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went away without casting
his vote.
g. In case a voter alleges after recording his vote that the printed paper slip generated by the
printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for: Action
should be taken as per provisions of Rule 49MA of the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules,
2013:
(i) Obtain a declaration from the complainant in the Declaration Form (Annexure-VI) under
his/her signature/thumb impression; (ii) Proceed to the voting compartment along with the
complainant and polling agents present in the polling station at that moment; (iii) The voter shall
be asked to cast a test vote in favour of any candidate and make second entry related to that elector
in the Form-17A; (iv) Observe carefully whether the Printer has printed the paper slip correctly;
(v) If the complaint of the elector is found genuine, the Presiding Officer shall report the facts
immediately to the RO and stop further polling at the station; (vi) If the complaint of the elector is
found false, make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form-
17A mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test vote has been
recorded and obtain the signature or thumb impression against such remark. Further make
necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part-I of Form 17-C.
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ANNEXURE-IV
CHECK LIST OF ADDITIONAL ITEMS OF POLLING MATERIALS TO BE PROVIDED

TO THE POLLING PARTY
1. Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) Printer Unit : 1 No.

2. VVPAT Status Display Unit (VSDU) : 1 No.
3. Carrying Case for the VVPAT system : 1 No.
5. Plastic Box for Black Paper Envelope Sealing : 1 No.
6. Pink Paper Seal for sealing Plastic Box : 2 Nos.
7. Form of declaration by elector under rule 49MA : 10 copies
of the Conduct of Elections Rules
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ANNEXURE-V
his is certified that I residing fficer at the o ing tation o of

ssem y Constituency or the ssem y segment
under ar iamentary Constituency conducted the moc po at
today the po day i e date fo o ing scrupu ous y a the instructions issued y
the Election Commission of India, using
CU of Serial No. (as printed on back-side of the C
BU of Serial No. (as printed on back-side of the
VVPAT Unit of Serial Number (if

used
1. tota of votes ere cast for each candidate and also for NOTA.
2. It was verified that the LED light was getting lit up against the correct candidate/NOTA
button, when the button was pressed and beep sound was properly heard.
3. The candidate-wise detail of votes polled during mock-poll and result displayed, is as
under:
S. No. Name of the Number of Number of Number of Votes Cast and
Candidate votes cast votes Printed Paper Result
during mock displayed in Slips, as per displayed &
poll CU on counting on Printed Paper
checking the checking mock Slip count (if
result poll result (if VVPAT used)
VVPAT used) Tallied with
each other
(YES/NO)
NOTA
Total
4. I have cleared the memory of the EVM and also removed the printed paper slips of
VVPAT after the mock poll and verified that the memory has been cleared, by
5. At the time of mock poll the following polling agents representing the candidates whose
names mentioned against the names of such agents were present and I have obtained their
signatures.
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6. Poll Start Date and Time seen on the display of CU at the time of start of actual
po o e fi ed in case of ost-2006
EVMs).
Sl.No.Name of Polling AgentName of PartyName of candidate Signature of PollingAgent
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
or
At the time scheduled for mock poll no polling agent was present/the agent of only one contesting
candidate was present. After waiting for fifteen more minutes, I conducted the mock poll along
ith other po ing staff at
Signature of Micro-Observer (if posted at the polling station)
Date:
Time: Name & Signature of the Presiding

Officer
Polling tation o
o ing tation ame
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ANNEXURE-VI
General/Bye-Election to
Sl. No. and Name of Parliamentary/Assemb y Constituency
No. and Name of Polling Station
FORM OF DECLARATION BY ELECTOR

UNDER RULE 49MA OF CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS RULES, 1961
1. I hereby solemnly declare and affirm under sub-rule (1) of Rule 49 MA of the Conduct of Elections
Rules 1961 that the paper slip generated by the printer attached to the Balloting Unit has shown the
name and/or symbol of a candidate other than the candidate for whom I voted by pressing the
concerned blue button against the name and symbol of the candidate of my choice on the Balloting
Unit. I am ready to cast a test vote again to show that the allegation made by me is true and bonafide.
(2). I am aware of the penal provisions of Section 177 of the IPC that I shall be liable to be punished
with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to one
thousand rupees, or with both, if the declaration given by me in para 1 above to the Presiding Officer
appointed under Section 26 of the RP Act, 1951 is found to be incorrect.
ame of the ector
ather other us and’s ame
art o of e ector ro
o of e ector in that art
o in egister of oters orm 1
ated
Certified that the above declaration was made and subscribed by the elector above named
before me.
ated
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ANNEXURE-VII
ANNEXURE TO PART-II OF FORM 17-C

Polling Station No. ______ Unique ID of VVPAT : ___________
Sl.No. of Name of Number of votes Number of test votes Number of

candidate candidate as per count of to be deducted as per valid votes.
Printed Paper item 5 of Part I (3-4)
Slip of VVPAT
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Total
Whether the total number of votes shown above tallies with the total number of votes shown against
item 6 of Part I or any discrepancy noticed between the two totals.(YES/NO)
ace
ate
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
ace
ate
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ANNEXURE-VIII
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ANNEXURE-IX
INSTALLATION OF PAPER ROLL IN VVPAT
b) emove pind e from its position y pu ing to ards up ard direction
c) Insert pind e into herma aper o
d) ace the herma aper o ith pind e into its position i e aper o compartment
and press it towards down.
e) Insert herma aper o edge into the uide - aper ntry nsure that the p ain paper
should be on the top surface and the printed band should be on the lower Surface of the Paper.
f) Move the paper into the slot by rotating the paper feed knob clockwise.
// True Copy //
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ANNEXURE C/25
C/SCA/22074/2017 343 ORDER
IN THE HIGH COURT OF GUJARAT AT AHMEDABAD
SPECIAL CIVIL APPLICATION NO. 22074 of 2017
================================================================
SHAILESHKUMAR NAGJIBHAI PANSURIYA....Petitioner(s)
Versus
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & 2....Respondent(s)
================================================================
Appearance:
MR BHARAT T RAO, ADVOCATE for the Petitioner(s) No. 1
MR AMIT SHARMA WITH MR. SAHIL M SHAH, ADVOCATE for the
Respondent(s) No. 1
MS MEGHA JANI WITH MR. SAHIL M SHAH, ADVOCATE for the
Respondent(s) No. 2
================================================================
CORAM: HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE AKIL KURESHI

and
HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE A.Y. KOGJE
Date : 12/12/2017
ORAL ORDER
(PER : HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE AKIL KURESHI)
1. This petition is filed for a direction to the Election Commission of

India to make it mandatory to count all VVPAT slips alongwith the
counting of votes through EVMs in the on-going State Assembly
elections. The petitioner is a resident of the State and is concerned
about the purity and proper conduct of such elections. His prime
concern is that there is clear and distinct possibility of tampering the
recording of votes in EVMs. In order to ensure conduct of free and fair
elections and to eliminate any such possibility as also to remove any
doubts in the minds of public, the Election Commission of India should
ensure that all slips secured in the boxes through VVPATs should be
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C/SCA/22074/2017 344 ORDER
subjected to counting parallely with the electronic counting through

EVMs. In this regard, the petitioner points out that the Election
Commission of India has issued a press release dated 20th May,2017 in
which it was declared that:
“The Commission will count VVPAT slips up to a definite

percentage, which will be determined by the Commission. The ECI
will shortly evolve an appropriate framework in this regard. “
2. The Counsel for the petitioner during the previous hearing on 7th
December,2017 had submitted that if not all the paper slips atleast
25% of the votes should be counted through VVPAT to ensure total
transparency. It was also submitted that despite the declaration of
Election Commission made in the press release dated 20th May, 2017
no framework for counting a certain percentage of votes through VVPAT
was set up. We had while issuing notice to the Election Commission of
India on 7th December,2017 in our order highlighted this aspect.
3. In response to the notice the Election Commission has appeared

through legal representatives. We have heard learned Advocates for
both the sides. Shri B.T.Rao for the petitioner highlighted that there
have been complaints about the functioning of EVMs during the first
phase of voting which took place on 9th December,2017. He submitted
that complaints have been received suggesting that the EVMs can be
connected to the mobile phones through Bluetooth leaving a possibility
of tampering. He pointed out that on 08th December, 2017 the Election
Commission of India issued guidelines providing for counting of votes
through VVPAT in one booth of every constituency selected on random
basis. However, according to the Counsel this would not provide
sufficient safeguard against possible tampering and manual counting
should be ordered atleast in 25% of the booths of every constituency.
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C/SCA/22074/2017 345 ORDER
4. On the other hand learned Counsel for the Election Commission

of India opposed the petition contending that the Election Commission
has taken all possible steps to eliminate any mistake, mischief or foul
play during the conduct of elections and at the time of counting of
votes. The booth to be selected for manual counting would be on
random basis. This would be in addition to the discretionary powers of
the Returning Officer to order manual counting in terms of Rule 56D of
the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. The Counsel submitted that
similar issues were raised before the Supreme Court in Writ Petition
(Civil) No. 983 of 2017. The Supreme Court while disposing of the
petition by an order dated 30.10.2017 refused to interfere with the
discretionary powers of the Election Commission of India. Counsel
pointed out that prior to 8th December,2017 also the Election
Commission of India had taken a conscious decision to order manual
counting in one polling station per Assembly Constituency randomly
selected which was circulated to the Chief Electoral Officers of the
Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh States under a communication dated
11th October,2017. More detailed guidelines in this respect were issued
under further communication dated 13th October, 2017.
5. Having heard the learned Advocates for the parties and having
perused the materials on record we may at the outset clarify that we
confine our observations and conclusions to the limited purpose of
meeting with the petitioner’s request for ordering full or atleast
substantial percentage of the votes through manual counting during
the on-going State Assembly Elections. We do not involve ourselves in
the larger issues and controversies for the simple reason that this
petition has been filed at a somewhat belated stage where the election
machinery in the State was in full swing and the first available
opportunity for the Court to peruse and examine the grievances of the
petitioner arose on 7th December,2017 when the first phase of polling in
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C/SCA/22074/2017 346 ORDER
the State was scheduled on 09th December,2017. Even otherwise, an

issue as serious and sensible as this cannot be summarily and
permanently closed.
6. With these preliminary comments we may recall that the system

of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail now deployed by the Election
Commission of India in the State elections for all polling stations in
every constituency, would trace its genesis to the judgment of the
Supreme Court in the case of Subramaniam Swamy v. Election
Commission of India reported in (2013) 10 Supreme Court Cases 500.
In the said judgment the Court had made following concluding
remarks:
“27. Though initially ECI was a little reluctant in introducing

the “paper trail” by use of VVPAT, taking note of the advantage
in the system as demonstrated by Dr. Subramaniam Swamy, we
issued several directions to ECI. Pursuant to the same, ECI
contacted several expert bodies, technical advisers, etc. They
also had various meetings with the national and State level
political parties, demonstrations were conducted at various
places and finally after a thorough examination and full
discussion, VVPAT was used successfully in all the 21 polling
stations of 51 Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of Nagaland.
The information furnished by ECI, through the affidavit dated 1-
10-2013, clearly shows that VVPAT system is a successful one.
We have already high lighted that VVPAT is a system of printing
paper trail when the voter casts his vote, in addition to the
electronic record of the ballot, for the purpose of verification of
his choice of candidate and also for manual counting of votes in
case of dispute.
28. From the materials placed by both the sides,m we re

satisfied that the “paper trail“ is an indispensable requirement of
free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs
can be achieved only with the introduction if the “paper trail”.
EVMs with VVPAT system can ensure the accuracy of the voting
system. With an intent to have fullest transparency in the
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C/SCA/22074/2017 347 ORDER
system and to restore the confidence of the voters, it is

necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is
nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance
in a democratic system.
pragmatic and reasonable approach of the ECI and considering
the fact that in general elections all over India, ECI has to
handle one million (ten lakh) polling booths, we permit ECI to
introduce VVPAT in gradual stages or geographical wise in the
ensuing general elections. The area, State or actual booth(s) are
to be decided by ECI and ECI is free to implement the same is a
phased manner. We appreciate the efforts and good gesture
made by ECI in introducing the same. For implementation of
such a system (VVPAT) in a phased manner, the Government of
India is directed to provide required financial assistance for
procurement of units of VVPAT.”
7. In tune with the decision of the Supreme Court in case of

Subramaniam Swamy (supra) the Election Commission of India would
provide 100% paper-trail through VVPATs on the on-going State
elections. In this regard in the press release dated 20th May, 2017, as
noted earlier, the Election Commission of India had declared that the
Commission would count VVPAT slips up to a definite percentage,
which will be determined by the Commission and an appropriate
framework in this regard would be evolved by the Commission shortly.
The Election Commission of India had there upon issued a
communication to the Chief Election Officers of Gujarat and Himachal
Pradesh on 11th October,2017 which reads as under:
“I am directed to intimate that the Commission has directed

that in the forthcoming General Election to State Legislative
Assemblies of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, mandatory
verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01(one)
polling station per Assembly Constituency shall be done on a
‘pilot basis’. The above mandatory verification of VVPAT paper
slips of 01(one) polling station (randomly selected) will be in
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C/SCA/22074/2017 348 ORDER
addition to the provisions of Rule 56D of the Conduct of Election

Rules, 1961.
Detailed instructions for this purpose will be issued

separately.
The above direction of the Commission shall be brought to

the notice of all concerned.”
8. Further detailed guidelines in this regard were issued under the

communication dated 13th October,2017 which further provided as
under :
“For this ‘pilot’ verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly

selected 01(one) polling station per Assembly Constituency, the
following procedure shall be followed:
1. The verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly sleeted

01(one) polling station for each Assembly Constituency shall be
taken up after the completion of the last round of counting of
votes recorded in the EVMs.
2. The random selection of 01(one) polling station per

Assembly Constituency shall be done by Draw of lots, by the
Returning Officer concerned, in the presence of candidates/
their agents and the General Observer appointed by the
Commission for that Assembly Constituency.
3. The draw of lots must be conducted immediately after the

completion of the last round counting of votes recorded in the
EVMs (Control Units) in the designated counting hall for the
particular Assembly Constituency.
4. A written intimation regrading the conduct of draw of lots

for the random selection of 01(one) polling station for
verification of VVPAT Slips shall be govern by the Returning
Officer to the Candidates/their election agents well in advance.
5. The following procedure shall be followed for the conduct of

draw of lots:
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C/SCA/22074/2017 349 ORDER
(a) White colour paper cards of postcard size shall be

used for conducting the draw of lots.
(b) Total number of such paper cards should be equal to
the total number if polling stations in the Assembly
Constituency.
(c) The paper cards shall have pre-printed Assembly
Constituency number, AC name and date of polling on the
top, and the polling station number in the centre. Each digit
of the polling station number shall be at least 1” * 1” (1 inch
by 1 inch) size and printed in black ink.
(d) The paper cards to be used for draw of lots should be
four-0folded in such a way that polling station number is not
visible.
(e) Each paper card shall be shown to the
candidate/their agents before folding and dropping in the
container.
(f)The paper cards shall be kept in the big container and
must be shaken before picking up 01(one) slip by the
Returning Officer.
6. The verification of VVPAT paper slips shall be done in a

‘VVPAT Counting Booth’ (VCB) specially prepared for this
purpose inside the Counting Hall. The booth shall be enclosed
in a wire mesh just like a bank cashier’s cabin so that no VVPAT
paper slip can be accessed by any unauthorized person. One of
the Counting tables in the Counting Hall can be converted into
the VCB and can be used for normal counting of round-wise
EVM Votes before the count of VVPAT slips as per random
selection after the completion of round-wise EVM counting.
7. The verification count of the VVPAT paper slips of the

randomly selected 01(one) polling station shall be conducted
strictly in accordance with the instructions of the Commission
on counting of printed paper slips.
8. The Returning Officer shall personally supervise the

counting VVPAT paper slips at this booth. The General Observer
concerned shall ensure close and careful observation of the
entire exercise and ensure strict compliance of the
Commission's instructions.
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C/SCA/22074/2017 350 ORDER
9. The above process shall be fully videographed.
10. After completion of the above process, the Returning

Officer shall give a certificate in the annexed format.
The above direction of the Commission shall be brought to

the notice of all concerned.”
9. Few things emerge from these communications dated 11th

October, 2017 and 13th October, 2017 of the Election Commission of
India. First is that on random basis one poling station per Assembly
constituency would be selected in which there would be manual
counting of votes on the basis of paper slips generated through VVPAT.
This would be in addition to the provisions contained in Rule 56D of the
Conduct of Election Rules,1961. The random selection of the polling
station for such counting would be done through draw of lots by the
Returning Officer in presence of the candidates or their agents and the
observers appointed by the Commission. Such lots would be drawn
immediately after completion of the last round of counting of votes
recorded in the EVMs. Detailed procedure for drawing of lots has also
been laid down. The counting paper slips of the VVPATs shall be done
in the manner specified. The Returning Officer would personally
supervise counting process. The entire process would be videographed.
After completion of the process the Returning Officer would giver a
certificate in a prescribed format which contains necessary details such
as number of votes cast as per the EVM, those cast as per the paper
slips and discrepancies between the two, if any.
10. Thus the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India

through its latest circular dated 08th December,2017 are at its best and
in addition and in reiteration of its earlier decision circulated through
communications dated 11th October, 2017 and 13the October,2017.
The procedure laid down through these communications would ensure
Page 8 of 12

C/SCA/22074/2017 351 ORDER
random selection of one polling station per Assembly constituency

where the paper slips of VVPAT would be counted and the tally would
be matched with the EVM counting. The detailed guidelines would
ensure the random selection of the polling station as well as orderly
counting of paper slips in presence of the Returning Officer himself,
which process would be videographed.
11. This entire procedure would be in addition to the powers of the

Returning Officer under Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections
Rules,1961 which reads as under:
“56D Security of paper trail:-

(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, after the entries made
in the result sheet are announced, any candidate, or in his
absence, his election agent or any of his counting agents may
apply in writing to the returning officer to count the printed paper
slips in the drop box of the printer in respect of any polling
station or polling stations.
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer

shall, subject to such general or special guidelines, as may be
issued by the Election Commission, decide the matter and may
allow the application in whole or in part or may reject in whole, if
it appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule(2)

shall be in writing an d shall contain the reasons therefor.

shall
(b) If there is discrepancy between the votes displayed on the
control unit and the counting of the paper slips, amend the
result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips count;
(d) complete and sign the result sheet.”
Page 9 of 12

C/SCA/22074/2017 352 ORDER
12. Perusal of this Rule would show that in case where the printed
paper trail is maintained by the Election Commission during the
election the candidate or his election agent or counting agent can apply
to the Returning Officer to count the printed paper slips in respect of
any polling station or stations under sub-rule (2) or Rule 56D. Upon
such application being made the Retuning Officer would decide the
matter and may allow the application in whole or in part or reject it if it
appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable. Sub-rule (3) or Rule
56D requires that such decision of the Returning Officer would be in
writing and contain reasons. Under sub-rule (4) of Rule 56D the
conclusions of the Returning Officer granting the request for counting
of paper slips are specified. From the materials on record thus it
emerges that the guidelines for mandatory counting of paper slips in
one polling station per Assembly constituency is in addition to the
powers of the Returning Officer under Rule 56D to accept the request of
a candidate for counting all the paper slips in as many polling stations
as the case for such counting is made out.
13. The mandatory counting of paper slips of a randomly selected

polling station is to ensure demonstration of transparency and purity of
the conduct of elections even in absence of any complaint or
discrepancy being reported whereas Rule 56D would operate in a field
where a candidate, his election agent or polling agent satisfies the
Returning Officer that the need for counting of paper trail has arisen in
one or more polling stations. Specific cases of genuine complaints cane
be addressed by the Returning officer through exercise of the powers
under Rule 56D of the Conduct of Election Rules,1961. There is no
further requirement for enlarging the scope for mandatory counting of
paper slips in addition to what the Election Commission in its
discretionary powers has specified. Quite apart from the basic
Page 10 of 12

C/SCA/22074/2017 353 ORDER
responsibility of conduct of free and fair elections resting with the

Election Commission of India with matching powers and duties, the
issue was also presented before the Supreme Court in Writ Petition No.
983 of 2017 where the prayers of the petition was as under:
“Issue an appropriate writ, order or direction the respondent to

frame appropriate rules, regulations and guidelines for counting
through VVPAT paper trails; “
14. In this respect while disposing of the Writ Petition by order dated
30th October,2017 the Supreme Court had made following observations:
“As far as Prayer (b) is concerned, it is urged by

Mr.K.K.Venugopal that guidelines have already been brought by
the Election Commission of India. The same is disputed by
Mr.Kapil Sibal and Mr.Vivek Tankha, learned senior counsel
appearing for the petitioner. We leave it to the discretion of the
Election Commission of India, as we are not inclined to enter
into the said arena.”
15. In view of the above discussion no direction as prayed for by the

petitioner can be granted. Before closing we may observe that there is
nothing on record to suggest that the decision of Election Commission
of India to go for mandatory counting of paper slips in one polling
station in every constituency in any manner, limits or restricts the
discretionary powers of the Election Commission of India to enlarge the
scope of such manual counting. We are sure and we hope that such a
situation does not arise but in the unlikely scenario of discrepancies
being reported in number of polling stations which have been subjected
to such manual counting it is always open for and the Election
Commission will consider manual counting in larger number of polling
stations as may be advised.
With these observations the petition stands disposed of.
Page 11 of 12

C/SCA/22074/2017 354 ORDER
(AKIL KURESHI, J.)
(A.Y. KOGJE, J.)
SINDHU NAIR
// True Copy //
Page 12 of 12

ANNEXURE C/26
ITEM NO.65 355

COURT NO.1 SECTION III
SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION (CIVIL) Diary No.41165/2017

in SCA No. 22074/2017 passed by the High Court of Gujarat at
Ahmedabad)
MOHD. ARIF RAJAPUT Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
THE ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA NIRVACHAN Respondent(s)

SADAN & ORS.
Date : 15-12-2017 This petition was called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
For Petitioner(s) Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Sr. Adv.

Mr. Vivek Tankha, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Aljo K. Joseph, AOR
Mr. S.S. Hooda, Adv.
Mr. Prashant Sivarajan, Adv.
For Respondent(s)

O R D E R
Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, learned senior counsel

appearing for the petitioner submits that he may be permitted
to withdraw the present special leave petition to file a
properly constituted petition under Article 32 of the
Constitution of India for proper electoral reforms with
regard to Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) at the
appropriate time, if so advised.

The special leave petition is permitted to be
Digitally signed by
CHETAN KUMAR
Date: 2017.12.16
withdrawn.
13:07:49 IST
Reason:
(Chetan Kumar) (H.S. Parasher)

// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/27
356
ELIICTION COMMISSION OF INDIA

NIITVACIIAN SAI)AN, ASIIOKA IrOAt), Nttw t)ur,Irr_110001
\o. 5 1/8/VV}'A l -l NS'l /201 {i-l.;M S l)arcd: I 3rl, ):cbruary, 20 I3
'tir
'l'hc (lhic t' lilcctural Olllccrs o1'
All Statcs anrl l,rrio:t Icrrittlr-jcs
Su bj cct: Mandatory vcrilication of VVI,A'I' paper slips- Irilol 'I'csting - rcgarding.

S ir'.
I arn dircctcd 1r; statc that 1hc (lor.nmission has alrcady rlandalcd that VV],A'l's will bc
uscd with l'lVMs at all pollitrg slations in ail lultrrc Ocncral/llyc-1.)icctiot'ls to thc l)arliamcnl and
thc Statc Lcgislativc Asscmblics. 'l hc (lom:r.rission conduclcd mantlatory vcrillcation ol'
vvl)A I papcr slips o1'randornly sclcclcd 0i (onc) polli,g stalion pcr. Asscmbly constitucncy
on a'piiot'basis in thc rcccntly concludcd (icncral l..lcclions to Slatc Lcgislativc Asscmblics o1'
(ir'rjaral and Ilimachal l)radcsh, in addition to lirc provisiorrs ol'I{ulc 5(rl) oIthc Conduct of
)'llcclions l{ulcs, 1961, and thc sarnc has bccn cxlcndcd to thc ongoing (icrrcral lilcclions to thc
Slatc Lcgislalivc Asscmblics of Mcghalaya. Nagaland and 'l ripura, on ,pilo1, basis.
'l
hc (lom:nissiot.t has lurthcr. dircctcd that }rcncciirrlh, mantlatory vcrillcalion o1'
vvl'A.l'papcr slips ol'randornly sclcctcd 0l (onc) polling slation shall bc gonductcd in ali
Iulurc (icncral and ilyc I')lqctions to llousc ol'thc Pcoplc and Statc Lcgislativc A.5sqm,bliq9,
1)rc
in addition to thc provisions of ilulc 561) ol'rhc (hnriucl o1'lilcctions l{uics. 1961. aiicr thc
compiclion ol'thc last round o1'counting ol'vo1cs rccordcd in thc IiVMs, as undcr:
(a) ln casc oi'(lcucral and Ilyc clcctions to Statc Lcgislativc Asscrnblics, vcrillcatiol of
VVl'}AI papc:. slips of randomly sclcclcd 0I (rnc) polling station pcr Asscrnbly
Constilucncy.
(b) In casc of(icncral and Ilyc clcctions to thc I Iousc o1'thc I)coplc, vcr.ilicati6n of vvirA'l'
papcr slips o1'ranclomly sclcctcil 0l (onc) polling stalion oIcach Asscmbly Scgmcnt ol.
tl.rc I)ariiamcntary Conslilucncv conccrncci
Iior tl.ris mandatory vcrilicatio. of vVl)A'i papcr slips, thc lollowing proccdur.c shall
bc lbllowcd:
l. l'hc vcriiication of vvI'A'l papcr slips ol'randomly sclccrcd 0l (onc)pollinF srati.n

Iirr cach Asscmbiy (irnstituc.cylScg'rc,t shall bc takcn up aftcr thc comp)ction ol'thc
last round ol'counling o1'votcs r.ccordcd in thc lrV\4s.
2. '['hc random sclcc1io, or'01 (onc)

polling station pcr Asscmbly Consritr.rcncy/Scgmcnl
shall bc donc by I)raw of lors. by thc licturning oirccr conccrncd, in thc prcscncc of
357
candidatcs/thcir agcnls and thc (icncrar

obscrvcr appointcd by fic oommission lbr thar
Constitucncy.
'l hc
3 ' draw o. iots musl bc concructcd immcclialciy
arlcr thc cornplcrion of thc rast rounrl
orcounling oi'r'o1cs rccordcd in trrc I:V\4s (oonrrol
t,nits) in thc dcsig,atcd Counring
IIall ibr thc particular Asscmbly, Oonslitucncy/Asscmbly
Scgntcnr.
4 A wriltcn i.timation rcgarding thc conduct
o1'draw o'lols lbr thc random sclcction
of
01 (onc) po,ing sralion lirr vcri'carion
o.vvI)A' Srips sirall bc givcn by thc ncrurning
Oiliccr to thc Candidatcs/rhcir clcction agcnts
r.vcll in advancc
5. '1'hc
lollowing procc.urc shall bc lbllowc. ft)r
rhc coltciuct ol.drar.r, ol.lots:
a whitc corou. papcr cartls o'postcarrl sizc
srra, bc uscd lbr conducting ths
drau, o1.
lots.
b' 'rbtai numbcr

o1'such papcr ca,rls should bc cqr.:al
to total .umbcr o1'poring stations
in thr: AsscrnhJy ( onstituencl .
c. 'l hc papcr
cards shall havc prc-pr.in1cd Asscmblv (irnstilucncy/Asscrrbly
Scgmcnt
numhcr. AC/AS namc and datc ol.polling
on lhc 1op, and thc polling station
numbcr
i, rhc ccntrc riach digit o1'1hc poring sralion
numbcr shall bc arlcast r x r,,(1
,'
inch
by J inch) sizc and printcd in black ink.
d 'r'hc
papcr cards 10 bc uscd ror drau,o'rots
sho,rcr bc
lb,r-ibldcd in such a way that
polling station numbcr is not visiblc.
c riach papc. card sha' bc showr
t0 thc candicratcs/thcir agcnts bclbrc
lirlding ancr
dropping in thc containcr.
I. 'l hc papcr
cards shaLi bc kcpt in thc big containcr
and musr bc shakcn bc.ibrc picking
up 01 (onc) slip by rhc llctur.ning Ofliccr.
6. 'l hc
vcrillcation o1'VVI)A.I. papcr slips shall
bc donc in a ,VVIrA.l. Counttng llooth,
(vcl))' spcciaJly prcparcrl ii:r r)ris purposc insi<Jc
thc (bunring I ia11. .r.rrc boorh
sha, bc
cncioscd in a wiic ntcsh.just ltkc
a bank cashicr,s cabin so that
no VVIrA.l.paper slip
can bc acccssccr by any unaul).rorizcd
o.c o1'rhc aounri,g tablcs in thc oou,ting
pcrson.
ira' can bc con,crtc. into thc var] a,d can
bc usod iirr nornrar counting
oi r.unrl-wisc
]rvM volcs bc1'orc trrc count o' vv.A'i
sii1.rs as pcr rardorn sclcclion aricr thc
contp)ction o1' round_wisc I.)VM counting.
7. 'l'hc Vcrilication
counl ol. thc VVI)A.l papor siips o1.
thc randomiy scJcctcd 0l (onc)
pollinil slation shall bc c.r.rdrtctcd
strictly in accodancc wirrr thc instructions
of thc
Oommission on counting ol.printcd
papcr slips.
358
8 'l'hc Ircturning
orficcr and Assislant ncturning
oificcr, as thc casc :nay bc. shalr
pcrsonally supcrvisc thc
co oi' VVI)A.I. papcr slips
at this boolh. .lhc (.icncrai
obscrvcr conccrncd .nor, nsurc
ciosc and carclul obscrvation
",,,ntrn* oi. thc cnlirc cxercisc
and cnsurc stricl compliancc
ofthc (irrnmission,s inslruclions.
9. 'l'hc
abovc proccss shali bc luily
vidcographcd.
10. Af1cr complction o.l-thc abovc proccss,
thc O,tccr shall givc a ccflificalc in
thc anncxcd Ibrmat. 'lclurning
'r'hc
abovc dircclion o'thc commission shalr bc brought 10 thc noticc
o.ari conccmcd.
Yours
(Matlhusudan C\upta.1
lJndcr Sccrctary
CC-: Standa rd I)ist ribution

359
Anncxurc
l'ilot 'l'csting of vcriricalion of papcr slips of vvlrA'I' of ()l
randomlv scrcctcd
polling slation
Namc o1'Statc:....
No. and Namc ol Asscmbly/parliamcnlary Oonstitr.rcncy:.
.. ..
No. and Namc o1'Asscurbly Scgmcnl (in casc ol l)C):...
Sl.No. and namc ol'l)olling Slalion:...,.. ... ...
Uniquc II) ol'(irnlrol lJnit:. .. .... .. .... ..
tJniquc II) ol'VVI,A'l :.......
It is ccrtiiy thar pilot tcsling ofcounring o1-papcr
slips o|vvI,A'l oi'01 rando:rry sclcclcd
pol)ing station has bccn conduclccl as pcr thc inslructions
ol.1hc Commission.
r Namc ol' (landidatc
No. of Votcs Cast I)iscrepancy if any
As pcr HVM As pcr l,apcr Slips
t.
2.
J.
NO',I A
'l()'i nL VOIt'S
Signaturc oi' Counting Agcnts
Signalulc o1' Oounling Supcrvisor
Signalurc o1' Iicturning Ofiiccr
Si gnaturc o1' (icncral Obscrvcr
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/28
360
ELECTION COMMISSION OF II\DTA

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Iloa Ncw Delhi-I10001
No. 5 1 /fti^/vPAt720 I 8/ItMS Dated: 8rr' March, 20I 8
'fo
'l-hc Chicl i.llcctoral Ol'ficcrs o1'
all S1a1es/lj'l's.
S LLbjcct: Clarificalion rcgarding conduct ol' mock poll during commissioning ol. IiVMs
and VVPAI's- rcgarding.
Sir',
I am dircclcd to convey rhal somc Slates havc soughr clarification whcthcr the
proccss of conduct or mock poll of 1000 votcs on 5oz randomry scrected llvMs during
commissioning ol'IiVMs is to be lbllowcd in case of VVpA.ls also or no1.
in this rcgard, it is crarified that during thc commissioning of livMs anrl

vvPA'l's, mock poll ol'1000 vores willbe cast in 5olo o1'randomly selccted liVMs, as well as
vVI'}A'ls. l'hc clcctronic rcsult shall bc tallicd with papcr count. candidates/thcir
rcprcsentatives shall bc allowcd to pick machincs randomly rbr this purposc
and ars. to
paflicipate in thc process.
Youryf4ithlully,
l)n
t/(l
\,/vl
^t\\x,,*-'
\w[-\ /
(Madhuiudan Cupta)
Undcr Secretary
Copy forwaldcd to
1. 'lhe chainaan-cum-Managing Director, Bharat rircotronic Limitcd, Bangarore.

2' 'l hc chairman-cum-Managing Dircctor, I:]cctronics c'orporation of India Limircd,
I Iyderabad.
... lor inltlrmation and ncccssarv action.
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/29
361
ELECTTON COMMISSION OF INDTA
NIIIVACII N SADAN, ASIIOKA IIOAD. NEW DI'LIII-IIOOOl
r-o.51/8/16/4/2018-EMS I){tcd: 18tr'.Iunc.2018
't'o
1. lhc Chicflllocloral Olllccrs ol'

All Slalcs/ l-lnion'l cn itorics.
2.'l hc Chairman-cum-Managing I)ircclor.

llharat l.llcctrcnics Limitod.
Nagavara. Oulcr Iling Iioad.
llangalorc 560045, Karnataka
3. l ho Chairman-cum-Managin.q l)ircclor,
IllccLronics Corpomljon oJ lndia Li;rircd.
I lydcrabad. Anclhra I'raclcsh.
Subicrt: l.irst Lcvcl Chftking of EVMs/Wl'A]'s - Rcgarding.
S,r.
I am dircctcd lo invilc your altc|tion 10 thc (itmmission's lctcr Nos. 5 l/8/16/4/2017 lrMS.
datcd 3orh Augus1.2017, 51/8/3/20lll-IlMS, darod l'1 Vay,2018 (SkneltJ't.t to y.hom M3 Iil/Ms
and M3 Vfl',17s arc alktcated).51/8/i6/4/2018 I]MS, darcd 9'r,May,20l8 (Sknes/(t'ls btlhom
M2 or M2-M3 YltPl'!'s arc allocatetl)rcgarding inslrLrclions on Iirs1 Lcvcl Chccking ol IiVN{s ancl
WPAIs and b c1:Lrily thal
lrirst Lcvcl Chccking (irl,(l) ol liVMs and VVI,A Is shall bc hcld scpamr0iy:
b. I:l.C oIllVMs shall bc slancd without u.riting l.r comflclc J(li\cr) ,,f VV P \ 1s.
Mock I'}oll in 5% of l,VMs during lri.C l.c. mock poll in 1% of liVMs ol 1200 volcs. in 2y0 of
liVMs of 1000 votcs and in 2% ol liVMs o1 500 votcs shall bc dotic rLsing VVI,A 1s. Aftcr rhc
mock poll. thc printcd balkn slips ofcach VVPAI p nlcr shall bc counlcd 10 comparc thc
rosult. indcpcndcnt ofthc clcctronjc rcsull in thc ('t,, anll thc rcsr l ofrhc prinrcd ballot slips
shallbc tallicd wilh thc cicctronic rcsult ol'(lU. lhctallyshouldbcshownlolhcreprtscnrativcs
ofpolilical parlics prcscnt in thc lrl.(1.
l:or this purposc, i1 shaLl bc cnsr.rrcd lhat atlcasl 25 VVI)A l s a.c madc avaiiablc a1 cach ol
thc disficls, whcrc 1fl,C ol]iVMs is 1o bc oonduclcd-
Yours
NK$'.
(Madhusudan-C u pta)
IJndcr Sccrelary
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/30
362
By Speed Post/E-mail

\irvachar Sadan. \shoka Road. \c\ I)elhi I1000-l
iiflElr elqtzot g ulaps 1),1tedi;?3suplember. 20 L 8
To
The Chief Dlcctorel Ofl'icers ol

All States and t,nion l crito cs
ofEVM/VVPA'I
-lirning rog
Subjcct: - First l,cvel Chccking
Sir,
I am dircclcd {o rei-cr to the Commission's instruction no. 51i8/16/4/2017-EMS dated
30.08.2017 and to staie that in addition 10 thc insLructions on Firsl l-cvcl Checking of
I]VM/WPA f givcn thcrcin, it has bccn decidcd by the Commission thai thc timing ofthe FLC
ol the EVM/VVPAI shail be al ica-.l lrom 9 AM ro 7 PM on all days including holidays'

Furlher, you are also rcquestcd to ensurc that the exlant insfuctions ofthe Commission
regarding proper arangements to be made lbr smooth and securc conducl of F;rst l'evei
Checking arc slrictly adhcred to.
lul)y,
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/31
363
NIRVACIIAN SAD N, AS}IOK.A. ROAD, NEW D}:'I,HI-1IOOO1
No. 5l/8/T&A/2018-ENIPS Dated: 09th Octob€r, 20I8
To
Thc ChiefElccloral Officers ol
All States and Union Terito es.
Subject: Taking out EVMS AND WPATS for Training and Awareness
purpose.
Sir,Madam,
In supersession of Commission's inslructions No 51/8/7/2017-EMS' dated
29'h September, 2018, on the subject cited, I am directed to state that to ensure proper
taining and awareness on use of WPATs with EVMs, the Commission has dilected
that after Filst Level Checking (FLC) of EVMS and WPATS:
(a) EVMs and WPATs may bc taken out for trai'!ing ard avlareness purpose
whenever neoded cven before first randomization subject to an uppcr ceiling

of
10% ofthe total number ofpolling stations in the District'
(b) Therc shall be no distinction between training and awareness EVMs/wPATs to
utilize maximum number of EVMs/WPATS for kaining and awareness purpose

inter-changeablY
(c) Political Parties should neccssarily be invited to witness this process from
opening ol Warehouse and re-sealing o1' warehouse aftor taking out thc
' EVMs/WPATs for training and awareness' Entire process to be video$aphed'
and State
(d) Thc list oI such EVMs and WPATs shall be givcn to the National
Recogniscd Political Parties. This list shall also be shared with the
candidates/thcir agents, as and when they are finalised-
(e) Schedule of Awareness/Training shall be shared with Recognized Nalional/State
Political Paaties.
(f Standard Operation Proccdure (SoP)for Training (including demonshation
and
awareness program) ol EVMs &WPATs is enclosed at Annexure-A
(g) A list ofprobable risk during training & awatencss is encloscd at Annexure-B
affixed on
(h) A slicker ofYellow colour mentioning "Training/'{wareness" shall be
such EVMs and VVPATs.
364
(i) The abovementioncd [VMs and VVPATs shall be stored in a separate
designatcd warehouse, not below the sub-division headquarlcrs level, with

proper securjty and doublc lock-system, as is done for strong room having FLC-
OK EVI4S and VVPATs. The keys sha11 bc kcpr wilh the two separate officers,
nominatcd by DEO and shall not bc below the rank of Tehsilda/Executive
Magislratc.
O The DEOs shall be directly responslble for the safcty and security of these
Training and Awarcncss EVMs and VVPATS.

(k) Such EVMS and WPATs shall be given only to the authorised officials doputed
by the District Elcction Officer concemed.
(1) The DEO shall ensure rhat the officials chosen lor creation of EVM/WPAT
related au,arcncss,'lEC campaign, as well as those nominated for handling these
E\rMs and VVPATS must be con'rprehcnsively trained on ftc usage and
functioning of thc EVMS and WIATs
(m) It shall be ensurcd thar aftcr the conclusion of daily training and awareness
programs. these IIVMs and VVPATs shall be stored in a secure Govt.
Office/Govl. building only If no such Govr. otlice/Govt. building is aval1able,
these EVMs and WPATS shall be srored in the nearest block/tehsil headquarters
under proper security- If there is no anangcmelt of security. the DEO shall
provide the adequate sccurit), lbr these EVMs and WPATs.
(n) Propcr 1og book shali be maintained.
(o)ln Assembly Constltuencles having 100 or more polling slarions, it shall bc

mandalory lbr the DEO to ensure that atleast 50/o of the EVMS and WPATs
takcn out lor training and awareness purpose arc re-introduced as Pol1-day
Reserve afler de novo FLC, randomization, cardidate settitlg ctc caricd out as
per the extant inskuctions of the Commission. For Asscmbly Constituencies
having less lhan 100 polling stations, thc number of training,/awareness EVMS
and VVPA I's to be re introduced in the polI-day Reservc pool may be dccidcd
by thc DEO as per the specific local requirertent. Ir any case, eflofl must be
made to ensurc maximum machines from lhe faining/awareness lot are rc-
introduccd as Poll-day Reserve ro optimizc thc utilization of machines for polls.
Thc lisi of ail suoh EVMs and WPATs re-introduced in rhe Rescrr'e poll shall
365
be duly shared with the political parties/candidates/their agents under proper
acknowledgemcnt.
(p) It is reiterated that trainins and awarcness EVMS/WPATS shall be addg!
to Doll day rescrve, only after followins rrrocess of FLC. randomizations and
Candidate Setting in the prcscnsc of oolitical prrties/tontestins
candidates/their agents.
(q) FLC OK EVMS & VYPATS taken out for the abovcmentiqned purDose.
shall be markcd 'Trainins and Awarcncss" in ETS also so that these EVMS
and !YPATs cannot be uscd for Randomization
Yours
Secretarv
Copy to:
1. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director,Bharat Electronics

Limited,Nagavara, Outer Ring Road,Bangalorc-560045, Karnataka.
2. The Chairman-curn-Managing Director,Electronics Corporation of India

Limited,Ilyderabad, Andhra Pradesh.
366
Anncxure_A
on EVM & VVPAT

and Awareness programme
SOP for Demonstration
DemonstFtion and
ANareness
shall strictly be folloved
lol
Thc loltowiDg Protocol
VVPA I '
programmc on EVM &
and awareness campaign'

' ttnits sbali be used fbr demonsffalion
Only "FI-C OK
' PaPer is used in the
BU'-
only dummy Ballot
. it shall be ensurcd that
wilh the symbols of
aummy symbols which should match
. The VVPAT snatt have
w?Ars have to be
area as the
. :::::ffi:"tal1 nol be given in an open
.l-iclJed (ror direcL 'unlrgh so

shall be kept together
Ballot Unit and WPAT
During demoustratiolvawareness'
' printed papcr slip ln VVPAT'
that voters can see the and also
ub*"n" o'o"ttt using EVM with VVPAT
. Voters should be explained
usc oIVVPAT wifi
EVM in clections'
informed about the of all the
shouid be maintained
to record votcs and signatures
' A Register
in the demonstratjon
process
participants on daily basis be clcared &
the elecfonic result of thc Cu_sha]l
At the end of tlomonstraton' Fufihcr' it has to be
' u" t"*o'"a from the WPAT drop box
VV?A'f slips tf'uU
proccss is repeated
ensured that on the
next day the same
made lor movemcnt
of EVMSNVPATS and
st-tall be
Proper Secu ty unôgern"'1t
'
aware[ess centres'
367
Annexure-B
PROBABLE RISKS
Dummy Symbois in the 1%

o Non-t-ploading of 16 candidttes (iocluding NO'I'A)
slmbols (including
V\PATs used for tcsring u"ith 4 BUs having 64 dr:mmy
that WPA| sljPs
NOTA). Flcocc, bciotc using for awatcness PulPose' !'ns'rtc
print as per durlm-v ba11ot papers'
using lor awatc'ess Plrtpose)
o Itregularrty on use of Dummy Symbols'Hcncc' bclorc
ensurrc that V\P,\T slips ptint as per dummy ballot papcrs'
o In case of tr{3 B\\Is, }tl \\rPATs shouicl be connectecl al thc dme uf

commissioniog of the E\a{s orhcru'ise E\rM $111 not acccPt a V\rPAT at a later
stage. Llcnce, fot awarcness PurPosc c^ndidate sctdng in N13 E\ 'ls should he donc
using Ballot Unit and \\'PAT'

o Lock papcr toli vheir traflsporilng the !l/P"\T from one place to ^nother-
Othert-ise, \A?AT may !{o inlo ertoi mocic'
a bulb ot halogea
o Do flot switch oo the WP,\T in btoad da1'light or dircctll'under
lamp ai the dme of xvarcncss as the \ryPr\T may go
lnto cttot mode Hence'
ensure that awatc.css oo E\rM aI1 i VVPAT shall be donc in shaded/closed area'
o Do not rePeetcdiy sv'itch ON and OFF rhe VVPAT as it will deplcte lhe bxttery as
well as PaPer roll.

the EVNI s/VrrPA Is and
o Sv,itch OFF the CU when corroectttrg or disconnectlng
do r , P-l ., c,blc to dscorr"'ring
o Non adhcrence o[SOP o:t i\warcness of E\iN{s and VW,{fs'
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/32
P e1 r d y Au u t 11
Pr nted or E ect on Co
CC On ne e Ed t on ttp //
3
on o nd 368
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e r d y Au u t 11
3
on o nd 369
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
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on o nd 370
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e r d y Au u t 11
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ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e r d y Au u t 11
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ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
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on o nd 373
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e r d y Au u t 11
3
on o nd 374
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e r d y Au u t 11
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on o nd 375
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e r d y Au u t 11
3
on o nd 376
ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
3
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ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
P e 11 r d y Au u t 11
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ccon ne co
Mod 1 CC 1 p r 61 6 63
// True Copy //
379 ANNEXURE C/33
Random Sampling For Testing Of EVMs Via VVPAT Slip

verification
Report
by
Abhay G. Bhatt
Head, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi Centre
&
Rajeeva L. Karandikar
Director, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai
&
Onkar Prosad Ghosh, ISS
Dy. Director General (Social Statistics Division), CSO, MOSPI
March 2019
380
Contents
I Statistical Testing of EVMs - Sample Size 3
1 Introduction 3
2 Statistical Survey 5
2.1 Population of EVMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Notations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Standard Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3 Determination of sample size 10

3.1 Confidence Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.2 Margin of Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 Testing of Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4 Optimal Sample Size 15
5 Further Analysis and Recommendations 15
6 Remarks on Implementation 19
II Appendix 22
A Common misconceptions and their clarifications 22

A.1 Sample size and sampling fractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
A.2 Isn’t guarantee needed for each constituency? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
A.3 Margins of error and Probability Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
B Some further tables and comments 28
C Python codes 34
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C.1 Hypergeometric probabilities for zero defectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
C.2 Optimal sample sizes for different populations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
C.3 Sample size cut-offs for different number of defectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
D Election Commission of India Letter 37
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Part I
Statistical Testing of EVMs - Sample

Size
1 Introduction
For the past several years, Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are being used by the Election
Commission of India (ECI) for the conduct of elections. However, recently, various stake-
holders have raised doubts about the usage of these machines. One of the major arguments
has been that the mechanism, by its very nature, is opaque in that there is no way to verify
whether the electronic counts that the EVM gives out agrees with the actual candidate-wise
count. To counter this argument, and for additional verifiability and transparency in the
voting process, ECI has also deployed Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines
since 2013. Further, from June 2017, each EVM is attached to a VVPAT machine at 100%
polling stations in all General and Bye elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative
Assemblies. When a voter casts the vote, the VVPAT machine prints a slip from which
the voter can immediately verify that the cast vote matches with the vote recorded by the
VVPAT.
At the time of counting of votes, the VVPAT slips can be counted and this VVPAT
paper slip count can be verified with the electronic count from the EVM machine. If the two
counts match for all the candidates, then this will clearly indicate that every vote that was
correctly recorded by the VVPAT machine was also being recorded correctly by the EVM.
And this will work as a guarantee that the EVM is working correctly. Since each EVM is
attached to a VVPAT machine, each EVM can be tested in this manner.
However, counting the paper slips manually has its own cost. Extra manpower and
time will be needed for a complete count. It can be argued that the Election process is
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383
an extremely sacrosanct process in any Democracy and hence the extra resources will be
justified. At the same time, it is pertinent to note that even manual count will never be
completely error free, and any error in the VVPAT slip count and consequent mismatch with
EVM data on account of this human error will invariably be saddled on the EVM itself and
create avoidable doubts on the credibility of the system.
The most logical and rational approach is the correct use of well-established Statistical
Sampling Techniques, which will allow us to check that the sanctity of the EVM based
election process is not disturbed – without having to check each EVM-VVPAT system. This
is achieved by testing a certain number of randomly selected EVM-VVPAT systems.
With this in mind, and in order to further enhance the credibility and transparency of
the EVM - VVPAT based election process, the Commission has already decided to undertake
VVPAT slip verification in one randomly selected polling booth per Assembly Constituency
(random sample). This involves, verifying the number of votes recorded in the VVPAT
printed slips with the corresponding electronic count for that machine in the randomly
selected polling booth.1
A natural question then arises: ‘what is the reasonable sample size of Polling stations
where VVPAT slip verification must be carried out to achieve the objective of establishing
the credibility and integrity of the present system?’ Various stakeholders have suggested
that the size of this random sample should be a significant proportion of the actual EVMs
being used with the requests ranging from 10% to 50%. However, it is necessary to analyse
and examine these requests on the touchstone of sound and scientific statistical theory.
In this context, it also necessary to understand that internationally, statistical theory is
widely used in almost every conceivable sphere of human endeavour to arrive at a reasonable
sample size for undertaking testing, authentication, validation or quality control of a trait or
1
It is pertinent to note that ECI has already undertaken 1521 such EVM-VVPAT slip verifications. In
each of these 1521 randomly sampled EVMs, not a single mismatch of votes has been found. This data
already suggests that the statistical confidence in the EVM-VVPAT systems should be extremely high. As
more and more data gets collected in future elections and if the number of defective EVMs remains zero or
close to zero, the statistical confidence in this process will keep getting enhanced.
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set of attributes within a given population of goods, products or services. Especially in large
populations, sample survey or sample study is the only rational, practical and feasible option
to examine any attribute as 100% checks are virtually impossible to undertake or implement
due to a variety of reasons and complications. Hence, a sample, if chosen randomly as per
the scientific statistical applications can provide a reasonably accurate depiction of the trait
or quality that is sought to be examined.
If the level of ‘reasonable confidence’ is specified then Statistical Theory can be used to
decide on the sample size.
ECI has asked us to suggest a basis for deciding upon a minimum sample size so as to
be very sure that the proportion of defectives, if any, is negligible, and to do so with a very
high level of confidence. (Letter from ECI dated 10th August 2018 is appended at the end
of this report in Appendix D).
Our recommendation:
We recommend that a random sample of the Electronic Voting Machines of
size 479 be drawn from the population of all the EVMs that have been used
in that set of elections. If for each of the selected machines, the EVM count
matches with the VVPAT count, then it can be concluded with an extremely high
statistical confidence (more than 99.993665752% confidence) that the proportion
of defective EVMs is less than 2%.
2 Statistical Survey
Before embarking on any statistical study, it is important to clearly set out the goals for the
study. While holding an election involves several steps and processes, this particular study
has the limited scope of testing for the efficacy of using EVMs for the election. This is to be
done by drawing a random sample from all the EVMs that are being used in the election.
In other words, the current exercise is to decide on an optimal sample size, which will
ensure with a very high level of confidence that the EVMs used in the election are working
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385
as they are supposed to do - namely correctly recording and counting the votes cast through
the machines.
2.1 Population of EVMs
The first question that arises is: ‘What is the Population of EVMs from which the random
sample is to be drawn?’ Is it all EVMs in a constituency, or in a State or the Whole country
or actually all the EVMs owned by ECI? To answer this question, we first need to ponder
over the level at which the (statistical) guarantee is required.
As noted earlier, the basic unit of this study is the EVM machine. We want to check the
working of the EVM through VVPAT counts. It should be noted that all the EVMs/VVPATs
are similar - having come up through the same process and having gone through similar tests.
Every EVM machine will be connected to a VVPAT machine. Before the actual voting starts,
each EVM/VVPAT goes through multiple rounds of testing and verification with established
protocol carried out in the presence of agents of all candidates in that constituency. Thus
prima facie, ECI is confident that EVMs are robust, credible and non-tamperable. It should
be further noted that there is no systematic bias in allotting particular EVM machines to
particular states/constituencies/booths.
Ideally the entire population of EVMs should be taken as a unit since they are man-
ufactured, stored, transported, undergo FLC and mock polls in exactly the same fashion.
However, since the purpose of this sampling is to detect if there is a presence of ‘significant’
number of defective EVMs hence it is vital that any corrective action (say counting of more
or all VVPAT slips) be taken up before announcement of results.
Thus, in our opinion, we should take as a unit all the elections that are announced on a
given day and typically counted on the same day. This could be assembly elections in few
states along with some bye elections, or Lok Sabha election along with some bye elections
and assembly elections in few states. We will refer to this as one set of elections. Thus we
suggest that a set be taken as the level at which the (statistical) guarantee is required.
We summarise the above discussion.
Since the Statistical Unit of study is the EVM, the Population will consist of all
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EVMs being used in a particular set of elections for which counting is done at
the same time.
2.2 Notations
To facilitate the discussion that follows, we introduce some notation.
(i) The Population consists of all the EVMs used in a given set of elections which is the
same as the total number of polling stations. (If in a polling station, more than one
EVM is used due to replacement of EVMs, we treat all the EVMs used in that polling
station as a single EVM for the purposes of this study. )
(ii) Let N denote the size of the population.
(iii) By P we will denote the actual, but unknown, proportion of of defective EVMs, i.e.
the EVMs for which there is a mismatch between the electronic count and the count
through the VVPAT slip.
(iv) A Random Sample of size n is to be drawn from the N units in the population. i.e.
n polling stations are to be randomly chosen for VVPAT slip verification.
(v) The proportion of defective EVMs in the sample will be denoted by p̂.
2.3 Standard Error
The standard error of the estimate obtained through the sample survey indicates the extent
to which the sample proportion p̂ and the true population proportion P may differ. Smaller
the standard error, greater is the confidence in the sample proportion p̂ being close to the
population proportion P. Thus we want to make the standard error as small as possible.2
As a thumb rule, the chances that p̂ and P differ by more than 2 times the standard
error is roughly 5% (or 1 chance in 20), while the chances that the two differ by more than
2
The standard error will be zero, or the confidence will be 100% only when n = N. In practice, the target
is to bring the standard error below a specified upper bound.
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387
3 times the standard error is very small, about 0.1% (or 1 chance in 1000). The chance that
the estimate differs from the true but unknown value by 4 times the standard error is about
0.006% or about 1 in 15,000.
The standard error is used to estimate the precision actually attained in a survey that
has been completed and also to estimate the size of the sample needed in a survey that is
being planned. (See [1])
If the sampling is done with replacement, the standard error is given by

!
P (1 − P)
. (1)
n
This depends on the unknown proportion P but not on the population size N.
However, when the sampling is done without replacement, the standard error is somewhat
less3 than when it is done with replacement and is given by4
! !
P (1 − P) N − n
. (2)
n N−1
"
The additional factor, namely N−nN−1
(called the finite population correction) has a minimal
effect on the precision of the sample estimate. This is so since the fpc is close to 1 unless n
is fairly close to N. To emphasize this point further, we quote from [1] (read in the current
context).
3
Since the aim is to restrict the standard error to a given upper bound, using (1) instead of (2) will be
more conservative.
4
When the sample size is infinity, the two formulae become identical. As such, sampling with replacement
may be thought of as sampling when the population size is infinite
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388
Provided that the sampling fraction n/N remains low, these factors are close to
unity, and the size of the population as such has no direct effect on the standard
error of the sample proportion p̂. For instance, if the variance is same in the two
populations (or equivalently, P is the same in the two populations), a sample of 500
from a population of 2,000,000 gives almost as precise an estimate of P as a sample
of 500 from a population of 10,000. Persons unfamiliar with sampling often find
this result difficult to believe and, indeed, it is remarkable. To them it is intuitively
obvious that if information has been obtained about only a very small fraction of the
population, it cannot be accurate. It is instructive for the reader to consider why
this point of view is erroneous.
We illustrate the point through the following table which gives the value of the standard
error for a random sample of size n = 500 drawn from populations of sizes 10,000 and
200,000 (Rows 2 and 3 respectively) and compare it with Row 1 which gives the standard
error when N is infinite (or when sampling is done with replacement). In any of the columns
corresponding to P = 0.01, 0.02 or 0.05 very little deviation is observed in the three values.
N fpc P = 0.01 P = 0.02 P = 0.05

∞ 1 0.00444 0.00626 0.00974
10000 0.9747 0.00434 0.00610 0.00950
200000 0.9987 0.00444 0.00625 0.00973
Table 1: For a fixed n, value of Standard error for different P does not change much with N
The authors in [1] further suggest that whenever the sampling fraction is less than 5% the
finite population correction can be ignored. Thus it is recommended that equation (1) be used
for calculation of the sampling error even when the sampling is done without replacement.
This formula yields an upper bound of the error for any population size.
It should be noted that the upper bound (1) depends only on sample size n and not on
n
sampling fraction N
. In summary, we reiterate the following.
n
The sampling fraction N
plays a very marginal role in Sampling theory. For
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the calculation of the standard error what matters is the actual absolute value
of the sample size n and not in relation to the population size N.
3 Determination of sample size

Let us come to the main question, namely, determination of the sample size n.
As commented earlier, if the entire population is tested, or sampled (so that n = N), the
standard error will always be zero. The goal of sampling theory is to make inferences about
the quantity P without having to sample every unit in the population, but at the same time,
with reasonable confidence.
In equation (1) of the previous section, we saw that there is a direct connection among
the three quantities - the standard error, the parameter value P, and the sample size n.
Formula (1) gives us the error in the estimate when using a simple random sample of size
n. We can put an ‘allowable’ bound on the error and may hope to use (1) to calculate n.
However, this relation is not directly usable since the parameter value P is itself unknown.
So instead of putting a bound on standard error, we fix a reasonable confidence level and
an allowable margin of error in order to estimate the sample size n.
3.1 Confidence Level
It is customary in Statistical surveys to use a confidence level of 95% or 99%. This number
95% can be interpreted as follows. If a similar survey is conducted 100 times, then 95 out
of those 100 surveys would give a correct inference or that there is a 1 in 20 chance of the
survey giving erroneous inference.
Typically, in large sample surveys5 , a 95% confidence level also corresponds to the state-
ment that the sample estimate p̂ and true unknown proportion P differing by more than 2
times the standard error has a roughly 5% chance (or 1 chance in 20). This error probability
(α = 0.05) is the probability that an observation from a Normally distributed random vari-
5
Normal Distribution approximations are valid in large sample surveys
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able with variance σ 2 differs from the mean by 2σ. This may be referred to as a ‘2σ level’.
The corresponding confidence level is given by 100(1 − α)% = 95%.
However, it is our belief that a 95% confidence level, or even 99% confidence level is too
low for the current situation. We instead suggest a ‘4σ confidence level’. The corresponding
error probability is about α = 0.00006334248 and corresponds to 99.993665752% confidence
level. This is high enough so that if we have 15000 such different random samples, one for
each election, each sample being of size n, then on the average, only about 1 of these 15000
samples are likely to give a result which is quite different from the true situation. Since India
has seen only around 200 elections since independence, this confidence level seems more than
reasonable.
In summary, We will target a 4σ level or 99.993665752% confidence level.
3.2 Margin of Error
In statistical theory, it is imperative that an acceptable Margin of Error is chosen in the

population, which is unlikely to affect the final outcome. It must be appreciated, in all
applications of Sampling theory, a reasonable margin of error is necessary as any sample,
howsoever randomly chosen, cannot be the exact replica of the population as a whole and
hence, the margin of error. In this context of sampling of EVMs, in our view 2% or 0.02
margin of error seems appropriate.
We will hence fix the margin of error to be 2% or 0.02.
The aim then would be to choose a size n such that in a random sample of size n the
proportion of defectives can be assured to be less than 2%, with high degree of confidence.
Or in other words, if the actual proportion of defectives in the population is 2% or more
then the probability that we do not observe any defective EVM in a random sample of size
n should be very small.
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3.3 Testing of Hypothesis
In simple words, we seek a sample size n such that if the true proportion of defective P is
0.02 or more, the chance that we observe zero defectives in the sample of size n is less than
α = 0.00006334248. Thus, if we do observe zero defectives, we can conclude with very high
confidence that the true proportion of defective P is less than 0.02.
This can be put in the statistical framework of testing of hypothesis as follows. The
statement that we wish to refute, namely that the proportion of defectives is 2% or more
is identified as the null hypothesis. The alternate hypothesis being that the proportion of
defectives is strictly less than 2%. The alternate hypothesis will be tested against the null
hypothesis at the level of significance α = 0.00006334248.6
Statistical Analysis
To briefly explain the statistical analysis involved, we introduce some notation. Let Xn
denote the number of defects observed in a random sample of size n out of a population
of size N . We seek to find the minimum sample size n such that the observation Xn = 0
is in the critical region.7 In other words, when the null hypothesis is true, the probability
that the observation values lie in the critical region should be smaller than our chosen
level of significance α = 0.00006334248.8 Then, if in an experiment, we actually observe
Xn = 0, we can reject the null hypothesis and conclude with high confidence (equal to
100(1−α)% = 99.993665752% confidence) that the proportion of defectives in the population
is strictly less than 2%.
The probability distribution of Xn can be computed using first principles and is taught in
a course on elementary probability : the probability of observing zero defectives in a sample
of size n from a population of size N when the population contains M defectives is equal to
6
Drawing analogy with legal parlance, the ‘burden of proof’ is on the alternate hypothesis. For the alter-
nate hypothesis to be accepted, and the null hypothesis to be rejected, there needs to be sufficient statistical
evidence as quantified by the level of significance. α = 0.00006334248 or confidence level 99.993665752%.
7
In a test of hypothesis problem, the set of values of the observation for which the null hypothesis is
rejected is called the critical region.
8
This probability is called the p-value corresponding to Xn = 0.
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the ratio with product of number of ways of choosing k defectives from M defectives in the
population and number of ways of choosing n − k non-defectives from N − M non-defectives
in the population as numerator and number of ways of choosing a sample of size n from a
population of size N as denominator.
#M$#N−M$
k
Prob (Xn = k) = #Nn−k
$ (3)
n
This is known as the Hypergeometric distribution.
Thus, the probability of observing zero defectives in a sample of size n is
#M$#N−M$
0
Prob (Xn = 0) = #N$n (4)
n
For small values of N this can be exactly computed by hand whereas for larger values,
the exact computation can be done via a python programme.
For a given population size N and sample size n, the table 2 gives probability of observing
zero defectives when the population has 2 % defective objects:
The python code that generates this table is enclosed as appendix C.1.
As we can see, the probability changes as we move across columns but does not change
much when we move down rows, specially there is very little difference when we go from
population size 50000 to 50000000. Once again this table illustrates that the sample size
is important and not the sampling fraction when population size is large.
Returning to our problem, for a given N we are seeking the minimum value of n for which
the p-value (the probability under the Null Hypothesis that the defectives are 2% or more)
of observing zero defectives is, less than α = 0.00006334248.
Thus for a given N we look for minimum n such that
#M$#N−M$
0
Prob (Xn = 0) = #N$n ≤ α = 0.00006334248 (5)
n
with M = 0.02 ∗ N.
Table 3 below gives the minimum sample size n required corresponding to different pop-
ulation sizes N so that if a sample of size n shows no defective, we can be convinced that
the defectives in the population are less than 2%.
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393
N↓ n→ 200 250 300 350 400 450 500

1000 0.013800 0.003991 0.001058 0.000254 0.000054 0.000010 0.000002
2000 0.015752 0.005188 0.001654 0.000509 0.000151 0.000043 0.000012
3000 0.016377 0.005593 0.001872 0.000614 0.000197 0.000062 0.000019
4000 0.016685 0.005796 0.001985 0.000670 0.000223 0.000073 0.000023
5000 0.016868 0.005918 0.002053 0.000704 0.000239 0.000080 0.000026
10000 0.017230 0.006161 0.002192 0.000775 0.000273 0.000095 0.000033
20000 0.017410 0.006283 0.002262 0.000812 0.000291 0.000104 0.000037
30000 0.017469 0.006324 0.002285 0.000824 0.000297 0.000107 0.000038
40000 0.017499 0.006344 0.002297 0.000831 0.000300 0.000108 0.000039
50000 0.017517 0.006356 0.002304 0.000834 0.000302 0.000109 0.000039
100000 0.017552 0.006381 0.002318 0.000842 0.000306 0.000111 0.000040
500000 0.017581 0.006400 0.002330 0.000848 0.000309 0.000112 0.000041
1000000 0.017584 0.006403 0.002331 0.000849 0.000309 0.000112 0.000041
50000000 0.017588 0.006405 0.002332 0.000849 0.000309 0.000113 0.000041
Table 2: Probability of observing zero defective in a sample size n drawn from population
size N containing 2 percent defectives.
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The python code that generates this table is enclosed as appendix C.2.
Finally, as can be seen from this Table, a sample size of 479 will be sufficient for
any population.
4 Optimal Sample Size

On the basis of the Analysis presented above, it is recommended that after the voting process
is over, a random sample of the Electronic Voting Machines of size 479 be drawn from the
population of all the EVMs that have been used in that set of elections and that each of the
selected machines be tested by checking the electronic count with the VVPAT slip count. If
for each of the selected machines, the EVM count matches with the VVPAT count, then it
can be concluded with an extremely high statistical confidence (more than 99.993665752%
confidence) that the proportion of defective EVMs is less than 2%.
This, in effect will give a very high statistical guarantee that the sanctity of the election
process is not disturbed by the use of EVMs.
We once again clarify the following. The optimal sample size suggested above will guar-
antee that the margin of error is capped at 2% with an extremely high confidence. Further,
while a larger sample will increase the statistical confidence in the EVM’s, the gain is not
proportionate to increase in sample size.
5 Further Analysis and Recommendations

We recall that the optimal sample size of 479 was determined by finding the smallest n
satisfying that observing “no defectives in the chosen sample when the actual proportion
of defectives in the population is equal to or more than 2%” has probability less than the
significance level α = 0.00006334248.
However, it is also possible that the actual proportion of defectives in the population is
less than 2% and yet, one or more defectives are present amongst the sampled EVMs. This
probability, though extremely small is still positive. For example, the probability that 1
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population size required sample size population size required sample size
500 308 1000 380
1500 410 2000 426
2500 436 3000 443
3500 447 4000 451
4500 454 5000 457
6000 460 7000 463
8000 465 9000 466
10000 468 20000 473
30000 475 40000 476
50000 477 100000 478
500000 479 50000000 479
Table 3: Sample size required from population size N so that p-value is less than α =
0.00006334248 .
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defective EVM is observed when the actual proportion is 2% is 0.000619.
A natural question then arises: If some defectives are observed in the sample, what should
be the further course of action? To answer this question, and at the cost of repetition, we
reiterate the statistical conclusion in such a scenario. Using terminology introduced earlier,
we can say that
If one or more defective EVMs are observed in a sample of size 479, then
the null hypothesis is NOT rejected at the 4σ level of significance (α =
0.00006334248).
Recall that our null hypothesis is that the proportion of EVMs is more than 2% and that
the burden of proof is on the alternate hypothesis and needs to have observational evidence
to the tune of 99.993665752% confidence. While observing one defective EVM out of 479
sampled EVMs will fail this ‘burden of proof’ the evidence is not strong enough for the
other side either. In other words, even when one defective is observed, the null hypothesis is
still rejected with a very high confidence (of approximately, 99.938%). However, this is less
confidence that what we set out with.
While observation of a few defective EVMs will raise questions about whether the pre-
decided margin of error is maintained, it does not automatically condemn all EVMs as
defective. In such a scenario, it makes sense to try and gather more evidence which will
tilt the balance one way or another. Of course, in doing so we neither want to increase the
allowable margin of error (2%) nor to reduce the confidence level (99.993665752%).
Hereunder, we suggest a statistically valid sequential approach. ECI can seek an addi-
tional sample of suitable size. If no additional defectives are found, we can still conclude that
the proportion of defectives is less than 2% with the same high confidence. This additional
number or additional sample size is 128. To clarify, if in a total sample of 607, we observe
only 1 defective, we can still conclude with high confidence (equal to 1 − 0.00006334248)
that the proportion of defectives is less than 2%. However, if larger number of defectives
are found (as further elaborated below) then the conclusion would be that more than 2% of
EVMs are defective.
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In Table 4 we give, for different sample sizes, the cut-off for number of defectives observed
which still gives us high confidence that the total number of defectives in the population is
less than 2 percent.The python code for generating this table 4 is given in appendix C.3.
Here are our step-wise recommendations.
1. If we observe 1 defective in 479 draw an additional sample of size 128 and check number
of defectives (n = 479 + 128 = 607).
2. If no defective is observed in the additional 128, making it 1 defective in sample size

607, reject null hypothesis and conclude that the proportion of defectives is less then
2% with high confidence.
3. If 1 defective is observed in the additional 128, making it 2 defectives in sample size

607, take an additional sample of 110 making the total 717.
4. If no defective is observed in the additional 110, making it 2 defective in sample size

717, reject null hypothesis and conclude that the proportion of defectives is less then
5. Likewise continue sampling and at any stage, if number of defectives is less than the
number in the table given below (Table 4 on page 20) corresponding to the sample
size, reject null hypothesis and conclude that the proportion of defectives is less then
6. If at any stage of the number of observed defectives exceeds 50, the conclusion would
be that EVMs are faulty or defect prone and ECI has to take a call on how to deal
with the situation
For example, if we observe 1 defective in 479, and 2 defectives in additional sample of

128 making it 3 out of 607, we take an additional sample of 210, making it 817. If no more
defectives are observed making it 3 out of 817, we reject null hypothesis and conclude that
the proportion of defectives is less then 2% with high confidence.
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Note that our earlier analysis was based on the critical region or the rejection region of
‘no defectives observed’. In other words, if the observed sample falls in this critical region
then the null hypothesis is rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis. The optimal
sample size of 479 was based on this critical region.
If, instead, we had done the statistical analysis of section 3 with the critical region being
‘number of defectives observed is at most one’, our optimal sample size would have been 607.
Similarly, for a critical region of ‘number of defectives observed is at most three’ the optimal
sample size would be 817. And so on. Other entries in Table 4 may also be interpreted in
this manner.
To continue our narrative, if in a sample of size 2000 we observe only 17 defectives
we can still conclude that percentage of defectives is less than 2% with a confidence of
99.993665752%.
If at any stage if the number of observed defectives exceeds 50, the conclusion would be
that EVMs are faulty or defect prone and ECI has to take a call on how to deal with the
situation.
6 Remarks on Implementation
In our analysis of the previous section, while deciding on the optimal sample size n, we have
assumed that the sample is going to be a random sample drawn from the population of
EVMs. This is indeed a crucial assumption and while implementing the recommendations,
sufficient care should be taken to ensure this. For the sake of completeness, we note that a
random sample is one where each unit in the population has the same chance or probability
of getting selected in the sample as any other unit 9 .
Our analysis presented earlier suggests that the optimal sample size for a random sample
is 479. In any such random sample of size, it is possible that no EVM is chosen from
some Assembly segments while some other Assembly segments may have more than one
representative EVM in the sample. This is a perfectly valid and natural statistical scenario.
9
There are standard and easy to implement methods for drawing a random sample
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Sample Size Number of Sample Size Number of Sample Size Number of

n defectives n defectives n defectives
479 - 606 0 607 - 716 1 717 - 816 2
817 - 910 3 911 - 1000 4 1001 - 1087 5
1088 - 1171 6 1172 - 1253 7 1254 - 1334 8
1335 - 1413 9 1414 - 1491 10 1492 - 1567 11
1568 - 1643 12 1644 - 1717 13 1718 - 1791 14
1792 - 1865 15 1866 - 1937 16 1938 - 2009 17
2010 - 2080 18 2081 - 2151 19 2152 - 2221 20
2222 - 2291 21 2292 - 2361 22 2362 - 2430 23
2431 - 2498 24 2499 - 2567 25 2568 - 2635 26
2636 - 2702 27 2703 - 2770 28 2771 - 2837 29
2838 - 2904 30 2905 - 2970 31 2971 - 3037 32
3038 - 3103 33 3104 - 3169 34 3170 - 3234 35
3235 - 3300 36 3301 - 3365 37 3366 - 3430 38
3431 - 3495 39 3496 - 3559 40 3560 - 3624 41
3625 - 3688 42 3689 - 3752 43 3753 - 3816 44
3817 - 3880 45 3881 - 3944 46 3945 - 4008 47
4009 - 4071 48 4072 - 4134 49 4135 - 4197 50
Table 4: Sample sizes and corresponding cut-offs for number of defectives observed which
still gives us 99.993665752% confidence that the proportion of defectives in the population
is less than 2 percent.
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However, in the past few elections, ECI has been randomly choosing one EVM from
among the polling stations in each Assembly Segment for verification with the VVPAT slip
counts. The practice can still be continued along with following the recommendations in this
report of drawing a random sample of size 479.
References
[1] (1977) William G. Cochran, Sampling Techniques, Wiley Eastern Ltd.
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Part II
Appendix
A Common misconceptions and their clarifications
In the first part of the report, we have given a self-contained and reasoned write-up about
the choice of the optimal sample size for testing EVM counts with VVPAT slip counts. Nev-
ertheless, there are some common misconceptions about the role of Statistics. Or sometimes
there are question marks about what Statistics can achieve. Or finally, sometimes there are
queries about the interpretation of Statistics or about the way it is used in a given situation.
In this Appendix section, we have tried to address some of the possible issues with the
hope of clarifying them. We will largely restrict our attention to the problem at hand, viz.,
finding an optimal sample size for testing of the EVMs used in Indian elections. However,
we would like to emphasize that Statistics is a well established Mathematical Science which
is used all over the world in many different aspects of life - from the mundane, say, pricing
of soap or deciding frequency of trains to the complex scenarios like predicting the weather.
Even DNA evidence which can decide guilt or innocence of an accused uses Statistics. It
is a Science which ‘quantifies uncertainty’ while dealing with large numbers. For example,
while it is impossible to predict with certainty whether the next toss of a coin will end in a
Heads or a Tails, Statistics will be able to predict with a fair amount of confidence that out
of any 100 tosses, about 50 are going to be Heads. Several leading Indian Statisticians have
contributed immensely to the development of the subject over the last century.
Some of the common questions that are generally asked can be broadly enumerated as
follows.
1. How can a sample of a few hundred be adequate in making inferences about lakhs of
individuals? The sample size should at least be some fixed percentage (10% or 20%
etc.) of the total population.
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2. While testing for EVMs in elections, what is the level at which statistical guarantee
should be sought? Should it be at the constituency level or state level or for the entire
country?
3. Using ready reckoners, which are widely available on the web, for determining sample
sizes gives very different answers. The suggested sample size, in fact, gives very high
margins of errors.
We will try and answer these queries in a bid to clarify all misconceptions.
A.1 Sample size and sampling fractions
A general perception is that a small sample will not be able to make any valid inference
about a large population. Several individuals have in fact suggested that ECI should sample
a certain minimum percentage of EVM-VVPAT systems and verify the electronic counts
with the slip counts for ensuring that the EVMs are not defective. The suggested percentage
of EVMs to be sampled varies from 10% to 50%.
This, of course is completely erroneous. To begin with it is noted that any of the suggested
figures, whether it is 10% or 30% or 50%, has no statistical basis whatsoever. Not only do the
numbers have no sanctity, it is further pointed out that the notion of determining the sample
size as a proportion of the population size has no statistical basis. In fact, the accuracy of
the results got by a sampling procedure mainly depends on the ‘absolute sample size’ and
not on ‘the sample size as a percentage of the population size’. While non-intuitive, this is
a standard statistical result and is well validated in all standard books on Sampling Theory.
We quote below from one such standard book [1] wherein the sampling is to be done for
finding the proportion of defective units in a population. This also appears on page 9 of this
report, but is reproduced here for a general reader.
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For instance, if the proportion of defectives P is the same in the two populations, a
sample of 500 from a population of 200,000 gives almost as precise an estimate of P
as a sample of 500 from a population of 10,000. Persons unfamiliar with sampling
often find this result difficult to believe and, indeed, it is remarkable. To them it
is intuitively obvious that if information has been obtained about only a very small
fraction of the population, it cannot be accurate. It is instructive for the reader to
consider why this point of view is erroneous.
In Statistics, whenever inference is drawn on the basis of a sample, by estimating a
certain quantity, the possible error in the sample estimate is measured. This sampling error
- or standard error - is important in that it tells us how close is the sample estimate to the
population value. The bigger the sample size n, the smaller will be the standard error.10
However, the sampling fraction n/N plays an insignificant role in the calculation of the
standard error. Table 1 (page 9) illustrates this point.
On the other hand, the following table shows that for the standard error P = 0.02
and a fixed sampling fraction n/N = 20% the standard error changes drastically with the
population size N.
N n Std. error
500 100 0.0125
10000 2000 0.0028
200000 40000 0.0006
Table 5: For a fixed P and fixed sampling fraction, value of Standard error changes with N
The same phenomenon will be true for any other value of sampling fraction or for any
other value of P.
In a related query, there is a suggestion that the counting and cross validation of VVPATs
is essential in interest of transparency as also for public scrutiny without any special expert
or technical knowledge. However, we would like to point out that expert knowledge is needed
only in the determination of the sample size of the EVMs for cross validation with VVPAT
10
See equations (1) – (2) on page 8 and the discussion there.
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counts. In fact, non-use of expert knowledge is likely to increase the doubts in the minds of
public.
A.2 Isn’t guarantee needed for each constituency?
The Election Commission Of India had announced that the VVPAT slip count would be
checked with the EVM count at one randomly selected polling booth in each constituency.
Several parties have questioned the wisdom of this step. The main criticism is that a sample
of size 1, will give extremley high margin of errors and does not make sense.
We have explained in Section 2.1 as to why we suggest choosing, for this statistical study,
the population of all EVMs being used in a set of elections. We repeat the same here.
There is no difference between EVMs used in one constituency and another. Further,
• All EVMs have similar design.
• They all go through the same tests before they are despatched as well as in the field.
• The order in which candidates appear is based on their names, alphabetically arranged,
and not on their party, resulting in different buttons on the EVM being assigned to a
political party in different constituencies.
• There is no systematic bias in allotting particular EVM machines to particular states,

constituencies or booths. In fact allotment to a constituency and then to a booth is
done through a two stage randomisation.
Also, this study is concerned with the efficacy of the EVMs being used in the election. In
particular, the sample is to be drawn to check that the proportion of defective EVMs, if any,
is not large enough. Note here that the term defective is being used for an EVM for which
the electronic count does not match with the paper count from the VVPAT machine.
As far as the EVM machine is concerned, the only thing that matters, is to check that
when a particular button is pressed, it gets recorded correctly. On this count, it does not
make any difference as to where was the machine being used - in which constituency, which
state.
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In fact, there is also a contention that various polling stations in a constituency are
not similar and the sample drawn may not be truly representative of the constituency as
a whole. And hence, it is also desirable that a stratified sampling be performed with a
random sample of one or more polling stations drawn from each of the following ‘strata’: ur-
ban (middle/upper class); urban (poor/slums); semi-urban; rural; Dalits/minorities; remote
hilly/desert/forest areas; voter turnout - heavy, moderate or low etc.
As explained above, this does not make any statistical sense. It would seem that the
study about testing about the efficacy of EVM’s is being confused with the actual election.
Indeed, if the idea is to determine which candidate is to win - but to do so only through
a suitably chosen sample, then definitely employing a ‘stratified’ sampling scheme makes
sense since a-priori, it may be rationally argued that the population - in this case, human
population - in different strata may exhibit different preferences for candidates.
However, it is inconceivable that a machine, an EVM, will change its behaviour just
because it is assigned to a polling station in a urban, rural, desert, hilly, forest or any other
region or one where more voting or less voting takes place. As such, there is no reason for
stratification using any of the above mentioned criteria.
In fact, asking for a ‘reasonable’ sample size for each constituency is also subsuming
the assumption that each constituency should be considered as a separate ‘stratum’. Once
again while the human population in different constituencies might exhibit different voting
behaviour, the EVM population will hardly do so. Even the number of candidates in any
constituency, whether it is 2 or 20 or any other number, will also have no effect on the working
of the EVM. - hence stratification using each constituency as a stratum is also completely
uncalled for.
At this point, it is also pertinent to note, that when drawing a random sample of a
particular sample size, it is quite possible that some constituencies might go unrepresented
in a sample while more than one EVM is chosen from some other constituencies. Statistically,
this scenario is perfectly fine, and does not make any difference to the inference drawn from
the sample.
Having said that, however, if ECI, for administrative reasons, decides to draw the required
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sample by choosing one EVM randomly from each constituency, as it is currently doing, that
is also ok, though not necessary as long as a minimum sample of 479 EVMs is randomly drawn
from the entire population of EVMs being counted on the same day across all constituencies
and states.
Finally, we would also like to point out here that most critiques, when putting forth a
point about the sampling procedure, suggest a confidence level of 95% – 99%. However,
given the undisputed importance of the exercise to be absolutely sure about the election
process, we have worked with a much higher confidence level – namely 99.993665752% -
which is quite a bit more than 99% level.
A.3 Margins of error and Probability Distributions
There are several ‘ready reckoners’ available on the web for use in statistical surveys. A
couple of possible queries may arise due to a blind use of these ready recknoers. While these
reckoners serve a purpose, a note of caution is warranted. Their use without understanding
the underlying statistical principles involved may lead to erroneous conclusions.
For example, there is a mathematical relationship between the sample size n, the confi-
dence level and the margin of error. So the ready reckoner will be able to calculate any of
the above three quantities for given values of the other two. Typically the confidence level
and the allowable margin of error is pre decided by the user and an optimal sample size
can be calculated. However, the above mentioned mathematical relation or formula also has
the unknown population proportion P in it. Since P is unknown, the ready reckoners give
sample size that will work for all P. As such the sample size suggested using these ready
reckoners will be very conservative.
Alternatively, if one tries to use the same reckoner in reverse order by plugging in the
sample size suggested by us and the confidence level and to get the margin of error, it will
once again lead to very erroneous readings. Here, we emphasize that in this report we have
not used standard error based approach. This has been done in order to avoid use of the
unknown P and instead we have used the formulation via testing of hypothesis, which is in
line with the objective.
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The distribution of defective EVMs is actually what is called as Hypergeometric distri-
bution. See (3). Calculating these probabilities by hand or using calculators for large N was
not easy. Hence it was customary to use either the Binomial probabilities or the Normal
distribution probabilities for this purpose as an approximation. With the current computing
power it is simple to actually calculate the hypergeometric probabilities which is what we
have done in this report. The python code for these computations is enclosed and can be
vetted by statistics and programming experts.
B Some further tables and comments

In the main part of the report, we have worked with a 4σ confidence level and a margin of
error of 2%. In subsections 3.1 – 3.2, we have also given reasons for the basis of our choices.
It is our belief that the values chosen by us are good enough to ensure with an extremely
high statistical confidence that the proportion of defective EVMs, if any is small so that the
sanctity of the election process is maintained. Once these two inputs are fixed, we can find
the optimal sample size based on the analysis of Section 4. Table 4 (on page 20) summarises
our recommendations for these two pre-fixed inputs.
If the allowable margin of error and/or the confidence level is changed, there would be
corresponding changes in the associated sample size. We illustrate this in Table 6 wherein
we give the sample sizes when the margin of error is 1% (the confidence level is kept at
99.993665752%). As can be seen from the Table, the minimum sample size recommended in
this case is 962.
Remark: A note prepared by an ex-IAS officer and submitted to ECI also contains
tables based on the same methodology. The tables are prepared with margin of error of 1%
but a lower confidence level of 99% and 99.9% respectively. In these tables sample sizes have
also been suggested separately for different states and based on these, recommendations also
an average number of EVMs per Assembly Constituency are given. While the calculations
for the state wide recommendations are generally correct (with errors only in a few entries),
pulling it down to the constituency level is not proper. As the sampling design changes so
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Sample Size Number of Sample Size Number of Sample Size Number of

n defectives n defectives n defectives
962 - 1219 0 1220 - 1439 1 1440 - 1639 2
1640 - 1828 3 1829 - 2008 4 2009 - 2182 5
2183 - 2351 6 2352 - 2516 7 2517 - 2677 8
2678 - 2835 9 2836 - 2991 10 2992 - 3144 11
3145 - 3296 12 3297 - 3446 13 3447 - 3594 14
3595 - 3740 15 3741 - 3885 16 3886 - 4029 17
4030 - 4172 18 4173 - 4314 19 4315 - 4455 20
4456 - 4595 21 4596 - 4734 22 4735 - 4872 23
4873 - 5010 24 5011 - 5147 25 5148 - 5283 26
5284 - 5418 27 5419 - 5553 28 5554 - 5688 29
5689 - 5821 30 5822 - 5955 31 5956 - 6087 32
6088 - 6220 33 6221 - 6352 34 6353 - 6483 35
6484 - 6614 36 6615 - 6745 37 6746 - 6875 38
6876 - 7005 39 7006 - 7134 40 7135 - 7263 41
7264 - 7392 42 7393 - 7520 43 7521 - 7649 44
7650 - 7776 45 7777 - 7904 46 7905 - 8031 47
8032 - 8158 48 8159 - 8285 49 8286 - 8411 50
Table 6: Sample sizes and corresponding cut-offs for number of defectives observed which
still gives us 99.993665752% confidence that the proportion of defectives in the population
is less than 1 percent.
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do the probability calculations based on which the sample size was calculated.
Moreover, it has been argued earlier in this report that sampling should be done from
the population of ALL EVMs being used in a set of elections for which counting will take
place simultaneously. As such the figures mentioned in the above mentioned Tables would
be alright only when elections are being held in each state separately. For the sake of
completeness, we have added two more tables. Table 7 below gives the optimal sample
sizes11 corresponding to confidence level 4σ = 99.993665752% for 1% and 2% margin of
error, when elections are held separately in each state.
Population Sample size n for

State Name Size (No. Margin of Error
of EVMs) 1% 2%
Sikkim 589 503 342

Mizoram 1164 678 396
Goa 1642 742 425
Nagaland 2194 806 438
Manipur 2794 837 446
Meghalaya 3082 845 448
Tripura 3174 847 448
Jammu & Kashmir 10035 921 469
Uttarakhand 10854 925 469
Haryana 16357 938 472
Kerala 21498 945 475
Punjab 22615 943 474
Chattisgarh 23672 946 475
Continued on next page
11
As the Population size for each state we have taken the same numbers as in the above mentioned note
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State Name Size (No. Margin of Error
of EVMs) 1% 2%
Jharkhand 24803 944 474

Assam 24890 947 475
Telangana 32574 950 476
Odisha 35959 951 476
Gujrat 50128 954 477
Rajasthan 51796 955 477
Karnataka 56696 956 477
Bihar 65337 956 478
Tamil Nadu 65616 956 477
West Bengal 77247 957 478
Uttar Pradesh 150000 960 478
Table 7: Optimal Sample sizes corresponding to confi-
dence level 4σ = 99.993665752% when elections are held
in each state separately
Similarly, Table 8 on page 33 gives the optimal sample sizes when elections are held
separately in each state corresponding to 1% margin of error for confidence levels 99.99%
and 99.9% respectively.
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State Name Size (No. Confidence Level
of EVMs) 99.99% 99.9%
Sikkim 589 494 440

Mizoram 1164 658 541
Goa 1642 716 574
Nagaland 2194 776 613
Manipur 2794 804 628
Meghalaya 3082 811 631
Tripura 3174 812 632
Jammu & Kashmir 10035 879 667
Uttarakhand 10854 883 670
Haryana 16357 895 676
Kerala 21498 902 680
Punjab 22615 899 678
Chattisgarh 23672 902 680
Jharkhand 24803 900 678
Assam 24890 903 681
Telangana 32574 906 682
Odisha 35959 907 682
Gujrat 50128 909 683
Rajasthan 51796 911 685
Karnataka 56696 911 685
Bihar 65337 911 685
Continued on next page
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State Name Size (No. Confidence Level
of EVMs) 99.99% 99.9%

Tamil Nadu 65616 911 684
West Bengal 77247 912 685
Uttar Pradesh 150000 915 687
Table 8: Optimal Sample sizes corresponding to 1% mar-
gin of error when elections are held in each state sepa-
rately
Further, the tables in the note also do not mention a line of action if one or more
defective is observed in the sample. We have given a detailed sequential procedure along
with the relevant sample sizes in cut-offs for different combinations of margin of error and
confidence levels. (See Tables 4 and 6).
Finally, the note also goes on to suggest an additional sample size equivalent to 1% of
all the EVMs being used in the elections in each state. This is done purportedly to detect
presence of systematic error in the EVMs. No explanation is given as to how this additional
sample will help in detecting systematic errors, and even if it does how has the number of
1% additional sample size being arrived at.
Firstly, a question of systematic error will arise only if a significant number of defectives
are observed in the sample to begin with. Our earlier suggested sample size is big enough to
detect the presence of defective EVMs - irrespective of whether the defect is due to random
causes or due to systemic defects.
As such there is no need for this additional sample size at all. Moreover, as mentioned
above, the suggestion of 1% additional sample is also completely arbitrary and has absolutely
no statistical basis.
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C Python codes
C.1 Hypergeometric probabilities for zero defectives
def binomlist(N, R):

a=[1]
for k in range(1, R):
a.append((a[k-1]*(N-k+1))//k)
assert((a[k-1]*(N-k+1))%k==0)
return a
def zerodefectprob(n,d,s):
m=1+(100-d)*n//100
b=binomlist(n,s+1)
c=binomlist(m,s+1)
x=c[s]
z=b[s]
y=x/z
return y
nn=[1000,2000,3000,4000,5000,10000,20000,30000,40000,50000,100000,
500000,1000000,50000000]
ss=[200,250,300,350,400,450,500]
d=2
for n in nn :
w=[n]
for s in ss :
x=zerodefectprob(n,d,s)
print(n,s,"{:.6f}".format(x))
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414
C.2 Optimal sample sizes for different populations

a=[1]
return a
def prob(n,p,s,t):
m=n*p//100
k=n-m
b=binomlist(n,s+1)
c=binomlist(m,t+1)
d=binomlist(k,s+1)
ta=d[s]/b[s]
f=[ta]
g=[ta]
for i in range(1,t+1):
tx=c[i]*d[s-i]/b[s]
f.append(tx)
ta=ta+tx
g.append(ta)
return g[t]
#4sigma
pr=6.334248/100000
#3sigma
p=2
t=0
nn=[500,1000,1500,2000,2500,3000,3500,4000,4500,5000,6000,7000,8000,
9000,10000,20000,30000,40000,50000,100000,500000,50000000]
for n in nn:
s=100
a=prob(n,p,s,t)
while(a>pr):
s=s+1
a=prob(n,p,s,t)
print(n,s)
35
415
C.3 Sample size cut-offs for different number of defectives
a=[1]
return a
def prob(n,p,s,t):
m=n*p//100
k=n-m
b=binomlist(n,s+1)
c=binomlist(m,t+1)
d=binomlist(k,s+1)
ta=d[s]/b[s]
f=[ta]
g=[ta]
for i in range(1,t+1):
tx=c[i]*d[s-i]/b[s]
f.append(tx)
ta=ta+tx
g.append(ta)
return g[t]
pr=6.334248/100000
p=2
n=10000000
s=1
u=1
t=1
for t in range(0,51):
u=s
v=t-1
a=prob(n,p,s,t)
while(a>pr):
s=s+1
a=prob(n,p,s,t)
k=s-1
if t>0 :
print(u, " - ",k," : ",v," ")
36
416
D Election Commission of India Letter

,
ELE,CTION COMMISSION OF INDTA

NIRVACIIAI\ SADAN, ASIIOKA ROAD, NEW DITI,III-11OOO1
uo.StiBiWpar:tSu20i6-rMS Dated:l.dXusust, 2o1B
To,
Prof Bhat,
Head, lndian Statistical lnstitute (Delhi Centre),
New Delhi.
Subject: Mandatory verification of WPAT slip count with electronic result during
counting of votes in elections to the Parliament and State Legislative
Assemblies: Statistical principles - regarding
Sir,
With reference to the captioned subject and in continuation of the discussion
during the meeting with Sh Sudeep Jain, Dy. Election Commissioner on 08.08.2018, I am
directed to state that the Election Commission of lrldia is Constitutionally mandated with
direction, superintendence and control of elections to the Parliament and various State
.Legislative Assemblies in the country. Over the last two decades, the Commission has
successfully conducted various general and bye elections through Electronic Voting
Machines (EVMs) based voting and counting. Since 2013, the Commission has also
deployed Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (WPAT) machines along with EVMs for
additional verifiability and transparency in the voting process. The Commission is
committed to 100% deployment of VVPATs with EVMs at all polling stations in all future
elections to the Parliament and State Assemblies.
ln order to further enhance the credibility and transparency of the EVM-
WPAT based election process, as also to address the demands of certain political parties
regarding WPAT paper trail counting, the Commission has already decided to undertake
WPAT slip verification of 1 (one) randomly selected polling station in each Assembly
Constituency during the counting process. As a consequence of this decision, till date,
WPAT slip verification has already been done in respect of 843 polling stations across
various States/UTs during the General and Bye election conducted during the last year. lt
is recorded with satisfaction that the slip verification has matched with the electronic count
in all the cases.
However,.there are intermittent demands from certain sections of the political
firmament to increase the counting of WPAT slips during every election and the request
varies from 25o/o to 100% slip counting. As can be duly appreciated, there has to be a
convincing logical rationale rooted, inter alia, in sound statistical foundatio\for examining
\
'---
37
417
and processing such requests. The

commission, as always, is keen to engage
and involve
all the stakeholders in the various aspects of
election management and adopts a
constructive and collaborative approach
in resolving and addressing various issues,
including the present matter regarding
wpAT srip count.
since' Indian statistical lnstitute is the most notable
and reputed national
institution devotedto research, teaching and application of statistics
and sampling
knowledge in the country, the commission
considers it expedient and desirable that your
cooperation and expertise is solicited
in addressing the matter of WpAT slip
verification,
being essentially a statistical issue. Your
vast technical resources and domain
expertise
will be very useful and instrumental in systematically
analysing the whole issue and
arriving at mathematically sound, statistically
robust and practically cogent solutions
to the
raging debate about the number/percentage
of wpAT srip counts to be undertaken
during
the elections.
ln view of the same, it is requested that your
kind convenience may please be
conveyed for associating with the commission
and coilaborating towards addressing the
issues as eraborated above. Any
additionar information or supprementary
material in the
matter, if so desired, may please be indicated.
Thanking you,
AR)
D irecto r
// True Copy //
38
ANNEXURE C/34
418
1
WRIT PETITION (C) NO. 273 OF 2019
N CHANDRABABU NAIDU & ORS. PETITIONER(S)
VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA & ANR. RESPONDENT(S)
WITH
WRIT PETITION (C) No. 1514 OF 2018

WRIT PETITION (C) No. 215 OF 2019 AND
O R D E R
Writ Petition (C) No. 273/2019:
This writ petition has been filed seeking the
following reliefs:
"A. Issue a writ of mandamus or any

other appropriate writ, order or
direction thereby quashing and
setting aside Guideline No.16.6 of
the Manual on Electronic Voting
Machine and VVPAT as framed and
issued by the Election Commission
of India; and
B. Issue a writ of mandamus or any

direction thereby directing that
minimum of 50% randomized VVPAT
paper slip verification of EVM
shall be conducted in every General
and Bye Election in each Assembly
Segment of a Parliamentary
Constituency, in case of Election
to the House of the People; and in
Digitally signed by
MANISH SETHI
Date: 2019.04.08
19:21:11 IST
Reason: each Assembly Constituency, in case
of an election to a State
Legislative Assembly; and
419
2
C. Pass such other order or direction

as it deems fit in the facts of the
present case and in the interest of
justice.”
Guideline No. 16.6 of the Manual on Electronic
Voting Machine and VVPAT in respect of which the first
prayer has been made would require to be specifically
noticed to appreciate the issues involved in the writ
petition. We, therefore, deem it appropriate to extract
Guideline No. 16.6, which reads as follows:
“16.6. Mandatory Verification of VVPAT

Paper Slips:
Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper

slips of randomly selected 01 (one)
polling station shall be conducted in all
future General and Bye Elections to the
House of the People and State Legislative
Assemblies, in addition to the provisions
of Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections
Rules,1961, after the completion of the
last round of counting of votes recorded
in the EVMs, as under:
a) In case of General and Bye elections

to State legislative Assemblies,
verification of VVPAT paper slips of
randomly selected 01 (one) polling
station per Assembly Constituency.
b) In case of General and Bye elections

to the House of the People,
station of each Assembly Segment of
the Parliamentary Constituency
concerned.
For this mandatory verification of

VVPAT paper slips, the following
procedure shall be followed.
16.6.1.The verification of VVPAT paper

420
3
slips of randomly selected 01

(one) polling station for each
Assembly Constituency/Segment
shall be taken up after the
completion of the last round of
counting of votes recorded in the
EVMs.
16.6.2. The random selection of 01 (one)

polling station per Assembly
Constituency/Segment shall be
done by Draw of lots, by the
Returning Officer concerned, in
the presence of candidates/their
agents and the General Observer
appointed by the Commission for
that Constituency.
16.6.3.The draw of lots must be conducted

immediately after the completion
of the last round of counting of
votes recorded in the EVMs
(Control Units) in the designated
Counting Hall for the particular
Assembly Constituency/Assembly
Segment.
16.6.4. A written intimation regarding

the conduct of draw of lots for
the random selection of 01 (one)
polling station for verification
of VVPAT Slips shall be given by
the Returning Officer to the
Candidates/their election agents
well in advance.
16.6.5. The following procedure shall be

followed for the conduct of draw
of lots:
a) White colour paper cards of

postcard size shall be used for
conducting the draw of lots.
b) Total number of such paper cards

should be equal to total number
of polling stations in the
c) The paper cards shall have pre-

printed Assembly Constituency/
Assembly Segment number, AC/AS
name and date of polling on the
421
4
top, and the polling station

number in the centre. Each digit
of the polling station number
shall be atleast 1" x 1"(1 inch
by 1 inch) size and printed in
black ink.
d) The paper cards to be used for

draw of lots should be four-
folded in such a way that
polling station number is not
visible.
e) Each paper card shall be shown

to the candidates/their agents
before folding and dropping in
the container.
f) The paper cards shall be kept in

the big container and must be
shaken before picking up 01
(one) slip by the Returning
Officer.
16.6.6. The verification of VVPAT paper

slips shall be done in a 'VVPAT
Counting Booth' (VCB), specially
prepared for this purpose inside
the Counting Hall. The booth shall
be enclosed in a wire mesh just
like a bank cashier’s cabin so
that no VVPAT paper slip can be
accessed by any unauthorized
person. One of the Counting tables
in the Counting Hall can be
converted into the VCB and can be
used for normal counting of round-
wise EVM votes before the count of
VVPAT slips as per random
selection after the completion of
round-wise EVM counting.
16.6.7. The Verification count of the
VVPAT paper slips of the randomly
selected 01 (one) polling station
shall be conducted strictly in
accordance with the instructions
422
5
of the Commission on counting of

printed paper slips.
16.6.8. The Returning Officer and
Assistant Returning Officer, as
the case may be, shall personally
supervise the counting of VVPAT
paper slips at this booth. The
General Observer concerned shall
ensure close and careful
observation of the entire exercise
and ensure strict compliance of
the Commission's instructions.
16.6.9. The above process shall be fully
videographed.
16.6.10. After completion of the above
process, the Returning Officer
shall give a certificate in the
annexed format (Annexure-30).”
The petitioners, who are 21 in number, are
representatives of 21 political parties, who claim to
represent about 70-75% of the total population of the
country and also to represent the entire opposition in
the Lok Sabha. The thrust of the petition is that, to
maintain the purity of the electoral process and to
ensure foolproof result of the mandate expressed by the
voters in the forthcoming General Elections of the Lok
Sabha as well as to some Assembly seats in different
States it is necessary to increase the percentage of
verification of VVPAT paper trails to atleast 50% of the
EVMs to be used in the forthcoming elections.
The Election Commission of India has not

423
6
responded very favourably to the prayers made in the
writ petition, as noticed above.
Very broadly, the Election Commission of India
("ECI") contends that a query had been posed to the
Indian Statistical Institute ("ISI"), namely, "what
would be the reasonable sample size of Polling
Stations where VVPAT slips verification is required
to be carried out to achieve the object of
establishing the credibility and integrity of the
electoral process".
According to the ECI, the said query was posed
to an Expert Body, namely, ISI. In response, the ISI had
submitted an elaborate report, the crux of which is that
verification of VVPAT paper trail of 479 (randomly
selected) Electronic Voting Machines ("EVMs") would
generate over 99% accuracy in the election results. It
is also pointed out that as per Guideline No. 16.6 i.e.
verification of VVPAT paper trails of one Assembly
Constituency or Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary
Constituency would involve verification of VVPAT paper
trail of 4125 EVMs instead of 479 EVMs which is eight
times more than what has been reported by the ISI.
Additionally, the ECI has pointed out infrastructure
difficulties, including manpower availability, at this

424
7
point of time, in increasing the number of EVMs for
verification. According to the Election Commission of
India, the sample verification of the VVPAT paper trail
of one EVM is done by a team of three Officers under the
direct supervision of the Returning Officer and the
Election Observer of the constituency. The process takes
about an hour. If what the petitioner asks for i.e.
verification of VVPAT paper trail of 50% of the EVMs,
the declaration of result of election could be delayed
by 5-6 days.
In a situation where the ECI, a constitutional
body, is satisfied on the integrity of the EVMs and
which is further fortified by the sample verification of
VVPAT paper trail of one EVM per Assembly Constituency
or Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency, the
exercise sought for by the petitioner would be a futile
exercise, which the Court should not order, it is
contended.
We have heard learned counsel for the parties
and we have also interacted with Mr. Jain, Deputy
Election Commissioner, who is personally present in
Court.
At the very outset the Court would like to
observe that neither the satisfaction of the Election

425
8
Commission nor the system in vogue today, as stated
above, is being doubted by the Court insofar as fairness
and integrity is concerned. It is possible and we are
certain that the system ensures accurate electoral
results. But that is not all. If the number of machines
which are subjected to verification of paper trail can
be increased to a reasonable number, it would lead to
greater satisfaction amongst not only the political
parties but the entire electorate of the Country. This
is what the Court should endeavour and the exercise,
therefore, should be to find a viable number of machines
that should be subjected to the verification of VVPAT
paper trails keeping in mind the infrastructure and the
manpower difficulties pointed out by the Deputy Election
Commissioner. In this regard, the proximity to the
Election schedule announced by the ECI must be kept in
mind.
Having considered the matter, we are of the view
that if the number of EVMs in respect of which VVPAT
paper slips is to be subjected to physical scrutiny is
increased from 1 to 5, the additional manpower that
would be required would not be difficult for the ECI to
provide nor would the declaration of the result be
substantially delayed. In fact, if the said number is
increased to 5, the process of verification can be done
by the same team of Polling Staff and

426
9
supervisors/officials. It is, therefore, our considered
view that having regard to the totality of the facts of
the case and need to generate the greatest degree of
satisfaction in all with regard to the full accuracy of
the election results, the number of EVMs that would now
be subjected to verification so far as VVPAT paper trail
is concerned would be 5 per Assembly Constituency or
Assembly Segments in a Parliamentary Constituency
instead of what is provided by Guideline No. 16.6,
namely, one machine per Assembly Constituency or
Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency. We
also direct that the random selection of the machines
that would be subjected to the process of VVPAT paper
trail verification as explained to us by Mr. Jain,
Deputy Commissioner of the Election Commission, in terms
of the guidelines in force, shall apply to the VVPAT
paper trail verification of the 5 EVMs covered by the
present order.
With the aforesaid directions, the Writ Petition
shall stand closed.
We express our reluctance to go into the issues
regarding the integrity of the EVMs which have been
raised at a belated stage. The petition was filed in the
month of December, 2018 raising various technical issues
which are not possible to be gone into at this stage.

427
10
With the aforesaid observations, the writ
petition shall stand closed.
We are of the view that the present practice of
recounting of votes in terms of Rule 56-C of the Conduct
of Election Rules, 1961 shall continue.
With the aforesaid observation, the writ
Writ Petition (C) No. 1514/2018 and Writ Petition (C)

No. 215/2019:
The writ petitions shall stand disposed of in terms
of the observations made in the connected writ petitions
i.e. Writ Petition (C) No.273/2019 etc.
..…...............CJI.
(RANJAN GOGOI)
…...…................J
(DEEPAK GUPTA)
...…................J.
(SANJIV KHANNA)
NEW DELHI,
APRIL 8, 2019.
428
11
ITEM NO.48 + 14 COURT NO.1 SECTION PIL-W
Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s). 273/2019
N CHANDRABABU NAIDU & ORS. Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA & ANR. Respondent(s)
(FOR ADMISSION )
WITH
W.P.(C) No. 1514/2018 (PIL-W)
W.P.(C) No. 23/2019 (PIL-W)

(FOR PERMISSION TO APPEAR AND ARGUE IN PERSON ON IA 3873/2019 and
FOR APPROPRIATE ORDERS/DIRECTIONS ON IA 46959/2019)
W.P.(C) No. 215/2019 (PIL-W)

(FOR ADMISSION)
W.P.(C) No. 385/2019 (PIL-W)

(FOR ADMISSION and IA No. 46187/2019-EXEMPTION FROM FILING O.T.)
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE DEEPAK GUPTA
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJIV KHANNA
For Petitioner(s)
WP 273/2019 Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Saif Mahmood, Adv.
Mr. Varun K. Chopra, Adv.
Mr. Amit Bhandari, Adv.
Mr. Avishkar Singhvi, Adv.
Ms. Madhavi Khanna, Adv.
Mr. Anish Dayal, Adv.
Mr. Sumant De, Adv.
Mr. Mayank Mikhail Mukherjee, Adv.
Mr. Vivek Agarwal, Adv.
Mr. Arjun Singh Bhati, AOR
Mr. L. Nidhiram Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Azeem Samuel, Adv.
Mr. Chandy Oomen, Adv.
Mr. Zulfikar Menon, Adv.
429
12
WP 1514/2018 Mr. Kapil Sibal, Sr. Adv.

Mr. Sanjay Hegde, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Prasanna S., Adv.
Mr. Nizam Pasha, Adv.
Mr. Pranjal Kishore, Adv.
Mr. Shantanu singh, Adv.
Mr. Goutham Shivshankar, AOR
WP 23/2019 Mr. Sunil Ahya, In-person
WP 215/2019 Mr. Sanjay Hegde, Sr. Adv.

Mr. Aakarsh Kamra, AOR
WP 385/2019 Mr. Rana Mukherjee, Sr. Adv.

Mr. Runamoni Bhuyan, AOR
Mr. S. Chatterjee, Adv.
Mr. Piyush Sachdev, Adv.
Mr. Rajkumar Thorat, Adv.
For Respondent(s) Mr. C.A. Sundaram, Sr. Adv.

E.C.I. Mr. Arvind P. Datar, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Amit Sharma, AOR
Ms. Ayiala Imti, Adv.
Mr. Prateek Kumar, Adv.
Mr. Neelesh Singh Rao, Adv.
Mr. Sudeep Jain, Dy. Election Commissioner
Mr. K.K. Venugopal, A.G.

Mr. Tushar Mehta, S.G.
Mr. Rajat Nair, Adv.
Mr. Sachin Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Ankur Talwar, Adv.
Mr. A.K. Sharma, AOR

O R D E R
Writ Petition (C) No. 273/2019, Writ Petition (C) No. 23/2019 and
The writ petitions stand closed in terms of the signed order.
Pending applications, if any, stand disposed of.

430
13
Writ Petition (C) No. 1514/2018 and Writ Petition (C) No. 215/2019:
The writ petitions shall stand disposed of in terms of the
observations made in the connected writ petitions i.e. Writ
Petition (C) No.273/2019 etc.
(SUSHIL KUMAR RAKHEJA) (ANAND PRAKASH)

AR CUM PS BRANCH OFFICER
(Signed order is placed on the file.)
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/35
431
1

INHERENT JURISDICTION
REVIEW PETITION (CIVIL) NO.1083 OF 2019

IN
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO.215 OF 2019
RAMESH BELLAMKONDA ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA ... RESPONDENT(S)
WITH
REVIEW PETITION (CIVIL) NO.1084/2019 IN WRIT PETITION

(CIVIL)NO.273/2019, REVIEW PETITION (CIVIL) NO.1116/2019
IN WRIT PETITION (CIVIL)NO.1514/2018 AND WRIT PETITION
(CIVIL)NO.612/2019
O R D E R
Review Petition (Civil) No.1083/2019 in Writ Petition

(Civil) No.215/2019, Review Petition (Civil) No.1084/2019 In
Writ Petition (Civil) No.273/2019, Review Petition (Civil)
No.1116/2019 In Writ Petition (Civil) No.1514/2018 :
Applications for listing the review petitions in open
Court are allowed.
Heard learned counsel for the petitioners and perused

the record. We are convinced that the order of which
Digitally signed by
SARITA PUROHIT
Date: 2019.05.09
review has been sought, does not suffer from any error
15:01:51 IST
Reason:
apparent warranting its reconsideration.

432
2
The Review Petitions are, accordingly, dismissed.
Pending applications stand disposed of.
Writ Petition (Civil) No.612/2019 :
We are not inclined to entertain this petition. The
writ petition is dismissed. Pending applications stand
disposed of.
……………………………………………………………CJI.
[RANJAN GOGOI]
……………………………………………………………J.
[DEEPAK GUPTA]
……………………………………………………………J.
[SANJEEV KHANNA]
New Delhi;
May 7, 2019.
433
3
ITEM NO.31 COURT NO.1 SECTION PIL-W
R.P.(C) No.1083/2019 in W.P.(C)No.215/2019
RAMESH BELLAMKONDA Petitioner(s)
VERSUS

(With appln.(s) for permission to file additional documents/facts/
annexures and for listing review petition in open Court)
WITH
R.P.(C)No.1084/2019 in W.P.(C) No.273/2019 (PIL-W)
(With appln.(s) for permission to file additional documents/facts/
annexures and for listing review petition in open Court)
R.P.(C)No.1116/2019 in W.P.(C)No.1514/2018 (PIL-W)
W.P.(C) No.612/2019 (PIL-W)

(With appln.(s) for exemption from filing O.T.)
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJIV KHANNA
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Aakarsh Kamra,AOR
Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi,Sr.Adv.

Dr. Saif Mahmood,Adv.
Mr. Amit Bhandari,Adv.
Mr. Avishkar Singhvi,Adv.
Mr. Mayank Mikhail Mukherjee,Adv.
Mr. Vivek Agarwal,Adv.
Mr. L. Nidhiram Sharma,Adv.
Ms. Madhvi Khanna,Adv.
Mr. Azeem S.,Adv.
Mr. Chandyoomen,Av.
Mr. Zulfikar Memon,Adv.
Mr. Arjun Singh Bhati,AOR
Mr. Kapil Sibal,Sr.Adv.

Mr. Nizam Pasha,Adv.
Mr. Prasanna S.,Adv.
Mr. Shantanu Singh,Adv.
434
4
Mr. Goutham Shivshankar,AOR
Mr. Raju Ramachandran,Sr.Adv.

Mr. C.U. Singh,Sr.Adv.
Dr. Saif Mahmood,Adv.
Mr. M.R. Shamshad,AOR
Mr. Aditya Samaddar,Adv.
Mr. Vivek Agarwal,Adv.
Ms. Sarah Haque,Adv.
For Respondent(s) Mr. K.K. Venugopal,AG

Mr. Tushar Mehta,SG
Mr. Ankur Talwar,Adv.
Mr. Rajat Nair,Adv.
Mr. Kanu Agrawal,Adv.
Mr. Sachin Sharma,Adv.
Mr. A.K. Sharma,AOR
ECI Mr. C.A. Sundaram,Sr.Adv.

Mr. Amit Sharma,AOR
Mr. Dipesh Sinha,Adv.
Mr. Prateek Kumar,Adv.
Mr. Neelesh Singh Rao,Adv.
Ms. Rohini Mosa,Adv.

O R D E R
Review Petition (Civil) No.1083/2019 in Writ Petition

(Civil) No.215/2019, Review Petition (Civil) No.1084/2019 In
Writ Petition (Civil) No.273/2019, Review Petition (Civil)
No.1116/2019 In Writ Petition (Civil) No.1514/2018 :
The review petitions are dismissed in terms of the

signed order.
Writ Petition (Civil) No.612/2019 :
The writ petition is dismissed in terms of the signed

order.
(Anand Prakash) (Sarita Purohit)

Branch Officer AR-cum-PS
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/36
435
1
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATAURE FOR RAJASTHAN
AT JODHPUR.
ORDER.
C.P. Joshi vs. Kalyan Singh Chouhan

& anr.
S.B. Election Petition No.1/2009 under

Sections 80,81,100(1)(d)(iii) and 100(1)(d)(iv) of
the Representation of People Act, 1951.
Date of Order: March 25th ,2010.
PRESENT
HON'BLE MR. PRAKASTH TATIA,J.
REPORTABLE
Mr. M.S. Singhvi, Arun Bhansali & Mr. R.K. Purohit for the
petitioner.
Mr.L.R. Mehta, Mr. Vijay Bishnoi & Mr. Ramit Mehta, for
respondent no.1.
.....
The election petition was posted on 16.2.2010 for
obtaining admission, denial for documents submitted by
the parties and for framing of the issues and the respondent
submitted this application a day before on 15.2.2010 raising
objections that the sealed packet containing marked copy of
the Electoral Roll, the Register of Voters in Form No.17A

436
2
and the list of Tendered Votes in Form No.17B, should not
be opened and be allowed to be inspected even for framing
of the issues. Consequence of which will be the Court may
not obtain admission denial for the documents referred
above before framing issues.
The contention of the respondent is that this Court
vide order dated 19.11.2009 allowed the application of the
petitioner for summoning of the documents and has
summoned the documents mentioned at S.Nos. 4 to 35
and 45 from the District Election Officer, Rajsamand.
Against this order dated 19.11.2009, Special Leave to
Appeal(Civil) No.33725/09 was preferred before Hon'ble the
Supreme Court. Said Special Leave to Appeal was disposed
of by the Hon'ble Supreme Court on 16.12.2009 with liberty
to petitioner to raise objections referred in the order at
relevant time.
According to the learned counsel for the respondent, in
view of the above order of the Hon'ble Supreme Court,
unless the petitioner prima facie proves allegations
contained in para no.12 to 19 of the election petition, the
sealed packet containing the marked copy of the Electoral
Rolls, the Registers of Votes in Form No.17A and the list of
Tendered Votes in Form No.17B should not be opened and
be allowed to be inspected even for framing of the issues in
the election petition.

437
3
The learned counsel for the respondent vehemently
submitted that the documents referred above are secret and
in view of Rule 93(1)(a) to (e), the opening of the
documents will violate the secrecy of the election process
which is not permissible. The learned counsel for the
respondent relied upon the judgment of the Hon'ble
Supreme Court delivered in the case of Fulena Singh v.
Vijay Kumar Sinha and others ((2009) 5 SCC 290), wherein
it has been held that before production and inspection of
the election papers, a clear case is required to be made out
for ordering the production and inspection of the election
papers. In that case, the inspection of the election papers,
i.e. the Register in Form No.17A allowed by the High Court
was set aside by the Hon'ble Supreme Court.
The learned counsel for the petitioner relied upon the
judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court delivered in the
case of Smt. Rekha Rana v. Jaipal Sharma & ors.(AIR 2009
SC 2946) and submitted that opening the documents for
the purpose of obtaining the admission, denial of the
respondent, will not violate any secrecy of ballot, nor there
is any restriction against opening of these documents, if the
Court passes the order. It is also submitted that the
documents referred above, as such, are not the secret
documents, as from those documents, no one can know
who had cast vote in favour of whom. Further, Section 94 of

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the Representative of People Act, 1951, has not made these
documents secret documents but put a restriction against
opening of documents otherwise than by the order of the
Court so that the election papers may not be opened and
used by any authority for any purpose.
I considered the submissions of the learned counsel
for the parties and the judgments referred above.
It will be appropriate to first recapitulate that the
election petitioner submitted application IA No.14745/09 for
summoning of various documents and articles before issues
be framed in the election petition. In reply to that
application, the respondent specifically took the plea in para
no.6 of the reply that “... It is for the petitioner to prove the
allegations which he has chosen to base his election
petition, he cannot be permitted to have a roving and
fishing enquiry into the records pertaining to election;
whose inspection and production is prohibited by statutory
rules in the interests of maintaining and preserving the
secrecy of votes.” Then took the plea in para no.7 that “...
The petitioner is not entitled to summon the documents
mentioned in S.No.4,5,12,13,20,21,34,35,36,37 and 45 by
invoking Rule 12 of the Election Petition Rules or under any
provision of law. Petitioner's application under reply is
clearly violative of the statutory provisions, which prohibit
inspection and production of the documents for maintaining

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secrecy of voting which is fundamental to democracy.”
In para no.11 of the above reply, the respondent took
the plea that “ since the petitioner has so far not cared to
exhibit his readiness to produce any evidence for even
showing that the allegations on which he has based his
election petition are capable of being substantiated, he
cannot be permitted to have a roving and fishing enquiry
into election records and violate the secrecy of voting.” The
in para no.13 of the said reply the respondent again took a
plea that “.... inasmuch as the petitioner has not
established any prima facie case in regard to his allegation
about voting by impersonation. Thus the petitioner's
petition under reply also deserves to be dismissed in regard
to the documents mentioned in S.Nos.20 to 27.” The same
plea was taken of not having any prima facie case
established by the petitioner for production of the
documents at S.No. 34,35 and 45 etc. in para no.15 of the
reply.
From the above, as plea taken in para no.18, it is clear
that the respondent's objection even at the time of
summoning of the document was that the
documents/articles cannot be summoned in the court
because there is no iota of evidence to substantiate any
allegation made in the election petition even of prima facie
nature. Therefore, these documents/articles cannot be

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summoned and very specifically it was pleaded that the
documents cannot be summoned as it will lead to roving
and fishing enquiry from the election material and, more
importantly, it will violate the secrecy of the election
process/votes and this Court vide order dated 19.11.2009
held as under:-
“.... the documents referred at S.No. 4 to

33 and if these documents are not produced at
this stage and will be summoned after some
evidence of the petitioner, then that will cause
only delay, therefore, these documents can be
summoned at this stage, rather say, required to
be summoned at this stage and after obtaining
admission and denial on these documents from
the respondents, the proper issues may be
framed and unnecessary evidence can be
excluded. The video CDs referred at S.Nos. 34
and 35 are also not the secrete articles and they
are also relevant which will also be required
before evidence of the petitioner starts. The
Electronic Voting Machines, referred at S.Nos.36
to 43 of the list as well as the tendered ballet
papers referred at S.No.44 cannot be summoned
at this stage without recording any prima facie
satisfaction of the court for ordering summoning
of these documents. However, the record relating
to the inclusion of the name of Kalpana
Kunwar/Kalpana Singh in the electoral roll
pertaining to Polling Station NO.86 (Numbered
39 in the election held on 4.12.2008) as also
Polling Station NO.83 (Numbered 40 in the
election held on 4.12.2008) of Nathdwara
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Legislative Assembly Constituency is also

required to be summoned, as these documents
are also relevant in view of the allegations made
in the election petition and by summoning them,
the proper issues can be framed and unnecessary
evidence may be excluded.”
Summoning of these documents, at this
stage, will help the Court in framing the proper
issues and will help in placing the burden of issue
properly upon the party and ultimately may
avoid unnecessary evidence.”
From the order dated 19.11.2010 it is clear that the
documents were summoned after considering whether it will
be the right stage for summoning the documents and after
considering that whether these documents are secret
documents or not and the documents were summoned for
the purpose of obtaining admission, denial of the
respondent as documents were summoned by the petitioner
and, therefore, that is required to be done before framing of
the issues. It was felt necessary that the admission, denial
be obtained so that for proving issues, proper burden can
be put upon the party and this Court also observed that it
will avoid unnecessary evidence and will facilitate early
decision on the election petition. It is clear from the above
order dated 19.11.2009 that this Court clearly held that the
documents/articles are required to be produced at this
stage and before evidence of petitioner and these

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documents summoned by the Court are not secret
documents/articles. Inspite of above clear decision by this
Court, on the issue raised by the respondent, the petitioner
with the help of the observations made by the Hon'ble
Supreme Court in Special Leave Petition preferred against
the order dated 19.11.2009, raised same objections. The
order passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court is as under:-
“Heard both sides.

The respondent-Election Petitioner filed an
application to summon certain documents,
mostly relating to the conduct of election. The
petition was opposed by the petitioner herein
alleging that these documents are irrelevant and
inadmissible in law and it was also submitted
that the election petitioner has not raised any of
the grounds warranting summoning of these
documents.
We make it clear that the petitioner would
be at liberty to raise these grounds/relevancy or
admissibility of these documents when these
documents are sought to be used by the
respondent herein in the proceedings. It was also
pointed out that these documents, some are
confidential in nature and they may expose the
secrecy of the election. The Returning Officer is
directed to produce the documents in a sealed
cover, only after hearing the parties, and if
necessary, open the sealed cover having due
regard to the sanctity of the secrecy of ballot.
The petitioner herein would be at liberty to
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raise all objections regarding admissibility and

relevancy of the documents at the time of the
hearing.
The special leave petition is disposed of
accordingly.” (emphasis supplied)
It is clear from the order of the Hon'ble Supreme
Court dated 16.12.2009 quoted above that the contention
of the respondent before the Hon'ble Supreme Court was
that the documents summoned are irrelevant and
inadmissible in law for which Hon'ble the Supreme Court
observed that the respondent will be at liberty to raise all
objections regarding admissibility and relevancy of the
documents at the time of hearing. Such objections are not
at present. Another plea taken by the respondent before the
Hon'ble Supreme Court was that some of the documents are
confidential in nature and they may expose the secrecy of
the election. For this, Hon'ble Supreme Court observed that
the Returning Officer shall produce the documents in sealed
cover only and only after hearing the parties and if
necessary, the documents will be opened having due regard
to the sanctity of the secrecy of ballot.
So far as the tendered ballot and the voting machines
wherein votes have been recorded are concerned, they are
certainly secret documents/articles and neither the
petitioner has requested for opening of tendered ballots or
for decoding of the voting machine. At this place it will be

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relevant to mention here that what has been made secret in
the process of election is given under Section 94 of the
Representation of People Act, 1950.
The Section 94 in the Representation of the People
Act, 1950, is as under:-
“94. Secrecy of voting not to be

infringed.- No witness or other person shall be
required to state for whom he has voted at an
election.”
This provision protects the voter or other person from
disclosing in whose favour he has voted as it is secret
information.
Hon'ble the Supreme Court in the case of Smt. Rekha
Rana v. Jaipal Sharma & ors. (AIR 2009 SC 2946), after
considering earlier decisions of the Supreme Court,
observed that:-
“the underlying object of the provision is to

assure a voter that he would not be compelled,
directly or indirectly, by any authority to disclose
as to for whom he has voted, so that he may
vote without fear or favour and is free from any
apprehension of its disclosure against his will
from his own lips. The Section confers a privilege
on the voter to protect him both in the Court
when he is styled as a witness and outside the
Court when he may be questioned bout how he
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voted. This precisely is the principle of “secrecy

of ballot.”
Then Hon'ble the Supreme Court observed that -“The
“secrecy of ballot” has always been the hallmark of the
concept of free and fair election, so very essential in the
democratic principles adopted by our polity. It undoubtedly
is an indispensable adjunct of free and fair election.” In the
same judgment, Hon'ble the Supreme Court considered the
case of S.Raghbir Singh Gill v. S. Gurcharan Singh (AIR
1980 SC 1362) wherein it has been observed that “Out of
the two competing principles, the “purity of election”,
principle must have its way and that the “rule of secrecy”,
as contemplated in Section 94 of the Act, cannot be pressed
into service to suppress a wrong coming to light and to
protect a fraud on the election process.”
The petitioner is not seeking any information relating
to any person, who had voted and to know to whom he
voted nor asked for the decoding of the Electronic Voting
Machine and, therefore, Section 94 cannot be involved to
prevent the Court from opening the documents summoned.
At this stage, it will be more relevant to emphasis that what
has been made secret is that no one should be compelled to
state for whom he has voted at an election and it has not
been made secret by Section 94 or by any other provision
of law under the Act of 1951 that whether one has voted or
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not. The petitioner is also not seeking inspection of the
documents to know who has voted for whom but the
petitioner gave names of the persons, for whom it has been
alleged that some other persons have voted. In the facts of
this case, the petitioner is not seeking opening of
documents to know whether any voter has voted or not or if
voted then for whom he has voted. In fact the documents
are required to be opened for obtaining admission, denial
of the respondent for the purpose of framing issues in
proper form to place the burden upon the appropriate party.
Inspite of having a specific provision for maintaining
the secrecy of ballot in the Act of 1951 under Section 94,
Rule 93 in the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 has been
framed in different language. By Rule 93, only it has been
provided that the papers and articles referred in sub-clause
(a) to (e) shall not be opened and their contents shall not
be inspected by or produced before, any person or authority
except under the order of a competent court. Rule 93 of
Rule of 1961 itself nowhere provides that the
documents/articles mentioned in sub-clauses (a) to (e) of
sub-rule (1) of Rule 93 shall be secret documents/articles
and in contrast to Section 94 of the Act of 1951, those
materials can be inspected and produced before any person
or authority, but only upon the order of the competent
court. This provision has been made inspite of the fact that
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as per Section 93 of the Act of 1951, no witness or any
other person is require to state for whom he has voted and
as per sub-clause (b) and (c) of sub-rule (1) of rule 93,
even packets of used ballot papers whether valid, tendered
or rejected, as well as the packets of counterfoils of used
ballot papers, are permitted to be inspected or produced
before not only the court, hearing the election petition, but
before any person or authority if the Court passes the order
for such inspection or production of those documents or
articles before any person or authority. The respondent
failed to demonstrate and show with the help of any
provision of law under the Representation of People Act,
1951 or the Election Rules, 1961 that the documents or
articles by which the secrecy of vote by voter is not
disclosed and cannot be made known, yet they cannot be
opened in the Court if needed to frame proper issues which
are required to be framed after obtaining admission, denial
on such documents and for that purpose the Court has
passed an order.
This Court by order dated 19.11.2009 summoned the
documents/articles mentioned at S.No.4 to 35 and 45 in the
application submitted by the petitioner, which are as
under:-
“1. Nomination Papers presented by Shri Kalyan Singh
Chouhan along with affidavit.

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14
“4. Electoral Roll relating to Polling station

No.39
5. Electoral Roll relating to Polling station
No. 40.
No.27
No.61
No.73 9. Electoral Roll relating to Polling
station No. 117.
No.
180
No.199
12. Marked copy of electoral roll relating to
Polling station NO.39
20. Register of Voters in Form NO.17A
relating to Polling Station No.39
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28. List of Tendered Votes in Form No.17B
relating to Polling station No.27
34. Video CDs containing the videography
of polling Process relating to Polling station
No.39
35. Video CDs containing the videography
of polling Process relating to Polling station
No.40
45. Record relating to inclusion of the name
of Smt. Kalpana Kunwar/Kalpana Singh wife of
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respondent Kalyan Singh Chouhan in the

electoral roll pertaining to Polling Station No.86
(Numbered 39 in the election held on 4.12.2008)
as also Polling Station No.83 (Numbered 40 in
the election held on 4.12.2008) of Nathdwara
Legislative Assembly Constituency.”
The documents at S.No.4 to 19 are the marked copies
of electoral roll relating to specific Polling Station, number
of which have been given and the election petitioner is not
seeking any roving enquiry from these electoral roll to find
out how many persons have voted or not voted but is
seeking to use specific entry in relation to specific person to
prove that specific persons have voted and specific persons
have cast tendered votes. It is not a case of touching the
secrecy of election and will disclose that who has voted for
whom.
The documents summoned, referred at S.No.20 to 27,
are the Registers of votes in Form 17A relating to specific
Polling Station, number of which have been given by the
petitioners. The Register of votes is maintained as required
under Rule 49L of the Rules of 1961. In the Form 17A,
before permitting an elector to vote, the Polling Officer (a)
records the electoral roll number of the elector as entered
in the marked copy of the electoral roll in a register of
voters in Form 17A, (b) obtain the signature or the thumb
impression of the elector on the said register of voters; and

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(c) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the
electoral roll to indicate that he has been allowed to vote.
Therefore, the information recorded in Form 17A itself
cannot disclose that which voter has voted for whom. It
only records the the elector who was allowed to vote at the
Polling Station. It contains the signatures/thumb impression
of that elector, which also only can prove that that person
has voted. Therefore, the documents referred at S.No.20 to
27 also have no secrecy attached to it in the light of the
provisions made in the Act of 1951 and the Rules of 1961.
The documents referred at S.No.28 to 33 are list of
tendered votes in Form 17B relating to specific Polling
Station. Form 17B is prescribed in the Rules of 1961 and
are required to be maintained under Rule 49E of the Rules
of 1961. In this Form 17B, the Presiding Officer is to enter
the serial number, name of the elector, serial number of the
elector in the electoral roll, serial number in the Register of
voters( Form 17A of the person who has already voted in
place of elector) and the Presiding Officer is required to
obtain the signature or thumb impression of such elector
who has been given tendered vote, as provided under
Section 49P of the Rules of 1961. For the purpose of
examining its value with reference to any secrecy attached
to it, the Form 17B is similar to Form 17A, as it itself also
does not disclose nor can disclose that for whom voter has
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voted.
At this juncture, it will be further relevant that the
petitioner in the election petition has specifically referred
the names of the electors, who according to the petitioners,
have submitted the tendered votes and the petitioner do
not want to have a roving or fishing enquiry from the
bundle/registers of Form 17A and 17B to know that who
gave tendered vote. Therefore, these documents can be
opened for the purpose of obtaining admission, denial of the
respondent.
In the case of of Fulela Singh (supra), Hon'ble the
Supreme Court held that inspection of election papers
mentioned in Rule 93(1)(a) to (e) is not available as a
matter of course and inspection is not to be ordered to find
out material to derive support for one's own case and a
clear case is required to be made out for ordering the
production and inspection of election papers. In above case,
the facts were that the election petition sought declaration
that the respondent's election be declared void on the
solitary ground that there are large number of voters;
roughly about 600 were enrolled as voters from more than
one place and majority of such voters have voted twice in
favour of Respondent 1. In this regard, it is curious to
indicate that there are 250 persons of the family of
Respondent 1, including the gotias(agnates) and co-

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villagers who were supporters of Respondent 1 and enrolled
in more than two places in the voter's list in the same
constituency and they have cast votes at both the places
and as such 500 void votes have been counted in favour of
Respondent 1 and if such void votes are deleted by simple
arithmetical calculations, Respondent 1 has secured less
number of votes than the petitioner and therefore on this
ground alone the election of Respondent 1 is not only fit to
be set aside but on the other hand the election petitioner is
entitled to declare election in place of Respondent 1 by
securing the majority votes than Respondent 1. In the
election petition, the election petitioner produced evidence
on his behalf and when the matter came up for evidence of
respondent before the Hon'ble Supreme Court, then an
application was filed under Rule 93(1)(dd) of the Rules
seeking inspection of “the packets containing registers of
voters in Form 17A”. The Hon'ble Supreme Court noticed
that in the said application, it was stated that inspection of
the register of voters in Form 17A is required for the
purpose of substantiating the allegations of double voting
by the relation and the supporters of the appellant. After
noticing the facts of the case, the Hon'ble Supreme Court
held that the documents referred in Rule 93(1)(a) to (e)
cannot be inspected for making a roving enquiry in order to
find out the material and to derive support for one's own
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20
case. As already observed, such is not the case here and
the petitioner wants to prove a specific entry for a specific
person and is not intended to find out whether that specific
person has voted or not. Not only this, in the case of Fulena
Singh (supra) it has been held that the grant or refusal of
production in the election petition to large extent depends
upon the decision as to whether parties have to be
permitted to inspect the register in Form 17A. The Hon'ble
Supreme Court, even after setting aside the order, directed
the trial court to dispose of the election petition as well as
the application, uninfluenced by any of the observations
made in the order passed by the Supreme Court by
specifically mentioning in para 18 that the Supreme Court
do not propose to minutely examine the nature of evidence
and express opinion as to whether any case at all is made
out for permitting the parties to inspect the packets
containing registers of voters in Form 17A. Therefore, the
said judgment has no application to the facts of the case.
In view of the above, it is held that the documents
summoned are required to be opened for the purpose of
obtaining admission, denial before framing of the issues in
the election petition and it do not violate the secrecy and
admission denial over the documents are required to be
obtained before issues are framed and before evidence in
the election petition may start.

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For the reasons mentioned above, the application is
dismissed and the objections raised by the respondent in
the application are rejected and the matter may be listed
for admission, denial and for framing issues on 6.4.2010 at
2.00 p.m.
( PRAKASH TATIA),J.
mlt.
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/37
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2004 SCC OnLine Kar 72 : AIR 2004 Kar 289 : 2004 AIR Kant R
1267 : (2004) 3 Civ LT 8 : (2004) 2 KCCR 1239
Karnataka High Court

(BEFORE K. SREEDHAR RAO, J.)
Michael B. Fernandes … Petitioner;

Versus
C.K. Jaffer Sharief and others … Respondents.
E.P. No. 29 of 1999
Decided on February 5, 2004
ORDER
1. This Election Petition does not only challenge the integrity of the
election of the first respondent but also the efficacy and integrity of the
electronic voting machine used in the election of Yelahanka
Parliamentary Constituency. The petitioner is the unsuccessful
contestant at the 13th Loksabha Parliamentary Election held on 6-10-
1999. The first respondent is the successful candidate. The respondents
2 to 5 are the other contesting candidates. Respondents 6 to 8 are
Election Commission and its Officers. This Court deleted respondents 6
to 8 as not necessary parties. The Supreme Court confirmed the order.
2. The gist of the objections raised by the petitioner in the Election
Petition disclose that the amendment to Representation of the People
Act by incorporating Section 61A and making provision for use of
electronic voting machines and the consequent amendment to Rules is
bad in law as it permits arbitrariness and ultra vires the Constitution.
An election conducted with the aid of electronic voting machine does
not ensure the free and fair polling and counting, in view of the
inherent defects in the electronic voting machine. It is also contended
that electronic voting machine is vulnerable to tampering. Besides it is
alleged that on account of the inherent errors in the electronic voting
machine, there has been no proper counting of the votes. The first
respondent has denied the allegations made in the petition. The
following issues were framed by my predecessor.
1. Whether the petitioner proves that there has been non-compliance
of the provisions
Page: 290
of the Constitution, Act, rules or orders made under the Act from the
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time of polling to counting resulting in materially affecting the result of

the election in so far as the first respondent is concerned?
2. Whether S. 61 of the Representation of the People Act and

consequent rules under Chapter 2 of the Conduct of Election
Rules, 1961 is ultra vires the constitution?
3. Whether the petitioner proves that elections held to No. 12,
Bangalore North Parliamentary Constituency by using the
Electronic voting machines is null and void?
4. Consequently, whether the petitioner is entitled for a declaration
that the result of the 1st respondent electing him from No. 12
Bangalore North Parliamentary Constituency is liable to be
declared as null and void?
5. Whether the petitioner has made out a case for re-poll?
3. In view of the disputed contentions, an additional issue is framed
in the following manner:
4. Whether the electronic voting machines used in the conduct of the
election is vulnerable to mischief or whether the electronic voting
machine has in-built safeguards of tamper proof?
5. This case as usual of the civil litigations does not stand out as an
exception for expeditious disposal. By the time the evidence is
commenced and concluded, the political scenario of the country has
undergone a thorough change, threatening a premature dissolution of
Loksabha. In view of the changed context, the Counsel for the
petitioner submits that factual contentions regarding impropriety and
illegality of election canvassed in the petition are given up and confine
to challenge only on the legal aspects and feasibility of the use of
electronic voting machines in the election process.
6. The Supreme Court in Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election
Commissioner, New Delhi (1978) 2 SCR 272 : ((1978) 1 SCC 405 : AIR
1978 SC 851) with lucidity has explained the scope and powers of the
Election Commission while interpreting article 324 of the Constitution.
Primarily the Legislature has to frame Rules regarding the
Superintendence, control and conduct of elections. Any gray area not
covered by the rules, the Election Commission is empowered to
regulate with the approval of the Government. The Election Commission
cannot conduct Itself overriding the provisions of the Act and the Rules.
7. In A.C. Jose v. Sivan Pillai, (1984) 2 SCC 656 : AIR 1984 SC 921,
for the first time the legitimacy of user of electronic voting machine in
an election came in question. The Supreme Court held that in the
existing structure of Act and Rules, there is no provision for using
electronic voting machine without necessary amendment, and such a
user was held to be bad in law. The Supreme Court further in para 36
listed out the serious faults in the use of electronic voting machine and
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found that with such defects it would not be advisable to use the
electronic voting machine in the election.
8. Much water has flown under the bridge. There has been a
tremendous advancement in the electronic technology. The electronic
voting machine used in the election during 1982 is an obsolete model.
The Scientist who is one of the co-designer of the electronic voting
machine is examined as a court witness and his evidence unflinchingly
supports the feasibility of use of electronic voting machines in the
election. The defects of the machine pointed out in A.C. Jose's case no
longer remain relevant. The present improved version of E.V.M. takes
care of all those defects. The amendment to Representation of the
People Act and Rules is carried out pursuant to the observations of the
Supreme Court. Therefore, it is untenable to contend that the
amendment of the Act and Rules is ultra vires and bad in law.
9. About the functional efficacy of E.V.E., one of the scientists of the
Bharat electronic Limited (in short B.E.L.), who is the co-designer of the
machine is examined as a court witness. The following is the gist of his
evidence:
10. Voting machine has two major units: one is control unit and
other is balloting unit. Control unit is handled by the Presiding Officer,
who is in-charge of the Polling Booth. The control unit has all the
intelligence inbuilt. The ballot unit is a dummy unit or otherwise called
non-intelligence unit. The ballot unit has buttons and a lamp for each
candidate arranged in a line. The ballot unit is kept in the polling
compartment, 5 meters away from the control unit. The ballot Unit has
a cable permanently attached. At the time of polling, the cable is
connected to the control unit, when the voter press the
Page: 291
button casting the vote to a candidate, the lamp by the side of the
button will glow to indicate that the voting done is proper and
simultaneously in the control unit a beep sound is heard to a range of
30 ft. The control unit functions in a non-reversible cycle of voting
process.
11. After the publication of the list of the candidates, the Returning
Officer sets the number of contesting candidates in the control unit,
which functions on a battery specially manufactured and supplied by
B.E.L. The effective life of the battery is 48 hours of continuous
functioning. In the balloting unit the printed ballot sheet is put behind
the transparent screen. The balloting unit is capable of handling the
ballot sheet containing 16 contestants and on the whole EVM is
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designed to handle a maximum of 64 contestants at an election. The

balloting unit has got 16 buttons operatable through a panel cut out.
After inserting the balloting paper in the ballot unit, the Returning
Officer closes the lid and put a seal provided by the election
commission in presence of the candidates/their agents. The lid and the
flaps once closed and sealed cannot be opened without tampering the
seal. The Returning Officer simultaneously will set the control unit to
receive the information about the number of candidates contesting in
the election. By pressing the last “Can set” button in the control unit,
the number of contesting candidates is recorded. The candidate set
compartment of the control unit is closed and sealed in the presence of
the candidates/their agents. Thereafter the control unit and the
balloting unit are put separately in a carrying cases and are sealed by
the Returning Officer in presence of the candidates/agents. The
carrying cases containing control unit and balloting Unit are delivered to
the Presiding Officers on the previous day to the election and would be
carried to the polling booth.
12. The Polling Officer will verify the seals of the carrying cases, take
out the control unit and balloting unit, verify the correctness of the
seals. An hour before the polling time, mock poll is conducted to verify
the functional capacity. The agents/candidates are asked to press the
button in the balloting unit to cast their votes. Later on the “result
button” in the micro controller is pressed which display the number of
votes polled. After demonstration of the correctness of the function, the
‘clear button’ is pressed which will erase all the data of the mock poll.
After the mock poll, the Presiding Officer will close the result
compartment by putting the seal provided by the election commission
by which the voting machine is ready for polling.
13. The voter presents before the Presiding Officer, after verifying
the identity, the Presiding Officer will press the ‘balloting button’ in the
control unit and send the voter to the polling cabin. When the voter
press the ‘balloting button’ casting vote to the candidate of his choice,
the lamp by the side of the button will glow indicating the correctness
of voting. The control unit will give a beep sound to indicate that the
vote casted is registered in the control unit. For the next vote to be
cast, again it is necessary that the ‘balloting button’ in the control unit
is to be pressed by the Presiding Officer, otherwise, mere pressing of
button in the balloting unit by the voter will be of no consequence. For
every next vote to be cast, it is necessary that the ‘balloting button’ in
the control unit is to be pressed by the Presiding Officer. After polling
time is over ‘close button’ in the control unit is pressed by the Presiding
Officer by which the machine gets locked. Thereafter, the balloting unit
is disconnected from the control unit, they are separately packed in the
carrying cases and sealed in presence of the agents by the Presiding
P e T ur d y M y
3
on o nd 460
ccon ne co
Officer. Later on they are transported to the counting centers and ballot
unit and control unit are kept in a strong room before they are taken to
the counting centers. At the time of counting, seals put by the
Presiding Officer to the control unit is verified to ensure that no
tampering has taken place. When the ‘result button’ is pressed,
machine will display the number of votes polled against each
candidates sequentially.
14. Control unit has two main devices: one is micro controller and
another is memory. Micro controller is one time programmable
component. Micro controller once fused with program code and data is
unchangeable and irreversible. The memory device is functionally
efficient and retain the voting data without the aid of a battery. The
micro controller will record and register the voting data by cross
checking with the memory for every vote. The programme code is
encrypted and stored in the memory. It is not possible to replace the
memory device in order to play mischief. If the Memory device is
removed,
Page: 292
micro controller will detect and declare that the machine is in error
state. The memory device and one time programmable micro controller
are the pivotal devices of the EVM and they act as tamper proof device
for the programme code and poll data.
15. If a voter damages the button of the balloting unit or for

accidental reason the button of the balloting unit gets struckn, such
errors are indicated in the control unit. In such cases, a spare balloting
unit is used. The sound of error message is heard in the control unit like
a alert sound, simultaneously the display panel will show letters “PE”
indicating that balloting unit has gone out of order. If the connecting
cable is damaged or cut, letter ‘LE’ is displayed in the display panel of
the control unit with an alert sound and these are the possible errors
that can happen during use of machine during polling. If there is any
error in the memory device, the machine is declared dead. The weak
battery can also lead to error and the panel display will indicate by six
dash marks. The Presiding Officer will change the battery and continue
polling. The defect in the battery is a rare phenomenon. If the machine
is not functioning, there will be no battery consumption.
16. The Micro controller manufactured with a given programme code
is only useful for EVMS made for the elections by the B.E.L. company
and cannot be used for any other purpose. The programme code is
encrypted by out-source agency in the presence of the responsible
P e6 T ur d y M y
3
on o nd 461
ccon ne co
official of the BEL and the programme code is a business secret.

Outsource agency would keep the encrypted data as utmost secrecy. It
is further stated that the encrypted code and data is unchangeable and
indelible by anybody, even by the manufacturer. Any attempt to
tamper with the encrypted code would only result in damage to the
machine. But the micro controller and memory cannot be manipulated
by anybody. It is also stated that the EVM is tested to the temperature
condition of 20 degree C to + 55 degree C. and electromagnetic
radiation also would not affect the functioning of the machine. The
witness categorically states that either by manipulation or by accident
there is no possibility of transfer of votes from one candidate to another
and the machine designed is fully tamper proof.
17. The witness is cross-examined at length by the counsel for the
petitioner and nothing is elicited in the cross-examination from the
witnesses about the vulnerability of the machine. The evidence on the
other hand fully inspires the confidence of the Court that the EVMS are
fully tamper proof. There is no possibility of manipulation of mischief at
the instance of anyone. The Supreme Court in T.A. Ahammed Kabeer v.
A.A. Azeez, (2003) 5 SCC 650 : AIR 2003 SC 2271, has approved the
fact that in the present version of EVM used in the 1999 general
election, it is possible to get at the disputed impersonated votes by
decoding. However, it is not possible to identify the impersonator, that
shortcoming is well with the manual ballot system also.
18. The evidence further discloses that the EVM has seeming
advantage over the traditional manual ballot method. In the manual
method, there is possibility of swift rigging at the end of polling time.
But when the votes are cast through EVM there has to be necessary
minimum time lag between one vote and the next vote. Therefore,
when the EVMs are used, the malpractice of rigging swiftly and quickly
at the closing hours of the polling time stands avoided.
19. The EVMs have been put in use in the last general elections and
in the last assembly elections in U.P. and other States. The practical
wealth of experience has dispelled abundantly the theoretical
unfounded apprehensions of the possible misuse. Cost-wise also, use of
EVMs is economical. Traditional manual method involves huge cost
towards printing charges and counting expenses. The said expenses will
almost account to 30-40% of the election expenses. On one time
investment by purchasing required EVMs, the cost of general elections
to Parliament and assembly and by-elections would get largely reduced.
The life span of EVM is 15 years.
20. The invention of EVM has an interesting history. According to the
evidence of the witness C.W. 1, the scientists of Bharath Electronics
Limited developed electronic voting machine to handle the trade union
elections. The election commission grasping the utility and its relevance
P e T ur d y M y
3
on o nd
ccon ne co
462
to the country's general elections approached the B.E.L. for

manufacturing a EVM suitable for the general elections. The scientists
got involved
Page: 293
themselves personally Including C.W. 1 in the general elections to

study the nuances of the pattern and procedures of the elections. After
thorough practical experimentation and research the present version of
EVM is designed. This invention is undoubtedly a great achievement in
the electronic and computer technology and a national pride. It has
come in the evidence of the witness that country like Singapore,
Malasiya and U.S.A. are interacting with BEL for supply of EVMs suitable
for their election requirements.
21. For the reasons and discussions made above Issue No. 2 and
Additional Issue is answered in Affirmative. Issues Nos. 1 and 2 and 4
pertain to the factual aspects of the election.
22. In view of the imminent premature dissolution of Lokasabha the
Counsel has given up those issues. Accordingly, they are answered in
negative and the election petition is dismissed. In the circumstances,
no order as to costs.
23. The Registry is directed to furnish the copy of this judgment to
the counsel appearing for the petitioner, to enable to her to submit the
same to the election commission.
24. Petition dismissed.
———
Disclaimer: While every effort is made to avoid any mistake or omission, this casenote/ headnote/ judgment/ act/ rule/
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liable in any manner by reason of any mistake or omission or for any action taken or omitted to be taken or advice
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disputes will be subject exclusively to jurisdiction of courts, tribunals and forums at Lucknow only. The authenticity of
this text must be verified from the original source.
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/38
463
ITEM NO.5 COURT NO.3 SECTION IV-C
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (C) No(s). 16870/2022

in WP No. 26671/2021 passed by the High Court Of M.p Principal Seat
At Jabalpur)
MADHYA PRADESH JAN VIKASH PARTY Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
(IA No. 120814/2022 - EXEMPTION FROM FILING C/C OF THE IMPUGNED

JUDGMENT)
Date : 30-09-2022 These matters were called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE SANJAY KISHAN KAUL
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ABHAY S. OKA
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Varun Thakur, Adv.

Mr. Varinder Kumar Sharma, AOR
For Respondent(s)

O R D E R
The election process under the representation of the People
Act, 1951 is monitored by a Constitutional Authority like Election
Commission. Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) process has been
utilized in our Country for decades now but periodically issues are
sought to be raised. This is one such endeavor in the abstract. It

appears that party which may not have got much recognition from the
Digitally signed by
RASHMI DHYANI
Date: 2022.09.30
17:43:55 IST
Reason:
electorate now seeks recognition by filing petitions!
1
464
We are of the view that such petitions must be deterred and
thus dismiss this petition with costs of Rs.50,000/- to be
deposited with Supreme Court Group-C (Non-Clerical) Employees
Welfare Association within a period of four weeks from today.
Pending applications stand disposed of.
(RASHMI DHYANI PANT) (POONAM VAID)

COURT MASTER COURT MASTER
// True Copy //
2
IN THE MATTER OF:
ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS ...PETITIONER
Versus
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA& ANR. …RESPONDENTS
COUNTER AFFIDAVIT ON BEHALF OF RESPONDENT NO. 1/

PAPER – BOOK
(KINDLY SEE INSIDE THE INDEX)
(VOL- II PAGE NO. 465 – 962)
ADVOCATE FOR THE RESPONDENT NO.1: AMIT SHARMA

INDEX
S. No Particulars pages
40. ANNEXURE C/39 465 - 559
19.03.2019 passed by Hon’ble Gujarat High Court
in KhemchandRajaramKoshti vs Election
Commission of India, Writ Petition (PIL) No. 36 of
2019
41. ANNEXURE C/40 560- 741
A true copy of the Manual on Electronic Voting
Machine and VVPAT published by the Election
Commission of India
42. ANNEXURE C/41 742-778
True copy of the Judgment dated 03.03.2009 of
the Second Senate of Germany ordering the
discontinuation of the use of NEDAP machines in
2009
43. ANNEXURE C/42 779-854
Presentation on EVM & VVPATs
44. ANNEXURE C/43 855-922
Legal history of EVM/VVPATs
45. ANNEXURE C/44 923-962
True copy of the Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQs) as provided by the Commission in public
domain
ANNEXURE C/39
C/WPPIL/36/2019 465 CAV ORDER
IN THE HIGH COURT OF GUJARAT AT AHMEDABAD
R/WRIT PETITION (PIL) NO. 36 of 2019
FOR APPROVAL AND SIGNATURE:
HONOURABLE THE ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE ANANT S. DAVE sd/-
and
HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE BIREN VAISHNAV sd/-
==========================================================
1 Whether Reporters of Local Papers may be allowed to YES

see the judgment ?
2 To be referred to the Reporter or not ? YES
3 Whether their Lordships wish to see the fair copy of the NO

judgment ?
4 Whether this case involves a substantial question of law NO

as to the interpretation of the Constitution of India or any
order made thereunder ?
==========================================================
KHEMCHAND RAJARAM KOSHTI
Versus
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & 1 other(s)
==========================================================
Appearance:
MR KR KOSHTI, ADVOCATE AS PARTY IN PERSON(5000) for the
Applicant(s) No. 1
for the Opponent(s) No. 1,2
==========================================================
CORAM: HONOURABLE THE ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE ANANT S. DAVE

and
HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE BIREN VAISHNAV
Date : 19/03/2019
CAV ORDER
(PER : HONOURABLE MR.JUSTICE BIREN VAISHNAV)
Page 1 of 95
Downloaded on : Thu May 25 11:52:07 IST 2023

1. This Public Interest Litigation is filed by the petitioner -

a practicing advocate of this Court who has come forward
with the following prayers:
“12. In the facts and circumstances of the above

case, the petitioner prays that:-
a) Your Lordships may be pleased to allow the
present writ petition (P.I.L.);
b) pass appropriate Writ, Order or direction
declaring and/or striking down the Rule 56(D)(2) as
ultra vires Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the
Constitution insofar as it vests discretion in the
Returning Officer to reject an application made
under Rule 56(D)(2) for counting of the printed
paper slips in the dropbox of the Printer;
c) pass appropriate Writ, Order or direction
directing the Respondent No 1 to mandatorily
count the printed paper slips in the dropbox of the
Printer in respect of any polling station or polling
stations in all future Legislative Assembly elections
and/or Parliamentary elections were paper trail has
been introduced;
d) pass appropriate Writ, Order or direction
directing Respondent No. 1 to use appropriate
technology by which the paper used in the Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (“VVPAT/paper trail”)
can be preserved for at least a period of 2 years
from the date of election;
e) pass suitable order/writ/direction and direct the
respondent No. 1 to procure the adequate
quantities of EVMs with VVPAT machines which
are compatible with each other since respondent
no. 1 is unable to procure the adequate quantity of
VVPAT machines as per their reply to the RTI
application and as per statement made by
respondent no. 1 in Contempt Petition (Civil) No.
303/2016 before the Hon’ble Supreme Court;
...”
2. The introductory facts, as narrated in the present

petition, are as under:
Page 2 of 95

2.1 The Election Commission of India is an autonomous body

carrying out elections to the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, State
Legislative Assemblies in India and the offices of the President
and Vice President of the country. Reliance is placed on a
circular dated 19.09.2017 by which the Election Commission
of India directed all the State Commissions to ensure that
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (hereinafter referred to as
‘VVPATS’) shall be used with the Electronic Voting Machines
(hereinafter referred to as ‘EVMs’) in all polling stations
during the general and the bye elections to the State
Legislative Assemblies and the Lok Sabha. According to the
petitioner, suitable amendments have been made in The
Conduct Of Election Rules, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as
‘the Rules’) which were notified in the Gazette of India on
14.08.2013.
2.2 According to the petitioner, in an all party meeting on

04.10.2017, there was a broad consensus amongst all political
parties for the continued use of EVMs. It was also suggested
in the meeting that there should be a possibility of
incorporating VVPAT in this system. The Election Commission
of India, acting on the suggestion, referred the matter to the
Technical Expert Committee to examine the possibility of
paper trail. The Bharat Electronics Limited, Bengaluru and
the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd., Hyderabad were
requested to develop a prototype of the VVPAT system. The
prototype was created and was tested in the field in extreme
environmental conditions in order to get an effective
assessment. According to the petitioner, the trial was to take
place in real election like conditions. The field trials were
Page 3 of 95

conducted as averred in paragraph no. 4.4 of the petition in

Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi, Jaisalmer, Cherapunji and Leh in
the presence and participation of all stake holders including
general voters, National and State political parties, Civil
Society Organizations and the media. Improvements were
suggested in the VVPAT system and after such necessary
changes as suggested were carried out, a second trial was
conducted.
2.3 According to the petitioner, the Election Commission of

India vide a letter dated 28.03.2013, addressed to the
Ministry of Law and Justice requested that in order to ensure
proper execution of the VVPAT system, it was necessary to
carry out ground work to amend The Conduct of Election
Rules, 1961. Pursuant to such letter by the Election
Commission of India, the Ministry of Law And Justice notified
the amendments to the Rules in the official gazette on
14.08.2013 paving the way for the use of VVPAT system with
EVMs. The amended rule 66A which contains Rule 56(D)(2) is
quoted by the petitioner in the petition. The said rule reads
as under:
“56(D)(2) On such application being made, the

returning officer shall, subject to such general or
special guidelines, as may be issued by the Election
Commission, decide the matter and may allow the
application in whole or in part or may reject in
whole, if it appears to him to be frivolous or
unreasonable.”
2.4 In the petition, reliance is placed on a decision of the

Apex Court in the case of Dr. Subramanian Swamy vs.
Election Commission of India reported in (2013) 10 SCC
Page 4 of 95

500. According to the petitioner, while holding that the

VVPAT system was an indispensable requirement to conduct
free and fair elections, the Apex Court while disposing of the
petition and directing phase-wise manner of introduction of
VVPAT system recognized that the VVPAT system was an
indispensable requirement for free and fair elections.
According to the petitioner, it was relevant to reproduce
paragraph no. 29 of the judgement in the case of Dr.
Subramanian Swamy which the petitioner has thought it fit
to reproduce in the petition which we also reproduce
hereunder:
“29) From the materials placed by both the sides,

we are satisfied that the “paper trail” is an
indispensable requirement of free and fair
elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs
can be achieved only with the introduction of the
“paper trail”. EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the
accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to
have fullest transparency in the system and to
restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary
to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is
nothing but an act of expression which has
immense importance in democratic system.”
2.5 The petitioner, thereafter, relies on a newspaper cutting

which appeared in ‘The Hindu’ on 16.08.2015 on the question
of vulnerability of use of thermal printing and thermal paper
for VVPAT. According to the petitioner, inspite of
technological advances, the legibility of the thermally printed
paper text lasts only for a period of 50 days which would
result in a loss of the records beyond a period of time and
preservation of votes would therefore become negatory.
2.6 According to the petitioner, for the first time VVPAT
Page 5 of 95

system was introduced in the Kancheepuram Assembly

Elections. The issue of mismatch between votes entered in
Form 17C of the polling booth and the total number of votes
recorded in the control unit of that booth will be resolved only
as a result of the VVPAT system because when the control unit
showed that 554 votes had been recorded, when the VVPAT
was opened it was found that the number of votes entered in
form no. 17C was correct. According to the petitioner, there
are reports of malfunctioning of the EVMs which has
generally left the public questioning on the vulnerability of
EVMs and therefore it is in the background of such
vulnerability apprehensions, that the VVPAT was introduced
and the discretion vested in the Returning Officer in Rule
56(D)(2) in the Rules is under challenge. The petitioner in the
petition has extensively referred to various communications
exchanged between one Mr. Dinesh Chavda and the Election
Commission on the introduction of VVPAT system and has
submitted that the Election Commission has spent substantial
amount on the manufacture of VVPATs and therefore even
thereafter it was announced in the All Party Meeting that the
Election Commission would endeavour to see that there is
100% coverage of VVPATs in all future elections of the Lok
Sabha.
2.7 The petition further goes on to plead that the

Commission vide a letter dated 19.09.2017 directed all State
Election Commissions to ensure that VVPAT system shall be
used with the EVMs at all polling stations. The circular dated
19.09.2017 has been annexed by the petitioner at Annexure
‘L’ to the petition. The petitioner has voiced concern over the
shortfalls of the VVPAT systems.
Page 6 of 95

2.8 In paragraph no. 4.0 of the petition, the petitioner has

brought to the notice of this Court that one Mr. Manubhai
Chavda had filed a writ petition no. 1012 of 2017 for
challenging the vires of Rule 56(D)(2) of the Rules. According
to the learned counsel as averred in the petition, the writ
petition was dismissed on the ground since the Code of
Conduct was in operation, the Apex Court did not examine the
matter on the above grounds. The order of the Apex Court
dismissing the SLP is annexed to the petition.
2.9 It may also be clarified at this stage that the learned

counsel who has appeared as party-in-person has even
tendered a copy of the petition which was filed before the
Apex Court. Perusal of the memo of the petition together with
the prayers so made would indicate that the prayers in the
present petition are identical to the prayers as set out in the
writ petition before the Apex Court. The prayers in the
petition before the Apex Court are set out as under:
a) pass appropriate Writ, Order or direction

declaring and/or striking down the Rule 56(D)(2) as
ultra vires Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the
Constitution insofar as it vests discretion in the
Returning Officer to reject an application made
under Rule 56(D)(2) for counting of the printed
paper slips in the dropbox of the Printer;
b) pass appropriate Writ, Order or direction
directing the Respondent No 1 to mandatorily
count the printed paper slips in the dropbox of the
Printer in respect of any polling station or polling
stations in all future Legislative Assembly elections
and/or Parliamentary elections were paper trail has
been introduced;
c) pass appropriate Writ, Order or direction
directing Respondent No. 1 to use appropriate
Page 7 of 95

technology by which the paper used in the Voter

Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (“VVPAT/paper trail”)
can be preserved for at least a period of 2 years
from the date of election;
...”
2.10 The bone of contention, by filing the present Public

Interest Litigation by the petitioner, in short, is that Rule
56(D)(2) of the Rules when read suggests that on an
application made to the Returning Officer, for
counting/recounting of votes, the Returning Officer will decide
the matter or may allow the application in whole or in part or
may reject the application in whole or in part if it appears to
him to be frivolous and unreasonable. In the grounds raised
in the petition, according to the petitioner, such refusal to
count the paper trail is bad and is violative of Articles 14, 19
and 21 of the Constitution of India.
3. According to Mr. Koshti, learned advocate/party-in-

person, introduction of the VVPAT system was found to be
indispensable requirement for free and fair elections and
therefore the discretion vested in the Returning Officer to
reject an application for recount is uncanalized and would be
contrary to the imperative use of the paper trail introduced in
the EVM. Vesting such a discretion which is unguided, in the
submission of Mr. Koshti, would jeopardize the transparency
and will be dangerous for the confidence of the voter, the sole
purpose for which the VVPAT was introduced.
3.1 Mr. Koshti further submitted that the entire purpose of

the introduction of VVPAT was to ensure that the electoral
verdict is the true representation of the votes cast by the
Page 8 of 95

voter. In the event of any discrepancy between the results

shown by the EVM and by the VVPAT, the VVPAT is supposed
to be the barometer of reflecting the choice and therefore the
Returning Officer should have a mandate to count the votes
displayed on the VVPAT in the event of a dispute. Refusal to
count such votes would amount to the destruction of the spirit
behind introduction of VVPATs.
3.2 Mr. Koshti relying on Sections 82 & 100 of The

Representation of People Act, 1951 (hereinafter referred to as
‘the Act’) submitted that discretion vested under Rule 56(D)
(2) cannot be challenged by a candidate or a voter as it is not
one of the grounds specified under Section 100 for filing an
Election Petition. The only remedy therefore of a recount can
be by issuing a mandate to the Returning Officer that in an
event of a dispute the Returning Officer ought to count the
votes. The discretion to consider the application and the
words ‘may grant’ or ‘may not grant’ invests discretion vested
in the Returning Officer which is bound to be abused.
3.3 Mr. Koshti further submitted that the very vesting of the
discretion under Rule 56(D) with the Returning Officer
enabling him to reject an application on the alleged ground
that ‘it appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable’ is a
complete affront to the rule of law, tainted with the vice of
arbitrariness under Article 14 and effaces the very purpose
for which the paper trail was introduced.
3.4 Mr. Koshti therefore relying extensively on the decision

in the case of Dr. Subramanian Swamy (supra), submitted
that since the Apex Court has held that the paper trail was an
Page 9 of 95

indispensable requirement for the conduct of free and fair

elections, it was mandatory that the counting of VVPAT votes
ought to be carried out in every election where the VVPAT is
used and the discretion vested in the Returning Officer to
reject such applications was unconstitutional and contrary to
the pronouncement of the Apex Court in the case of Dr.
Subramanian Swamy (supra).
3.5 Mr. Koshti further submitted that the order of rejection

of a request for counting of VVPATs could not be challenged
in any Court and such stringent provisions of the Act when
read, even the election cannot be questioned on such rejection
and therefore if the results of the VVPATs do not match with
the EVM results, on a request being made, prima facie Rule
56(D)(2) of the Rules is a stumbling block to the goal of
transparency in the election process.
4. It is in the background of these pleadings that the

petitioner has approached this Court for the prayers
reproduced hereinabove and prayed that Rule 56(D)(2) of the
Rules be held as ultra vires Articles 14, 19 & 21 of the
Constitution of India insofar as it vests discretion in the
Returning Office to reject an application made under Rule
56(D)(2) for counting of printed paper slips in the drop box of
the printer.
5. Before we advert to the issue on hand, it will be relevant

and in the fitness of things to reproduce the relevant
provisions of the Act, 1951 and the Rules.
“80. Election petitions.—No election shall be called in
question except by an election petition presented in
Page 10 of 95

accordance with the provisions of this Part.
80A. High Court to try election petitions.— (1) The

Court having jurisdiction to try an election petition shall
be the High Court.
(2) Such jurisdiction shall be exercised ordinarily by a

single Judge of the High Court and the Chief Justice,
shall, from time to time, assign one or more Judges for
that purpose: Provided that where the High Court
consists only of one Judge, he shall try all election
petitions presented to that Court.
(3) The High Court in its discretion may, in the interests
of justice or convenience, try an election petition,
wholly or partly, at a place other than the place of seat
of the High Court.]
81. Presentation of petitions.— (1) An election

petition calling in question any election may be
presented on one or more of the grounds specified in
[sub-section (1)] of section 100 and section 101 to the
[High Court] by any candidate at such election or any
elector [within forty-five days from, but not earlier than
the date of election of the returned candidate or if there
are more than one returned candidate at the election
and dates of their election are different, the later of
those two dates].
Explanation.—In this sub-section, “elector” means a

person who was entitled to vote at the election to which
the election petition relates, whether he has voted at
such election or not.
[***]
[(3) Every election petition shall be accompanied by as
many copies thereof as there are respondents
mentioned in the petition [***] and every such copy
shall be attested by the petitioner under his own
signature to be a true copy of the petition.]
82. Parties to the petition.—A petitioner shall join as

respondents to his petition—
(a) where the petitioner, in addition to claiming
declaration that the election of all or any of the
returned candidates is void, claims a further
declaration that he himself or any other candidate
has been duly elected, all the contesting
candidates other than the petitioner, and where
no such further declaration is claimed, all the
returned candidates; and
Page 11 of 95

(b) any other candidate against whom allegations

of any corrupt practice are made in the petition.]
83. Contents of petition.— (1) An election petition—

(a) shall contain a concise statement of the
material facts on which the petitioner relies;
(b) shall set forth full particulars of any corrupt
practice that the petitioner alleges including as
full a statement as possible of the names of the
parties alleged to have committed such corrupt
practice and the date and place of the commission
of each such practice; and
(c) shall be signed by the petitioner and verified in
the manner laid down in the Code of Civil
Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908) for the verification of
pleadings:
[Provided that where the petitioner alleges any corrupt

practice, the petition shall also be accompanied by an
affidavit in the prescribed form in support of the
allegation of such corrupt practice and the particulars
thereof.]
(2) Any schedule or annexure to the petition shall also

be signed by the petitioner and verified in the same
manner as the petition.]
86. Trial of election petitions.—(1) The High Court

shall dismiss an election petition which does not comply
with the provisions of section 81 or section 82 or
section 117.
Explanation.—An order of the High Court dismissing an
election petition under this sub-section shall be deemed
to be an order made under clause (a) of section 98.
(2) As soon as may be after an election petition has

been presented to the High Court, it shall be referred to
the Judge or one of the Judges who has or have been
assigned by the Chief Justice for the trial of election
petitions under sub-section (2) of section 80A.
(3) Where more election petitions than one are

presented to the High Court in respect of the same
election, all of them shall be referred for trial to the
same Judge who may, in his discretion, try them
separately or in one or more groups.
(4) Any candidate not already a respondent shall, upon

application made by him to the High Court within
Page 12 of 95

fourteen days from the date of commencement of the

trial and subject to any order as to security for costs
which may be made by the High Court, be entitled to be
joined as a respondent.
Explanation.—For the purposes of this sub-section and

of section 97, the trial of a petition shall be deemed to
commence on the date fixed for the respondents to
appear before the High Court and answer the claim or
claims made in the petition.
(5) The High Court may, upon such terms as to costs

and otherwise as it may deem fit, allow the particulars
of any corrupt practice alleged in the petition to be
amended or amplified in such manner as may in its
opinion be necessary for ensuring a fair and effective
trial of the petition, but shall not allow any amendment
of the petition which will have the effect of introducing
particulars of a corrupt practice not previously alleged
in the petition.
(6) The trial of an election petition shall, so far as is

practicable consistently with the interests of justice in
respect of the trial, be continued from day to day until
its conclusion, unless the High Court finds the
adjournment of the trial beyond the following day to be
necessary for reasons to be recorded.
(7) Every election petition shall be tried as

expeditiously as possible and endeavour shall be made
to conclude the trial within six months from the date on
which the election petition is presented to the High
Court for trial.]
100. Grounds for declaring election to be void.—

[(1) Subject to the provisions of sub-section (2) if [the
High Court] is of opinion—
(a) that on the date of his election a returned
candidate was not qualified, or was disqualified,
to be chosen to fill the seat under the Constitution
or this Act [***] [or the Government of Union
Territories Act, 1963 (20 of 1963)]; or
(b) that any corrupt practice has been committed
by a returned candidate or his election agent or
by any other person with the consent of a
returned candidate or his election agent; or
(c) that any nomination has been improperly
rejected; or
(d) that the result of the election, in so far as it
Page 13 of 95

concerns a returned candidate, has been

materially affected—
(i) by the improper acceptance or any
nomination, or
(ii) by any corrupt practice committed in the
interests of the returned candidate [by an
agent other than his election agent], or
(iii) by the improper reception, refusal or
rejection of any vote or the reception of any
vote which is void, or
(iv) by any non-compliance with the
provisions of the Constitution or of this Act
or of any rules or orders made under this
Act, [the High Court] shall declare the
election of the returned candidate to be
void.]
[(2)] If in the opinion of [the High Court], a returned

candidate has been guilty by an agent other than his
election agent, of any corrupt practice [***] but [the
High Court] is satisfied—
(a) that no such corrupt practice was committed
at the election by the candidate or his election
agent, and every such corrupt practice was
committed contrary to the orders, and [without
the consent], of the candidate or his election
agent; [***]
(c) that the candidate and his election agent took
all reasonable means for preventing the
commission of corrupt [***] practices at the
election; and
(d) that in all other respects the election was free
from any corrupt [***] practice on the part of the
candidate or any of his agents,
then [the High Court] may decide that the election of
the returned candidate is not void.”
PART V OF THE CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS RULES, 1961

COUNTING OF VOTES IN PARLIAMENTARY AND ASSEMBLY
CONSTITUENCIES
"50. Definitions.—In this Part, unless the context
otherwise requires,—
(b) “constituency” means a parliamentary or assembly
constituency;
(c) “counting agent” means a counting agent duly
appointed under section 47 and includes a candidate
Page 14 of 95

and the election agent of a candidate when present at

the counting;
(d) “notified polling station” means a polling station
notified under rule 49;
(e) “polling station” means a polling station provided
under section 25 other than a notified polling station.
51. Time and place for counting of votes.—The

returning officer shall, at least one week before the
date, or the first of the dates, fixed for the poll, appoint
the place or places where the counting of votes will be
done and the date and time at which the counting will
commence and shall give notice of the same in writing
to each candidate or his election agent:
Provided that if for any reason the returning officer

finds it necessary so to do, he may alter the date, time
and place or places so fixed, or any of them, after giving
notice of the same in writing to each candidate or his
election agent.
52. Appointment of counting agents and

revocation of such appointments.—
(1) The number of counting agents that a candidate may
appoint under section 47 shall, subject to such general
or special direction as the Election Commission may
issue in this behalf, not exceed sixteen at the place or
each of the places, fixed for counting under rule 51.
(2) Every such appointment shall be made in Form 18 in
duplicate, one copy of which shall be forwarded to the
returning officer while the other copy shall be made
over to the counting agent for production before the
returning officer 1[not later than one hour before the
time fixed] for counting under rule 51.
(3) No counting agent shall be admitted into the place
fixed for counting unless he has delivered to the
returning officer the second copy of his appointment
under sub-rule (2) after duly completing and signing the
declaration contained therein and receiving from the
returning officer an authority for entry into the place
fixed for counting.
(4) The revocation of appointment of a counting agent
under sub-section (2) of section 48 shall be made in
Form 19 and lodged with the returning officer.
(5) In the event of any such revocation before the
commencement of the counting of votes, the candidate
or his election agent may make a fresh appointment in
accordance with sub-rule (2).
Page 15 of 95

53. Admission to the place fixed for counting.—

(1) The returning officer shall exclude from the place
fixed for counting of votes all persons except—
(a) [such persons (to be known as counting
supervisors and counting assistants)] as he may
appoint to assist him in the counting;
(b) persons authorised by the Election
Commission;
(c) public servants on duty in connection with the
election; and
(d) candidates, their election agents and counting
agents.
(2) No person who has been employed by or on behalf
of, or has been otherwise working for, a candidate in or
about the election shall be appointed under clause (a) of
sub-rule (1).
(3) The returning officer shall decide which counting
agent or agents shall watch the counting at any
particular counting table or group of counting tables.
(4) Any person who during the counting of votes
misconducts himself or fails to obey the lawful
directions of the returning officer may be removed from
the place where the votes are being counted by the
returning officer or by any police officer on duty or by
any person authorised in this behalf by the returning
officer.
54. Maintenance of secrecy of voting.—The

returning officer shall, before he commences the
counting, read out the provisions of section 128 to such
persons as may be present.
54A. Counting of votes received by post.— (1) The

returning officer shall first deal with the postal ballot
papers in the manner hereinafter provided.
(2) No cover in Form 13C received by the returning
officer after the expiry of the time fixed in that behalf
shall be opened and no vote contained in any such
cover shall be counted.
(3) The other covers shall be opened one after another
and as each cover is opened, the returning officer shall
first scrutinise the declaration in Form 13A contained
therein.
(4) If the said declaration is not found, or has not been
duly signed and attested, or is otherwise substantially
defective, or if the serial number of the ballot paper as
entered in it differs from the serial number endorsed on
the cover in Form 13B, that cover shall not be opened,
and after making an appropriate endorsement thereon,
Page 16 of 95

the returning officer shall reject the ballot paper

therein contained.
(5) Each cover so endorsed and the declaration
received with it shall be replaced in the cover in Form
13C and all such covers in Form 13C shall be kept in a
separate packet which shall be sealed and on which
shall be recorded the name of the constituency, the
date of counting and a brief description of its content.
(6) The returning officer shall then place all the
declarations in Form 13A which he has found to be in
order in a separate packet which shall be sealed before
any cover in Form 13B is opened and on which shall be
recorded the particulars referred to in sub-rule (5).
(7) The covers in Form 13B not already dealt with
under the foregoing provisions of this rule shall then be
opened one after another and the returning officer shall
scrutinise each ballot paper and decide the validity of
the vote recorded thereon.
(8) A postal ballot paper shall be rejected—
[(a) if it bears any mark (other than the mark to
record the vote) or writing by which the elector
can be identified; or] 3[(aa)] if no vote is recorded
thereon; or
(b) if notes are given on it in favour of more
candidates than one; or
(c) if it is a spurious ballot paper; or
(d) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity
as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established;
or
(e) if it is not returned in the cover sent along
with it to the elector by the returning officer.
(9) A vote recorded on a postal ballot paper shall be
rejected if the mark indicating the vote is placed on the
ballot paper in such manner as to make it doubtful to
which candidate the vote has been given.
(10) A vote recorded on a postal ballot paper shall not
be rejected merely on the ground that the mark
indicating the vote is indistinct or made more than
once, if the intention that the vote shall be for a
particular candidate clearly appears from the way the
paper is marked.
(11) The returning officer shall count all the valid votes
given by postal ballot in favour of each candidates,
record the total thereof in the result sheet in Form 20
and announce the same.
(12) Thereafter, all the valid ballot papers and all the
rejected ballot papers shall be separately bundled and
kept together in a packet which shall be sealed with the
seals of the returning officer and of such of the
Page 17 of 95

candidates, their election agents or counting agents as

may desire to affix their seals thereon and on the
packet so sealed shall be recorded the name of the
constituency, the date of counting and a brief
description of its contents.]
55. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes.—[(1) The

returning officer may have the ballot box or boxes used
at more than one polling station opened and the ballot
papers found in such box or boxes counted
simultaneously.]
[***]
(2) Before any ballot box is opened at a counting table,
the counting agents present at that table shall be
allowed to inspect the paper seal or such other seal as
might have been affixed thereon and to satisfy
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none
of the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered with.
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any ballot
box has in fact been tampered with, he shall not count
the ballot papers contained in that box and shall follow
the procedure laid down in section 58 in respect of that
polling station.
56. [Counting of votes].—[(1) The ballot papers

taken out of each ballot box shall be arranged in
convenient bundles and scrutinized.]
(a) if it bears any mark or writing by which the
elector can be identified, or
[(b) if it bears no mark at all or, to indicate the
vote, it bears a mark elsewhere than on or near
the symbol of one of the candidates on the face of
the ballot paper or, it bears a mark made
otherwise than with the instrument supplied for
the purpose, or]
(c) if votes are given on it in favour of more than
one candidates, or
(d) if the mark indicating the vote thereon is
placed in such manner as to make it doubtful to
which candidate the vote has been given, or
(f) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity
as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established,
or
(g) if it bears a serial number, or is of a design,
different from the serial numbers, or, as the case
may be, design, of the ballot authorised for use at
Page 18 of 95

the particular polling station, or

(h) if it does not bear 3[both the mark and the
signature] which it should have borne under the
provisions of sub-rule (l) of rule 38:
Provided that where the returning officer is satisfied
that any such defect as is mentioned in clause (g) or
clause (h) has been caused by any mistake or failure on
the part of a presiding officer or polling officer, the
ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground
of such defect:
Provided further that a ballot paper shall not be
rejected merely on the ground that the mark indicating
the vote is indistinct or made more than once, if the
intention that the vote shall be for a particular
candidate clearly appears from the way the paper is
marked.
(3) Before rejecting any ballot paper under sub-rule (2),

the returning officer shall allow each counting agent
present a reasonable opportunity to inspect the ballot
paper but shall not allow him to handle it or any other
ballot paper.
[(4) The returning officer shall endorse on every ballot

paper which he rejects the word “Rejected” and the
grounds of rejection in abbreviated form either in his
own hand or by means of a rubber stamp and shall
initial such endorsement.]
(5) All ballot papers rejected under this rule shall be

bundled together.
[(6) Every ballot paper which is not rejected under this

rule shall be counted as one valid vote:
Provided that no cover containing tendered ballot
papers shall be opened and no such paper shall be
counted.
[(7) After the counting of all ballot papers contained in

all the ballot boxes used at a polling station has been
completed,—
(a) the counting supervisor shall fill in and sign
Part II—Result of Counting, in Form 16, which
shall also be signed by the returning officer; and
(b) the returning officer shall make the entries in
a result sheet in Form 20 and announce the
particulars.]]
[***]
[57. Sealing of used ballot papers.—The valid ballot
Page 19 of 95

papers of each candidate and the rejected ballot papers

shall thereafter be bundled separately and the several
bundles made up into a separate packet which shall be
sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of
such of the candidates, their election agents or
counting agents as may desire to affix their seals
thereon; and on the packets so sealed shall be recorded
the following particulars, namely:—
[(b) the particulars of the polling station where
the ballot papers have been used; and]
[(c) the date of counting.]
58. Counting of ballot papers transferred to bags

or covers under rule 44.—The provisions of rules 55,
56 and 57 shall apply so far as may be in relation to
counting of ballot papers and votes, if any, which have
been transferred from ballot boxes to cloth bags or
cloth-lined covers under sub-rule (5) of rule 44:
Provided that every reference in the said rules to a
ballot box shall be construed as a reference to a bag or
cover to which the contents of a ballot box have been
transferred.
59. Counting of votes at notified polling stations.—In

relation to the counting of ballot papers found in ballot
boxes used at notified polling stations, 1[rules 50 to 54]
and, in lieu of rules 55, 56 and 57, the following rules
shall apply, namely:—
“55A. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes.—
(1) All ballot boxes used at a notified polling
station shall be opened at the same time but every
ballot box shall be dealt with in such manner that
its contents do not get mixed up with the contents
of any other ballot box.
(2) Subject to the provisions of sub-rule (1), the
returning officer may have the ballot boxes used
at more notified polling stations than one opened
and their contents counted simultaneously.
(3) Before any ballot box is opened, the counting
agents present shall be allowed to inspect the
paper seal or any other seal that might have been
affixed thereon and to satisfy themselves that it is
intact.
(4) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that
none of the ballot boxes has in fact been
tampered with.
(5) If the returning officer is satisfied that any of
the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered with,
Page 20 of 95

he shall not count the ballot papers contained in

any of the ballot boxes used at the polling station
at which such box was used and shall proceed as
laid down in section 58 in respect of that polling
station.
(6) After each ballot box is opened, the counting
agents present shall be allowed to inspect the
ballot box and satisfy themselves that it bears the
proper symbol inside and has been duly marked in
accordance with the provisions of sub-rule (6) of
rule 33 as modified by clause (c) of sub-rule (3) of
rule 49.
(7) If any question arises as to the candidates to
whom a particular ballot box was allotted at the
poll, the returning officer shall decide such
question by a reference to the symbol inside the
box:
Provided that—
(a) if there is no symbol inside the box, or
(b) if the symbol inside the box has been
damaged or mutilated beyond recognition,
or
(c) if the same symbol is found on two or
more boxes used at the same polling station,
the returning officer, shall, wherever
possible, decide the question by reference
to all relevant circumstances including the
distinguishing marks on the ballot box, and
where he does not consider it possible to
decide the question, he shall immediately
refer it to the Election Commission for its
decision.
(56A) [Counting of votes].—(1) The ballot papers
taken out of each ballot box shall be arranged in
convenient bundles and scrutinised.
(2) The returning officer shall reject a ballot
paper—
elector can be identified; or
(b) if it is a spurious ballot paper; or
(c) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity
as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established;
or
(d) if it bears a serial number, or is of a design,
different from the serial numbers or, as the case
may be, design, of the ballot papers authorised for
use at the particular polling station; or
(e) if it does not bear 3[both the mark and the
signature] which it should have borne under the
Page 21 of 95

provisions of sub-rule (1) of rule 38:

Provided that where the returning officer is
satisfied that any such defect as is mentioned in
clause (d) or clause (e) has been caused by any
mistake or failure on the part of a presiding
officer or polling officer, the ballot paper shall not
be rejected merely on the ground of such defect.
(3) Before rejecting any ballot paper under sub-
rule (2), the returning officer shall allow the
counting agents present a reasonable opportunity
to inspect the ballot paper but shall not allow
them to handle it or any other ballot paper.
(4) The returning officer shall record on every
ballot paper which he rejects the letter ‘R’ and the
grounds of rejection in abbreviated form either in
his own hand or by means of a rubber stamp.
(5) All ballot papers taken out of any one ballot
box and rejected under this rule shall be made
into a separate bundle.
[(6) Every ballot paper which is not rejected
under this rule shall be counted as one valid vote:
Provided that no cover containing tendered ballot
papers shall be opened and no such ballot paper
shall be counted.]
[(7) After the counting of all ballot papers
contained in all the ballot boxes used at a polling
station has been completed,—
(a) the counting supervisor shall fill in and
sign Part II—Result of Counting in 6[Form
16 which shall also be signed by the
returning officer; and
(b) the returning officer shall make the
entries in a result sheet in Form 20 and
announce the particulars.]
[57A. Sealing of used ballot papers.—(1) The valid

ballot papers found in each ballot box, shall
thereafter be bundled together and kept along
with the bundle of rejected ballot papers, if any
found in that box in a separate packet which shall
be sealed with the seals of the returning officer
and of such of the candidates, their election
agents or counting agents as may desire to affix
their seals thereon and on the packet so sealed
there shall be recorded the following particulars,
namely:—
(b) the particulars of the polling station
where the ballot papers have been used,
Page 22 of 95

(c) the name of the candidate to whom the

ballot box was allotted, and
(d) the date of counting.
(2) The returning officer shall then place together
all the packets made up under sub-rule (1) in
respect of each candidate in a separate container
which shall be sealed with the seals of the
returning officer and of such of the candidates,
their election agents or their counting agents as
may desire to affix their seals thereon and on the
container so sealed shall be recorded the
following particulars, namely:—
(b) the names of the candidates, and
(c) the date of counting.]”.
59A. [Counting of votes in specified

constituencies.—Where the Election Commission
apprehends intimidation and victimisation of electors in
any constituency and it is of the opinion that it is
absolutely necessary that the ballot papers taken out of
all boxes used in that constituency should be mixed
before counting, it may, by notification in the Official
Gazette, specify such constituency and for counting of
such ballot papers, in lieu of rules 55, 56, 57 and 59,
the following rules shall apply], namely:—
‘55B. Scrutiny and opening of ballot boxes.—(1) The
returning officer shall open, or cause to be opened,
simultaneously the ballot box or boxes used at more
than one polling station and shall have the total number
of ballot papers found in such box or boxes counted and
recorded in Part II of Form 16: Provided that
discrepancy, if any, between the total number of such
ballot papers recorded as aforesaid and the total
number of ballot papers shown against item No. 5 of
Part I shall also be recorded in Part II of Form 16.
(2) Before any ballot box is opened at a counting table,
the counting agents present at that table shall be
allowed to inspect the paper seal or such other seal as
might have been affixed thereon and to satisfy
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none
of the ballot boxes has in fact been tampered with.
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any ballot
box has in fact been tampered with, he shall not count
the ballot papers contained in that box and shall follow
the procedure laid down in section 58 in respect of that
polling station.
Page 23 of 95

(56B) Counting of votes.—(1) Subject to such general or

special directions, if any, as may be given by the
Election Commission in this behalf, the ballot papers
taken out of all boxes 3[used at more than one polling
station in a constituency,] shall be mixed together and
then arranged in convenient bundles and scrutinised.
elector can be identified, or
(b) if it bears no mark at all or, to indicate the
vote, it bears a mark elsewhere than on or near
the symbol of one of the candidates on the face of
the ballot paper or, it bears a mark made
otherwise than with the instrument supplied for
the purpose, or
(c) if votes are given on it in favour of more than
one candidate, or
(d) if the mark indicating the vote thereon is
placed in such manner as to make it doubtful to
which candidate the vote has been given, or
(f) if it is so damaged or mutilated that its identity
as a genuine ballot paper cannot be established,
or
(g) if it bears a serial number, or is of a design,
different from the serial numbers, or, as the case
may be, design, of the ballot papers authorised for
use at the particular polling station, or
(h) if it does not bear both the mark and the
signature which it should have borne under the
provisions of sub-rule (1) of rule 38:
Provided that where the returning officer is satisfied
that any such defect as is mentioned in clause (g) or
clause (h) has been caused by any mistake or failure on
the part of a presiding officer or polling officer, the
ballot paper shall not be rejected merely on the ground
of such defect: Provided further that a ballot paper shall
not be rejected merely on the ground that the mark
indicating the vote is indistinct or made more than
once, if the intention that the vote shall be for a
particular candidate clearly appears from the way the
paper is marked.
(3) Before rejecting any ballot paper under sub-rule (2),
the returning officer shall allow each counting agent
present a reasonable opportunity to inspect the ballot
paper but shall not allow him to handle it or any other
ballot paper.
(4) The returning officer shall endorse on every ballot
paper which he rejects the word “Rejected” and the
Page 24 of 95

grounds of rejection in abbreviated form either in his

own hand or by means of a rubber stamp and shall
initial such endorsement.
(5) All ballot papers rejected under this rule shall be
bundled together.
(6) Every ballot paper which is not rejected under this
rule shall be counted as one valid vote: Provided that no
cover containing tendered ballot shall be opened and no
such paper shall be counted.
(7) After the counting of all ballot papers contained in
all the ballot boxes used in a constituency has been
completed, the returning officer shall make the entries
in a result sheet in From 20A and announce the
particulars. Explanation.—For the purpose of this rule,
the expression “constituency” shall, in relation to an
election from a parliamentary constituency, mean the
assembly constituency comprised therein.
(57B) Sealing of used ballot papers.—The valid ballot

papers of each candidate and the rejected ballot papers
shall thereafter be bundled separately and the several
bundles made up into a separate packet which shall be
sealed with the seals of the returning officer and of
such of the candidates, their election agents or
counting agents as may desire to affix their seals
thereon and on the packets so sealed shall be recorded
the following particulars, namely:—
(a) the name of the constituency; and
(b) the date of counting.’
60. Counting to be continuous.—The returning

officer shall, as far as practicable proceed continuously
with the counting and shall, during any intervals when
the counting has to be suspended, keep the ballot
papers, packets and all other papers relating to the
election sealed with his own seal and the seals of such
candidates or election agents as may desire to affix
their seals and take sufficient precaution for their safe
custody during such intervals.
61. Recommencement of counting after fresh poll.

— (1) If a fresh poll is held under section 58, the
returning officer shall, after completion of that poll,
recommence the counting of votes on the date and at
the time and place which have been fixed by him in that
behalf and of which notice has been previously given to
the candidates and their election agents.
(2) The provisions of rules 56 and 57 shall apply so far
as may be to such further counting.
Page 25 of 95

[***]
63. Re-count of votes.— (1) After the completion of

the counting, the returning officer shall record in the
result sheet in Form 20 the total number of votes polled
by each candidate and announce the same.
[(2) After such announcement has been made, a
candidate or, in his absence, his election agent or any
of his counting agents may apply in writing to the
returning officer to re-count the votes either wholly or
in part stating the grounds on which he demands such
re-count.]
(3) On such an application being made the returning
officer shall decide the matter and may allow the
application in whole or in part or may reject it in toto if
it appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
(4) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-
rule (3) shall be in writing and contain the reasons
therefor.
[(5) If the returning officer decides under sub-rule (3) to
allow a re-count of the votes either wholly or in part, he
shall—
(a) do the re-counting in accordance with 2[rule
54A,] rule 56 or rule 56A, as the case may be;
(b) amend the result sheet in Form 20 to the
extent necessary after such re-count; and
(c) announce the amendments so made by him.]
(6) After the total number of votes polled by each
candidate has been announced under sub-rule (1) or
sub-rule (5), the returning officer shall complete and
sign the result sheet in Form 20 and no application for
a re-count shall be entertained thereafter:
Provided that no step under this sub-rule shall be taken
on the completion of the counting until the candidates
and election agents present at the completion thereof
have been given a reasonable opportunity to exercise
the right conferred by sub-rule (2).
[64. Declaration of result of election and return of

election.—The returning officer shall, subject to the
provisions of section 65 if and so far as they apply to
any particular case, then—
(a) declare in Form 21C or Form 21D, as may be
appropriate, the candidate to whom the largest
number of valid votes have been given, to be
elected under section 66 and send signed copies
thereof to the appropriate authority, the Election
Commission and the chief electoral officer; and
(b) complete and certify the return of election in
Page 26 of 95

Form 21E, and send signed copies thereof to the

Election Commission and the chief electoral
officer.]
65. Counting at two or more places.—If ballot

papers are counted at more places than one, the
provisions of 1[rules 53, 54 and 55 to 60] shall apply to
the counting at each such place, but the provisions of
[rules 54A, 63 and 64] shall apply only to the counting
at the last of such places.
66. Grant of certificate of election to returned

candidate.—As soon as may be after a candidate has
been declared by the returning officer under the
provisions of section 53, or section 66, to be elected,
the returning officer shall grant to such candidate a
certificate of election in Form 22 and obtain from the
candidate an acknowledgment of its receipt duly signed
by him and immediately send the acknowledgment by
registered post to the Secretary of the House of the
People or, as the case may be, the Secretary of the
66A. Counting of votes where electronic voting

machines have been used.—In relation to the
counting of votes cast at a polling station, where voting
machine has been used,—
(i) the provisions of rules 50 to 54 and in lieu of
rules 55, 56 and 57, the following rules shall
respectively apply, namely:—
“55C. Scrutiny and inspection of voting
machines.—(1) The returning officer may
have the control units of the voting
machines used at more than one polling
station taken up for scrutiny and inspection
and votes recorded in such units counted
simultaneously.
(2) Before the votes recorded in any control
unit of voting machine are counted under
sub-rule (1), the candidate or his election
agent or his counting agent present at the
counting table shall be allowed to inspect
the paper seal and such other vital seals as
might have been affixed on the unit and to
satisfy themselves that the seals are intact.
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself
that none of the voting machines has in fact
been tampered with.
Page 27 of 95

(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that

any voting machine has in fact been
tampered with he shall not count the votes
recorded in that machine and shall follow
the procedure laid down in section 58, or
section 58A or section 64A, as may be
applicable in respect of the polling station
or stations where that machine was used.
56C Counting of votes.—(1) After the
returning officer is satisfied that a voting
machine has in fact not been tempered with,
he shall have the votes recorded therein
counted by pressing the appropriate button
marked “Result” provided in the control unit
whereby the total votes polled and votes
polled by each candidate shall be displayed
in respect of each such candidate on the
display panel provided for the purpose in
the unit.
(2) As the votes polled by each candidate
are displayed on the control unit, the
returning officer shall have,—
(a) the number of such votes recorded
separately in respect of each
candidate in Part II of Form 17C;
(b) Part II of Form 17C completed in
other respects and signed by the
counting supervisor and also by the
candidates or their election agents or
their counting agents present; and
(c) corresponding entries made in a
result sheet in Form 20 and the
particulars so entered in the result
sheet announced.
57C Sealing of voting machines.—(1) After

the result of voting recorded in a control
unit has been ascertained candidate-wise
and entered in Part II of Form 17C and
Form 20 under rule 56C, the returning
officer shall reseal the unit with his seal and
the seals of such of the candidates or their
election agents present who may desire to
affix their seals thereon so however that the
result of voting recorded in the unit is not
obliterated and the unit retains the memory
of such result.
(2) The control unit so sealed shall be kept
in specially prepared boxes on which the
Page 28 of 95

returning officer shall record the following

particulars, namely:—
(b) the particulars of polling station or
stations where the control unit has
been used;
(c) serial number of the control unit;
(e) date of counting.”
(ii) the provisions of rules 60 to 66 shall, so far as
may be, apply in relation to voting by voting
machines and any reference in those rules to,—
(a) ballot paper shall be construed as
including a reference to such voting
machine;
(b) any rule shall be construed as a
reference to the corresponding rule in
Chapter II of Part IV or, as the case may be,
to rule 55C or 56C or 57C].
94. Disposal of election papers.—Subject to any

direction to the contrary given by the Election
Commission or by a competent court or tribunal—
(a) the packets of unused ballot papers shall be
retained for a period of six months and shall thereafter
be destroyed in such manner as the Election
Commission may direct;]
[(aa) the voting machines kept in the custody of
the district election officer under sub-rule (1A) of
rule 92 shall be retained intact for such period as
the Election Commission may direct and shall not
be used at any subsequent election without the
previous approval of the Election Commission;]”
6. At the outset, let us appreciate the issue that was raised

before the Apex Court in the case of Dr. Subramanian
Swamy (supra). In the said case, the appeal was directed
against a judgement and order dated 17.01.2012 passed by
the Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi. The Delhi High
Court disposed of the petition disallowing the prayer of the
appellant, for issuing a writ of mandamus to the Election
Commission of India to incorporate the system of paper trails
in the EVMs. After the contentions which were raised by the
Page 29 of 95

learned advocate appearing on behalf of the petitioner

therein, the Apex Court, after charting out the course of
history that had gone into the introduction of the VVPATs and
the EVMs held as under:
“30. In the light of the above discussion and taking

notice of the pragmatic and reasonable approach of
the ECI and considering the fact that in general
elections all over India, the ECI has to handle one
million (ten lakhs) polling booths, we permit the
ECI to introduce the same in gradual stages or
geographical-wise in the ensuing general elections.
The area, State or actual booth(s) are to be decided
by the ECI and the ECI is free to implement the
same in a phased manner. We appreciate the
efforts and good gesture made by the ECI in
introducing the same.”
6.1 Reading of the aforesaid judgment would indicate that

looking to the fact that the general elections in India are a
large scale exercise, the Apex Court permitted the Election
Commission of India to introduce VVPATs in gradual stages or
geographical wise in the ensuing general elections. The Apex
Court further observed that the area, the State or the actual
booths are to be decided by the Election Commission of India
and that the Election Commission of India is free to
implement the same in a phased manner. The Apex Court, for
such implementation in a phased manner, directed the
Government of India to give the required financial assistance.
In other words, pursuant to the directions given by the Apex
Court in the case of Dr. Subramanian Swamy (supra), the
Election Commission of India has sought to introduce Voter
Verifiable Paper Trails in the general elections held in the
country.
Page 30 of 95

7. We have extensively reproduced, the relevant prayers

and the contentions of the Party in Person in context of the
prayer to challenge and declare Rule 56(D)(2) of the Conduct
of Election Rules,1961 as ultra vires Article 14, 19 and 21 of
the Constitution Of India. The apprehension voiced is insofar
as it vests discretion in the Returning Officer to reject an
application made under Rule 56(D)(2) for counting of the
printed paper slips in the drop box of the Printer. Such
discretion appears to be based on a concern that the
discretion will be used by the Returning Officer in not
entertaining an application for recount at all.
8. We would have expected the Party-In-Person- who in fact

is a practicing lawyer of this Court and not an ordinary
uninformed litigant acting at the instructions and briefs of his
advocate, to have taken us through the Status Paper to
demonstrate the justification of the apprehension of the
discretion under Rule 56(D)(2) being capable of being abused.
We are afraid that except reiterating the submissions from the
pleadings and reading out the provisions of the
Representation Of People Act, 1951, the paper was not read
though it was part of the letter, annexed to the petition and
therefore can be safely presumed to be part of the record.
9. We have therefore undertaken the task of reading the

paper and from the contents which we extensively reproduce
hereinafter, we are assured that the firm conviction about the
integrity and non-tamperability and credibility of the EVMs
and the confidence in the robustness of the procedural
safeguards as voiced in the communication dated 10.01.2019
by the Election Commission Of India, make the decision-
Page 31 of 95

making process of the Returning Officer and the discretion so

vested in him, under Rule 56(D)(2) beyond reproach.
10. It has to be borne in mind that the foundation and the

basis of the allegation is a lurking fear repeatedly voiced and
demonstrated by the Election Commission Of India that the
EVMs are tamperproof. From what we will reproduce
hereinafter, the material which was available to the
petitioner, a practicing lawyer, as is evident from the
communication dated 10.01.2019 addressed to him, a
reference has been made to the Commission’s ‘Status Paper
on EVM/ VVPAT’ which has comprehensively addressed and
cleared all doubts and queries regarding the credibility of
EVMs used by the Election Commission of India. The letter
unequivocally states that the Commission has firm
conviction about the integrity, non-tamperability and
credibility of the EVMs and is confident of its
robustness and reliability in view of its technical
security features,comprehensive administrative
protocols and robust procedural safeguards that protect
the EVMs and VVPATs against any sort of manipulation
at any stage,before,during or after the polls including
manufacture, transportation, storage, polling and
counting process. (emphasis supplied).
10.1 Once an autonomous constitutional authority like the

Election Commission Of India, which has till date, fulfilled the
avowed object of conducting free and fair elections in the
largest democracy of the world makes such a statement, in its
letter addressed to the petitioner assuring the robustness of
Page 32 of 95

the procedural safeguards, this Court shall be loath to sit in

judgement over the assurance of a constitutional authority
like the Election Commission Of India and show the
zealousness to overstep its jurisdiction vested in it under
Article 226 of the Constitution Of India, on mere uncharted
reservations and apprehensions voiced by the petitioner.
11. It would also be fruitful to reproduce the information

about introduction, present status and the conclusion about
EVMs/VVPATs as per the aforesaid Commission’s ‘Status
Paper on EVM/VVPAT’ for ready reference and which has
been requested by the Election Commission of India to be
referred in the communication dated 10.01.2019 addressed to
the petitioner. This will also help us to trace the
EVMs/VVPATs’ journey into the election process of this
country through the Status Paper.
“Introduction:
India is the largest Participatory Democracy of the

world, with about 850 million registered voters. The
Constitutional mandate of superintendence, direction
and control of Elections to the Parliament and the State
Legislative Assemblies has been conferred on the
Election Commission of India.
The Election Commission of India is an independent
Constitutional entity, which has successfully conducted
regular elections to the Parliament and various State
Legislative Assemblies for the past 66 years in a free,
fair, participative, informed and credible manner. The
Commission is widely acknowledged as a ‘’Global Gold
Standard’’ in Election Management across the World,
setting ever-higher standards of efficient and
professional conduct of Elections.
The Commission has been at the forefront of
embracing, adopting and implementing the latest
technological advancements in improving and fine-
tuning the election processes and systems. The
Page 33 of 95

Commission has taken the pioneering initiative of

introducing Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for
recording, storing and counting of votes across the
length and breadth of the Country in a transparent,
credible and secure manner, backed by appropriate
legal support. The use of EVM demonstrates the
Commission’s unflinching resolve to continually
improve, upgrade and strengthen the Electoral Process
in the country.
The Commission has successfully used EVMs in
conducting 113 General Elections to the State
Legislative Assemblies and 3 Lok Sabha Elections over
the last 23 years. The List of States, along with the
years in which 100% EVMs were used in the Assembly
Elections is placed at ANNEXURE - 1.
55.41 crore (554 million) voters exercised their
franchise in 2014 Lok Sabha elections using EVMs.
Since the very inception of the EVMs in 1982, as a
positive electoral reform on the electoral scene in India,
blames and aspersions have been cast on the EVMs
from various quarters including political. Recently, after
the announcement of the results of the five State
Assembly Elections in March 2017, again certain
allegations have been levelled against the EVMs. A
group of thirteen political parties met the Commission
on 10 April 2017 and expressed certain reservations
about the use of EVMs.
It needs to be emphasized that the wide range of
technical security, administrative protocols and
procedural safeguards mandated by the Commission
robustly ensures the integrity, non-tamperability and
credibility of the EVMs. The stringent procedures and
well-defined poll processes prescribed by the
Commission protect the EVMs against any sort of
manipulation.
It is also significant to highlight that the Commission is
committed to the 100% coverage of VVPATs in all
future elections to the Parliament and State Assembly
Elections. The requisite funds for the procurement of
adequate number of VVPATs and latest generation (M3)
EVMs have been sanctioned by the Government and
machines are expected to be manufactured and
delivered by BEL and ECIL to the ECI by November
2018 as committed by the manufacturers.
At the present juncture, when EVMs are once again
encumbered with yet another debate on its efficacy and
robustness, it is imperative to hold consultations with
stakeholders.
Page 34 of 95

VOTER VERIFIABLE PAPER AUDIT TRAIL (VVPAT)
In a meeting of all political parties held on 4th October,

2010, the parties expressed satisfaction with the EVM
but some parties requested the Commission to consider
introducing Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail for
further transparency and verifiability
inpollprocess.InIndia,thedemandofVVPATtoincrease
transparency was floating in the air for some time after
such a tool was first demonstrated in New York City in
March 2001 and first used in Sacramento, California in
2002. The demand was referred to the Technical Expert
Committee (TEC) by the ECI.
Introduction of VVPAT implied that a paper slip is
generated bearing name and symbol of the candidate
along with recording of vote in Control Unit, so that in
case of any dispute, paper slip could be counted to
verify the result being shown on the EVM. Under
VVPAT, a printer is attached to the balloting Unit and
kept in the voting compartment. The paper slip remains
visible on VVPAT for 07 seconds through a transparent
window. The Commission referred the matter to its
Technical Expert Committee (TEC) on EVMs for
examining and making a recommendation in this
regard. The Expert Committee had several rounds of
meetings with the manufacturers of EVM, namely, BEL
& ECIL, on this issue and then had met the political
parties and other civil society members to explore the
design requirement of the VVPAT system with the EVM.
On the direction of the Expert Committee, the BEL and
ECIL made a prototype and demonstrated before the
Committee and the Commission in 2011. On the
recommendation of the Expert Committee on EVM &
VVPAT system, the Commission conducted simulated
election for the field trial of VVPAT system in Ladakh
(Jammu & Kashmir), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala),
Cherrapunjee (Meghalaya), East Delhi District (NCT of
Delhi) and Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) in July 2011. All stake
holders including senior leaders of political parties and
civil society members participated and witnessed
enthusiastically in the field trial. After 1st field trial of
the VVPAT system, Commission made a detailed
reassessment of the VVPAT system to further fine tune
the VVPAT system. Accordingly, the manufacturers
developed 2nd version of VVPAT prototype.
The same was again subjected to 2nd field trial in the
said five locations in July- August 2012.
In the meeting of the Technical Expert Committee held
on 19th February, 2013, the Committee approved the
Page 35 of 95

design of VVPAT and also recommended the

Commission to take action on amendment of the rules
for using VVPAT. The model was demonstrated
to all the political parties in an all-party meeting on
10th May, 2013. The Government of India notified the
amended Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 on 14th
August, 2013,
enabling the Commission to use VVPAT with EVMs. On
4th September, 2013, the Commission used VVPAT with
EVMs first time in bye-election from 51-Noksen (ST)
Assembly Constituency of Nagaland.
On 8th October, 2013, the Hon’ble Supreme Court
ordered introduction of VVPAT in phases in its
judgment on a PIL and asked Government to sanction
funds for procurement. As directed by the Hon’ble
Supreme Court of India, the ECI introduced the VVPAT
system in a phased manner so that full implementation
could be achieved by 2019. In 2013, the ECI procured
20000 VVPATs. On 25th November, 2013, VVPATs were
used in 10 ACs in Mizoram; on 4th December 2013, it
was used in one AC in Delhi; and thereafter in
subsequent elections.
The following table gives us the journey of VVPAT in
India at a glance:
4th Oct 2010 An all-party meeting held. Agreement
on incorporation of VVPATs along with
EVMs.
07/01/11 Field trial conducted after the
prototype was manufactured, in
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Delhi,
Cherapunjee (Meghalaya), Jaisalmer
(Rajasthan) and Leh (Jammu &
Kashmir).
July-Aug 2012 A second field trial was conducted
19th Feb 2013 Final model was approved by TEC
10th May 2013 The Model was demonstrated to all
political parties
14th Aug 2013 The conduct of Election Rules 1961
was amended and notified

8 Oct 2013
th
Hon’ble Supreme Court directed ECI to
introduce the VVPAT system in a
phased manner. full implementation to
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be achieved by 2019
25th Nov 2013 VVPATS were used in 10 ACs of
Mizoram 4th Dec 2013 VVPAT was
used in one AC in Delhi and thereafter
in subsequent elections
Feb-Mar 2017 52000 VVPATs were used in 33 ACs in
Punjab, 6 ACs in Mani- pur, 3 ACs in
Uttarakhand, 30 ACs in Uttar Pradesh
and 40 ACs in Goa
04/01/17 Approval of Government received for
purchase of 16, 15,000 VVPATs at a
total estimated cost of Rs.3173.47
Crores**.
** Cost of 16,15,000 VVPATs reduced
to Rs. 2616.30 Cr. After fixation of
price by the Price Negotiation
Committee.
12th May 2017 All Political Parties Meeting held. The
Commission decided to use 100%
VVPATs at every polling station in all
future elections to Parliamentary and
Assembly constituencies.
19th Sept., The Commission directed to use 100%
2017 VVPATs at every polling station was
formally communicated to all Chief
Electoral Officers to ensure
compliance.
11th Oct, 2017 The Commission decoded to conduct
mandatory verification of VVPAT slips
of randomly selected 01 Polling Station
per AC. Subsequently, mandatory
verification of VVPAT slips has been
further extended to 01 randomly
selected Polling Station of each
Assembly segment of Parliamentary
Constituency also.
So, far, VVPATs have been used in 933 Assembly

Constituencies and 18 Parliamentary
Constituencies. Till date, VVPAT slip verification
has been undertaken for 792 polling stations and
in all the cases, the results tallied with the
electronic result in the CU.
Present Status:
Hon’ble Supreme Court in its order dated 8 Oct 2013
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has observed that EVMs with VVPAT system ensures

the accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to
have fullest transparency in the system and to restore
the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up
EVMs with VVPAT systems because vote is nothing but
an act of expression which has immense importance in
democratic system. The apex court appreciated the
efforts and good gesture made by the ECI in
introducing VVPATs and permitted the ECI to introduce
the same in a gradual stages or geographical wise in
the ensuing general elections. The Court also directed
the Government of India to provide required financial
assistance for the procurement of units of VVPATs for
the implementation of VVPAT system in a phased
manner.
Amidst the ongoing debate on the EVM, the ECI not
only reaffirmed its faith on the transparency, credibility,
non-tamperability and robustness of the machines, but
also stressed on the immediate deployment of VVPATs
for safeguarding the integrity of the voting system as
well as strengthening confidence of the voters. In order
to ensure the compliance of Hon’ble Supreme Court
order The Chief Election Commissioner of India
vigorously pursued the allocation of funds to the
manufacturers for the timely manufacture and supply of
required quantity of VVPATs to the ECI for ensuring
100% VVPAT coverage at all polling stations. The
Election Commission also vigorously reviewed the
production capacity of the manufacturers impressing
upon them the need to strictly adhere to the schedule
by enhancing their manufacturing capacity.
Based on Commission’s continuous follow up the funds
have since been allocated on 19April2017 amounting to
Rs.2616.30 crore for purchase of 16,15,000VVPATs and
orders have been issued to the manufacturers. It is
pertinent to mention that Rs 1939.95 crore has been
sanctioned and released by the Government for the
manufacture of M3 EVMs. The manufacturers have
committed to manufacture the EVMs and VVPATs and
supply to ECI by Sep 2018.
The Commission is committed to using VVPAT machines
along with EVMs in all future elections to be conducted
under its superintendence and direction for the
Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies.
In the All Political Parties Meeting held on 12th May,
2017, the Commission decided to use 100% VVPATs in
all future elections. The above decision of the
Commission was formally communicated to Chief
Electoral Officers of all States and Union Territories on
Page 38 of 95

19th September, 2017.

The Commission mandated verificationofVVPATpaper
slips of randomly selected 01 polling station in addition
to the provisions of Rule 56D of the Conduct of
Elections Rules, 1961, as under:
(a) In case of General and Bye-elections to State
Legislative
Assemblies, verification of VVPAT paper slips of
randomly selected 01 polling station per Assembly
Constituency.
(b) In case of General and Bye-elections to the House
of the People, verification of VVPAT paper slips of
randomly selected 01 polling station of each Assembly
Segment of the Parliamentary Constituency concerned.
Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips has
been conducted so far in 792 polling stations and
no discrepancy was found in electronic result and
paper count.
Conclusion:
As is evident, the EVM used in Indian elections have

gone through a long journey of evolution amidst
challenges and has emerged as an effective machine of
electoral reform over the years since its introduction. It
has enhanced public confidence as well as legitimacy of
Indian elections in the eyes of the world.
The Indian EVM stands as one of the most credible,
non-tamperable and transparent machine amongst all
such machines used in other parts of the world. Indian
EVMs have attracted the attention of many Afro-Asian
countries also. Till date, no one could actually
demonstrate that EVMs in possession of ECI and used
by it, can be tampered with or manipulated. What has
been demonstrated or claimed to have been
demonstrated is on a privately assembled “look-alike of
ECI-EVMs” and not the actual ECI-EVM used by ECI.
Recently, on an allegation of EVMs yielding votes for
only one political party in Bhind (Madhya Pradesh) and
Dholpur (Rajasthan), the ECI promptly conducted an
enquiry which found out that such allegations were
found to be baseless.
Today,the ECI once again completely reaffirms its faith
in the non-tamperability of the EVMs of ECI in view of
the technical security features and the stringent
administrative protocols and procedural safeguards
which are mandatorily to be followed during and after
the polls. In conclusion, it will be pertinent to
refer to the verdict of the Karnataka High Court in this
Page 39 of 95

respect, which observed that EVM in India is a

“national pride” and the fact that Indian elections are
widely internationally acknowledged as the “Global
Gold Standard”.
The Commission and electoral system stakeholders
have taken a conscious decision that EVM is the right
answer to the formidable task of election management
and the huge logistical challenges it throws. The ECI
hopes that once the VVPATs cover all the polling booths
in the country, the confidence and transparency will be
further enhanced.
The Commission firmly believes thatthe introduction of
VVPAT machines with the EVMs in all future elections
will bring utmost transparency and credibility in the
EVM-based voting system in our country and
conclusively put to rest all misinformed doubts and
misgivings regarding these machines.
The Commission will launch a comprehensive,
concerted and nation- wide voter education and
awareness programme under its flagship SVEEP
initiative, to educate, orient and inform the voters about
the functioning, usage and advantages of the VVPAT
machines and their immense utility in reinforcing the
transparency, credibility and authenticity if the voting
process. The Commission earnestly solicits the
cooperation and collaboration of all the vital
stakeholders, particularly the political parties, to join
hands in spreading awareness about the advantages of
VVPAT machines. The Commission is confident that the
collaborative efforts of all the stakeholders in the
electoral process will lead to continuous improvements
in the electoral management and make our system
more transparent, participative, informed and credible.
The Commission firmly believes in an open, constructive
and comprehensive dialogue with all crucial
stakeholders in the electoral process and the political
parties are a critical stakeholder of the democratic
edifice in the country. Considering the recent issues
regarding use of EVMs, the Commission convened an
All Party Meeting on 12th May 2017. The objective
behind the said meeting was to facilitate threadbare
discussions and detailed deliberations amongst the
important players in the electoral arena on this vital
issue, so that all views and counter-views were placed
on the table and thrashed out transparently and
cogently.
In All Political Parties Meeting the Commission assured
100% coverage of VVPATs in all future election to the
Parliament and State Assembly Elections. In the said
Page 40 of 95

meeting the representatives of political parties were

informed that the Commission would hold a challenge
and offered opportunity to political parties to
demonstrate that EVMs used in the recently concluded
Assemblies elections were tampered OR that EVMs
could be tampered even under the laid down Technical
and Administrative Safeguards.
Subsequently, 20th May 2017, the Commission

announced the EVM Challenge and sent invitation to all
National and State Recognized Political Parties to
participate in the Challenge from 3rd June 2017
onwards. Only two Political Parties, namely NCP and
CPI(M) submitted their interest in participating the
EVM Challenge. However, they did not participate in
the Challenge but only expressed their interest in
understanding the EVM process. They interacted
extensively with TEC of the Commission to clear their
doubts. The EVM Challenge concluded on 3rd July
2017.
Since 12th May 2017, every election to the Parliament
and State Assembly Elections has been conducted using
VVPAT with EVM and the Commission is committed to
100% deployment of VVPATs in all future elections to
Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies.
The Commission requests all citizens and stakeholders
to remain aware, vigilant and alert about our electoral
processes and facilitate the Commission in discharging
its Constitutional mandate of conducting free and fair
elections in the country.”
[Emphasis Supplied]
12. In fact the Election Commission of India has also

published a Manual (3rd Edition) on EVMs and VVPATs in view
of the 100% use of VVPATs with EVMs and to familiarize the
readers with the genesis of the EVM, Process of its
development, Procurement, Storage and Legal provisions. It
also contains all important instructions on use of EVM and
VVPAT making it a useful handbook on the subject for the
electoral machinery handling the EVM, and VVPAT. The
relevant portions of the said manual are reproduced
hereunder.
Page 41 of 95

“169. Power to make rules. —

(1) The Central Government may, after consulting the
Election Commission, by notification in the Official
Gazette, make rules for carrying out the purposes of
this Act.
(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the
generality of the foregoing power, such rules may
provide for all or any of the following matters, namely:
—
[(a) the form of affidavit under sub-section (2) of
section 33A;]
[(aa)] the duties of presiding officers and polling
officers at polling stations;
[(aaa) the form of contribution report;]
(b) the checking of voters by reference to the electoral
roll;
[(bb) the manner of allocation of equitable sharing of
time on the cable television network and other
electronic media;];
(c) the manner in which votes are to be given both
generally and in the case of illiterate voters or voters
under physical or other disability ;
(d) the manner in which votes are to be given by a
presiding officer, polling officer, polling agent or any
other person, who being an elector for a constituency is
authorised or appointed for duty at a polling station at
which he is not entitled to vote;
(e) the procedure to be followed in respect of the
tender of vote by a person representing himself to be
an elector after another person has voted as such
elector;
[(ee) the manner of giving and recording of votes by
means of voting machines and the procedure as to
voting to be followed at polling stations where such
machines are used;]
(f) the procedure as to voting to be followed at elections
held in accordance with the system of proportional
representation by means of the single transferable vote;
(g) the scrutiny and counting of votes including cases in
which a recount of the votes may be made before the
declaration of the result of the election; 12
[(gg) the procedure as to counting of votes recorded by
means of voting machines;]
(h) the safe custody of 3[ballot boxes, voting machines],
ballot papers and other election papers, the period for
which such papers shall be preserved and the
inspection and production of such papers;
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[(hh) the material to be supplied by the Government to

the candidates of recognised political parties at any
election to be held for the purposes of constituting the
House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of a
State;]
(i) any other matter required to be prescribed by this
Act.
[(3) Every rule made under this Act shall be laid as soon
as may be after it is made before each House of
Parliament while it is in session for a total period of
thirty days which may be comprised in one session or
[in two or more successive sessions, and if, before the
expiry of the session immediately following the session
or the successive sessions aforesaid, both Houses agree
in making any modification in the rule or both Houses
agree that the rule should not be made,] the rule shall
thereafter have effect only in such modified form or be
of no effect, as the case may be; so, however, that any
such modification or annulment shall be without
prejudice to the validity of anything previously done
under that rule.].
2. Under rule 94(aa) of the Conduct of Elections Rules

1961, the guidelines of the Commission on retention period of
the EVMs after using in election and for using the same in
the subsequent elections, are as under:
A. Every Voting Machine (EVM) and VVPATs used in an
election and kept in the custody of the District Election
Officer shall be kept untouched, under the standard
protocol of security, till confirmation of Election
petition position from the High Court concerned after
the completion of the period for filing Election Petition
i.e. 45 days from the date of declaration of the result.
B. In the case of elections, where no election petition
has been filed or no other court cases are pending,
afterthe aforesaid period,the EVMs may be allowed to
be used by the Election Commission for any future
election or any other purpose like movement, physical
verification of EVMs and VVPATs, etc.
C. In case of any election where election petition has
been filed, the following action shall be taken:-
i) If the EVMs are the subject of the election petition,
the EVMs used at all Polling Stations in the
constituency concerned shall continue to be kept in the
safe custody of the District Election Officer, till such
time the Election Petition is finally disposed of by the
Courts.
ii) If the EVMs are not the subject of the election
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petition, an application may be moved to the concerned

Court for allowing the EVMs concerned to be taken out
of the strong room for any future election or any other
purpose like movement, physical verification of EVMs
etc. 35
iii) In case EVMs not involved in any Election
Petition/Court Case are stored with the EVMs involved
in Election Petition/Court Case, the following procedure
shall be followed for segregating the EVMs not involved
in any election petition/court case form the EVMs
involved in EP/Court case:-
a) A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room
having EVMsinvolved in EP/Court Case shall be given
to the petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court Case and
the representatives of all political partiesin writing at
least 72 hours in advance, requesting them to remain
present at the time of opening of strong room.
b) The strong room shall be opened in the presence of
the District Election Officer, Petitioners/respondents of
the EP/Court case and representatives of Political
Parties.
c) The EVMs not involved in any EP/Court Case shall be
segregated from the EVMs involved in EP/Court Case
for taking out of the strong room. A list of EVMs being
so taken out from the strong room shall be prepared.
d) The EVMs, which are not involved in any EP/Court
Case, should alone be taken out of the Strong room.
e) The entire process shall be videographed.
f) A copy of the list of EVMs being taken out from the
strong room and copy of videography shall be given to
the petitioner/respondent of the EP/court case and
acknowledgement taken.
D. If any other Court Case is pending, like, booth
capturing, etc., in which any EVM is involved, the EVM
concerned or the EVM(s) used at such Polling Station(s)
concerned may also be kept till the final disposal of the
said case. After the final disposal of the election
petitions or other court cases, as the case may be,
referred to above, the EVMs can be used for
16.5. APPLICATION FOR VVPAT PAPER SLIPS

COUNTING
After announcement of result sheet entries, any
candidate, their election agent or their counting agents
may apply in writing to the RO to count the printed
VVPAT paper slips in any or all polling stations. If such
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application is made, the RO shall pass a speaking order

on whether the VVPAT paper slips should be counted. If
the RO decides to allow the counting of the VVPAT
paper slips of any or all polling stations, such decision
of the RO must be recorded in writing along with the
reasons thereof. The RO shall give due consideration to
the following:
Whether the total number of votes polled in that polling
station is greater or lesser than the margin of votes
between winning candidate and candidate making the
application
Whether EVM had a problem and was replaced at that
polling station during poll
Whether there was any complaint about VVPAT not
printing or 76 complaints by any voter under Rule
49MA in that polling station during the poll.
16.6. MANDATORY VERIFICATION OF VVPAT

PAPER SLIPS:
Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips of
randomly selected 01 (one) polling station shall be
conducted in all future General and Bye Elections to the
House of the People and State Legislative Assemblies,
in addition to the provisions of Rule 56D of the Conduct
of Elections Rules, 1961, after the completion of the
last round of counting of votes recorded in the EVMs,
as under:
a) In case of General and Bye elections to State
Legislative Assemblies, verification of VVPAT
paperslips ofrandomly selected 01 (one) polling station
per Assembly Constituency.
b) In case of General and Bye elections to the House of
the People, verification of VVPAT paperslips ofrandomly
selected 01 (one) polling station of each Assembly
Segment of the Parliamentary Constituency concerned.
For this mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips,
the following procedure shall be followed:
16.6.1. The verification of VVPAT paper slips of
randomly selected 01 (one) polling station for each
Assembly Constituency/Segment shall be taken up after
the completion of the last round of counting of votes
recorded in the EVMs.
16.6.2. The random selection of 01 (one) polling station
per Assembly Constituency/Segmentshall be done by
Draw of lots, by the Returning Officer concerned, in the
presence of candidates/their agents and the
GeneralObserver appointed by the Commission forthat
Constituency.
16.6.3. The draw of lots must be conducted immediately
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afterthe completion of the last round of counting of

votes recorded in the EVMs (Control Units) in the
designated Counting Hall for the particular Assembly
Constituency/Assembly Segment.
16.6.4. A written intimation regarding the conduct of
draw of lots for the random selection of 01 (one) polling
station for verification of VVPAT Slips shall be given by
the Returning Officer to the Candidates/their election
agents well in advance.
16.6.5. The following procedure shall be followed for
the conduct of draw of lots:
a) White colour paper cards of postcard size shall be
used for conducting the draw of lots.
b) Total number of such paper cards should be equal to
total number of polling stations in the Assembly
Constituency.
c) The paper cards shall have pre-printed Assembly
Constituency/ Assembly Segment number, AC/AS name
and date of polling on the top, and the polling station
number in the centre. Each digit of the polling station
number shall be atleast 1" x 1"(1 inch by 1 inch) size
and printed in black ink.
d) The paper cards to be used for draw of lots should be
four-folded in such a way that polling station number is
not visible.
e) Each paper card shall be shown to the
candidates/their agents before folding and dropping in
the container.
f) The paper cardsshall be kept in the big container and
must be shaken before picking up 01 (one) slip by the
Returning Officer.
16.6.6. The verification of VVPAT paperslipsshall be
done in a 'VVPAT Counting Booth' (VCB), specially
prepared for this purpose inside the Counting Hall. The
booth shall be enclosed in a wire mesh just like a bank
cashier’s cabin so that no VVPAT paper slip can be
accessed by any unauthorized person. One of the
Counting tables in the Counting Hall can be converted
into the VCB and can be used for normal counting of
round-wise EVM votes before the count of VVPAT slips
as per random selection after the completion of round-
wise EVM counting.
16.6.7. The Verification count of the VVPAT paper slips
of the randomly selected 01 (one) polling station shall
be conducted strictly in accordance with the
instructions of the Commission on counting of printed
paper slips.
16.6.8. The Returning Officer and Assistant Returning
Officer, asthe case may be, shall personally supervise
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the counting of VVPAT paper slips at this booth. The

General Observer concerned shall ensure close and
careful observation ofthe entire exercise and ensure
strict compliance of the Commission's instructions.
16.6.9. The above process shall be fully videographed.
16.6.10. After completion of the above process, the
Returning Officer shall give a certificate in the annexed
format(Annexure-30).
16.7. ARRANGEMENTS FOR COUNTING OF

VVPAT PAPER SLIPS:
One ofthe Counting Tablesinside the CountingHallshall
be earmarked by the Returning Officer as VVPAT
Counting Booth (VCB) for Counting of VVPAT Paper
Slips.
VCB shall be enclosed in a wire-mesh just like a Bank
Cashier Cabin, so that no VVPAT paper slip can be
accessed by any unauthorised person.
16.8. PROCEDURE TO COUNT VVPAT PAPER

SLIPS:
If the RO decides to count the printed paper slips of any
polling station(s) on an appeal for recounting of any
polling station(s), the following procedures shall be
strictly followed:
Step-1:
a) For keeping VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the
Drop Box of the VVPAT, a sufficiently sized container
with lid, of dimensions 14 inch X 10 inch X 5 inch
(length x breadth x height), to easily accommodate
around 1400 Printed Paper Slips,shall be kept on the
table of VCB. This Container should be made of sturdy
transparent material like plastic etc. Sample images of
the Container are available in Annexure-27.
b) For keeping VVPAT paper slips of the respective
candidates, a Pigeonhole Framework shall be prepared
in advance according to the number of
candidatesincludingNOTA, with one additional
pigeonhole for keeping self-test slips of the VVPAT, and
shall be kept on the table of VCB.
i) The minimum number of Pigeonholes in the
Framework must be equal to the number of candidates
plus 2 (two).
ii) The size of each compartment (Pigeonhole) must be
atleast 6 inch X 4 inch X 4 inch (length x breadth x
height).
iii) The pigeonhole structure should be made of sturdy
transparent material like plastic etc, having a fixed
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base, to prevent any VVPAT paper slip from slipping

underneath.
iv) The symbolof eachcontesting candidate
aspertheBallot Papershould be affixed on the wall of the
pigeonhole allotted to the particular candidates. The
symbol should be printed in black and white on a plain
paper of minimum size 4inch X 3 inch. Sample images
of the Pigeonhole Framework are placed in Annexure-
27.
c) At least 100 Rubber bands for making bundles of 25
VVPAT paper slips.
Step-2:
The VVPAT unit(s) of the respective polling station(s)
should be brought to the VCB one by one, as the case
may be.
In case a VVPAT unit was replaced during poll at that
polling station, all the VVPAT units used at that polling
station should be brought to the VCB.
Step-3:
The printed paper slips shall be taken out from all the
VVPATs used at the polling station, before beginning
the counting of VVPAT paper slips for that polling
station.
Before taking out the VVPAT Paper Slips from the drop
box, the address tag(s) of the drop box shall be
crosschecked to ascertain that the VVPAT pertains to
the respective polling station.
a) The VVPAT Paper Slipstaken out from the Drop Box
of the VVPAT shall be first kept in the container as per
specification at step-1 (i).
b) After taking out the VVPAT paper slips from Drop
Box, the Counting Supervisor shall ensure that no
VVPAT paper slip is left inside the VVPAT drop box and
show the empty drop box to the counting agents.
c) In case a VVPAT unit was replaced, it may so happen
that an uncut fully or partially VVPAT paper slip is
hanging and has not got cut and dropped in the drop
box and still connected to the paper roll. This uncut
VVPAT paperslip should not be torn and should not be
counted because the vote is not recorded electronically
in the CU unless the VVPAT paper slip is cut. In such an
event, the last voter whose VVPAT paper slip was not
cut would have been given an opportunity to cast his
vote after replacement of VVPAT and the VVPAT paper
slip of the vote cast by him shall be in the next VVPAT
used in that polling station.
d) The drop box of the VVPAT will also have VVPAT
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slips of self-test report. These are easily identified, as

they do not have either the name or the symbol of any
candidate. These self-test report slips are to be
preserved along with the VVPAT paperslips as part of
the record but they are not to be counted.
Step-4:
i) The VVPAT paper slips should be segregated one-by-
one and put in respective pigeon holes after showing
each slip to the Counting Agents. The paper slips
bearing self-tests report shall also be segregated and
put in a separate pigeonhole provided for the purpose.
ii) Bundles of 25VVPAT paper slips of respective
candidates shall be prepared for counting purpose.
iii) VVPAT Paper Slips shall then be counted by the
counting staff.
iv) Result oftheVVPAT paperslips countshall be
prepared in the format as per Annexure-28and attached
to Part-II of Form 17-C(Annexure-29).
v) The result of the count of VVPAT paperslipsshall be
announced loudly in the counting hall and shown to the
counting agents.
vi) As per Rule 56D (4) (b) of the Conduct of Elections
Rules 1961, if there is any discrepancy between EVM
count and paper slip count, the paper slip count shall
prevail. Hence, if there is discrepancy between the
count of votes displayed on the Control Unit and the
count of printed-paper slips in respect of that Polling
Station, the result sheet will be amended as per the
printed-paper slips count.
Step-5:
After completion of counting of VVPAT paper slips, the
bundles of all the VVPAT Paper Slips shall be kept back
in the Drop Box of the respective VVPAT and door of
the Drop Box shall be sealed using address tags.
The candidate(s)/their agents may also be allowed to
affix their signature with party abbreviation on the
Address Tags.
16.9. Sealing of EVMs after counting of votes

After completion of counting, all such Control Units
whether result has been retrieved from it or not, the
Control Unit should be kept back inside 81 its carrying
case. The carrying cases should then be sealed once
again. The Returning Officer and Observer should put
their signatures on the seal. All candidates and their
election agents should also be allowed to put their
signature on the seal. The Control Unit should be then
Page 49 of 95

kept in the strong room(s).
16.10. STORAGE of EVMs & VVPATs after

counting of votes:
After completion of counting of votes, EVMs and
VVPATs containing printed paper slips in its Drop box,
shall be kept in the same strong room without removing
Power Packs of Control Units and Power Packs and
Paper Rolls of VVPATs.
The Strong room shall not be opened till completion of
Election Petition (EP) period i.e. till EP list is received
from respective High Court.
After completion of Election Petition Period, the exact
EP position should be ascertained from High Court
concerned before opening the strong room.
16.11. STORAGE OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPS AFTER

EXPIRY OF PERIOD OF FILING OF ELECTION
PETITIONS:
After expiry of the period of filing of Election
Petitions(EPs) i.e. 45-daysfrom the date of declaration
of result, District Election Officers shall ascertain the
position of EP from the concerned High Court. After
obtaining the status of EP from the High Court
concerned, the following action shall be taken:
Every VVPAT used in an election and kept in the
custody of the District Election Officershall be kept
untouched, under the standard protocol ofsecurity, till
confirmation of Election petition position from the High
Court concerned after the completion of the period for
filing Election Petition i.e. 45 days from the date of
declaration of the result.
In the case of elections, where no election petition has
been filed or no other court cases are pending, after the
aforesaid period, the VVPATs shall be available for use
in any future election or any other purpose like
training, awareness, movement, physical verification
etc.
Before moving any VVPAT, printed paper slips shall be
taken out from Drop-box of the VVPATs as per
procedure mentioned below: 82
A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having
VVPATs shall be given to the representatives of all
political parties in writing at least 48 hours in advance,
requesting them to remain present at the time of
opening of strong room.
The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the
District Election Officer and representatives of Political
Parties.
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Remove the Power Packs of Control Units and Power

Packs and Paper Rolls of VVPATs.
The VVPAT paper slips shall be taken out from the Drop
Box of VVPAT and kept in a paper envelope made of
thick black paper, sealed using red wax under the seal
of DEO. Name of election, number and name of
assembly constituency, particulars of polling station,
unique serial number of the VVPAT unit, date of poll
and date of counting shall be mentioned on the
envelope containing printed paper slips.
The envelopes containing VVPAT paper slips shall be
kept with all other statutory documents relating to that
election till the statutory time limit.  Thorough
checking of officials deputed for the removal of VVPAT
paper slips and their sealing must be ensured. All
pockets need to be emptied before entering the Sealing
Room/Strong Room and thorough checking of officials
leaving the sealing room should be done in addition to
DFMD/Metal Detector Checking.
Once the VVPAT paper slips have been taken out, the
VVPATs must be kept in their separate designated
warehouse. VVPAT should not be kept in the same
warehouse where EVMs are stored.
To ensure there is no deliberate attempt to remove any
paperslips from sealing room/strong room, the entire
process should be conducted under high quality CCTV
recording/videography.  In case of any election where
election petition has been filed, the following action
shall be taken:-
If the EVMs or Counting of Votes are the subject of the
election petition, the EVMs and VVPATs used at all
Polling Stations in the constituency concerned shall
continue to be kept in the safe custody of the District
Election Officer, till such time the Election Petition is
finally disposed of by the Courts. 83
If the EVMs or counting of votes are not the subject of
the election petition, an application may be moved to
the concerned Court for allowing the EVMs& VVPATs
concerned to be taken out of the strong room for any
future election or any other purpose like movement,
physical verification etc.
In case VVPATs not involved in any Election
Petition/Court Case are stored with the VVPATs
involved in Election Petition/Court Case, the following
procedure shall be followed for segregating the VVPATs
not involved in any election petition/court case from the
VVPATs involved in EP/Court case:-
A Notice informing the opening of Strong Room having
VVPATs involved in EP/Court Case as well as non-EP
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VVPATs, shall be given to the petitioners/respondents

of the EP/Court Case and the representatives of all
political parties in writing at least 72 hours in advance,
requesting them to remain present at the time of
opening of strong room.
The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the
District Election Officer, Petitioners/respondents of the
EP/Court case and representatives of Political Parties.
The VVPATs not involved in any EP/Court Case shall be
segregated from the VVPATsinvolved in EP/Court Case
for taking out of the strong room. A list of VVPATs
being so taken out from the strong room shall be
prepared.
The VVPATs, which are not involved in any EP/Court
Case, should only be taken out of the Strong room.
The procedure mentioned above shall be followed for
taking-out power packs, paper rolls and the printed
paper slips from all such VVPATs, following which the
VVPATs are available for any subsequent
deployment/use.
The entire process shall be videographed and
videography must be preserved for record.
*****
DO’s AND DON’Ts ON USE OF VVPAT
DO’s DON’Ts
Ensure paper roll knob is
locked (horizontal
position) before
transportation.
In Polling Station, unlock Don’t switch ON CU
the paper roll knob before VVPAT paper roll
(vertical position). knob is in unlocked
condition (vertical
position).
Position BU and VVPAT in
Voting Compartment.
Position CU and VSDU on
PO’s Table
Establish right connection Don’t allow direct light or
by following the color high power illumination
scheme. over VVPAT.
Ensure the connectors are Don’t insert/remove cables
inserted properly. without pressing the clips
on the connectors.
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Switch ‘ON’ CU, the Don’t switch OFF CU

Power-On Green LED on unless all 7 slips are
VVPAT glows and VVPAT printed and cut.
prints all 7 slips.
Check for any “PRINTER Don’t start polling in case
ERROR” message on of “PRINTER ERROR”
VSDU. Inform Sectoral message on VSDU.
Officer (SO) in such case.
Always switch OFF CU Don’t operate the paper
before making any roll knob till the end of the
connection or poll.
disconnection including
change of battery.
NOTE: In M3 VVPAT there is no VSDU. VVPAT related
messages are displayed on the CU’s Display.
13. In the earlier part of the Judgement we have reproduced

the relevant provisions of the Representation Of People Act,
1951 and the provisions of the Conduct Of Election Rules,
1961. The perusal of the Conduct of Election Rules and the
amendments made therein on the advent of the EVMs reveal
that all the procedural safeguards as to counting and
recounting of votes, as were part of the rule, the pre-EVM era
in the time of use of Ballot Boxes, have been verbatim kept in
place for the purposes of count/recount post Ballot Box voting,
in the EVM/VVPAT, voting regime. This is notwithstanding the
tested technological advancement in the manner and the
method of voting and counting of votes, which especially in
the context of voting, counting has become more error-free.
13.1 The discretion of the Returning Officer under Rule 56(D)

(2) is nothing new, added as a result of the VVPATs. Rule 63
dealing with re-counts, even pre-EVMs had a provision which
exists, which is worded the same. Rule 63(3) also provides
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that on an application made to the Returning Officer to re-

count votes, the returning officer shall decide the matter and
may allow the application in whole or in part or may reject it
in toto if it appears to him to be frivolous or unreasonable.
Therefore, it is not a case of introducing an element of
discretion in the subjective satisfaction of the Returning
Officer, merely on the advent of the VVPATs by the Election
Commission. At this juncture, it shall also be relevant to
peruse the guidelines as per the Handbook of Instructions
to the Returning Officers, Chapter – XV which pertains
to Counting of Votes. The same is reproduced hereunder:
“15.30. RECOUNT
15.30.1 Normally, there will be no question of recount

of votes recorded in the voting machines.
Every vote recorded by the voting machines is
a valid vote and no dispute will arise as to its
validity or otherwise. At the most, some
candidates or their agents may not have noted
down the result of voting at any particular
polling station properly when the control unit
displayed that information. If necessity arises
for re-verification, the Result Button can
preseed, whereupon the result of voting at
that polling station will again be displayed in
the Display Panels of that control unit. ]
15.30.2 Despite the necessity for recount being
totally eliminated by the use of voting
machines, the provisions relating to recount
contained in Rule 63 of the Conduct of
Election Rules, 1961, still apply in relation to
your constituency. Accordingly, when the
counting is completed and the Final Result
Sheet in Form 20 has been prepared, you
should announce the total number of votes
polled by each candidate as entered in the
Final Result Sheet. You should then pause for
a minute or two. If during this period any
candidate or, in his absence, his election
Page 54 of 95

agent or any of the counting agents, asks for a

recount, you should ascertain from him
regarding the time required by him for
applying for recount in writing. If you
consider that the time applied for is
reasonable, allow it and announce the exact
hour and minute up to which you will wait for
receiving the written application for recount.
You should not sign the Final Result Sheet in
Form 20 until after the expiry of the time so
announced.
15.30.3 When an application for recount is
made, you should consider the grounds urged
and decide the matter. You may allow the
application in whole or in part if it is
reasonable or you may reject it in toto, if it
appears to you to be frivolous or
unreasonable. Your decision will be final, but
in every case you should record a brief
statement of your reasons for your decision. A
candidate has option to make request for
recount of polled ballot papers and/or polled
EVMs of all or some of the polling stations
15.30.4 If in any case, you allow an application
for recount either wholly or in part, you shall
have the votes recorded in the voting
machines counted over again in accordance
with your decision. The postal ballot papers
will also be counted over again if so decided
by you. After the recount, correct the final
result sheet to the extent necessary.
Announce the amendments so made, if any, by
you. After the total number of votes polled by
each candidate after recount has been
announced by you, complete and sign the
Result Sheet. No candidate has a right to
demand a recount after you have completed
and signed the Final Result Sheet. Reject any
demand for any recount of votes after you
have completed and signed the Final Result
Sheet.
15.30.5 Where printer for paper trail is used,
any candidate or in his absence his election
agent or any of his counting agents may apply
in writing to the RO to count the printed
paper slips in the drop box of the printer in
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respect of any polling station or polling

stations after the entries made in the result
sheet is announced. If such an application is
received, the returning officer shall, subject to
such general or special guidelines as may be
issued by the ECI, decide the matter and may
allow in whole or in part or may reject in
whole, if it appears to him as frivolous or
unreasonable. Every decision of the RO shall
be in writing and shall contain the reasons
thereof. If the RO decides the counting of
paper slips either wholly or in part or parts,
he shall –
a. do the counting in the manner as may be

directed by the Commission,
b. amend the result sheet in form 20 as per
the paper slips count if there is discrepancy
between the votes displayed on the Control
Unit and the counting of Paper Slips,.
C. announce the amendment so made by him
and,
d. complete and sign the result sheet (ECI NO
3/1/2013 VVPAT/SDR dated 15.10.2013.)
15.30.6 As the Returning Officer, your duty is to

count accurately the votes and you have
therefore always the right to order your staff
to recount the votes. But the right of a
candidate to demand a recount under Rule 63
does not mean that recount can be granted
for the mere asking. The party demanding
recount has to make out a prima facie case
that the counting was not accurate and
recount is necessary in the interest of justice.
15.30.7 It would be unreasonable to demand second
recount if the first recount showed only minor
variations from the first count and at the same
time showed a very substantial majority in
favour of one candidate. On the contrary, it
would be reasonable to demand further
recount where the margin between first two
candidates is close and where previous
recount has shown differing results.
15.30.8 But you would be justified in refusing a
further recount when the previous recount
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showed the same result even if the difference

between the contesting candidates may be
very small.
15.30.9 The Commission has decided that where the
result of an election is going to be decided by
difference of postal ballot received by the first
two candidates, then there shall be mandatory
and comprehensive recount of postal ballot
papers, even though no candidate ask for it.
15.30.10 If votes are counted at more places than
one, according to rule 65 of the Conduct of
Elections Rules, 1961, the demand for recount
of votes can be made only at the end of
counting in the last place fixed for the
purpose. Thus, in the case of Parliamentary
Constituency, the recount can be demanded
only at the place where the Returning Officer
counts the postal ballot papers and completes
Part II of the Final Result Sheet in Form 20
and not at the places where the votes have
been counted Assembly segment-wise.
15.30.11 As mentioned above, if votes are counted
at more than one places, the recount can be
demanded at the last place fixed for the
purpose. This would be very inconvenient as
the voting machines and all relevant papers
would have to be taken to the last place of
counting and in that way it will defeat the
entire effort and the whole purpose of
spreading out the counting at different places.
Though generally it is intended that a recount
of votes of a particular polling station should
be done only after the counting for the entire
constituency is over, if any doubt is expressed
by any candidate immediately after the
counting of votes at any polling station is
over, it is desirable that you check up again.
This is strictly not a recount but a check,
which will satisfy all the candidates.
14. On the contrary, as will be evident from the extensive

reproduction of the Status Report on EVMs/VVPATs, the
system of registering the vote of the voter and reflection of his
vote has become more transparent and apparent to regain the
Page 57 of 95

voter’s confidence in the system. What essentially was the

object of introduction of the VVPATs was the restoring of the
voter’s confidence by the logging and registering of his vote
correctly in the EVM. The Voter Verifier Audit Trail as the
name suggests assures the voter of his vote having been
correctly recorded in the system. Once the object of the audit
of the voter’s vote, from his perception is achieved, who is the
end consumer of the franchise, the mere apprehension voiced
by the candidate, pales into insignificance.
15. We have also gone through the press notes released by

the Commission from time to time. The same read as under:
“ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi
PRESS NOTE
No.ECI/PN/39/2017 Dated:
12th May, 2017
Subject: Meeting of all Political Parties on issues

related to EVM/VVPAT and other Electoral reforms
The Election Commission held a meeting with all
recognised National and State Political parties
today at Constitution Club, New Delhi to discuss
the following issues:
(i) EVMs and VVPATs.
(ii) Making Bribery in Elections a
Cognizable Offence.
(iii) Disqualification on Framing of Charges
for the Offence of Bribery in Elections
(iv) Suggestions on VVPAT Recount Rules.
07 National Parties and 35 State Parties attended
the meeting.
In his inaugural address, Chief Election

Commissioner Dr. Nasim Zaidi, underlined the
contribution of all political parties and stated that
systemic improvements and progressive measures
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aimed at improving the electoral processes and

systems have been evolved by the Commission in
cooperation with all political parties.
CEC referred the queries raised by some political
parties about the incidents of alleged EVM
manipulation at Bhind and Dholpur during the
recently concluded Bye-elections, and reiterated
that baseless perceptions were generated about
these incidents and there was no case of biased
vote results.
Commission highlighted the wide range of
technical, administrative protocol and procedural
safeguards that fortify the EVMs and VVPATs
against any sort of manipulation or tampering. He
said that Commission is open to hear suggestions
on how to further improve integrity and credibility
of EVMs.
CEC also informed the political representatives that
the Commission will hold a challenge and offer
opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that
EVMs used in the recently concluded Assemblies
elections were tampered OR that EVMs can be
tampered even under the laid down Technical &
Administrative Safeguards.
CEC stated that the Commission will ensure 100%
coverage of VVPATs in all future election to the
Parliament and State Assembly Elections. That
VVPATs slips of a percentage of EVMs to be
determined by ECI will be counted. ECI will soon
evolve a framework in this regard. To make the
election process more transparent, the Commission
has made proposal for electoral reforms on misuse
of money power and bribery during elections. The
Commission has also made proposal for
amendments in the Income Tax Act and in the RP
Act, 1951, for enhancing transparency in the
funding of political parties.
Dr. Nasim Zaidi urged the political parties to
ensure their continuous and qualitative
participation at all crucial preparatory steps for
elections like FLC, Randomization of
EVM/VVPAT/Polling personnel, EVM
Preparation/candidate setting, Mock Poll, EVM
Sealing etc. CEC also stressed that continuous
involvement is the shared responsibility of all the
stakeholders including the political parties.
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CEC conveyed neutral stand and equidistance of

ECI from all political parties as it has no favourite
which has enhanced India’s reputation in the eyes
of Global Community.
A detailed presentation on EVM was presented by
Shri. Sudeep Jain, Director General of ECI
explaining therein its secured design feature,
development process, stakeholders’ participation at
various levels, and administrative processes
making the EVMs secure.
Representatives of the political parties presented
their views & suggestions on each of the agenda
items.
Commission assured the political parties that their
concerns & apprehensions regarding EVMs have
been taken note of and would be duly considered &
addressed through forthcoming challenge and
further necessary actions. In respect of other
Electoral Reforms, their views/suggestions would
be examined and further action would be initiated
appropriately.
-sd/-
(Dhirendra Ojha)
Director

Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road, New Delhi-
110001
No. ECI/PN/42/2017
Dated:20th May 2017
PRESS NOTE
Sub: EVM Challenge by Election Commission of
India
1. The Election Commission of India is globally
acknowledged as a ‘’Gold Standard’’ in conduct of
free and fair elections with integrity in India. It has
set ever-higher standards of efficient, smooth and
professional conduct of Elections and has been at
the forefront of embracing, adopting and
implementing the latest technological
advancements in improving and fine-tuning the
election processes and systems.
2. The Commission has taken the pioneering
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initiative of introducing Electronic Voting Machine

(EVM) for recording, storing and counting of votes
across the length and breadth of this country in a
transparent, credible and secure manner, duly
backed by appropriate legal support.
3. Over the last twenty years, the Commission has
successfully conducted 107 State Legislative
Assembly elections and 03 Lok Sabha elections
using EVMs. Since September 2013, Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines have
also been used in various State Assembly and
Parliamentary constituencies for enhanced
transparency and credibility in the voting process.
4. The introduction of EVMs in 90’s was a positive
electoral reform by the Commission. Some doubts
have been raised on the functioning of the EVMs
from time to time and from some quarters.
5. After the announcement of the results of the five
State Assembly Elections (UP, Uttarakhand,
Punjab, Goa and Manipur), in March 2017, again
certain doubts have been raised on the functioning
of EVMs. Some complaints and suggestions were
received by Commission after declaration of results
of five State Assembly elections. The Commission
duly examined these complaints and asked for
evidence and credible material information
supporting the claims, but so far no evidence has
been provided by complainants to ECI.
6. A group of thirteen political parties met the
Commission on 10th April, 2017 and expressed
certain reservations about the use of EVMs. Some
political parties also raised queries about incidents
relating to VVPATs used on 31/3/17 during
demonstration (NOT in actual poll) at Bhind (M.P)
and Dholpur (Rajasthan) Bye-elections held in the
first week of April, 2017.
7. To understand the concerns of political parties,
Commission convened an all party meeting on 12th
May. A press statement was also issued by ECI the
same day to the following effects.
(i) The Commission stated before political parties
that all future elections will be mandatorily held
with VVPATs. The Commission firmly believes that
use of VVPAT machines along with the EVMs in all
polling stations, in all future elections, will bring
utmost transparency and credibility in the EVM-
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based voting system. This will enable each voter to

see for himself in VVPAT whether his or her vote
has gone to the right candidate. After press of
button on BU, name and symbol the concerned
candidate will appear on the screen of VVPAT
machine and paper slip bearing name and symbol
will be dropped in a sealed box connected with
VVPAT. These slips will serve as audit trial of the
vote cast by voter on EVM. Audit trail will enhance
confidence and trust of voters. Use of VVPATs with
EVMs must conclusively put to rest all misinformed
doubts and misgivings regarding EVMs. It will also
be a matter of pride that India will become the first
country to deploy 100% VVPATs or paper trail in
the world, an element that was missing in many
countries including Netherland, Germany and
Ireland. Funds for procuring the required VVPATs
for 100% deployment have already been sanctioned
and production is to begin in August, 2017 and will
be completed by September, 2018.
(ii) It was also stated that the Commission has also
taken into account suggestions made by various
political parties regarding counting of VVPAT slips.
The Commission will count VVPAT slips up to a
definite percentage, which will be determined by
the Commission. The ECI will shortly evolve an
appropriate framework in this regard.
(iii) The Commission will hold a challenge and offer
opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that
EVMs used in the recently concluded Assembly
elections were tampered or that EVMs can be
tampered even under the laid down technical and
administrative safeguards of ECI.
(iv) Commission also urged all parties to ensure
their continuous and qualitative participation in all
crucial steps during elections such as First Level
Checking (FLC), randomisation of
EVMs/VVPATs/polling personnel, EVM preparation
and candidate setting, mock poll, EVM sealing and
storage. The Commission also invited more
suggestions from political parties on how to further
increase their participation, so that absolute
transparency is maintained at all times.
(v) Commission, further, urged political parties that
improving integrity of election process is a shared
responsibility of all the stake holders. We solicited
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their suggestions to fill up gaps, if any, during

election and non election period. The Commission
made it clear that ECI want total transparency and
have nothing to hide from people and other
stakeholders. Commission will always receive
suggestions from its stakeholders for improvement
of its processes.
(vi) The Commission also emphasised that
Commission is committed and it maintains
equidistance from all parties and groups. The
Commission further emphasised that ECI has no
favourites. Further, this equidistance by ECI has
enhanced India’s reputation in the eyes of the
global community.
8. The Commission has already issued detailed
Press releases on Credibility of Electronic Voting
Machines on 16th March, 2017, on alleged VVPAT
incident during mock EVM demonstration on 31st
March 2017 (and not in actual poll as alleged) at
Bhind (Madhya Pradesh) on 07th April, 2017 and
also regarding EVMs in Dholpur (Rajasthan) on
11th April, 2017. In Bhind, a wrong notion was
created that for any key pressed on the Ballot Unit,
only one symbol was printed by VVPAT.
Commission’s thorough enquiry clearly established
that during the EVM demo held on 31.03.2017 in
DEOs office the 4 buttons were pressed during the
demo and not the actual poll and every time the
correct corresponding symbol was printed. A
Status Paper on EVMs has also been circulated to
all stakeholders on 12th May, 2017elaborating
various aspects about EVMs and VVPATs for
information and awareness. (All these documents
are available on ECI website).
9. Certain complaints of alleged tampering of EVMs
during the recently held Municipal elections in
Maharashtra and elsewhere also generated wrong
perception about EVMs of ECI. It was noted that
confusion exists in the minds of many about the
jurisdiction of ECI. We would like to clarify once
again on this occasion that ECI is not responsible
for the conduct of local body elections by the State
Govts in the country and consequently about
various protocols and procedures adopted by the
concerned State Election Commissions. Election to
local bodies, both urban and rural, are conducted
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by separate constitutional authorities State

Election Commissions constituted by the State
Govts. Under Article 243 of the Constitution.
Moreover, a particular complaint of some candidate
receiving zero vote in Mumbai Municipal elections
has been found to be totally false by SEC
Maharashtra.
10. The Commission is confident and has firm

conviction about the integrity, non- tamperability
and credibility of the EVMs. The basis of confidence
of the Commission flows from a wide range of
technical and administrative protocols and
procedural safeguards that protects our EVMs and
VVPATs against any sort of tampering during
manufacture, transportation, storage, polling and
counting process. Still, the Commission is open to
receiving from all stakeholders’ suggestions on how
to further improve the integrity and credibility of
our EVMs and VVPATs. The Commission will not
allow even a shade of doubt about EVM operations.
11. The Commission would like to address some
of the important issues that have been raised from
time to time in past two months:
A. ECI- EVMs are not hackable as these, are stand

alone machines and not connected to the internet
and /or any other network at any point of time
during polling. Hence, there is no chance of
hacking. The ECI-EVMs do not have any frequency
receiver or data decoder for wireless and hence
cannot receive any coded signal by wireless.
Hence, no tampering can be carried out through
external hardware Wireless, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
device. Moreover, machines are always in the
custody of ECI and its election authorities.
B. Manipulation at manufacturing stage is ruled out

as there is very stringent security protocol
regarding the security of software. Further, the
Machines have been manufactured in different
years starting from 1989. After manufacturing,
EVMs are sent by ECI to State and district within a
State. The manufacturers are in no position to
know several years ahead which candidate will be
contesting from a particular constituency and what
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will be the sequence of the candidates on the BU

and, therefore, cannot manipulate EVMs in a
predetermined manner at manufacturing stage.
C. Results cannot be altered by activating a Trojan
Horse through a sequence of key presses because
1. Trojan Horse cannot be inserted into the
software code of ECI EVM burnt into the
Microcontroller Chip since the chip is one time
Programmable only.
2. The stringent security measures by ECI make it
impossible to access the EVMs which is an
essential prerequisite for attempting to change the
Micro-controller for inserting a Trojan Horse.
3. Control Unit activates Ballot Unit for only one
key press at a time. Any additional key pressed on
the Ballot Unit is not sensed by the Control Unit
making it impossible to send signals by pressing a
sequence of keys or secret codes. Once a ballot key
is pressed in CU, the CU enables BU for registering
the vote and waits for the key pressing in the BU.
During this period, all keys in the CU become
inactive till the entire sequence of casting of that
vote is complete. Once any of the keys (candidates
vote button) is pressed by a voter in BU, the BU
transmits the key information to CU in dynamically
encrypted form. The CU gets the data and
acknowledges it by glowing the corresponding red
LED lamps in BU. After the enabling of ballot in
CU, only the ‘first key press’ is sensed and
accepted by CU.
After this, even if a voter keeps on pressing the
other buttons, that is of no use as there will not be
any communication between CU and BU of those
subsequent key presses, nor will BU register any
key press. To put it in other words, there can be
only one valid key press (the first key press)for
every ballot enabled using CU. Once a valid key
press (voting process) is complete, until another
ballot enabling key press is made there will not be
any activity between the CU and the BU. Hence,
sending of any malicious signal, by way of so called
‘sequenced key presses’, is impossible in the
Electronic Voting Machines being used in the
country.
D. ECI-EVMs cannot be Physically Tampered with
nor their components be changed without anyone
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noticing. It is clarified that replacement of micro

controller/chip and the motherboard in earlier
generations of machines like M1 and M2 is ruled
out due to robust administrative and technical
safeguards. Further, the new M3 EVM produced
after 2013 have additional features like Tamper
Detection and Self Diagnostics. The tamper
detection feature makes an EVM inoperative the
moment anyone tries to open the machine. The Self
diagnostic feature checks the EVM fully every time
it is switched on. Any change in its hardware or
software will be detected. Rs. 1900 Crore have
already been sanctioned to the manufacturers for
production of 13.95 Lakh BU and 9.30 Lakh CU of
M3 generation.Also, 16.15 Lakh VVPATs are also
under production and Rs. 3173 Crore have been
sanctioned for the same.
E. The latest technological features make ECI-

EVMs tamper proof. The ECI- EVMs use some of
the most sophisticated technological features like
one time programmable (OTP) microcontrollers,
dynamic coding of key codes, date and time
stamping of each and every key press, advanced
encryption technology and EVM-tracking software
to handle EVM logistics, among others to make the
machine 100% tamper proof.
In addition to these, new model M3 EVMs also have
tamper detection and self- diagnostics as added
features.OTP software implies that the programme
in the EVM cannot be altered, re-written or re-read
by anyone under safe custody of ECI. This makes
EVM tamper proof. If anyone makes an
unauthorized attempt, the machine will become in-
operative.
F. Contrary to misinformation spread and alleged
by some, ECI does not use any EVMs produced
abroad. EVMs are produced indigenously by two
PSU manufacturers viz. Bharat Electronics Ltd.,
Bengaluru and Electronics Corporation of India
Ltd., Hyderabad. The Software Program Code is
written in-house by these two companies and not
outsourced and approved by TEC of ECI and
subjected to strict security procedures at factory
level to maintain the highest levels of integrity.
The software programme is converted into machine
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code by manufacturers and only then given to the

chip manufacturer abroad. (We don’t have the
adequate capability of producing semi-conductor
microchips within the country). Every microchip
has an identification number embedded into
memory and the producers have their digital
signatures on them. So, the question of their
replacement does not arise at all because
microchips brought back to manufacturers are
subjected to functional tests with regard to the
software. Any attempt to replace microchip is
detectable and can make EVM in-operative. Thus,
both changing existing program and introducing
new one are detectable making EVM in-operative
because EVMs are tamper detect. Also the
technological advancement now permits fusing of
the software on the chip at BEL and ECIL itself and
hence, in M3 the software is fused on the chip
inside BEL and ECIL.
G. There are no possibilities of manipulation in
EVM during transportation or at the place of
storage. At the district headquarters, EVMs are
kept in a double-lock system under appropriate
security. Their safety is periodically checked. The
election authorities do not open the strong room,
and they only regularly check whether it’s fully
protected and whether the lock is in proper
condition or not. No Unauthorized person can get
access to the EVMs at any point of time. During the
non election period, annual physical verification of
all EVMs is done by DEOs and report sent to ECI.
Further, strong rooms are always opened in the
presence of representative of political parties.
H. There are different levels of checks and balances
ensuring tamper proofing of ECI-EVMs which are
as follows:
- First Level Checking: Authorized BEL/ECIL
engineers certify originality of components after
technical and physical examination of each EVM,
which is undertaken in the presence of
representatives of political parties. Defective EVMs
are sent back to the factory. The FLC Hall is
sanitized, entry is restricted and no camera, mobile
phone or spy pen is allowed inside. The Mock Poll
is conducted on EACH EVM by election officials in
the presence of representatives of political parties.
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The Mock poll of at least 1000 votes is conducted

on 5% EVMs selected randomly by representatives
of political parties and the result shown to them.
The entire process is video graphed.
- Candidate Setting: Yet another significant
safeguard is the process of candidate setting, which
is done after the finalization of contesting
candidates. A ballot paper is inserted in the Ballot
Unit, which is then sealed with Pink Paper Seal. BU
is sealed at this stage. Where VVPATs are used,
candidates’ symbols are loaded in each VVPAT at
this stage. Once again, every EVM is subjected to
mock poll and 5% EVMs are randomly picked up for
1000 mock poll.
- Randomization: EVMs are randomized twice while
being allocated to an Assembly and then to a
polling booth ruling out any fixed allocation. As you
can appreciate, tillfirst randomization no-one
knows the sequence of names on the ballot paper
till the finalization of list of contesting candidates,
the names of contesting candidates are placed
alphabetically on the ballot paper first for National
and State Parties, followed by other Registered
Parties, followed by independents and NOTA. Thus
the Serial no. of any political party, candidate on
the BU would be variable from constituency to
constituency. It is therefore clear that serial no. of
any political party candidate is not fixed or pre-
determined in all the constituencies of the state.
Hence, till candidate setting, none, not even RO or
DEO or CEO or the Commission could know which
button on which BU will be assigned to which
candidate.
- Mock Poll of at least 50 votes at the polling station
is also conducted in front of polling agents of
candidates on the poll day, before poll begins.
- After Poll, EVMs are sealed and polling agents put
their signature on the seal. Polling agents can
travel up to strong room during transportation of
polled EVMs from the polling station to the EVM
Strong room.
- Strong Rooms: Candidates or their
representatives can put their own seals on the
rooms, where polled EVMs are stored after the poll
and also camp in front of the strong room. These
strong rooms are guarded 24x7 in multilayers, with
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CCTV facilities.
- Counting Centres: The polled EVMs are brought
to the Counting Centres under security and in
presence of candidates and Unique IDs of the seals,
signature of polling agents on CU are shown to
representatives of candidates before the start of
counting.
12.Looking at the above series of fool-proof checks
and balances that are undertaken by the ECI to
make EVMs tamper proof, it is evident that neither
the machines can be tampered-withnor they can
leave the ECI-EVM system. Further, neither
defective machines nor Non-ECI-EVM can get
reinducted/ inducted into the polling process at any
point of time. Non ECIEVMs will get detected by
the above process due to mismatch of BU & CU.
13. Some people argue that why have Developed
Nations like the US and the European Union not
adopted EVMs and some have even discontinued?
ECI EVMs are far superior to any EVMs worldwide.
EVM, used in the Netherlands, Ireland and
Germany were privately manufactured and had no
independent certification system unlike a very
robust verification and certification system through
independent TEC or an ECI approved third party in
case of ECI EVMs. Also, voting data in these
NEDAP EVMs in the Netherlands was transferred
using CDs, unlike our EVMs where it is stored
internally and never transferred. Also these
countries lacked full end to end administrative and
security safeguards as well as legal framework.
Finally their EVMs also lacked auditability.
A point is raised from time to time that several
foreign countries have discontinued the use of
voting machines and why India is using EVMs. With
the rapid advances in technology over the years,
Election Management Bodies, professionals,
experts, and activists (particularly Green Activists)
have mooted the idea of using paperless electronic
voting methods in different parts of the world in
order to overcome the disadvantages of manual
marking of paper ballots. The marriage between
technology and election management goes back to
at least 1892, when the first ‘lever voting machine’
was used in New York, after using the paper ballot
for a long time. In the 1960s, punch-card machines
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were introduced in the USA, and the first EVM was

introduced there in 1975. Electronic Voting has
moved quite ahead since then.
Types of Electronic Voting:

The process of electronic voting can be of three
types:
(i) Direct Recording Machines placed at designated
polling station,
(ii) Internet Voting
• Remote Online Voting
• At Designated Polling Stations
(iii) Optical Scanners
• Stand-alone
• Networked for centralized counting of
results
EVMs used in India fall under the first type of
stand-alone direct recording machines with no
possibility of any kind of network connectivity
where voters cast their votes at an assigned polling
station on the day of election under strict
administrative security ensured by the ECI.
Even though ECI EVMs are also direct recording
machines ECI EVMs are completely different from
any of the EVMs used internationally either for
direct recording or for internet voting or for optical
scanning. This is clearly highlighted in the
comparative analysis of ECI EVMs with the DRMs
used in countries like Germany, Netherland,
Ireland, and USA as follows:
The Netherlands
Electronic Voting was used in The Netherlands in
between 1990-2007. The voting machines were
manufactured by a private Dutch-company called
NEDAP (Nederlandse Apparaten Fabriek NV). In
2006, the government ordered an independent
testing of the voting machines. Two independent
commissions, The Voting Machines Decision-
making Commission and the Election Process
Advisory Commission (EPAC) were also established
on December 19, 2006 and January 18, 2007,
respectively, to review the security and reliability
features of NEDAP machines. Following the
observations of the two Commissions, the use of
NEDAP machines and electronic voting was
discontinued in 2007 on the following grounds:
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• The Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations

(MOIKR) of The Netherlands lacked adequate
technical knowledge vis-à-vis the NEDAP machines,
leading officials to depend on external actors for
the conduct of elections.
• Technology vendors became part of the decision
making process and the ministry was not in a
position to exercise effective oversight.
• The Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific
Research (Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk
Onderzoek, TNO) certified and tested these
machines following “outdated standards” which
were not immune to modern IT and security
threats.
• Moreover,the certification and testing reports
were not made public depriving independent
experts to verify the analysis.
• The legal framework, particularly the necessary
security requirements, was inadequate to deal with
the specificities of the electronic voting process.
(For a comprehensive report on electronic voting in
The Netherlands, see link:
https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/5_Netherland
s.pdf)
Germany:
In Germany, the e-voting machines manufactured
by NEDAP were used in between 2005 – 2009
before it came under criticism and finally
discontinued. The Bundesverfassungsgericht (the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany) ordered
the discontinuation of the use of NEDAP machines
in 2009 because of the below-mentioned reasons:
• The use of Nedap electronic voting machines
violated the principle of the public nature of
elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article
20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law) that requires that
all essential steps in the elections are subject to
public examinability unless other constitutional
interests justify an exception.
• It also observed that “it must be possible for the
citizen to check the essential steps in the election
act and in the ascertainment of the results reliably
and without special expert knowledge”.
(See the judgment in the following link:
http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.
de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/EN/2009/03/cs200
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90303_2bvc000307en.html;jsessionid=FEA71E86E
2CEE030FF7AAAC905 72279C.2_cid383)
Ireland:
NEDAP machines were used in Ireland in between
2002 – 2004. The use of these machines was
questioned following which two independent
commissions were set up. The two Commissions on
the Secrecy, Accuracy and Testing of the Chosen
Electronic Voting System, concluded the NEDAP
machines could not be used in elections in Ireland
on the following grounds:
• Inadequate technological safeguards
• Insecure transfer of data by the use of CDs
• Absence of a comprehensive independent end-to-
end testing, verification and certification by a
single accredited body
• Inconsistencies in physical security of machines
across constituencies
• Absence of a clear policy guideline via-a-vis
storage, transport, set-up, use and disposal of
voting equipment; and
• Absence of comprehensive electronic register to
record the identity, location and movement of the
electronic voting devices.
(Seelinks:http://www.umic.pt/images/stories/public
acoes1/00Index.pdf;http://www.umic.pt/images/stor
ies/publicacoes1/Part200%20Index.pdf)
United States of America:
In 2000, after the dispute on the voting method in
the USA presidential elections, the voting method
was reviewed (Esteve, Goldsmith, & Turner, 2012:
185). Accordingly, Direct Recording Electronic
(DRE) Systems (like the widely used AccuVote TS
developed by Premier Election Solutions, commonly
called Diebold) were introduced. DRE Systems uses
“one of three basic interfaces (pushbutton,
touchscreen or dial)” through which “voters record
their votes directly into computer memory. The
voter’s choices are stored in DREs via a memory
cartridge, diskette or smart card...Some DREs can
be equipped with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail
(VVPAT) printers...” Currently, in the USA, the
Direct Recording Machines are used in 27 states,
among which paper audit trails are used in 15
states. The other voting methods include: Optical
Scan Paper Ballot Systems, Ballot Marking Devices,
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and the Punch Card Ballot.

(See link:
https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-
equipment/)
Other countries:
In Brazil, the machines used in elections are called
‘electronic ballot boxes’ which are stand-alone
direct electronic recording systems. In Venezuela,
SATIS (Smartmatic Auditable Election Systems)
voting machines are used which were fully
implemented across the nation in 2004. (Esteve,
Goldsmith, & Turner, 2012: 185)
India:
Indian EVMs are truly unique compared to the e-
voting machines used in other parts
of the world for the following reasons:
• ECI-EVMs are stand-alone non-networked
machines
• The ECI-EVMs are manufactured in two PSUs
namely ECIL and BEL, unlike machines used in
other countries, which were manufactured entirely
by private entities. Hence there is no chance of
involvement of vested interest of private players or
technology vendors in decision making or
production of the ECI-EVMs.
• ECI-EVMs have been time and again successfully
verified and certified by an independent Technical
Experts Committee after an end-to-end testing
process. STQC under Ministry of Information and
Technology, an accredited third party entity,
conducts standardization and certification of ECI
EVMs produced by manufacturers, unlike the
machines used in Netherlands,
• In ECI EVMs data is stored internally and not
transferrable by any device, unlike other countries
where voting data recorded in the DRM is
transferred by means of CD, etc.
• Commission has evolved full end to end security
protocol and administrative safeguards for the use,
storage, transportation and tracking of ECI EVMs,
unlike in other countries where NEDAP machines
were used.
• Unlike MOIKR of Netherlands, the Commission is
fully backed by a Technical Expert Committee
comprising of eminent professors.
• Every EVM has a unique number attached to it,
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which is recorded in the Election Commission’s

database through EVM Tracking Software. This
number of the EVM can always be cross-checked
against the database.
• The software used in these EVMs is One Time
Programmable (OTP), which can’t be re-written
after manufacture.
• The ECI-EVMs are always under strict, uniform,
high profile administrative and physical security as
per legal framework across the country.
• Section 61 A of the Representation of the Peoples
Act 1951 allows the use of EVMs by ECI. The
different High Courts across the country have also
upheld the use of EVMs time and again in various
judgments and the Karnataka High Court in 2004
declared ECI-EVMs as “national pride” because of
its transparency and robustness.
• Following the direction of the Hon’ble Supreme
Court, the ECI has introduced the technology of
VVPAT in order to ensure public verifiability. The
Commission is committed to implement VVPATs
nation-wide by 2019. Thus there will be 100% voter
verifiability and auditability of every vote cast as
opposed to lack of such facility in the NEDAP
machines, which was struck down by the German
Supreme Court as un-Constitutional, whereas
Indian Supreme Court has upheld the validity of
use of EVM for conducting elections in the country.
• Thus any comparison of ECI-EVMs with machines
used elsewhere is misplaced. The Commission has
always worked in an open and transparent manner
and always welcome questions, doubts and
constructive and decent criticism of our processes
so that we can further strengthen electoral
processes. During political party meeting on 12
May 2017, Commission had promised to organise
an open challenge to give
an opportunity to political parties to demonstrate
that EVMs used in five States were tampered or
EVMs even under technical and administrative
safeguards can be tampered. Accordingly, ECI now
proposed to open a challenge on 3rd June 2017
onwards to all political parties.
Frame-work of the challenge:
Election Commission of India invites the nominees
of National and State Recognized political parties
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who contested and claimed that the EVM machines

held under the ownership of Election Commission
of India and used in the recently held General
Assembly Elections of five states namely Punjab,
Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh in
Feb-Mar 2017 were tampered or that these could
be tampered even under technical and
administrative safeguards of ECI, to demonstrate
their claims at the ECI Headquarters within the
framework of the extant administrative and
security protocols prescribed by the Commission.
Salient features of the EVM Challenge of the
Commission are as follows:
Challenge Statement I:
That the EVMs used in the General Elections to five
States-2017 were tampered to favour a particular
candidate/political party by altering the results
stored in the EVMs after the polls. The claimants
will hence have to alter the results in the Control
Units used during these polls in exactly the same
scenario as the EVMs remain within the technical
and administrative safeguards of ECI after the poll,
i.e. during the storage in strong rooms or during
counting, through
a. using press of combination of keys on CU or BU
or BOTH, or
b. By communication to CU or BU or Both via
external wireless/Bluetooth/mobile phone etc.
Challenge Statement II
That the EVMs used in the General Elections to the
five States-2017 were tampered before or during
the poll day. The claimants will hence have to alter
the results in the EVMs used during these polls in
exactly the same scenario as the EVMs remain
within the technical and administrative safeguards
of ECI before the poll, i.e. during the storage in
strong rooms or during the poll, through
c. using press of combination of keys of CU or BU
or Both, or
d. by communication to CU or BU or Both via
external wireless/Bluetooth/mobile phone etc.
Common Procedure for Challenge I and Challenge
II
1. The EVM Challenge is open for participation
from the National and State Recognized Political
Parties only which participated in the five States’
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Assemblies Elections viz. Goa, Punjab, Manipur,

Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
2. Each National and State Recognized Party
intending to participate may nominate a maximum
of 3 persons only to participate in the EVM
Challenge. Each Party shall intimate the names of
maximum 3 authorized persons, if any, who wish to
accompany the chosen EVMs from the Warehouses
to the Commission at New Delhi during
transportation at their own cost.
3. The Political Parties willing to participate in the
EVM Challenge must mandatorily confirm their
interest to ECI by 5.00 pm on 26th May, 2017
through the email (evmchallenge@eci.gov.in),
wherein the details of the Nominated members
must be furnished as per the prescribed Performa.
Only those Political Parties, which respond by 5.00
pm on 26th May, 2017 to the ECI, shall be allowed
to participate in the EVM Challenge. The response
of the political parties shall mandatorily be made
on the official letter-head of the party duly signed
by the President or General Secretary of the
political party concerned, which shall be scanned
and emailed to the email id mentioned above.
4. Further, if the Nominees of any Political Party, to
whom a Challenge date-time Slot has been allotted,
fail to report at the designated time and venue
without prior intimation or approval, shall forfeit
their right to participation in the EVM Challenge.
5. Each Political Party will be allowed to choose a
maximum of 4 EVMs of their choice from any 4
polling stations out of the Five poll-gone States.
Examples; Maximum of 4 EVMs only form 4 polling
stations can be chosen, either from one AC or from
multiple ACs in a State or from any of the five
States. It is clarified that any EVMs involved in EP
(Election Petition) or those under any sealing by
the orders of a competent Court, shall not be part
of this EVM Challenge. If a Political Party does not
wish to specify a particular EVM but wants ECI to
provide any EVM of Commission’s choice, then the
same should be intimated by 26th May, 2017.
6. The choice of the EVMs shall be emailed

(evmchallenge@eci.gov.in) in the prescribed
proforma by 5.00 pm on 26th May, 2017.
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7. The chosen EVM machines, including Control

Units (CU), Ballot Units (BU) (one or more as
deployed) and VVPAT (wherever deployed) shall be
brought to the ECI at New Delhi, on as-is-where
basis, in compliance of the extent of established
protocol of ECI regarding opening of EVM strong-
rooms/warehouse and EVM transportation.
8. The representatives of the Political Parties at
State Level are at liberty to witness the opening of
EVM Strong-rooms at the District/AC level where
the EVMs are presently stored, inspect the
machines for the various seals (as in protocol) and
accompany the machines during their
transportation to ECI in sealed trunks, if they so
desire.
9. As these EVMs were used in the recently held
elections and were stored post counting, the EVMs
would still have the candidate setting and the result
of the said election.
10. The results of the machines as recorded during
the counting in the previous elections shall be
available in paper form also, having details like
total votes polled and votes casted for each
candidates etc.
11. A Challenge Slot of 4 Hours shall be allotted to
each participating Political Party, wherein their
registered nominees shall be given access to one of
their chosen EVMs (CU+BU + VVPAT if deployed)
for the purpose of PROVING the Challenge
Statement 1 and 2. In case the first chosen EVM is
in-operative as a result of transportation, then the
second of the chosen EVM shall be allowed to be
used for the challenge and so on. However, if a
Political Party desires to avail of more time, the
request shall be made in writing to the
Commission, which shall decide the issue on merits
and demands of reasonability.
12. The nominees may before proceeding for
challenge if they want, check the result of previous
election already stored in CU and verify that these
are same as given by ECI in item 10 above as per
ECI protocol of declaring results from CU. This step
is optional and will be recorded if they opt for it in
writing. The result of re-count also will be
recorded.
13. The Nominees of the participating Political
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Parties shall be allowed the following methods on

the Challenge EVMs to prove the challenge:
a. Pressing any sequence of buttons on the CU or
BU or Both.
b. The use of any external
wireless/Bluetooth/Mobile Phone
device/Transmitter.
14. All Key Presses made by the Challenger shall be
declared prior to the actual execution of key
presses and these will manually be recorded by the
ECI Counter Staff for keeping a “written record of
exact process of conduct” of the “challenge
proving” poll. In case the challenger wishes to use
mobile or blue tooth during poll, he should inform
the Election officials and this should also be
recorded. This is especially relevant, in case the
Challenger wishes to conduct any mock poll or full
poll by either use of key presses or mobile phone /
blue-tooth during his tamper attempt to prove the
Challenge Statements.
15. All Key Presses shall be made in clear and
unhindered view of the ECI Counter Staff and the
recording Cameras and made with a Specially
Designed Presser, so as to avoid any confusion or
ambiguity in the key presses made by the
Challenger using his fingers.
16. EVMs can be opened and only visually
inspected during Challenge-II as this is allowed
during First Level Check (FLC). However, EVMs
cannot be opened during Challenge- I as EVMs are
always kept sealed after the Poll till counting in
actual poll scenario.
17. During the Challenge period, with regard to any
written representation or any dispute or
interpretation issues, the decision of the ECI
Officer In-charge shall be final.
18. The EVM challenge shall be organised from
03.06.2017 onwards at Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka
Road, New Delhi.
Challenge Conclusion:
1. The Challenger under Challenge I shall be
deemed to have ‘’FAILED’’ if:
a. The EVM becomes non-functional after the
tamper attempt made by the Challenger. (Reason:
ECI EVMs are designed to go into error mode if any
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unwarranted technical operations are conducted

rather than recording any wrong results).
b. The EVM is functional and results displayed on
the CU after conduct of challenge attempt are the
same as ECI declared results stored on the chosen
CU (prior to the pressing of CLEAR Button).
c. If the Challenger violates any of the guidelines
prescribed for the EVM Challenge.
d. The challenger withdraws from current
challenge.
2. The Challenger under Challenge II shall be
deemed to have ‘’FAILED’’ if:
a. The EVM becomes non-functional after the
tamper attempt made by the Challenger. (Reason:
ECI EVMs are designed to go into error mode if any
unwarranted technical operations are conducted
rather than recording any wrong results).
b. The EVM remains functional and after erasing
the earlier stored result, a mock poll or full poll is
conducted by the Challenger along with his
challenge attempt and manually recorded votes(by
ECI staff) are the same as that stored on the chosen
CU after the said mock/full poll.
c. If the Challenger violates any of the guidelines
prescribed for the EVM Challenge.
d. The challenger withdraws from current
challenge.
10. Certain naysayers have demanded that ECI
should either permit them to take the EVMs with
them for tampering or allow changing of internal
circuit etc. of the EVM. This is like saying that they
should be permitted to manufacture a new machine
and introduce their new EVMs in our system.
Further, it is common knowledge that changing the
‘ internal circuit’ of any electronic device is like
changing the whole device itself, after which it is
no longer the same device. As any person with
common sense will be able to appreciate, a non-ECI
EVM or an EVM with a different ‘internal circuit’ is
simply a different machine or look alike of ECI EVM
hence can never be guaranteed by ECI to give
correct results. Such a scenario is completely ruled
out within our administrative safeguards and that’s
why it is not proposed in the Challenge.
11. The Commission is thankful to all the citizens,
voters, political parties and all stakeholders for
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their unwavering faith in the Commission for more

than 67 years. The Commission would further like
to thank all political parties for showing their
continuous trust and confidence in the Election
Commission of India as expressed during
interventions of political parties on 12th May in the
All Party Meeting. The Commission would like to
reassure the people of the country that the
Commission would leave no stone unturned in
preserving the purity, integrity and credibility of
the Elections and reinforcing the faith and trust of
the people in the electoral democracy of our
country. I wish to reassure that citizens of the
country that the Commission will never ever allow
the faith of the people in the integrity of the
election process to be shaken. The Commission
desire all citizens and stakeholders to remain
aware ,vigilant and alert about our electoral
processes so that conduct of free and fair election
by Commission is further strengthened.
(Dhirendra Ojha)
Director
ANNEXURE-6
NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW
DELHI-110001
No. ECI/PN/47/2017 Dated:

3rd June, 2017
Press Note
Subject- EVM Challenge concludes.
At the outset ECI thanks all the stakeholders for

reaffirming their faith and confidence in the EVMs
whether by participation or otherwise in the whole
exercise of EVM Challenge. The Election
Commission of India had, in an extraordinary
measure, invited all national and state recognized
political parties to come and participate in the EVM
challenge announced by it on 20th May, 2017 as
per the framework of the
challenge. Only two political parties namely, NCP
and CPI(M) submitted their interest in participating
the EVM challenge till 5.00 PM on 26th May, 2017.
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Since none of the two political parties specified

their choices for EVMs to be chosen from five poll
gone states, the Commission brought 14 EVMs
randomly in sealed condition kept in strong rooms
from 12 Assembly Constituencies of Punjab,
Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh for the EVM
challenge scheduled for 3rd June, 2017.
Earlier, Commission had a meeting with all
National and State Political Parties on 12 May 2017
in which 42 parties participated. While majority
expressed full confidence on the integrity of EVMs,
a few continued to raise doubts on functioning of
the ECI-EVM.
Commission held a press conference on 20 May
2017 and explained in great detail why it has
absolute confidence on non-tamperability of ECI-
EVMs working within the technical and
administrative safeguards. Commission then
announced an EVM Challenge and spelt out a
complete framework and send to all political
parties on 20th May, 2017 alongwith invitation.
Today both the parties (NCP and CPI-M) reported

to the Challenge Venue on the 7th floor. However
CPI(M)told they do not wish to participate in the
challenge but only want to understand the EVM
process. A detailed demonstration of the entire
process was given to them by our technical team.
They also expressed desire to interact with the TEC
and had a detailed doubt clearing session in which
in depth technical doubts were clarified by TEC of
the Commission. CPI(M) team then expressed
complete satisfaction and suggested that to allay
any such doubts Commission should hold such
demonstrations and awareness sessions with
technical community proactively. Commission
welcomes their very constructive suggestion.
NCP team led by Mrs Vandana Chavan, MP,
informed that they too do not want to participate in
any challenge but were only interested to
participate in an academic exercise. She referred to
her earlier request to provided them the memory
number and battery number of the EVM four days
in advance. The Director General Mr Sudeep Jain
informed her that Commission had already replied
to their request mentioning that the EVMs have to
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be kept under sealed conditions it is not possible

for the Commission to open the EVMs to take out
the memory and battery numbers in the absence of
party representatives in the Commission.
Commission had accordingly informed that the
party can access these numbers at the time of the
Challenge by opening themselves the sealed EVMs
which is provided as per Challenge Framework. DG
again informed her that they can choose an EVM
and open the same to access these memory
numbers. However NCP representative submitted a
letter saying they cannot participate in the
challenge because of non-provision of this
information. In the letter NCP representative also
raised an objection of last minute change in the
EVM selection protocol by asking them to select an
EVM out of the list of 14 EVMs.
Commission then offered her to have all her
technical doubts clarified by interacting with TEC.
NCP team then had a detailed discussion with TEC
which clarified all their issues, including the 8
issues listed by them in their letter submitted today
to which the response would be sent separately.
NCP team again met the Commission where the
Commission reiterated their offer that they can still
participate in the Challenge or by way of academic
exercise by selecting the EVM and then accessing
the memory and battery numbers by opening the
machines themselves. Commission also offered
them that they can come back, as they had
demanded, to prove their point.
However NCP representative mentioned that the
source of all their doubt had been alleged problems
with EVMs during Municipal Elections in
Maharashtra. Commission clarified that EVMs used
by SEC, Maharashtra for urban local bodies
elections do not belong to ECI. The NCP team then
expressed their willingness to opt out requesting
that Commission should evolve a system which
clearly distinguishes ECI-EVMs form SEC EVMs.
Commission has taken note of NCPs suggestion.
The Commission has already stated publicly and
before political parties that all future elections will
be mandatorily held with VVPATs. The Commission
firmly believes that use of VVPAT machines along
with the EVMs in all polling stations, in all future
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elections, will bring utmost transparency and

credibility in the EVM-based voting system. Audit
trail will enhance confidence and trust of voters.
Use of VVPATs with EVMs must conclusively put to
rest all misinformed doubts and misgivings
regarding EVMs.
Honourable Uttarakhand High Court in its
judgement yesterday said “Prima facie, it is evident
from a combined reading of the entire press release
of ECI that this system is seal proof. The EVMs are
not hackable. There cannot be any manipulation at
manufacturing stage. The results cannot be altered
by activating a Trojan Horse through a sequence of
key presses. The ECI-EVMs cannot be physically
tampered with. The EVMs use some of the
microcontrollers, dynamic coding of key codes,
date and time stamping of each and every key press
etc. These EVMs also cannot be tampered with
during the course of transportation or at the place
of storage. There are checks and balances to
ensure tamper-proofing of EVMs”.
It is clarified that for visual Inspection EVMs can
be opened and visually inspected during Challenge-
II as this is allowed during First Level Check (FLC).
The Commission is thankful to all the citizens,
voters, political parties and all stakeholders for
their unwavering faith in the Commission for more
than 67 years. The Commission would further like
to thank all political parties for showing their
continuous trust and confidence in the Election
Commission of India as expressed during
interventions of political parties on 12th May in the
All Party Meeting. The Commission would like to
reassure the people of the country that the
Commission would leave no stone unturned in
preserving the purity, integrity and credibility of
the Elections and reinforcing the faith and trust of
the people in the electoral democracy of our
country. I wish to reassure that citizens of the
country that the Commission will never ever allow
the faith of the people in the integrity of the
election process to be shaken. The Commission
desire all citizens and stakeholders to remain
aware, vigilant and alert about our electoral
processes so that Commission can further
strengthen the conduct of free and fair elections in
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the country.
-------Sd--
(Suman Kumar Das)
Under Secretary”
16. From the reproduction of the contents hereinabove, the

salient features of the EVM/VVPATs mode used in the election
process of the country when appreciated, can be enumerated
as under:
A) The Election Commission Of India, an autonomous

constitutional authority has the constitutional mandate of
superintendence, direction and control of elections to the
Parliament and the State Legislature. Article 324 of the
Constitution Of India vests the Commission with such power
to conduct elections. The introductory Chapter to the Status
Report is self-explanatory of the role of the Commission and
its responsibilities, which we no further re-iterate and
elaborate. Judicial notice can be taken of the fact that the
Indian Democracy has seen multiple elections in the vast
geographical expanse, without a murmur of the elections not
being conducted in a free and fair manner at the hands of the
Commission. This is notwithstanding the voices of the
disgruntled candidate who has voiced unfounded allegations
on the tamperability of the EVMs, which have to be nipped in
light of the Election Commission’s conviction in its letter of
10.01.2019 coupled with the action so taken as demonstrated
in the Status Report regarding the unjustified apprehensions.
B) The voting system in India has gone through multiple

changes. The use of ballot paper was time consuming, prone
to malpractices booth-capturing and ballot box stuffing. There
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was a recognizable possibility of casting of votes and large

number of invalid votes due to wrong/incorrect marking,
subject to prolonged counting drills, more disputes and
delayed result announcements.
C) The introduction of EVMs has made voting, from the

perception of the voter, much more simpler and voter-friendly.
The voter has to merely press a button on the Balloting Unit.
Under the EVM system, there is no invalid vote unlike the
ballot system where there were large number of invalid votes
to an extent that in some cases the number of invalid ballot
papers were more than the winning margin of the elected
candidate. The EVMs are more auditable, accurate,
transparent reducing human error. The Commission
conducted several field trials and involved all stake holders
and political parties in evolving a error free EVM.
D) The addition of the Voter Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPAT)

which was introduced in 2013 brought in additional
transparency.
E) The status report has in detail, highlighted in a separate

chapter - LEGAL INTERVENTION AND COURT CASES
eliciting decisions of various Courts where the election mode
and manner has successfully stood up when the credibility of
the technology was at stake.
F) The Voter Verifiable Paper Trail is an additional unit

attached to the EVMs. It prints a small slip of paper that
carries the symbol, name and serial number of the candidate
voted by the Voter, which is visible for some seconds in the
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viewing machine in the viewing window. The voter after

pressing the button on the Balloting Unit can view the printed
slip on the VVPAT through the window. The paper slips are
then automatically cut and stored in the sealed compartment
of VVPAT to be used later to cross check the votes in the
Control Unit. This is an additional verification to the voter.
Therefore, the mechanism has been introduced to be more
voter-centric and not with a view to address the
apprehensions of a losing candidate or for that matter a
contesting candidate.
G) The report has highlighted the safety and security

features of the EVMs which indicate that the technological
safeguards that contribute to the non-tamperability of the
EVMs are :
* They are stand-alone non-networked machine which are

neither computer controlled nor connected to any
network and hence cannot be hacked. In fact, as the
Press Notes reproduced earlier the exercise to see
whether it was “hackable” were undertaken and it has
stood the test.
* The machine is electronically protected. The software is
developed in-house and tested.
* The software is so designed that it allows the voter to
cast the vote only once. The vote can be recorded by a
voter from the ballot unit only after the Presiding Officer
enables the ballot on the Controlling Unit. The machine
does not receive any signal from outside at any time. The
next vote can be recorded only after the Presiding
Officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit. In
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between, the machine becomes dead to any signal from

outside( except from the Control Unit).
H) The administrative procedures as highlighted by the

Report for handling EVMs are also stringent. They are :
Before every election, a first level checking is done for

every EVM to be used in the election by the engineers in
the presence of political parties.
The manufacturers certify at the time of first level
checking that all components in the EVM are original.
After this, the plastic cabinet of Control Unit of the EVM
is sealed using a Pink Slip which is signed by the
representatives of the political parties and stored in
strong rooms.
A mock poll is conducted with a few votes at the time of
first level checking using EVMs and VVPATs and after
the poll printed VVPATs slips are counted and the result
is tallied with the electronic result of the Control Unit.
Representatives of the political parties are allowed to do
mock poll themselves. Such a mock poll by casting 50
votes is conducted at every polling station on the poll
day in the presence of the representative of the
candidates and the polling agents and a mock poll
certificate is obtained from a Presiding Officer.
The entire EVM is then sealed and the candidates and
their agents are allowed to put their signature.
I) Reading the extract in the Status Report at Pages 46-49

(of which the table at page 47 is reproduced hereinbelow at
the cost of repetition) reveal from the chronology of events
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that so far VVPATs have been used in 933 Assembly

Constituencies and 18 Parliamentary Constituencies. Till
date, VVPAT slip verification has been undertaken for 792
polling stations and in all cases, the results tallied with the
electronic result in the CU. This gives no manner of room for
the petitioner to contend that the discretion vested in the
Returning Officer under Rule 56(D)(2) is wrought with the
fears expressed by the Petitioner.

4th Oct 2010 An all-party meeting held.
Agreement on incorporation of
VVPATs along with EVMs.
07/01/11 Field trial conducted after the
prototype was manufactured, in
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala),
Delhi, Cherapunjee (Meghalaya),
Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) and Leh
(Jammu & Kashmir).
July-Aug A second field trial was conducted
2012
19th Feb Final model was approved by TEC
2013
10th May The Model was demonstrated to all
2013 political parties
14th Aug The conduct of Election Rules 1961
2013 was amended and notified
J) Reading of the Status Report indicates that on 12.05.2017,

a meeting with all political parties was organized by the
Election Commission of India. The Election Commission
highlighted the wide range of technical, administrative
protocol and procedural safeguards that fortify the EVMs and
VVPATs against any sort of tampering or manipulation. The
Commission informed the political representatives that an
Page 88 of 95

opportunity will be offered to the political parties to

demonstrate that EVMs can be tampered with. The
Commission has assured 100% coverage of VVPATs in all
future elections to the Parliament and State Assembly
Elections. A Press Conference was held on 20.05.2017 to
announce the EVM Challenge and invitation was sent to all
National and State Recognized Political Parties to participate
in the EVM Challenge from June 3, 2017 onwards. Only two
political parties reported for the challenge. They reported for
the challenge but they did not wish to participate in the
challenge and instead only expressed their interest in
understanding the EVM Process. They interacted extensively
with the Technical Expert Committee of the Commission to
clear their doubts. The Press Notes of 12.05.2017, 20.05.2017
and 03.06.2017 are self-explanatory
K) The Election Commission of India had issued

instructions to all Chief Electoral Officers on 13.02.2018 for
mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips-Pilot Testing.
Evident it is, on reading the August Edition of the Status
Report, that there has been no complaint as to the defect on
the VVPAT’s credibility. The same is reproduced hereunder:
“ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA

NIRVACHAN SADAN, ASHOKA ROAD, NEW
DELIII- l 10001
No.51/8/VVPAT-INST/2018-LMS Dated: 13 lh
February, 2018
To
The Chief
Electoral
Officers of All
States and
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Union
Territories.
Subject: Mandatory verification of

VVPAT paper slips- Pilot Testing -
regarding.
Sir.
I am directed to state that the Commission has
already mandated that VVPATs will be used with
EVMs at all polling stations in all future
General/Bye-Elections to the Parliament and the
State Legislative Assemblies. The Commission
conducted mandatory verification of VVPAT paper
slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling station
per Assembly Constituency on a 'pilot' basis in the
recently concluded General Elections to State
Legislative Assemblies of Gujarat and Himachal
Pradesh, in addition to the provisions of Rule 56D
of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, and the
same has been extended to the ongoing General
Elections to the State Legislative Assemblies of
Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura. on 'pilot' basis.
The Commission has further, directed that
henceforth, mandatory verification of VVPAT paper
shall be conducted in all future General and Bye
Elections to the House of the People and State
Legislative Assemblies, in addition to the
provisions of Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections
Rules, 1961, after the completion of the last round
of counting of votes recorded in the EVMs, as
under:
(a) In case of General and Bye elections to State
Legislative Assemblies, verification of VVPAT paper
per Assembly Constituency.
(b) In case of General and Bye elections to the House
of the People, verification of VVPAT paper slips of
randomly selected 01 (one) polling station of
each .Assembly Segment of the Parliamentary
Constituency concerned.
For this mandatory verification of VVPAT
paper slips, the following procedure shall be
followed:
1. The verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly
selected 01 (one) polling station for each Assembly
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Constituency/Segment shall be taken up after the

completion of the last round of counting of votes
recorded in the EVMs.
2. The random selection of 01 (one) polling station per
Assembly Constituency/Segment shall be done by
Draw of lots, by the Returning Officer concerned, in
the presence of
candidates/their agents and the General
Observer appointed by the Commission for that
Constituency.
3. The draw of lots must be conducted immediately
after the completion of the last round of
counting of votes recorded in the EVMs (Control
Units) in the designated Counting Hall for the
particular Assembly Constituency/Assembly
Segment.
4. A written intimation regarding the conduct of
draw of lots for the random selection of 01 (one)
polling station for verification of VVPAT Slips
shall be given by the Returning Officer to the
Candidates/their election agents well in
advance.
The following procedure shall be followed for
the conduct of draw of lots:
a. White colour paper cards of postcard size shall
be used for conducting the draw of lots.
b. Total number of such paper cards should be
equal to total number of polling stations in the
c. The paper cards shall have pre-printed
Assembly Constituency/Assembly Segment
number, AC/AS name and date of polling on the
top. and the polling station number
in the centre. Each digit of the polling station
number shall be atleast 1" x 1" (1 inch by 1
inch) size and printed in black ink.
d. The paper cards to be used for draw ; of lots
should be four- folded in such a way that polling
station number is not visible.
e. Each paper card shall be shown to the
candidates/their agents before folding and
f. The paper cards shall be kept in the big
container and must be shaken before picking up
01 (one) slip by the Returning Officer.
Page 91 of 95

The verification of VVPAT paper slips shall be

done in a 'VVPAT Counting Booth' (VCR),
specially prepared for this purpose inside the
Counting Hall. The booth shall be enclosed in a
wire mesh just like a bank cashier's cabin so
that no VVPAT paper slip can be accessed by
any unauthorized person. One of the Counting
tables in the Counting Hall can be converted
into the VCB and can be used for normal
counting of round-wise EVM votes before the
count of VVPAT slips as per random selection
after the completion of round-wise EVM
counting.
The Verification count of the VVPAT paper slips
of the randomly selected 01 (one) polling station
shall be conducted strictly in accordance with
the instructions of the Commission on counting
of printed paper slips.
8. The Returning Officer and Assistant
Returning Officer, as the case may be shall
personally supervise the counting of VVPAT
paper slips at this booth. The General
Observer concerned shall ensure close and
careful observation of the entire exercise and
ensure strict compliance of the Commission's
instructions.
9. The above process shall be fully

videographed.
10. After completion of the above process, the

Returning Officer shall give a certificate in the
annexed format.
The above direction of the Commission shall be
brought to the notice of all concerned.
CC. Standard Distribution”
17. Keeping the aforesaid facts on hand and collectively

appreciating the purpose of the introduction of the VVPAT, in
exercise of powers under Section 169 of the Representative Of
People Act, 1951, the Central Government has the powers to
Page 92 of 95

make Rules in consultation of the Election Commission for

carrying out the purposes of the Act. Amendments have been
made in the Conduct Of Election Rules, 1961 looking to the
technological advancement in the method of voting i.e.
through EVMs rather than casting of votes in a Ballot Box
through a Ballot Paper. The Rules as existing for the method
of voting through a Ballot Paper and counting of such votes,
have been added and renumbered as new Rules by virtue of
introduction of VVPATs. The language and the spirit of the
Rules which erstwhile existed when the franchise was
exercised through the Ballot Paper has remained the same for
the EVMs too, though notwithstanding the fact that from the
perception of the Voter, who is the prime consumer of the
institution of democracy has had the benefit of the voting
becoming more easier and transparent through the concept of
EVMs and VVPATs.
17.1 The entire step-wise procedural safeguards that the

Election Commission undertakes in the manner of the conduct
of elections through the EVMs and VVPATS, in exercise of its
constitutional obligation under Article 324 of the Constitution
Of India coupled with the technology, leaves no room of doubt
for the petitioner to contend that the discretion of the
Returning Officer to entertain an application under Rule 56(D)
(2) of the Rules can be said to be an unguided discretion when
they are qualified with the words that the rejection will only
be on the ground of the application being frivolous or
unreasonable. Such a rule existed even when the voting was
carried out through the Ballot Box. The apprehension of the
petitioner seems to be based on the unjustified apprehension
of a malfunction and tamperability of the EVMs, which claims
Page 93 of 95

have been rendered completely unfounded and unjustified.
17.2 It is required to be noted that the provisions of law

reproduced hereinabove and the guidelines laid down by the
Election Commission of India specifically ensure
demonstration of transparency in the conduct of elections. In
fact the provisions of Rule 56D(2) allows the Returning Officer
to address cases of genuine complaints and there is no reason
why the prayers prayed for by the petitioner should be
granted. The communication dated 10.01.2019 addressd by
the Election Commission of India to the petitioner and the
conviction of the Election Commission, a constitutional
authority more an autonomous body, assures of the fact that
the discretion so vested in the Returning Officer will be
exercised with due care and in accordance with law. Reading
of the provisions of Section 100(d)(iv) of the Representation
Of People Act, 1951 indicates that in the event such an
application is rejected, the aggrieved candidate or the elector
has a remedy which is inbuilt to file an Election Petition. On
these counts, therefore, we see no reason to entertain the
Public Interest Petition and grant the prayers therein.
18. Before parting, we may just make a reference to the fact

that the petitioner has with his petition, annexed a copy of the
order of the Supreme Court rendered in Writ Petition (Civil)
No.1012/2017. By the order dated 20.11.2017, the Apex
Court dismissed the petition filed by Mr. Manubhai Chavda
against the Election Commission. In the pleadings in the PIL
before this Court, a reference is made that the Writ Petition
before the Supreme Court was filed challenging Rule 56(D)(2)
of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 by the writ petitioner
Page 94 of 95

therein. Mr. Koshti, Party-In-Person has furnished a copy of

the Writ Petition so filed. The grounds and particularly the
prayers of the Writ Petition before the Apex Court and this
Court are identical. When Mr. Koshti was confronted with the
question whether it was appropriate for the petitioner to file
the present petition, when the Supreme Court had dismissed
the petition with similar prayers, Mr. Koshti relied on several
decisions of the Apex Court, namely in the cases of DM
Wayanad Institute Of Medical Sciences versus Union Of
India and Anr. (Writ Petition (C) No.448 of 2015) :
Indian Oil Corporation versus State Of Bihar 1986(4)
SCC 146 to submit that merely because Article 32 of the
Constitution of India is invoked, there is no bar to a
subsequent petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of
India. Since we have extensively dealt with the issue on
merits, we are not going into the said question of
maintainability of this Petition.
19. The Writ Petition PIL is therefore dismissed with no

orders as to to costs.
sd/-
(ANANT S. DAVE, ACJ)
sd/-
(BIREN VAISHNAV, J)
DIVYA
// True Copy //
Page 95 of 95

ANNEXURE C/40
560
561
Manual on
Electronic Voting Machine
Edition 8
August 2023

“Greater Participation for a stronger democracy”
562
Manual on Electronic Voting Machine
563 Edition 8 August 2023
PREFACE
The use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) has revolutionized the Electoral System and introduction
of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system has provided greater transparency to the poll
process. Henceforth, EVM means Ballot Unit, Control Unit and VVPAT unit unless specified
particular unit.
This is the 8th Edition of Manual on Electronic Voting Machine which has been updated in view of
important progressive decisions taken by the Commission since the last Edition. The Manual contains
the gist of all important instructions on use of EVM for clarity on implementation of ECI instructions
and guidelines. If any instruction mentioned in this Manual is not covered in any earlier existing
instructions/directions, the instructions written in this Manual will prevail. The Manual has been
divided into four parts for ease of understanding. Part-I covers storage and movement of EVMs during
non-Election period, First Level Checking, Training & Awareness and First Randomization. Part-II
covers all processes from second randomization to counting of votes. A new Chapter Documentation
and Monitoring has been included. Part-III gives the historical and legal perspective of EVMs. Part-IV
contains all Annexures and Formats.
It is hoped that this Manual will be useful to all election related officials and other stakeholders. The
Commission would welcome suggestions from all users of this Manual for making it more informative
and useful.
1
2
INDEX
PART-I
FROM NON ELECTION PERIOD TO FIRST RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs
Sl. Page
Chapter No Contents
No. No.
STORAGE OF EVMs AND OPENING OF EVM
WAREHOUSE DURING NON-ELECTION PERIOD
1 Chapter – 1 8-13
AND EMERGENCY-MOVEMENT/SHIFTING OF
EVMs
2 Chapter – 2 FIRST LEVEL CHECKING (FLC) OF EVMs 14-21
3 Chapter – 3 FIRST RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs 22-24

4 Chapter – 4 REPAIRING OF NON-FUNCTIONAL EVMs 25
5 Chapter – 5 TRAINING AND AWARENESS OF EVMs 26-29
PART – II
FROM SECOND RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs TO COUNTING OF VOTES
Sl. Page
Chapter No Contents
No. No.
STORAGE OF EVMs, OPENING OF EVM WARE-
6 Chapter –6 HOUSE DURING ELECTION & EP PERIOD OF 31-35
EVMs
7 Chapter –7 SECOND RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs 36
8 Chapter –8 COMMISSIONING OF EVMs (CANDIDATE SET) 37-44
9 Chapter –9 DISPERSAL OF EVMs 45-52

VOTING COMPARTMENT TO BE USED IN POLL-
10 Chapter – 10 53
ING STATION
11 Chapter – 11 POLL DAY 54-68
STORAGE OF POLLED AND UNPOLLED EVMs
12 Chapter – 12 69-71
AFTER POLL
13 Chapter – 13 USE OF EVMs IN CASE OF REPOLL 72
14 Chapter – 14 COUNTING OF VOTES 73-86
3
15 Chapter –15 CHECKLIST AND PRECAUTIONS 87-93
16 Chapter –16 DOCUMENTATION AND MONITORING 94-102
PART-III
INTRODUCTION OF EVMs
Sl. Page
Chapter No Contents
No. No.
17 Chapter – 17 INTRODUCTION 104-106
18 Chapter – 18 LEGAL PROVISON FOR THE USE OF EVM 107-118
19 Chapter - 19 EVM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 119-120
PART-IV
ANNEXURES
Sl. Page
Chapter No Contents
No. No.
1 Annexure-1 Master Stock Register 122-123
2 Annexure-2 Monthly/Quarterly Inspection Reports 124-126
Attendance Register for National and State Recognised
3 Annexure-3 127
Political Parties at FLC Hall
SOP for Cleaning of Plastic Cabinet and Carrying
4 Annexure-4 128-129
Cases
5 Annexure-5 Certification of EVMs by BEL/ECIL 130
Tools and Spares to be brought by BEL/ECIL Engi-
6 Annexure-6 131
neers for FLC
Mock Poll Selection Certification
7 Annexure-7 132
during FLC of EVMs
Mock Poll by Representatives of National and State
8 Annexure-8 133
Recognised Political Parties during FLC of EVMs
9 Annexure-9 Mock Poll certification during FLC of VVPATs 134
10 Annexure-10 Flow Chart for FLC Procedure of EVM 135

Sealing of Control Unit of EVMs using Pink Paper
11 Annexure-11 136
Seal
4
12 Annexure-12 Certificate on arrangement for FLC by DEO 137
13 Annexure-13 Certificate on completion of FLC process 138
14 Annexure-14 Inspection Report of arrangement for FLC 139-141
15 Annexure-15 Plan on Awareness for EVMs 142
16 Annexure-16 Progress on EVMs Awareness 143

Standard Operation Procedure (SoP) for Training in-
17 Annexure-17 cluding demonstration and awareness program of 144
EVMs
18 Annexure-18 Potential Errors 145
19 Annexure -19 Register for Preparation of EVMs 146
20 Annexure -20 Certification of EVMs by BEL/ECIL 147-148
21 Annexure -21 Installation of Paper Roll in VVPAT 149
22 Annexure -22 Mock Poll certification during Preparation of EVMs 150
Handling of Non-Functional CU, BU & VVPAT During

23 Annexure-23 151-152
Poll
Check List of Additional Items of Polling Materials to
24 Annexure -24 153
be provided to the Polling Party
Voting Compartment – Dimensions & Cascading of
25 Annexure -25 154-156
Ballot Units
Form of Declaration by Elector under Rule 49MA of
26 Annexure- 26 157
27 Annexure-27 PRESIDING OFFICER’S REPORT(PART-I TO V) 158-163
28 Annexure -28 Certificate for Sector Officers / Zonal Magistrate etc. 164-165
CERTIFICATE- all the unused reserve EVMs and

29 Annexure-29 166
Non-functional un-polled EVMs (BY RO)
Mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05
30 Annexure -30 167
randomly selected Polling Stations
Mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05
31 Annexure- 31 168
randomly selected Polling Stations (Observer)
5
32 Annexure -32 Samples of Container and Pigeonholes 169

Result of Printed Paper Count (Annexure to Part-II of
33 Annexure -33 170
Form 17-C)
34 Annexure -34 Account of Votes Recorded (FORM-17C) 171-172
35 Annexure -35 Appointment of Officer for shredding VVPAT slips 173
Certificate- Disposal of VVPAT Paper Slips pertaining to

36 Annexure -36 174
Mock Poll & Actual Poll (DEO)
Certificate- Disposal of all the VVPAT Paper Slips per-
37 Annexure -37 175
taining to Mock Poll & Actual Poll (CEO)
6
PART–I
(From Non-Election period to First Randomization of EVMs)
Sl. No. Chapter No Contents Page No.
STORAGE OF EVMs AND OPENING OF

EVM WAREHOUSE, MOVEMENT OF EVMs
1 Chapter – 1 - DURING NON-ELECTION PERIOD AND 8-13
EMERGENCY-MOVEMENT/SHIFTING OF
EVMs
2 Chapter – 2 FIRST LEVEL CHECKING (FLC) OF EVMs 14-21
3 Chapter – 3 FIRST RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs 22-24
4 Chapter – 4 REPAIRING OF NON-FUNCTIONAL EVMs 25
5 Chapter – 5 TRAINING AND AWARENESS OF EVMs 26-29
7
CHAPTER-I
STORAGE OF EVMs AND OPENING OF EVM WAREHOUSE DURING
NON-ELECTION PERIOD AND EMERGENCY-MOVEMENT/SHIFTING
OF EVMs
1.1. Various types of EVM storages:
(a) EVM Warehouse: EVM Warehouse means the designated building having room(s) for
storing EVMs during non-election period including VVPATs after counting of votes at
District Headquarters or at Tehsil Headquarters, in exceptional case with valid reason.
(b) EVM Strong Room: EVM Strong Room means the designated hall/room for storing
EVMs from FLC to completion of EP filing period. Various categories of EVM Strong
Room include;
(i) FLC Strong Room: FLC Strong Room(s) means the designated room/hall having FLC-
Ok EVMs after completion of First Level Checking of EVMs.
(ii) Repair Strong Room: Repair Strong Room(s) means the designated room/hall having
FLC-rejected EVMs and un-polled non-functional EVMs pertaining to Awareness,
Training, Commissioning, dispersal, mock poll (Category C) etc.
(iii) Training & Awareness Strong Room: Training & Awareness Strong room(s) means
the designated room/hall having EVMs pertaining to Training & Awareness.
(iv) AC/AS Strong Room: AC/AS Strong Room(s) means the designated room/hall having
EVMs after First Randomization of EVMs.
(v) Polled Strong Room: Polled Strong Room(s) means the designated room/hall having
polled EVMs [Category A (Polled) EVMs and Category B (Polled non functional)
EVMs] after completion of Poll till Counting of votes. Re-polled machines, if any, may
also be kept here.
(vi) Reserve Strong Room: Reserve Strong Room(s) means the designated room/hall
having unused/reserve EVMs (Category D) after completion of Poll.
(vii) District Strong Room: District Strong Room means the designated room/hall for storing
Category A (Polled) EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) and Category B (Polled
non-functional) EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) after Counting of Votes till
Election Petition Period.
1.2 Physical Aspects of the EVM Warehouse/Strong Room:
i) Only one (1) entry/exit point (Single entry and exit point for the warehouse/strong room)
ii) Seal all other doors/windows of the warehouse/strong room, if any using brick-masonry
or concrete.
iii) Install Main switch outside the warehouse/strong room and disconnect electricity of
room, where EVMs are kept, after sealing.
iv) Free from dampness, pests, rodents etc.
v) Free from flood/water logging risk/cracks/leakage etc.
8
vi) Provide exhaust fan on the front side at the highest feasible point for air-circulation and
install strong iron grill at the vent/passage.
vii) Vacuum Cleaner for each warehouse.
viii) No other material whether election related or not (except the documents/materials
prescribed by the Commission) to be kept with the polled EVMs.
ix) In no case SEC-EVM and ECI-EVM loaned to SEC shall be stored in EVM warehouse
meant for storage of ECI-EVMs.
x) Before storing the EVMs in newly constructed warehouse or any EVM warehouse, the
District Election Officer shall obtain a certificate from the authority concerned to ensure
the quality and physical aspects of the EVM warehouse and to be kept on record for
future reference.
1.3 Non-Election Period (After C+45 days)
1.3.1 Storage of EVMs
i) District Head Quarters/Designated warehouse
ii) In Treasury
iii) If it is not possible to store as above, then the alternative storage place shall not be
below the Tehsil Headquarters. The same shall be done with valid reasons with the
approval of the CEO concerned.
iv) Warehouse of Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehouse Corporation
(CWC) or State Warehouse Corporation (SWC) may be used for storing EVMs only
as last resort after exhausting all other options.
1.3.2 Security & Safety arrangements for EVM Warehouse/strong room:
i) Double Lock System with all keys of each lock with two separate specified officers.
ii) Minimum Half Section of Armed Police for 24X7 security (only Government Security
Personnel). Home Guards Security as an exception when regular police cannot be
posted.
iii) Installation of CCTV Camera to capture hall door and corridor with DVR for storing
at least 30 days recording.
iv) Log book for each entry and exit.
v) Duty roster for security personnel.
vi) Videography at the time of the opening and closing of the warehouse (recording of
last inspection to be preserved till the next inspection)
vii) Adequate fire safety and fire alarm system.
1.3.3 Custody of Warehouse Keys: DEO is over all in-charge of the safe custody of EVMs.
i) All the keys of Lock -1 with DEO & all the keys of Lock-2 with Dy. DEO or equivalent.
ii) Warehouse outside the District HQ- all the keys of Lock -1 with SDM & all the keys
of Lock-2 with Tehsildar or equivalent.
9
iii) Deposit keys in Treasury and maintain proper log book for depositing and taking out
the keys. If there is no provision of Treasury, the keys shall be in the custody of the DEO
and Dy. DEO concerned.
iv) Handing over and taking over of the keys to be a part of Certificate for Transfer of
Charge (CTC).
1.3.4 Protocol for opening & closing of EVM warehouse/strong room:
i) Inform National and State Recognized Political Parties in writing, at least 24 hours in
advance, about the date and time of opening and closing of EVM warehouse.
ii) Do not open Warehouse having EVMs in Election Petition or court cases for any purpose.
iii) DEO to nominate an Officer not below the rank of Tehsildar for the purpose of
opening/ closing of EVM-warehouse.
iv) Allow National and State Recognized Political Parties Representatives to remain
present during opening and closing of the warehouse.
v) Conduct of videography is mandatory whether election period or non-election
period.
vi) In case of exigencies like flood, fire etc., if videography is not feasible, video of
opening/ closing of warehouse shall be made through mobile.
vii) In case of exigencies like flood or fire the CEO/DEO may shift the EVMs under
intimation to the Commission and also take post facto approval. The DEO shall
inform the CEO on the same day and the CEO shall immediately send report to the
Commission with his comments. If EVMs (BU and CU) are pertaining to Election
Petition, shift the EVMs (BU and CU) in the presence of DEO, petitioners and
respondents of Election Petition under advance intimation to the Hon’ble High Court
concerned specifying the reasons.
1.3.5 Maintain details of EVMs in a Master Stock Register (MSR) for every district as per format
in Annexure-1.
1.3.6 Monthly/Quarterly Inspection of EVM warehouse by the DEO
i) Monthly inspection of sealed warehouse every month and submission of inspection
report in Annexure-2 (A) in EMS.
ii) Quarterly inspection report of opening and checking the warehouse for its internal
condition in March, June, September and December every year and submission
of inspection report in Annexure-2 (B) in EMS. National and State Recognized
Political Parties Representatives to remain present during opening and closing of the
warehouse.
iii) It should be ensured that in no case warehouse be opened for checking its internal
conditions, if it has EVM pertaining to any election petition/court case/during FLC
to finalization of EP status period.
iv) Time stamping along with GPS location to be printed on photographs while inspecting
warehouse.
10
v) Opening and checking of warehouse for its internal condition during rainy season or in
case of any exigencies, if required, and submission of report to the CEO concerned.
vi) The CEO shall also do inspection of one EVM warehouse per Quarter and should
countersign the report {Annexure-2 (B)}. Similarly, the EVM Nodal Officer shall also
do inspection of one EVM warehouse per month and should countersign the report
{Annexure-2 (A)}.
vii) Inspection of warehouse by the Chief Electoral Officer and The EVM State Nodal Officer
be done in the following ways :
Officer Minimum Frequency Remarks

Chief Electoral One EVM Warehouse Inspection date should coincide with
Officer per Quarter in the State concerned DEO’s Quarterly inspection
date. CEO should countersign the report.
EVM State Nodal One EVM Warehouse Inspection date should coincide with
Officer per month in the State concerned DEO’s Monthly inspection
date. SNO should countersign the report.
viii) The CEO shall review consolidated inspection reports received at each interval and
proceed to remove any deficiencies pointed out immediately.
1.4 TRANSPORTATION/SHIFTING OF EVMs
1.4.1 eneral Instructions to follow:
a) Movement of EVMs through EVM Management System (EMS).
b) Use only containerized trucks or sealed trucks with proper locking arrangements.
c) Seal all trucks transporting EVMs with lock and paper seals.
d) Use GPS enabled Vehicles for movement of EVM and tracking of movement.
e) Inform the National and State Recognized Political Parties in advance about opening,
stocking & sealing of warehouses while shifting EVMs. However, if no representative
attends, the work should not stop.
f) DEO to videograph the whole process of transfer/receipt of EVM.
g) Adequate foolproof armed security arrangements are made for the transportation of the
machines.
h) the movements of each of the vehicle carrying EVMs should be closely monitored on daily
basis, until it reaches the destination, by the Chief Electoral Officers/District Election Officers
of the concerned State through which the vehicle carrying EVMs are to pass.
i) One official, not below the rank of Tehsildar (or equivalent as known), with each vehicle
shall also be appointed by the CEO/DEO and their cell numbers shall be given to concerned
officers of States through which vehicle passes, who shall be in contact with the official on
monitoring of the transportation of EVMs and VVPATs.
j) A signage shall be labeled on the wind-screen of the vehicle carrying EVMs “Election
Materials-Urgent” for smooth passage of the vehicle with clear mention of originating and
destination places. 11
1.4.2 Movement of EVMs from or to or within poll bound State(s)/District(s) especially during the
period commencing from Commissioning of EVMs to Counting of Votes shall be avoided, as
there may be possibility of miscommunication/disinformation resulting into avoidable aspersions.
However, various essential movements of EVMs originating from or terminating at the poll
bound State/district having the manufacturing premises/companies cannot be avoided for several
weeks.
1.4.3 The manufacturers (BEL/ECIL) and the sender/receiver CEOs shall provide tentative full
movement plan of containerised vehicle carrying EVMs to be passed through any enroute State/
district in advance to the Chief Electoral Officer by email, letter and telephonically. The Chief
Electoral Officer of poll-bound State/UT shall intimate the National & State Recognised Political
Parties, in writing, about all such movements of EVMs that is planned through the State/UT and
destined to go or come from other States/UTs.
1.4.4 Responsibility to provide armed security, track GPS movements of vehicles and to inform enroute/
destination States/UTs/PSUs shall be as follows :
Sender Receiver Responsibility to
Provide Armed Security Track GPS Monitoring of Inform Enroute/Destination States/
(by CEO & DEO) vehicles (by CEO & DEO) UTs/PSUs (by CEO & DEO)
State/UT State/UT Receiver State/UT Receiver State/UT Receiver State/UT
State/UT PSU Sender State/UT Sender State/UT Sender State/UT
PSU State/UT Receiver State/UT Receiver State/UT Receiver State/UT
Factory to State
• Transportation arrangement of New EVMs/VVPATs done by Manufacturer.
• Consignee State/UT to depute its official at Factory with security personnel.
• State/UT to bear the transportation charges of shifting of repaired EVM.
Intra-State & Intra District Movement

• CEO is competent authority to issue permission to DEO for shifting under intimation to the
Commission.
• Share list of EVMs to National and State Recognised Political Parties/candidates/their represen-
tatives.
• Smooth Movement to avoid physical damage.
• Proper entry of moving out the EVMs in the Master Stock Register/Movement Register to be
ensured by nominated officer with the acknowledgement from the officer receiving the same.
Inter-State Movement
• Appoint Nodal Officer at State as well as District level for constant coordination and smooth
transportation.
• Borrowing State/UT to depute its official at sender State/UT with security personnel.
• Ensure the location of districts for collection of EVMs is in a cluster or on the same route.
12
1.4.5 Intra-State (inter-district) shifting of First Level Checking (FLC) completed EVMs:
a) De-novo FLC in the district where these units are being shifted.
b) During Parliamentary election, within the Parliamentary Constituency (covering more
than one district)
BEFORE first randomization of EVMs, ensure de-novo FLC of the EVMs.
AFTER first randomization of EVMs, there is no need of FLC of the EVMs.
1.4.6 In case of lntra-district shifting of FLC completed EVMs:
a) FLC of these EVMs is not required, subject to the following conditions: -
i. For General Election to State Legislative Assembly, from one Assembly Constituency
to another Assembly Constituency after first randomization of EVMs, ensure de
novo FLC of the EVMs.
ii) For Parliamentary election, from one Parliamentary Constituency to another
Parliamentary Constituency after first randomization of EVMs, ensure de-novo
First Level Checking of the EVMs.
b) In case of simultaneous elections to Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies,
FLC of EVMs/ VVPATs is conducted, if EVMs/VVPATs pertaining to Assembly
election are required to be used in Parliamentary constituency or vice-versa.
13
CHAPTER - 2
FIRST LEVEL CHECKING (FLC) OF EVMs
2.1 Overall responsibility of FLC:
(a) District Election Officer (DEO) shall be responsible for overall FLC process.
(b) DEO shall ensure strict adherence & compliance of FLC instructions.
(c) DEO will appoint a senior officer of the rank of Addl. /Dy. DEO fully trained with FLC
process as FLC Supervisor.
2.2 Requirement of EVMs for conducting FLC:
(a) For Bye election to the Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies, the requirement of
EVMs for conducting FLC shall be 200% of number of polling stations.
(b) For General Election to the Parliamentary and Assembly Constituency, the requirement
of EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) and VVPATs for conducting FLC shall be
125% and 135% respectively of the number of polling stations or as allocated by the
Commission considering geographical or past experiences.
2.3 FLC when to be done:
(a) FLC of EVMs shall be done before every General/Bye-election to Assembly and
Parliamentary Constituency or in any elections where EVMs are used.
(b) FLC of EVMs shall commence:
(i) within one month of occurrence of vacancy in case of bye-election.
(ii) at least P-120 days in case of General Election to State Legislative Assembly or as
instructed by the Commission.
(iii) at least P-180 days in case of General Election to Lok Sabha or as instructed by
the Commission.
(P-may be estimated based on the last General Election).
(c) FLC is to be done sufficiently in advance so that all checks are carried out without any
undue haste in the presence of representatives of National and State Recognised Political
Parties.
(d) FLC of EVMs shall be completed, as far as possible, three months before tentative
announcement of election. The same may be calculated considering the last time of
announcement of election.
2.4 Schedule of FLC:
(a) Depending on the number of EVMs to be checked in FLC, the CEO/DEO shall prepare a
schedule for the FLC of EVMs in consultation with EVM manufacturers (BEL & ECIL).
(b) Ensure timings of FLC from 9 am to 7 pm on all days including holidays. For any
exemption request for timing or OFF on a particular day due to any valid reason, prior
approval of the CEO concerned is required under intimation to the ECI.
14
2.5 FLC to be done in the presence of representatives of National and State Recognised
Political Parties:
(a) The schedule for FLC shall be communicated to every National and State Recognised
Political Party at the district headquarters with proper acknowledgement and copy
endorsed to the parties at State headquarters, in writing by the DEO at least 2 days before
the beginning of the FLC in the district.
(b) On the day of the FLC, representatives of all National and State Recognised Political
Parties authorised by the District President of the party shall be encouraged to be present.
(c) If the representative of no or only one National/State Recognised Political Party
is present in 3 days, a written reminder shall be given to every National and State
Recognised Political Party at the district headquarters with proper acknowledgment and
copy endorsed to the State headquarters by the DEO.
(d) A register shall be kept at FLC hall by the DEO in Annexure-3 in which signatures
of the representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties shall be taken
every day as token of their presence.
2.6 Arrangements in the premises of FLC:
(a) FLC Hall shall be spacious to accommodate the EVMs, officials nominated by DEO,
engineers of BEL/ECIL and the representatives of National and State level recognized
parties.
(b) FLC hall shall be large, well-lit, well ventilated and dust free hall. Non-heating high
illumination LED lights to be installed so that each table is brightly lit.
(c) In consultation with BEL/ECIL, install a TV/Monitor of minimum 24 inches display
with HDMI input, for each SLU under use in FLC Hall for simultaneously viewing
the symbols being loaded in VVPATs by the representatives of the National and State
Recognised Political Parties.
(d) FLC area to be fully barricaded and sanitized by police.
(e) Ensure the hall is free from any electronic components, device, except those permitted by
the Commission for the purpose of FLC process etc.
(f) Make proper arrangements like drinking water, toilets (separate for male and female),
first aid, fire extinguishers, fire alarm inside and outside the hall.
(g) Single entry and exit to hall with full security by armed police forces (minimum one
section) round the clock with 24X7 CCTV coverage.
(h) Paste copy of the Detailed Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) mentioning step by step
instructions in FLC hall. The SoP shall be provided by BEL and ECIL, as the case may
be, in advance so that the same shall be pasted in FLC Hall before starting FLC.
(i) Entry to hall through Door Frame Metal Detector (DFMD) on production of Identity
Card of authorised official/pass issued by DEO.
(j) Proper frisking of every person/officer/engineer at every entry with record in the log book
for every entry and exit.
15
(k) Cell phones, camera, spy pens etc. not to be allowed inside the FLC hall and kept at
the collection centre made outside the hall except for two mobiles to be used by the
election officials nominated by DEO for marking FLC-OK and one mobile to BEL/
ECIL engineer to mark FLC-Reject in EMS using mobile app with proper reason.
(l) (I) No other equipment allowed inside the hall except those mentioned in FLC User
Manual and a paper shredding machine to dispose of VVPAT slips generated during FLC
process.
(m) Web casting of the entire FLC process and monitoring the same in the Control room at
DEO and CEO level and submission of report to ECI.
(n) Arrangement of one PC/laptop with internet connectivity outside FLC Hall for
transmitting FLC data from P-FLCU on daily basis.
(o) During entire FLC period in the district, both P-FLCU and SLU with SLMD and
connecting cables shall be in the custody of the FLC In-charge deputed by the District
Election Officer and to be kept in the FLC premises with proper security. The same shall
be returned back to BEL/ECIL (engineers authorized by the BEL/ECIL) after completion
of FLC in the respective district, for further use in other stations or to move to safe
custody of the manufacturers.
2.7 Manpower in FLC:
(a) FLC shall be conducted only by authorised engineers of BEL and ECIL. BEL and ECIL
shall be fully responsible for the integrity, efficiency and competence of their engineers.
(b) Randomization of list of engineers to be deputed by BEL/ECIL for carrying out FLC shall
be done by the CEO for District-wise allocation and shall provide the list along with
engineers’ cell numbers to DEO concerned.
(c) Deputation of Sr. level engineers at State Headquarters as well as at each district
headquarters by BEL/ECIL to supervise FLC.
(d) Deputation of one Manager by BEL/ECIL for 4-5 districts to remain in the field for daily
supervision & co-ordination.
(e) No entrance of engineers, technicians or other technical staff except authorised
engineers/ technical staff of BEL and ECIL to the FLC Hall.
(f) Deployment of sufficient unskilled labour by the DEO for cleaning, unpacking and
packing of EVMs in consultation with the manufacturers.
2.8 Work to be done during FLC:
(a) Cleaning of Machines by official/staff/ labourer deputed by DEO: This includes
removal of address tags, ballot papers, special tags, cleaning of superscriptions of CU,
BU and VVPAT, clearing of earlier poll data, dusting of CU, BU and VVPAT, etc. as per
the prescribed guidelines (Annexure-4) of the manufacturers in the designated FLC hall
under the supervision of Team leader of engineers and FLC in-charge.
(b) Visual Inspection by authorised engineers of BEL/ECIL: Visual Inspection of BU,
CU, VVPAT, connecting cable, connector, latches, carrying cases etc., will be conducted to
ensure there is no damage or breakage of plastic parts, latches, switches etc. Any defect
16
in the unit will be noted down against unit serial number. Replacement of plastic parts,
latches, switches etc. which are permissible (as per detailed SoP for FLC of BEL/ECIL)
in the field.
(c) Functionality checks using P-FLCU by authorised engineers of BEL/ECIL: The
functionality checks of CU, BU & VVPAT will be conducted using P-FLCU as per the
detailed procedure contained in the P-FLCU user manual for field engineers.
(d) Symbol Loading in VVPAT using SLU by authorised engineers of BEL/ECIL:
P-FLCU passed Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) shall be moved to Symbol
Loading table before moving to manual FLC table. Symbol loading in VVPAT shall be
done using SLU as per the SLU user manual and facilitation of simultaneously viewing
of symbol loading on Monitor to the representatives of National and State Recognized
Political Parties. Only dummy symbols prescribed by the ECI shall be loaded in the
VVPATs for conduct of FLC and Mock polls.
(e) Full functionality checks:
(i) Diagnostic test of each BU, CU and VVPAT prescribed by the manufacturer.
(ii) Check response of all switches and carry out tests prescribed by the manufacturers
as per the SoP to confirm all the components of the EVM are original. BEL and
ECIL engineers will certify in Annexure-5 that all the components of the EVMs
(Ballot Units and Control Units) are original.
(iii) In order to provide assurance to the political parties, the authorised engineers will
ensure opening of cabinets of BU & CU in the presence of the representative of
National and State Recognised Political Parties during FLC and carry out visual
inspection of PCB to check for spurious components, if any. Any discrepancy should
be brought to the notice of DEO or his representative immediately. Seal the cabinet
of the CUs with Pink Paper Seals as per the SoP.
(iv) For conducting FLC of BU, CU & VVPAT together, Mock poll of 6 votes against
each candidate button shall be conducted and electronic count of CU will be tallied
with VVPAT paper slips of each VVPAT.
(v) Whenever, additional BUs or CUs or VVPATs are required to be added with the
EVMs of already conducted FLC-OK EVMs at later stage like commissioning, de-
novo FLC of additional units shall be conducted.
(vi) Once the unit is passed, Green FLC OK sticker will be pasted on Ballot Unit (BU),
Control Unit (CU) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
(vii) Red Sticker with reasons of rejection will be pasted on FLC-rejected units.
(viii) Ensure signatures of BEL/ECIL Engineers and the representative of DEO on both
red/ green stickers as applicable.
(ix) Pink Paper Seals will be pasted on FLC-OK CU and signed by FLC Engineer,
FLC supervisor and the representatives of National and State Recognised Political
Parties.
(x) If any EVM is found to be non-functional, it will be kept aside and sent to the factory
of BEL and ECIL for repairs within 7 days of completion of FLC in the district.
17
CEO shall club dispatches from more than 1 district to economise transport.
(xi) In case of bye-elections to Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies, all the non-
functional EVMs pertaining to First Level Checking, commissioning, dispersal and
mock poll (before actual poll) replacement shall be sent together to the respective
manufacturers namely; BEL and ECIL for repairing purpose within 7 days of
completion of the bye election(s).
(xii) Superscription on the cabinet/carrying cases of EVM with marker pen or any other
pen is strictly prohibited to avoid defacing of the machines.
(xiii) No electronic repair of the machine shall be carried out in the field. Changing of
electronic components of the machines in the field is strictly prohibited.
(xiv) BEL/ECIL FLC Engineers shall bring with them the detailed Standard
Operating Procedure (SoP) mentioning the step-by-step instructions of checking of
the machine. Copy of this SoP shall be pasted prominently at FLC Hall.
(xv) List of equipment and spares, which the engineers shall be allowed to carry with
them in FLC Hall is attached as Annexure-6.
(f) Conduct of Mock Poll by officials/Staff/FLC Engineer deputed by DEO:
i) Casting of 6 (six) votes against each of the 16 candidate buttons, observation of result
and clearing of mock poll data will be done for each EVM (BU+CU) and VVPAT by FLC
Engineers.
ii) A load test on 1% of the randomly selected FLC-OK EVMs will be conducted by
connecting 4 BUs to 1 CU and 1 VVPAT and casting at least 1 vote for each candidate
button of connected BUs (i.e. 64 votes) and tallying the VVPAT slips count with the CU
count.
iii) Additionally, mock-poll in 1% of EVMs & VVPATs of 1200 votes, in 2% of EVMs
& VVPATs of 1000 votes and in 2% of EVMs & VVPATs of 500 votes shall be done
in the presence of the representatives of the National and State Recognised Political
Parties and electronic count shall be tallied with VVPAT slips count. Percentage shall be
taken/calculated on quantity of FLC OK Control Units.
iv) Representatives of the National and State Recognised Political Parties shall be allowed
to pick machines randomly for the purpose of mock-poll and also do the mock poll
themselves, if they so desire and their signatures will be obtained in the register at
Annexure-7 and Annexure-8, respectively.
v) In rest of the machines, number of votes polled during the mock poll should be to the
satisfaction of the representatives of political parties.
vi) Signatures of representatives of the National and State Recognised Political Parties
shall be taken in a register m Annexure-9 as a token of confirmation that there are no
discrepancies between the VVPAT paper slips count and electronic count of Control
Unit.
vii) Destruction of VVPAT paper slips generated during FLC shall be done on daily basis
through shredding machine.
18
(g) Updation of FLC status in EMS: Unique ID of FLC-OK units will be uploaded (In case of
Control Units along with Unique Serial Number of Pink Paper Seals) using EMS mobile
App by the authorised official of DEO, on a daily basis. Unique ID of rejected Units with
rejection details will be uploaded to EMS using EMS mobile app, on a daily basis, by FLC
engineers.
(h) Uploading PFLCU Data: At the end of the day the FLC In charge (BEL/ECIL) shall move
all PFLCUs to the internet room (Room with PC & Internet) of the FLC Centre and upload
the PFLCU data to respective factory server on a daily basis. In case of physical and Plastic
Damages, Data which could not be captured by PFLCU, shall be manually entered into
application against unit serial number. Further, FLC Data will be sent to BEL/ECIL FLC
server through internet using “Field FLC Data Transfer” Application only.
(i) Flow chart for the FLC procedure is attached at Annexeure-10.
2.9 Sealing of plastic cabinet of Control Unit of EVMs with Pink Paper Seal
(a) In order to ensure that the Control Unit of EVM cannot be opened after First Level
Checking of the EVMs, the cabinet of the Control Units shall be sealed with
the modified Pink Paper Seal supplied by the Nasik Security Press, in the presence
of the representatives of the National and State Recognised Political Parties present at
the time of FLC, as per the following procedure:
(i) Pink Paper Seal has two portion/part of same Unique Serial Number. First, split the
seal into two separate Pink Paper Seals.
(ii) Remove the gummed paper from Pink Paper Seal carefully.
(iii) These two Pink Paper Seals shall be pasted on two sides of the Cabinet of the
Control Unit as shown in the figures:
Control Unit sealed with Pink Paper Seal

(iv) For proper fixing of the seals, the BEL and ECIL shall emphasise the following:
• Proper handling of seals.
• The surface on which seal need to be applied should be clean and free from
dust, dirt, water, chemical and oil.
• The peeling off/removal of seal from the release liner surface with clean finger
nails.
19
• The application to the applicable surface should be done gently with thumb
pressure or finger (4-5 times) to avoid possibility of air pocket, crease.
• The seal applied on the EVM surface should not be partially stuck and removed
and re-used.
(v) While marking FLC-OK in EVM Management System (EMS) using Mobile App,
the Unique Serial Number of Pink Paper Seal shall be entered by scanning QR-
Code.
(b) Take signatures of the Engineer and the representatives of the National and State
Recognised Political Parties present along with the party name in abbreviations below
their signatures. Allow them to note down the serial number of the Pink Paper Seal.
(c) Marking of FLC-OK and FLC-Reject of machines in EMS should be done on daily
basis.
(d) Maintain a register in Annexure-11 for mentioning the unique number of CU and serial
number of pink paper seal and take their signature and provide photocopy to the National
and State Recognised Political Parties.
(e) Provide list of FLC-OK Ballot Units, Control Units and VVPATs generated from EMS
to the National and State Recognised Political Parties after completion of FLC and also
to all the contesting candidates as soon as last date of withdrawal of candidature is over
and take their acknowledgement.
(f) Ensure the availability of photocopy of the register at the time of Commissioning of
EVMs.
2.10 Supervision of FLC
(a) FLC shall be carried out under the direct and close supervision of District Election
Officer.
(b) The DEO shall nominate one officer not below the rank of Additional/Deputy DEO as
FLC Supervisor to supervise the entire process of FLC. This officer shall be present in
the FLC Hall for the entire duration of FLC. FLC Supervisor shall submit a certificate in
Annexure-12 to the CEO concerned through DEO before starting of FLC to the effect
that all the arrangements of FLC have been done as per ECI instructions.
(c) District Election Officer shall invariably conduct a daily inspection of the FLC venue
& FLC process to ensure that the FLC is being carried out as per the instruction of the
Commission. The process of FLC shall be webcast (CCTV with IP) & continuously
recorded. Video, CD, DVD or other suitable modes will be kept in the custody of DEO.
(d) Webcast cameras shall be installed in the FLC Hall in such a manner that the process
of FLC can be fully seen on webcast. The web link shall be shared with CEO and ECI,
preferably as a single dashboard view with individual links for all the FLC centres.
(e) Control Room shall be set up at CEO office for monitoring through webcast whether
FLC instructions & procedures are being fully followed.
(f) After completion of the FLC of all the BUs, CUs and VVPATs and updating of FLC-
Status in the EMS, DEOs shall submit a Certificate to this effect to the CEO in the
20
format given at Annexure-13 and CEO will submit a consolidated certificate for all the
districts to the Commission.
2.11 Inspection of preparedness and quality check of FLC:
(a) In case of bye-election(s) to Parliamentary/Assembly Constituency(ies), EVM Nodal
Officer of the State/UT concerned shall do inspection.
(b) In case of General Election to Lok Sabha/State Legislative Assembly, Nodal Officer(s) of
other States/UTs shall be deputed to do surprise inspection. In Lok Sabha election, State
Officers/NLMTs/ECI Officers and consultants can also be deputed.
(c) Deputed officers will submit report to the Commission in Annexure-14.
(d) CEO shall also depute teams to conduct surprise inspection of FLC process in the districts
from time to time. The report of such inspection undertaken by CEO shall be submitted to
the Commission.
2.12 Security measures for EVMs after FLC of EVMs:
(a) Comprehensive arrangements should be made for round-the-clock security of the FLC
Strong Rooms having EVMs after First-Level-Checking.
(b) Minimum one section of State Armed Police shall be deployed for 24X7 security of FLC
Strong Room having FLC “OK” EVMs.
(c) The entry point of FLC Strong Room having EVMs after FLC and corridor shall have 24X7
CCTV coverage with DVR.
(d) There should be sufficient arrangement of fire extinguishers and fire alarm near
and inside the strong room.
(e) A log book shall be maintained by the security personnel in which entry should be made about
date, time, duration and name(s) of anyone entering near the strong rooms. This includes
visits by the Observers or DEOs or SPs or Political Parties/candidates or their agents or any
other person.
2.13. After completion of FLC, store FLC-OK EVMs in FLC Strong Room till first randomization
of EVMs with minimum one section of armed police for 24X7 security along with CCTV
coverage.
21
CHAPTER – 3
FIRST RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs
3.1 Steps for First Randomization to be done by DEO:-
Before 1st Randomization of EVMs, take out upto 10% EVMs for training and awareness purpose and
mark as “Training and Awareness” in EVM Management System (EMS) [Ref: Chapter-5]
DEO will fix a schedule for 1st Randomization and invite the National and State Recognised Political
Parties in writing, atleast 48 hours in advance, with acknowledgment
Conduct 1st Randomization of EVMs in EVM Management System (EMS)
Conduct 1st Randomization of EVMs in the presence of the representatives of National and State
Recognised Political Parties
In case of General/ In case of Gener- In case of Simultane- Exceptional case: In
Bye-elections to Legis- al/ Bye-elections to ous elections to Lok case Assembly Constitu-
lative Assembly, allocate Lok Sabha, allocate Sabha and Legislative ency/ Segment is falling
EVMs Assembly Con- EVMs Assembly Seg- Assembly, allocate in two or more districts,
stituency-wise ment-wise EVMs Assembly Seg- refer Scenarios 4 and 5.
ment-wise (for PC)
and EVMs Assembly
Constituency-wise
(for SLA)
Provide the list of randomized EVMs to each National and State Recognised Political Party and ob-
tain written acknowledgment.
Taking charge of EVMs by the respective Returning Officer/Assistant Returning Officer, as t he case
may be.
Receiving of 1st Randomized EVMs in AC/AS Strong Room using Mobile App.
After First Randomization, the EVMs shall be in the custody of the RO/ARO concerned. for details
kindly see para 6.1.1 of Chapter-6
22
During the General Elections to the Lok Sabha, the States/UTs may face the following scenarios:
Scenario No.1: When the entire district consists of the PC, the District Election Officer (DEO) is the
custodian of EVMs/VVPATs of that district and the Returning Officer of that PC.
Ex: PC consists of only one District-A having 9 Assembly Segments (AS) (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and i).
District-A (1-PC = 9 AS: fully covered in District -A)
a b c
d e f Shaded Area is PC
g h i
Scenario No.2: When the entire two or more districts consist of the PC, the DEOs are the custodian of
EVMs/VVPATs of the respective district and the DEO of one district is the Returning Officer of that PC.
Ex: PC consists of two Districts-A & B. District-A having 9 AS (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and i) and District-B
having 4 AS (j, k, l and m). DEO of District-A is the RO of PC.
District-A District-B
a b c j k
d e f l m Shaded Area is PC
g h i
Scenario No.3: When the PC consists of entire district as well as some AS of some adjoining district/
districts and the DEO of this district is RO of the PC.
Ex: PC consists of entire Districts-A (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and i) & some AS of District-B (only AS-j) &
District-C (only AS- o and p). DEO of District-A is the RO of PC.
a b c j k
d e f l m
g h i Shaded Area is PC
n o p
q r s
District-C
Scenario No.4: The PC consists of entire district as well as some AS or some parts of AS of some
adjoining district/districts and the DEO of this district is RO of the PC.
Ex: PC consists of entire Districts-A (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and i) & some part of AS of c i.e. c (ii) of
District-A is in District-B & some AS of District-C (only AS- o and p). DEO of District-A is the RO of
PC.
23
a b c(i) c(ii) j k
d e f l m
Shaded Area is PC
g h i
n o p
q r s
District-C
Scenario No.5: In case of Assembly election: If any AC falls in two or more districts, First
Randomization for allocating EVMs and VVPATs to that AC will be conducted by the DEO of the
district in which RO HQs of that AC is situated. That AC shall be mapped in EMS with the district
where RO HQs of that AC is situated.
Ex: Some part (b1) of AC-b is in District-A and remaining part (b2) in District-B. AC-b-RO HQs is at
District-A. AC-b shall be mapped in EMS with District-A.
a b(b1) b(b2) g
c d h i
e f j k
3.2. Action to be taken if 120% EVMs and 130% VVPATs are not available for first randomization:
(a) Randomize all the CUs and VVPATs available in the district for allocating them AC/AS
wise. Hence, as far as possible equal percentage of Control Units, allocate to all the ACs/
ASs without retaining any CU at District level.
(b) In case of BUs of EVMs, randomize the number of BUs equivalent to number of CUs for
allocating them to AC/AS wise i.e. the percentage of BUs should be equal to percentage
of CUs at each AC/AS.
(c) The remaining BUs should be available in the FLC strong room at the District level for
allocating to the PC/AC where more than one BU would be needed after withdrawal
of candidatures. However, this additional allocation after withdrawal should also be
randomized.
(d) Training and Awareness EVMs may be re-introduced to meet the shortfall, if any, by
following de-novo FLC and supplementary randomization etc., at later stage before
commissioning of EVMs.
3.3. Identification and recognition of EVMs for simultaneous elections
For clear identification and recognition of EVMs for simultaneous elections:
(i) Paste distinct colour (same as that of ballot paper) self-adhesive stickers containing
the words ‘LOK SABHA’ or ‘LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY’, as the case may be, on the
carrying cases of BU, CU and VVPAT.
(ii) Apart from the above, paste distinct colour (same as that of ballot paper) self-adhesive
stickers containing the words ‘LOK SABHA’ or ‘LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY’, as the
case may be, on top cover ‘BATTERY SECTION’ of the CU and on top of VVPAT.
(iii) Size of self-adhesive sticker - 6 cm x 3 cm.
24
CHAPTER-4
REPAIRING OF NON-FUNCTIONAL EVMs
4.1 The non-functional EVMs are sent to the respective factory of the manufacturers of the EVMs,
namely, BEL & ECIL for necessary repairs.
4.2 Strictly follow the following protocol for non-functional EVMs:-
a) Send FLC rejected EVMs to the manufacturers for repair within 7 days of completion of
FLC in that district. The CEO will coordinate and club non-functional Machines of multiple
districts for dispatching to the factory.
b) No movement of EVMs is permitted during the period from commencement of
Candidate Setting (commissioning) to the Counting day. However, transportation
of EVMs required for use in subsequent phases of elections or for training of election
officials is allowed under intimation to the National & State Recognized Political Parties and
Candidates.
c) Store all non-functional EVMs not used in the poll in Repair Strong Room, preferably in a
separate campus and never with other EVM.
d) POST ELECTION REPAIRS: Within 10 days of declaration of result, send all the non-
functional EVMs (except polled non-functional) to the respective factory for repairs and
non-functional polled EVMs, which are not involved in any Election Petition within 10 days
of confirmation of status of Election Petitions.
e) After repairs are carried out, BEL/ECIL to follow exactly the same testing protocol for all
repaired machines as for new EVMs.
f) The manufacturers shall not return the repaired EVMs to the respective State/ UT; the
repaired EVMs are to be stored in the factories till further allocation by the Commission.
CEOs/DEOs are not required to take back the EVMs sent to the factory for repairs.
g) The manufacturers will furnish a report of the repaired EVMs in the prescribed Proforma to
the State of dispatch/allocation and to the Commission. The same shall be uploaded in EMS
also.
4.3 Expenditure on Repairing of non-functional EVMs: Sender State will bear the payment
for repairing of all non-functional EVMs. The States/UTs where no specific Head for meeting
the expenses on repairs/maintenance of EVMs exist they may create necessary sub head viz.
“Maintenance of EVMs” for the purpose in consultation with the State Government.
No electronic repair can be done during FLC (except mechanical).

Shifting of these non-functional EVMs through EMS only.
25
CHAPTER-5
TRAINING AND AWARENESS OF EVMs
5.1 Schedule of Awareness program:

a) The Chief Electoral Officer shall fix a time schedule for a focused campaign throughout
the State. The campaign shall have three components:
(i) EVM Demonstration Centers (EDC)
(ii) Mobile Demonstration Vans (MDV)
(iii) Digital outreach
b) The awareness campaign shall be started approximately 3 months prior to announcement

of election (for this purpose date of announcement of the last election may be considered).
Further, awareness of EVMs by way of physical display and/or demonstration of the
machines in public shall not be conducted after announcement of election, whereas
digital outreach may be intensified after announcement.
c) A schedule for awareness campaign should be prepared by the DEO assembly
constituency/ segment-wise and adequate publicity shall be made in the media about this
campaign. Schedule of Awareness program shall be shared with National and State
Recognized Political Parties.
d) Only M-3 EVM shall be used in training, demonstration and awareness.
e) Physical demonstration of EVM would be carried out through ‘EVM Demonstration
Centre’ and ‘Mobile Demonstration Vans’.
f) CEOs to submit plan on Awareness for EVM at Annexure-15 approximately 3 months
prior to announcement of election and progress on EVM/VVPAT awareness every week
on Monday at Annexure-16 till the date of announcement of elections.
5.2 EVM Demonstration Centre (EDC):
(a) For physical demonstration-cum-awareness on use of EVM, EVM Demonstration
Centre(s) shall be set up at District Election Office and at the Returning Officer
Headquarters/Revenue Sub-Division Offices.
(b) The EVM Demonstration Centre shall remain operational till the announcement of the
elections.
(c) Adequate infrastructure with proper signage (banner on EDC and close to demonstration
table and Standee on demonstration table) should be provided in the EVM Demonstration
Centres. Adequate publicity shall be made in this regard.
5.3 Mobile Demonstration Vans (MDV):

(a) A Mobile Demonstration Van must be deployed for every Assembly Constituency/
Segment. However, the requirement of Vans may be assessed based on the geographical
and other local conditions of the AC/AS by the CEO/DEO and decision may be taken
26
accordingly, so that all polling locations/clusters/ELCs (Electoral Literacy Clubs) are

covered during the campaign period at least once.
(b) An officer designated by DEO shall accompany each Mobile Demonstration Van.
(c) Mobile Demonstration Vans shall be functional till announcement of Election.
(d) Mobile Demonstration Vans should be appropriately equipped with Audio-Visual
Equipment and proper signage (banner on vehicle and close to demonstration table
and Standee on demonstration table). Route chart with programme dates shall be
adequately publicized.
(e) Mobile Demonstration Vans shall be provided proper security and safeguards.
5.4 Digital Outreach:

Digital outreach component of the awareness campaign shall be dovetailed in the SVEEP
Plan of the districts and the State and executed accordingly during the campaign period.
Innovative creative contents on usage of EVMs shall be developed locally, if required in
vernacular languages, as part of the SVEEP Plan under guidance of SVEEP Division.
5.5 Protocol of EVM/VVPAT for Training and Awareness:

(a) For the purpose of Training and Awareness (T&A), District Election Officers shall
take out EVMs keeping the overall upper ceiling of 10% of the total number of polling
stations in the district. Awareness EVM shall be used only for the innovative physical
outreach mode described in para 5.2 and 5.3.
(b) It shall be ensured that only First Level Checked OK EVMs shall be used for the
aforesaid purpose.
(c) The representatives of National and State Recognized Political Parties shall be invited
to witness the process from opening and closing of the warehouse/strong room for the
purpose of taking out the EVMs under videography.
(d) The list of such EVMs shall be provided with acknowledgment to the National and State
Recognized Political Parties. This list shall also be shared with acknowledgment to the
candidates/their agents, as and when they are finalized.
(e) A yellow color sticker mentioning “Training/Awareness” shall be affixed on such EVMs
and also on their carrying cases without fail.
(f) There shall be no distinction between Training and Awareness EVMs. The machines
marked for Training/Awareness could be used interchangeably between Training and
Awareness purpose inter-changeably.
5.6 Storage Protocol:
(a) The abovementioned EVMs (Training &Awareness) shall be stored in a separate
designated warehouse, not below the sub-division headquarters with proper security
and lock.
(b) In no case, EVMs pertaining to Training and Awareness shall be kept in FLC Strong
Room.
27
(c) For opening and closing of Training and Awareness designated warehouse, there is
no need to invite the representatives of the recognised political parties. However, the
opening and closing of the designated warehouse shall be done by the authorized officer
nominated by the DEO.
(d) A proper log-book shall be maintained for proper account of EVMs pertaining to Training
and Awareness.
(e) Such EVMs shall be given only to the authorized officials deputed by the District
Election Officer.
(f) After the conclusion of daily training and awareness programs, these machines shall be
stored in the designated warehouse only.
5.7 The DEO shall ensure that the officials chosen for creation of EVM awareness/campaign,
as well as those nominated for handling the EVMs must be comprehensively trained on the
usage and functioning of EVMs.
5.8 EVMs pertaining to Training and Awareness may be re-introduced as Poll Day Reserve, after
de-novo FLC, randomizations, candidate setting, etc. carried out as per the extant instructions
of the Commission.
5.9 Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) for Training including demonstration and awareness
program of EVMs is enclosed at Annexure-17. A list of Potential Errors during training and
awareness is enclosed at Annexure-18.
5.10 Training of Master Trainers, Polling Personnel, Counting Personnel and Storage
Personnel:
(a) Presiding Officers, Polling Officers, Returning Officer, Assistant Returning Officers,
Sector Officers and Counting Personnel must be given hands-on-training related to their
role/duties on use of EVMs.
(b) Every official to get an opportunity to operate the EVM system and understand the process
of recording the vote using VVPAT.
(c) Separate training to be given on counting of printed paper slips from the VVPAT system
and tallying the count of VVPAT paper slips with the count of the Control Unit.
(d) A copy of EVM/VVPAT brochure should be given to all officers during training and be
made available at polling station on poll day.
(e) A training session may be incorporated in the training module of State Public
Administration Institutions, on operation & use of EVMs.
5.11 Hands-on-Training on VVPAT slips counting during training of counting staff:
(a) Mock drill of VVPAT slip count shall be included in training module of counting staff
for a more in depth and hands on experience so that there is no need to rush up conduct
of mock drill of VVPAT slip count for counting staff on previous day of counting of
votes, which has logistical issues/problems.
(b) EVMs pertaining to training and awareness shall only be used. In NO case, reserve
EVMs shall be used for training of polling and counting staff.
28
(c) Only dummy symbols prescribed by the Commission shall be used.

(d) Mock drill of VVPAT slip counting shall be done along with training of counting staff.
Mock drill of VVPAT slips shall be conducted in a dummy VVPAT Counting Booth
(VCB). For mock drill of VVPAT slips counting during training, a dummy (VCB) shall
be made.
(e) For training of counting staff at least 500 VVPAT slips shall be generated.
(f) VVPAT Slips used for training/Mock drill shall be destroyed through shredding machine
on a daily basis.
5.12 Destruction of VVPAT Slips generated during Training & Awareness
(a) Destruction of VVPAT slips generated during the training and awareness using Paper
Shredding Machine on a daily basis, in the presence of a Gazetted Officer duly nominated
by the DEO.
(b) Issuance of a certificate by the Nodal Officer in-charge of Training and Awareness exercise
regarding the daily destruction of all VVPAT Slips as per Commission’s direction.
(c) Further, the DEO shall submit a Certificate to the respective CEO on P-3 day for the
entire district attesting the compliance of these instructions.
NOTE: Use only FLC-OK EVMs with dummy symbols for training, awareness and
demonstration purposes.
29
PART – II
(From Second Randomization of EVMs to Counting of Votes)
Sl.
Chapter No. Contents Page No.
No.
STORAGE OF EVMs, OPENING OF EVM WARE-

6 Chapter –6 31-35
HOUSE DURING ELECTION & EP PERIOD
7. Chapter –7 SECOND RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs 36

COMMISSIONING OF EVMs (CANDIDATE
8. Chapter –8 37-44
SET)
9. Chapter –9 DISPERSAL OF EVMs 45-52

VOTING COMPARTMENT TO BE USED IN
10. Chapter – 10 53
POLLING STATION
11. Chapter – 11 POLL DAY 54-68

STORAGE OF POLLED AND UNPOLLED
12. Chapter – 12 69-71
EVMs AFTER POLL
13. Chapter – 13 USE OF EVM IN CASE OF REPOLL 72
14. Chapter – 14 COUNTING OF VOTES (EVM) 73-86
CHECKLIST AND PRECAUTIONS

15. Chapter –15 87-93
16. Chapter –16 DOCUMENTATION AND MONITORING 94-102
30
CHAPTER-6
STORAGE OF EVMs, OPENING OF EVM WAREHOUSE DURING
ELECTION & EP PERIOD
6.1. Election Period

6.1.1 Pre-Poll Storage: After first Randomization of EVMs till dispersal of polling parties
a) After first randomization of EVMs, handover EVMs to the RO/ARO concerned, as the case
may be, under proper armed police escort.
Guidelines to be followed:
i) Store EVMs in AC strong room in the presence of representatives of National and
State Recognised Political Parties under Videography.
ii) Keep Training and awareness EVMs in Training and Awareness warehouse.
iii) 1 Section Armed Security and CCTV coverage 24X7
iv) All the keys of Lock-1 with RO and all the keys of Lock-2 with ARO. In case
of Parliamentary Constituency election, if some Assembly Segments are in other
district(s), the all keys of Lock-1 with ARO and all the keys of Lock-2 with SDM/
Tehsildar concerned.
b) Store EVMs in separate strong rooms Assembly Constituency (AC)/Assembly Segment
(AS) wise.
c) In case of simultaneous elections, store EVMs pertaining to AC/AS separately in separate
strong rooms.
d) In exceptional cases, make separate temporary strong rooms for each AC/AS within
large strong room with separate entry for every temporary strong room.
e) Open the Strong Room at the time of commissioning of EVMs.
f) After commissioning, keep EVMs again in the strong room and open on the day of
dispersal in the presence of candidates or their representatives.
6.1.2. Post-Poll Storage (Polled EVMs storage): After poll till counting day
(a) After completion of poll, escort back the complete set of machines (BU, CU & VVPAT)
of a particular polling station to Collection/Reception Centre and store in the Polled
strong room in the presence of the candidates/their authorised representatives, under
videography.
(b) Store unused EVMs in separate “Reserve EVM” strong room in other location.
(c) Earmark all polling stations on the specified parts of the floor space of the strong room
in the form of squares in advance for stacking the EVM(s) of a particular polling station
in the respective square. In any case, EVMs of a particular polling station, should not
be stored in separate strong room i.e. all units used at a particular polling station should
be kept together in the square/rack earmarked for that polling station. If not feasible, to
accommodate all EVMs in one Strong Room follow the protocol mentioned below:
31
i. Keep polled EVMs (including non-functional polled) in multiple strong rooms,

adjacent to each other, and outside each strong room paste a notice indicating the
particulars of the elections, AC/AS name and No. and serial number of polling
stations whose EVMs are kept inside.
ii. Fabricated steel/iron/wooden multi-layer storage rack for storing polled EVMs
(including non-functional polled) as per ECI specifications.
6.1.3. Security & Safety arrangements for Polled EVM Strong Room:
(a) Single Entry/ Exit with all other doors/windows sealed with brick masonry/ concrete.
(b) Double Lock System.
(c) All the keys of Lock-1 with RO and all the keys of Lock-2 with ARO. In case of
Parliamentary Constituency election, if some Assembly Segments are in other district(s),
the all keys of Lock-1 with ARO and all the keys of Lock-2 with SDM/Tehsildar concerned.
(d) Minimum One Platoon of Armed Police for 24X7
(e) Two tier security arrangements round the clock. Innermost perimeter by CAPF and
outer perimeter by State Armed Police.
(f) CCTV Cameras with DVR and Uninterrupted Power Supply. CCTV Camera should
cover sealed Door of Polled Strong Room, security and corridor etc.
(g) Operative Control Room adjacent to the Strong Room.
(h) Log book for each entry, exit and duty roster for security personnel.
(i) Separate Log book for authorized officials (including Observers, DEOs or SPs) crossing
the second security ring i.e. the middle perimeter under Videography.
(j) Videography at the time of the opening and closing of strong room.
(k) Fire- extinguishers inside and outside of strong room. Adequate fire alarm system.
(l) No entry for any vehicle including VIPs & officials.
32
6.1.4 Protocol for Polled EVMs:

(a) Intimate all contesting Candidates, 24 hrs. in advance, in writing with acknowledgment,
for deputing their representatives for watching the security arrangements of strong
room and allow them to stay outside the inner perimeter. If entrance of the Strong
Room is not visible, arrange CCTV display for them.
(b) Make proper arrangements like drinking water, shamiana / tent etc.
(c) Circulate the phone nos. of CEO, Addl. CEOs, DEC in-charge in the ECI and the
DEO/SP/ COP/ROs concerned for emergency.
(d) Constant Videography of all the entry points (doors etc.) of strong rooms using the
web cams.
(e) Visit of RO to the storage campus (up to the inner perimeter only) twice a day in the
morning and evening to check the log book and Videography and send a report to
the DEO on the status every day.
(f) In case of strong rooms located in the district headquarters or outside the District
HQ, DEO is responsible for regular or frequent visits as possible and at least once
in 3-4 days.
g) DCs and SPs are responsible for security of strong room within the district and
meticulous implementation of the protocol. Copy of the Manual to be circulated to all
candidates, DEOs, ROs and CAPF commandant.
h) The above instructions will also apply mutatis mutandis to the storage of the voting
machines during the interval between the original count and the recount, if any.
6.2 After the Counting of Votes till EP Period
a) Sub-rules (1A) and (2)(cc) of Rule 92 of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961-Keep
all voting machines and the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of rule
57 C of the said Rule in the custody of concerned DEO.
b) DEOs are the custodian of EVMs.
c) A minimum of one section State Armed Police may be deployed till the EP period
is over.
6.2.1.Storage of EVMs after Counting of Votes:
(a) After completion of counting of votes, seal CU as per existing instruction of the
Commission after removal of power pack from CU. Thereafter, shift EVMs to
District Strong Room. In District Strong Room, EVMs and VVPATs should not be kept
together. VVPATs (having no VVPAT slips) should be stored separately in the District
Strong Room so that VVPATs can be used, if required, even during Election Petition
Period.
(b) Inform all the contesting candidates/their agents well in advance in writing with
acknowledgment about the location of EVM strong room. Allow them to put their
seals on the double lock system.
(c) Guidelines to follow if the strong room is at different place than the counting centre:
33
(i) Allow the contesting candidates/their agents to follow the vehicles carrying
EVMs and give intimation in writing with acknowledgment.
(ii) Provide proper armed escort for the vehicles carrying EVMs after counting of
votes with Videography.
(d) Do not keep EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) of 2 or more than 2 Assembly
Segments/Constituencies in the same strong room till completion of Election Period
(EP).
(e) In case of simultaneous elections, store EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) pertaining
to AC and AS in separate strong rooms i.e. do not keep EVMs pertaining to AC with
EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) pertaining to AS of PC in the same strong room.
(f) Guidelines to be followed in case of not keeping the EVMs (Ballot Units and Control
Units) pertaining to 1 AC/AS in a single room:
(i) Fabricate steel/iron/wooden multi-layer storage rack for EVMs.
(ii) Keep EVMs in two strong rooms, adjacent to each other within a building and
paste notice indicating the particular of elections, AC/AS name and No. and serial
number of polling stations outside of all such strong rooms.
6.2.2 Guidelines of the Commission on retention period of the EVMs (Under rule 94(aa) of the
Conduct of Elections Rules 1961) after using in election and for using the same in the
subsequent elections are as under:
(a) Do not touch any EVM (Ballot Units and Control Units) used in an election which are
in the custody of the DEO, under the standard protocol of security, till confirmation of
Election Petition (EP) position from the High Court concerned, after the completion
of the period for filing Election Petition i.e. 45 days from the date of declaration of the
result.
(b) Immediately after completion of EP period, obtain the details of the EP/Court Cases
pertaining to the election from the High Court/Court concerned.
(c) After ascertaining the position of EP/court cases from the court concerned,
(i) Within 10 days, send all the non-functional EVMs pertaining to actual poll (along
with list containing unique ID of BU/CU) to BEL/ECIL, which are not involved in
any EP/court cases.
(ii) Do not open the Strong Room in which the non-functional EVMs pertaining to any
EP/court case are kept. After final disposal of the EP/Court case, send the non-
functional EVMs for repairs to the respective factories within one month.
(d) If there is no election petition filed or no other court cases are pending, after the aforesaid
period, use EVMs for any future election or any other purpose like movement, physical
verification of EVMs etc.
(e) Take following action if EP filed: -
(i) If the EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) or counting of votes are the subject
of the EP, the EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) used at all Polling Stations in
the constituency continue to be in the safe custody of the DEO, till the EP is finally
34
disposed of by the Courts. However, move an application to the concerned Court

for taking out/releasing Ballot Units from the Strong Room for any future election
or other purpose, as Ballot Units have no election/result data. In case Hon’ble Court
permits the same, the procedure mentioned at (iv) shall be followed.
(ii) After disposal of election petition/court case, the CEO shall take the following
action:
• Ascertain the position of appeal from the Supreme Court.
• If no appeal is filed, the DEO shall be permitted to open the warehouse, if needed.
• Petitioners/respondents of the EP/Court case shall be invited through a Notice
regarding opening of the strong room.
(iii) If EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) are not subject of EP, move an application
to the concerned court for taking out the EVMs from the strong room for any future
election or any other purpose. In case, the Hon’ble High Court permits for taking
out the EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) for use in elections, there is no
need to ascertain about appeal filed in the Hon’ble Supreme Court. The procedure
mentioned below shall be following in such case.
(iv) Follow the procedure for segregating the EVMs not involved in any EP/court case
from the EVMs involved in EP/Court case stored at one place: -
• Give a notice informing the opening of Strong Room having EVMs
(Ballot Units and Control Units) involved in EP/Court Case to the petitioners/
respondents of the EP/Court Case and the representatives of all political
parties in writing at least 72 hours in advance, requesting them to remain
present at the time of opening of strong room.
• Open the strong room in the presence of the DEO, Petitioners/respondents of
the EP/Court case and representatives of Political Parties.
• Segregate and take out the EVMs (Ballot Units and Control Units) not involved
in any EP/Court Case from the EVMs involved in EP/Court Case from the
strong room under videography and provide a prepared list of EVMs taken out
to the petitioner/respondent of the EP/ court case and take acknowledgement.
(f) If any other Court Case is pending, like, booth capturing, etc., in which any EVM is
involved, keep the EVM concerned or the EVM(s) used at such Polling Station(s)
concerned till the final disposal of the said case. After the final disposal of the election
petitions or other court cases, as the case may be, referred to above, use the EVMs for
6.2.3 Lost/stolen EVMs
Action to be taken in case of traced or recovered lost/stolen EVMs
• Furnish a detailed report to the Commission.
• Recovered/traced units to be kept in a separate store and stock-taking of the same not to
be done, if already does not exist in stock inventory.
• After disposal of court cases (if any) send to the factory for destruction.
35
CHAPTER – 7
SECOND RANDOMIZATION OF EVMs
The purpose of Second Randomization is to allocate EVMs randomly to Polling Stations.
Second Randomization of EVMs is to be done after finalization of List of the Contesting Candidates
and just before the commissioning of EVMs.
Returning Officer will fix a schedule for 2nd Randomization and invite all the Contesting Candidates
in writing with acknowledgment at least 24 hours in advance.
Conduct 2nd Randomization of EVMs in EVM Management System (EMS).
Conduct Second Randomization of EVMs in the presence of all the Contesting Candidates/their
representatives in presence of General Observer(s) appointed by ECI.
In case of General/ In case of General/ In case of Simultaneous Exceptional case for
Bye-elections to Bye-elections to Lok elections to Lok General/Bye Election
Legislative Assembly, Sabha, allocate EVMs Sabha and Legislative to Lok Sabha by ARO
allocate EVMs Polling Polling Station-wise by Assembly, allocate
Station-wise by RO RO of PC concerned EVMs Polling Station-
wise, by RO of AC (for
SLA) and RO of the PC
(for PC election)
After, 2nd Randomization of EVMs, RO shall provide the list of randomized EVMs alongwith 1st
Randomization list to all the Contesting Candidates and obtain written acknowledgment.
RO will fix a date for preparation of EVMs for poll (candidate setting) after the last date of withdrawal
of candidatures and finalization of the ballot paper under written intimation with acknowledgment to
all the Contesting Candidates at least 48 hours in advance.
36
CHAPTER-8
COMMISSIONING OF EVMs (CANDIDATE SET)
8.1. Commissioning of EVMs after the last date of withdrawal of candidatures

a. RO draws schedule for commissioning of EVMs.
b. Commissioning of EVMs is done for all the assembly constituencies/segments in
separate halls.
c. Written intimation with acknowledgment to all the candidates about the schedule for
their presence to oversee the commissioning and actively participate in the mock poll
process and take their signatures on the register maintained as per Annexure-19.
d. In case of Parliamentary Elections, ARO will supervise the preparation of EVMs for
assembly segment.
8.2 Arrangements in the premises of preparation of EVM

a. Large Preparation hall to accommodate EVMs, officers nominated by the DEO, engineers
of concerned manufacturers and representatives of candidates.
b. In consultation with BEL/ECIL, install a TV Monitor for each SLU under use in
commissioning hall for simultaneously viewing the symbols being loaded in VVPATs
by candidates/ their representatives.
c. Fully sanitized to ensure that the hall is free from any electronic components or devices.
d. Single entry and exit point to hall with full security by atleast one Section of armed
police forces round the clock with 24X7 CCTV coverage.
e. Permission for Entry to hall through Door Frame Metal Detector (DFMD) on production
of Identity card of authorised official/pass issued by DEO.
f. Proper frisking at every entry and exit.
g. Neither allow anyone to carry any electronic device inside the hall nor anybody to take
out anything outside the Preparation Hall.
h. Commissioning of EVMs pertaining to Assembly Segment (AS) of PC falling in RO
headquarters may be done at ARO level under direct supervision of RO level, in the
presence of candidates/ their representatives. Further, the commissioning of EVMs of
remaining AS may be done by the respective ARO in the presence of candidates/their
representatives.
8.3 Manpower for preparation

a. Commissioning of EVMs shall be done by the officials deputed by the RO/ DEO.
b. Only the authorized engineers of BEL/ECIL to be associated for the commissioning of
EVMs.
c. BEL/ECIL to share the list of engineers with DEO for carrying out task during the
commissioning of EVMs in a district along with their identity card numbers etc.
37
d. Allow authorized engineers/technical staff of BEL and ECIL only to enter the preparation
hall.
e. Separate teams for conducting mock poll of 1000 in randomly selected 5% of EVMs.
8.4 Main tasks during preparation
Detailed instructions of the tasks performed during preparation of BU and CU of
EVMs are available in the Handbook for RO. Execute the following additional tasks:
8.4.1.Checking and Preparation of Ballot Units (BUs)-
a. Opening of outer cover of BUs by BEL/ECIL Engineers to examine and certify as in
Annexure-20 that all components of BUs are original and show to the candidates/their
representatives.
b. Separately issue detailed instructions for checking of BU by BEL and ECIL for their
respective machines and the list of equipment to carry within the preparation hall.
c. Sealing of ballot paper screen of BU with thread and address tag
After firm fixation of the ballot paper under the Ballot Paper Screen on the upper side
of top cover, seal the screen from inside, by passing the thread through two holes, at
the back of the ballot paper screen, using address tag showing the particulars of election
with seal of the RO.
d. Setting of Thumb Wheel Switch: Set the two digits of the rotary thumb wheel switches,
at the top right comer of BU, at desired position like 01 for BU-I, 02 for BU-2 and so on.
e. Masking Unused Buttons of BU: Unmask all candidate buttons including NOTA button
of BU as per the ballot paper and mask all remaining unused buttons of BU.
f. Sealing of plastic cabinet of BU with thread and address tag
After unmasking candidate buttons, seal the upper cover of the BU by thread passed
through holes on the top and bottom end at right side using address tags showing the
particulars of the election with the seal of the RO.
38
g. Sealing of plastic cabinet of BU with pink paper seal

• Pink Paper Seal has two portion/part of Pink Paper Seals of same Unique Serial Number.
First, split the seal into two separate Pink Paper Seals.
• Remove the gummed paper from Pink Paper Seal carefully.
• These two Pink Paper Seals shall be pasted on lower and upper sides of the Cabinet of
the Ballot Unit as shown in the figures:
Lower Portion Upper Portion
h. In case more than 01 Ballot Unit is used, Braille Sticker “Ballot Unit-1”, “Ballot Unit-
2 and so on shall be printed and affixed on the corresponding Ballot Unit on the TOP
MIDDLE PART of the Ballot Unit.
8.4.2. PREPARATION OF VVPAT- Rule 49B [4(c) (i) - (iii)] of the Conduct of Elections
Rules, 1961
Installation of paper roll Inserting of power pack

a) Install a new power pack (battery) to the VVPAT unit and shut the door of the battery
compartment. Do not seal the battery compartment as the power pack can be replaced
in case of low battery.
b) Install a fresh paper roll in the printer unit as per the procedure mentioned in the user
manual (Annexure-21).
c) Load allotted Serial numbers, names of candidates and symbols in VVPAT with the help
of engineers using Symbol Loading Unit (SLU). RO/ARO to check the test printout with
the ballot paper in BU & sign & certify the same. User Manual on SLU shall be provided
by the BEL/ECIL concerned.
Sealing of paper roll compartment of VVPAT:
39
After installation of paper roll in the paper roll compartment of VVPAT, seal the latches
of Paper Roll Compartment by passing a thread through holes provided on the latches
using Address Tag showing the particulars of the election with the seal of the RO.
(Ensure Switching OFF of Control Unit and keep the paper roll knob in horizontal
position (transport position) before sealing of paper roll compartment)
8.4.3. Preparation and Candidate Setting in Control Units:
a. Install new Power Pack in CU.
b. Connect cable of VVPAT with CU and cable of BU with VVPAT. In case of more than
one BU, the cable of BU-2 is to be plugged into connector at the back of BU-01 and
so on.
c. Unlock Paper Roll knob of VVPAT (Rotate to Working Position).
d. Switch ON the CU.
e. Press Candidate Set button of CU. Display Panel of CU shows Set Candidate_.
f. Press last candidate button (NOTA button) of BU to set candidate in CU.
g. Mock Poll with one vote to each candidate to check that the VVPAT is printing the paper
slips accurately.
h. Switch off the CU and Lock paper roll knob of VVPAT (Transport Position).
i. Seal the latches of paper roll compartment of VVPAT and Battery & Candidate Set
compartments of CU using thread seals and address tags.
j. Allow the candidates/their agents to affix their signatures with party abbreviations
on Address Tags.
8.4.4. Sealing of Control Units (CUs) -
Sealing of Candidate Set Section and Battery Section of CU with thread & address tag
40
After Candidate set, seal cover of the Candidate Set Section and Battery Section of
CU by passing a thread through hole provided on the respective side using address tags
showing the particulars of the election with the seal of the RO.
NOTE : All Seals used at the time of commissioning of EVMs & VVPATs shall be
signed by the Returning officers and candidates/their agents.
8.4.5. Identification of Reserve Units (BU/CU/VPAT):
a) Paste adhesive stickers with inscription ‘RESERVE’ on carrying cases of reserve BU/
CU/ VVPAT.
b) Pink sticker for Assembly Elections and White sticker for Parliamentary Elections.
c) Dimension of sticker: 15 cm x 10 cm.
d) Sealing of carrying cases of reserve BU/CU/VVPAT with address tag.
8.4.6. Safe custody of Symbol Loading Unit:
a) BEL/ECIL shall provide list of SLUs to DEO concerned.
b) SLUs brought by BEL/ECIL Engineers for symbol loading in VVPATs during commissioning
of VVPATs shall be in the custody of the concerned Returning Officer (Assistant
Returning Officer in case of Parliamentary Constituency election, if required) from
arrival in constituency to completion of commissioning.
c) After completion of commissioning of EVMs, BEL/ECIL Supervisors shall hand over
all the SLUs to the concerned DEO along with a list of Serial Number of the SLU for
safe keeping. DEOs shall keep the SLUs in their safe custody and return to BEL/ECIL
Supervisors or engineers authorized by the BEL/ECIL on P+ l Day.
8.4.7. Conduct of higher rate Mock Poll:
a. Checking of VVPATs. In 100% VVPATs, one vote to each candidate including NOTA
shall be given to check that the VVPATs are printing the paper accurately.
b. Mock poll of 1000 votes on 5% randomly selected EVMs. Percentage shall be calculated
on quantity of Control Units.
c. Tally the electronic result with paper count. Allow Candidates/their representatives to
pick machines randomly for this purpose.
d. Allow representatives of candidates to do the mock poll themselves and take their
signatures in a register in Annexure-22 as token of having done mock poll themselves.
e. Ensure that the pink paper seal of the CU applied at the time of FLC is not damaged in
any manner during commissioning.
f. Install new Paper Roll and Power Pack in VVPATs and new Power Pack in CUs in which
higher mock poll of 1000 votes cast.
8.4.8. Supervision of the preparation: RO or one of the AROs will supervise the preparation of
EVMs under CCTV/videography.
8.4.9. Braille Signage Features: Make Additional Arrangements to facilitate visually impaired electors
to exercise their franchise.
41
(a) Do not paste any Braille Sticker on the right of the blue button (voting button) on the
BU because it has embossed serial numbers of the candidates in Braille signage.
(b) After finalization of list of the contesting candidates, immediately send the list of contesting
candidates to the State approved /recognized Association/ Institution /University having
requisite expertise for preparation of Dummy Ballot Sheets which contains the serial
numbers of the contesting candidates, names of the candidate arranged in the same serial
numbers order in which their names appear on the ballot paper on the BU.
(c) Indicate the party affiliation of each of the candidates by printing the name of the political
party concerned against the name of candidate. In the case of Independent candidates,
print the word “Independent”.
(d) Prepare Dummy Ballot Sheet in regional languages (i.e. language printed on actual
Ballot Paper) in addition to English and supply a copy of the same to each of the PS.
(e) If more than 1 BU is used at a polling station, print separate dummy ballot sheet for
each BU.
8.5 Preparation of Dummy Ballot Sheet:
a) Give serial Numbers to candidates in each Dummy Ballot Sheet from 01 to 16. Ex.- if
number of contesting candidates are 19 including NOTA, number the serial number for
the candidates in first Dummy Ballot Sheet as 01 to 16 as mentioned on the Ballot Paper
of first BU. For contesting candidates at serial number 17-19 of BU-2, start the serial
numbers again from 01 on 2nd Dummy Ballot Sheet i.e. 01 for 17th Candidate, 02 for
18th Candidate and 03 for NOTA.
b) If more than 1 BU is used, print BU-01 in Braille on the TOP MIDDLE PART of first
Dummy Ballot Sheet and BU-02 in second dummy ballot sheet and so on.
c) Similarly, print Braille stickers ‘BU-01’, ‘BU-02’ and so on and affix on the
corresponding BU on the TOP MIDDLE PART’.
d) Print Dummy Ballot Sheets mentioned above in Braille signage by the State approved/
recognized Association/Institution/University having requisite expertise for this purpose
under the supervision of one responsible officer appointed by CEO of the State/UT.
Write the name of the constituency on Dummy Ballot Sheets in normal script at the top.
e) Commissioner of Disabilities of concerned State or his/her authorized representative
who will be an official knowing Braille, will certify each such sheet prepared for every
polling station.
f) Conduct detailed training and briefing sessions for the Presiding Officers and the Polling
Officers explaining them these facilities for the visually impaired electors.
g) Arrange for wide publicity of these measures through advertisements in newspapers and
TV etc. to inform the visually impaired voters for the arrangements made.
h) At the polling station, allow the visually impaired persons to take a companion along as
provided in Rule 49N of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961.
i) Give the Dummy Ballot Sheet in Braille to the visually impaired voter on his/her request
if he/she prefers to cast his/her vote with the help of same. After he/she studies the
42
contents of Dummy Ballot Sheet, allow his/her to proceed to the voting compartment to
cast her vote.
j) Such electors after reading the Dummy Ballot Sheet will be able to cast their vote by
reading the serial number of the candidate of their choice on the numeric sticker fixed on
the EVM (Ballot Unit).
k) After the voter has cast his/her vote, ensure that the Dummy Ballot Sheet delivered to the
voter is returned to the Presiding Officer.
1) After the close of poll, seal the Dummy Ballot Sheet in separate cover superscribed
“Dummy Ballot Sheet” for visually impaired and send to the RO along with other Non-
Statutory forms.
8.6. Destruction of VVPAT paper slips taken out during commissioning of EVMs:
VVPAT slips generated during Commissioning of EVM disposed of by using Paper Shredding
machine on daily basis in the presence of Returning Officer/Assistant Returning Officer.
Note:
1. In case any BU or CU or VVPAT does not work properly during commissioning of EVMs
only concerned unit should be replaced from the reserve one.
2. All Seals used at the time of commissioning of EVMs shall be signed by the Returning
Officers and candidates / their agents.
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A SAMPLE POSTER ON COMMISSIONNING OF EVMs

(TO BE DISPLAYED IN COMMISSIONING HALL)
44
CHAPTER-9
DISPERSAL OF EVMs
9.1 Inform date and time of opening of strong room in writing with acknowledgment to the
candidates/ agents whenever the EVMs are taken out of the strong room for dispatch to
polling stations.
9.2 At the time of dispatch, Presiding Officers to check and ensure:
Ballot Unit(s)
• Address Tags of BU pertain to the assigned polling station and tally with ID
mentioned on metallic plate/barcode sticker on the unit.
• Pink Paper Seals of BU are intact.
• Ballot Paper is inserted properly.
• Contesting Candidate Blue Buttons including NOTA are unmasked.
• Thumb wheel position is 01 for first BU (If more than 01 BU is used, Thumb wheel
position for 2nd BU is 02, for 3rd BU is 03 and so on).
Control Unit
• Address Tags of CU pertain to the assigned polling station and tally with ID
• Pink Paper Seals of CU are intact.
• Switch ON the CU (without connecting to BU and/or VVPAT) to check Battery status
and number of contesting candidates. Thereafter, Switch OFF the CU.
VVPAT
• Address Tags of VVPAT pertain to the assigned polling station and tally with ID
• Power Pack (Battery) is installed.
• VVPAT knob is in horizontal position (i.e. Transportation mode). If VVPAT knob
is in vertical position (i.e. Working mode), turn the knob to horizontal position.
9.3. Backpacks to carry EVMs as well as Backpacks for carrying polling materials to aid
hand free movement for polling parties in difficult terrain and safeguard the machines.
A. Backpacks shall be provided to all polling teams deployed in difficult terrain (like hilly areas/
locations wherein movement of machines by foot is involved). For this purpose, the Chief
Electoral Officers (CEOs) shall consider the following:
a. Backpacks to carry EVMs in difficult terrain:
i. The specifications of backpack to carry EVMs and polling materials is as under:
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Technical Specification for

Control Unit (CU Bag) Ballot Unit (BU Bag) VVPAT Bag
Size 15” (Vertical) 22.6” (Vertical) 17.6” (Vertical)
12.4” (Horizontal) 15” (Horizontal) 17.6” (Horizontal)
10.6” (Breadth/ 10.6” (Breadth/Thickness) 12” (Breadth/Thickness)
Thickness)
Fabric High Quality eco High Quality eco friendly High Quality eco friendly
Materials friendly material: material: material:
Specification outer shell Specification outer shell Specification outer shell
Fabric: Fabric: Fabric:
1000D OXFORD 1000D OXFORD 1000D OXFORD
COATING SOLVENT COATING SOLVENT PU COATING SOLVENT
PU *2+ *2+ PU *2+
Polyster ULY GSM 210 Polyster ULY GSM 210 Polyster ULY GSM 210
DYEING METHOD DYEING METHOD JET DYEING METHOD JET
JET DYEING DYEING DYEING
Specification of inner Specification of inner Shell Specification of inner
Shell Fabric: Fabric: Shell Fabric:
Pungi (Polyster) 140 Pungi (Polyster) 140 GSM Pungi (Polyster) 140
GSM W/R W/R GSM W/R
Colour Black Black Black
Bottom Bush/ 2.2” diameter (6 pieces 2.2” diameter (6 pieces per 2.2” diameter (9 pieces
Padded PVC per bag) bag) per bag)
Shoulder Base with fabric size Base with fabric size 3.5” Base with fabric size 3.5”
straps 3.5” width x 1” width width x width x
with adjustable nylon 1” with width adjustable 1” with width adjustable
strip and buckles) nylon strip and buckles) nylon strip and buckles)
On top with soft cushion On top with soft cushion On top with soft cushion
inside- 30mm width inside- 30mm width capable inside- 30mm width
capable of withstanding of capable of withstanding
20 kg weight withstanding 30 kg weight 30 kg weight
Zip 2 Heavy Duty Tony 2 Heavy Duty Tony Runner 1 Heavy Duty Tony
Runner Chain No 10 ZIP Chain Runner Chain
No 10 ZIP No 10 ZIP
Zipper (Fastener) with Zipper (Fastener) with 2 Zipper (Fastener) with 2
2 Nos. sliding tabs: Nos. Nos.
Toothed edges of plastic Sliding tabs: Toothed edges Sliding tabs: Toothed
with metal sliding tabs, of plastic with metal sliding edges of
(Heavy Duty). tabs, plastic with metal sliding
(Heavy Duty). tabs, (Heavy Duty).
46
Other The length of the back The length of the back strap The length of the back
Features strap is adjustable with is adjustable with good strap is adjustable with
good quality buckles quality buckles good quality buckles
The bag has interlocking The bag has interlocking The bag has interlocking
nylon strip stitched with nylon strip stitched with nylon strip stitched with
100% nylon 40 TKT 100% nylon 40 100% nylon 40
thread. TKT thread. TKT thread.
Buckles are made from Buckles are made from Poly Buckles are made from
Poly Acetal Materials Acetal Materials Poly
Acetal Materials
2 Chambers with a 2 Chambers with a width of NA
width of 10.6” for 10.6”
carrying 2 CU/Election for carrying 2 CU/Election
Materials Materials
Waist Trap with foam Waist Trap with foam Poly Waist Trap with foam
Poly Acetal Materials Acetal Materials Poly Acetal Materials
4 buckles of 1” with 4 buckles of 1” with 2 buckles 1” with
adjustable nylon strip adjustable adjustable nylon strip and
and buckles on the top nylon strip and buckles on buckles on the top of the
of the bag as additional the top bag for safety when zip
support of the bag as additional are fail
support
12 mm thick thermo 12 mm thick thermo cool 12 mm thick thermo cool
cool between the two between the two chambers of in the inner lining of the
chambers of the bag the bag as well as at the inner bag
as well as at the inner lining of the bag
lining of the bag
Multi colour ECI logo Multi colour ECI logo (6”x Multi colour ECI logo
(6”x 6”) customized 6”) customized embroidery (6”x 6”) customized
embroidery embroidery
Department Name Department Name Department Name
embroidery embroidery embroidery
Note: The above specifications are minimum desirable. However, States may adopt the
features with suitable modifications as per requirement.
47
BACKPACKS TO CARRY EVMS - INDICATIVE SAMPLES
BU CU VVPAT
Backpacks for BU
Backpack for CU
48
Backpack for
VVPAT
Photographs of indicative backpack samples

ii. Above mentioned specifications is for guidance of the CEOs. However, CEOs may
further improve upon them based on local situations and needs; in which case the
following aspects are to be necessarily considered while designing the backpacks:
• The logo of ECI is necessarily to be imprinted on all the backpacks.
• There will be provision of waist belt, straps, good quality buckles with lock, strong
and smooth zips.
• Padded head straps may be added as optional from the middle portion of the VVPAT
backpack especially for hilly terrain if needed.
• The length and width of shoulder straps for VVPATs should be adjustable.
• The back pack shall be water proof.
• In case of VVPAT backpack, extra padding for back support should be
incorporated.
iii. In case of simultaneous elections, the backpack for BU should have two pockets for
carrying two BUs. Similarly, the backpack for CU should have two pockets for carrying
two CUs. However, two separate backpacks should be used for carrying VVPATs.
iv. Tagging system for the identification of AC/AS, including the details of polling booth
number is to be used. In case of simultaneous elections, two different colours of the tags
have to be used as given: AC election - Pink colour, PC election - White colour.
B. Backpack for carrying polling materials in difficult terrain:
In order to provide hands-free movement while carrying polling materials in difficult terrain,
the CEOs may consider to add outer pocket/chamber on backpack to keep polling materials
for polling parties.
C. Necessary action on the matter shall be initiated on priority.
9.4. Trouble Shooting Instructions to be provided to Polling Parties
At the time of dispersal of Polling parties, hand over two copies of trouble shooting
49
instructions (Annexure-23) and a list of additional items of Polling material (Annexure-24)

to the Presiding Officer.
9.5. EVM-Intermediate Strong Rooms for Polling Team staying with EVMs at
intermediate location before poll and after poll
SOP for P-2/P-3 dispatch and P+1 arrival of Polling Parties:
• Earmark a Govt. building at the cluster point for polling parties and EVMs of P-2/P-3
dispatch Polling Stations and RO will inform the same to all the contesting candidates in
writing. Do not use Police Stations for such cluster points.
• Earmark a room as strong room for storing EVMs of the P-2/P-3 PSs at these designated
Govt. buildings. Keep all EVMs in the said strong room and seal in the presence of
Sector Officers and video graph the entire process. Allow the contesting candidate to
nominate their representative to watch the whole process, if they desire.
• In case there is more than one assembly segment involved, make a sturdy partition for
each AS of the said strong room in such a way that it can be properly secured by double
lock system/seals etc. Under no circumstance, mix the units of one AS with those of
another AS in one strong room.
• Maintain a logbook for opening and closing of the said strong room.
• Follow the aforesaid process for P+1 arrival of Polling Parties. Minimum half section
CAPF will guard the intermediate strong room, where polled EVMs are stored.
• A Nodal Officer may be appointed for Intermediate Strong Room(s) for arrangement,
coordination and to facilitate polling parties etc.
• In exceptional case, Police Station(s) for Intermediate strong room/cluster point may
be considered, if there is no Govt. Building for the purpose, with the approval of the
respective Chief Electoral Officer.
Videography by mobile for Opening/Closing of Intermediate Strong room(s) may
be considered, if it is not possible to depute videographer.
Note:
1. Instruct the polling parties for not testing the VVPAT at the time of dispersal and
before mock poll at polling station under any circumstance.
2. In case any BU or CU does not work properly during dispersal only concerned unit
should be replaced from the reserve one.
9.6. Use of vehicles with GPS tracking/Mobile app-based tracking for movement of EVMs
during election period.
a) Monitor the end-to-end movement of all vehicle carrying EVMs including Reserve
EVMs at all times using GPS/ Mobile app-based tracking.
b) DEO is responsible for the effective end-to-end GPS/Mobile-app based tracking and
monitoring.
c) Set up ‘EVM Control Room’ at DEO as well as CEO level for round-the-clock
monitoring and tracking through GPS Monitors and other related IT infrastructure/
50
applications.
d) Sector Officers shall not remove the EVMs from the authorized vehicles except where
required for election purpose or for safe storage at designated places.
e) DEO notifies the registration number and details of all vehicles carrying Reserve
EVMs along with the name of the Sector Officer to all National and State Recognised
Political Parties/ Candidates and Observers in the district.
f) The General Observer shall monitor the compliance of these instructions and record
an entry to this effect in the General Observers’ diary.
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Sample Poster for Dispersal Day

(To be displayed at Dispersal Centre and provided to Polling Parties)
52
CHAPTER-1O
VOTING COMPARTMENT USED IN POLLING STATIONS
10.1 To maintain secrecy of vote at the time of poll and uniformity on use of voting compartments,
follow the following instructions for use of Voting Compartment at Polling Stations: -
a. Voting Compartment will be only of corrugated plastic sheet (flex-board) of steel grey
color, which is opaque and reusable. The thickness of corrugated flex board for making Voting
Compartment will be minimum 3 mm.
b. In three folds, each fold having dimension of 24”x24”x30” (Length x Width x Height).
c. Self-adhesive stickers on all the three sides of the voting compartments as per Annexure-25.
The height of the table on which the voting compartment should be 30” as per Annexure-25.
d. If more than one BU is used for poll, increase the width of the voting compartment by 12” for
each additional BU. Where additional BU is used, arrange it in the manner as per Annexure-25.
While placing the EVM in the voting compartment, ensure that the secrecy of voting is not
violated and ensure that it is not near a window or the door of the polling station.
e. Route the interconnecting cable of BU/VVPAT in such a way that it does not obstruct the
movement of voters inside the polling station and they do not tread or trip over it, but the entire
length of the cable should be visible and under no circumstances be concealed under the
cloth or under the table.
f. Tape the connecting wires of BU, CU and VVPAT to the leg of the table with “Transparent
Adhesive Tape” of half inch width in such a manner that the wires do not hang in the air so
that the load of hanging wire does not impact the connecting switch of the BU and VVPAT.
10.2 Additional Directions:
i. Proper electricity arrangements at the polling stations.
ii. Place the Voting Compartment in such a way that sufficient light is available inside
the voting compartment, no direct lighting is placed over or in front of the voting
compartment.
NOTE: The size of the voting compartment as specified above includes the use of VVPAT.
53
CHAPTER-11
POLL DAY
11.1. Layout of polling station
PO-III with CU
Polling Agents
Presiding Officer
Polling Officer
11.2. SET UP OF EVMs AND VVPATs
54
11.3 Responsibilities of DEO, Presiding and Sector Officers on Poll Day

In order to ensure that the conduct of the Presiding Officers and other polling staff complies
with secrecy of votes, the following instructions shall be strictly adhered to:-
11.3.1 Supply of Dummy Ballot Paper to Presiding Officer
a) Supply a printed sample of EVM (Ballot Unit) pasted on a cardboard (real size) to
all the Presiding Officers along with other polling materials at the time of dispatch.
b) While printing such model ballot, ensure that only dummy name and dummy symbols
that are not in use, are used and not any real names or symbols and print in colour so
that ‘blue button’ ‘green light’ and ‘red light’ etc. are clearly represented.
11.3.2 Responsibilities of Presiding Officer
Presiding Officers are responsible for the conduct of the poll in the polling station and they
must have a sound knowledge of the voting procedures.
a) Whenever any voter asks for help or expresses inability to vote using EVM, explain
to the voter the voting process using the card board model of the EVM ballot in such
a manner that the voter is able to understand. This shall be done outside the voting
compartment only in the presence of polling agents.
b) Ensure inspection of BU in the presence of polling agents from time to time when
there is no voter inside the voting compartment.
c) All the CUs/BUs/VVPATs allotted to Polling Stations as well as the reserve machines
shall be kept in the strong room in the presence of candidates/agents.
d) Enquire all the complaints about the conduct of the polling staff at the polling station.
The Observers are being instructed to take serious note of such complaints and conduct
or cause enquiry in to such allegations and submit reports to the Commission.
e) If any voter alleges about the wrong printing of particulars of a candidate and/or
symbol of that candidate on VVPAT paper slip printed by the printer on pressing
of concerned blue (candidate) button on the Ballot Unit to which the printer is
connected, provide him a ‘Form of Declaration’ (Annexure-26) and take action in
accordance with rule 49MA of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961.
11.3.3 Responsibilities of Polling Officer-I
Before the first voter signs in Form 17A (Register of Voters), the Polling Officer-I shall
check with the Presiding Officer and record in INK in Form 17A that “Total in the Control
Unit checked and found to be Zero”.
11.3.4 Responsibility of Sector Officers and movement of reserve EVMs on Poll Day
a) As far as possible, reserve EVMs shall be provided to Sector Officers/Zonal
Magistrates on Poll Day.
b) In case reserve EVMs are provided to Sector Officers/Zonal Magistrates before Poll
Day, the reserve EVMs shall be kept at Government Building with proper security. In
absence of Govt. Building, reserve EVMs may be kept at police station in exceptional
circumstance only with written approval of the Chief Electoral Officer concerned.
55
c) All EVMs provided to polling parties or Sector Officers/Zonal Magistrates shall be

under cover of armed police at all times.
d) Reserve and non-functional un-polled EVM (replaced during mock poll) will be
carried by the Sector Officer with proper labeling like “RESERVE”, “MOCK POLL
REPLACED”.
e) Non-functional unit replaced before start of actual poll (mock poll) should not be left
in the polling station with the Presiding Officer.
f) The place of storage of reserve EVMs shall be identified and earmarked in advance
and intimated to all contesting candidates/their agents.
g) Categories C (Un-polled non-functional- replaced during mock poll on poll day) & D
(Unused Reserved) EVMs will be deposited at the same time when all polled EVMs
(Category-A) and polled non-functional (Category-B) are stored in the strong room
under written intimation to candidates and proper videography in separate room other
than the polled strong room.
h) Category C and Category D EVMs will be stored in EVM Repair Room and Reserve
Unit Warehouse respectively not in the building of Polled Strong Room (having
Category A and Category B EVMs)
i) 1/2 Section Security to warehouse/strong room, where Categories C & D EVMs are
stored.
j) Sector Officer shall submit a detailed account of reserve EVMs in prescribed format
at the time of deposition of reserve EVMs after close of poll on the same day.
k) SoP for Sector Officers on handling EVMs (Point 11.4 to 11.4.6) shall be provided to
all Sector Officers during training as well as on dispersal day.
11.4 Standard Operating Procedure for Sector Officer on handling EVMs
• A sticker containing “ON DUTY- Sector Officer/Zonal Magistrate” may be
pasted on the front (wind-screen) and backsides of the vehicles having reserve
EVMs on dispersal/poll days.
• Names and mobile number of the Sector Officer/Zonal Magistrate and the polling
stations covered by them may be shared with all the contesting candidates.
11.4.1 Collection of Reserve EVMs
• Returning Officer will provide reserve EVMs and extra Power Packs of CU and
VVPAT for poll day replacement.
• Reach the earmarked Collection Centre for receiving the same at scheduled time
fixed by the Returning Officer.
11.4.2 What to check on Reserve EVMs

• Stickers “Reserve” are pasted on the carrying cases of Ballot Unit(s), Control Unit(s)
and VVPAT(s).
• Check the unique ID of reserve BU(s), CU(s) and VVPAT(s) provided.
56
11.4.3 Intermediate Storage and Movement of Reserve EVMs

• Use only vehicles/other transport provided by the Returning Officer.
• On Poll Day, keep reserve EVMs in the provided vehicles/other transport.
• In case of P-3/P-2/P-l Day, keep reserve EVMs only in Intermediate Strong Room
earmarked by the Returning Officer.
• Ensure security person with vehicle.
11.4.4 Replacement Protocol
(All ‘ERROR’ messages for BU, CU & VVPAT will be displayed on CU only. Please
read message and act accordingly)
During Mock Poll
• BU not functioning: Replace BU only.
• CU not functioning: Replace CU only.
• VVPAT not functioning: Replace VVPAT only.
• Past prescribed sticker on Non-functional BU/CU/VVPAT replaced during mock poll.
• It shall be kept with Sector Officer. In no case Non-functional BU/CU/VVPAT replaced
during mock poll shall be kept in the polling station.
During Actual Poll
• BU or CU not functioning: Replace BU+CU+VVPAT
(Ask Presiding Office to do mock poll in new set of BU+CU+VVPAT by casting 1
vote to each contesting candidate button including NOTA and to follow other mock
poll process)
• VVPAT not functioning: Replace VVPAT only. (Advise Presiding Officer not to
conduct mock poll in such case)
• CU shows Error “Replace Power Pack of CU”: Replace power pack of CU only.
(Advise Presiding Officer not to conduct mock poll in such case)
• CU shows Error “Replace Power Pack of VVPAT”: Replace power pack of VVPAT
only. (Advise Presiding Officer not to conduct mock poll in such case)
• Non-functional BU/CU/VVPAT replaced during actual poll shall be with Presiding Officer
and deposited by Presiding Officer at Receipt Centre.
11.4.5 Deposition of Reserve and Mock Poll non-functional EVMs along with left out Power
Packs of CU and VVPAT by Sector Officer.
• Immediately after completion of poll, on Poll Day itself deposit reserve and mock
poll non-functional EVMs in the Receiving Centre or other place earmarked by the
Returning Officer.
• In case of P+1 movement, keep reserve and mock poll non-functional EVMs only
in Intermediate Strong Room earmarked by the Returning Officer and deposit in the
57
Receiving Centre or other place earmarked by the Returning Officer, as instructed.

11.4.6. DON’T
• Don’t use vehicle other than vehicle/transport provided by Returning Officer.
• Don’t use provided vehicle/transport without Signage, “Sector Officer- On Duty” on
front and back side of the vehicle.
• Don’t stay at any private place like hotel, home etc. Always stay in designated place.
• Don’t leave vehicle unattended under any circumstances.
• Don’t keep reserve and mock poll replaced EVMs without prescribed stickers in vehicle.
• Don’t keep EVMs at any private places. Always keep at places earmarked by the
Returning Officer.
NOTE: In case of any doubt, immediately contact the Returning Officer.
11.5. Replacement of Power Pack of the Control Unit:
• In case the Power pack of CU does not function properly or show low battery, replace
Power pack of CU. For this purpose Presiding Officer shall replace the Power pack
of CU in presence of polling agents and Sector Officer and again seal the Battery
Section of CU with Address Tag and obtain their signatures. Presiding Officer shall
submit a report in Format prescribed by the Commission.
58
Sample Poster of Poll Day for displaying at Polling Station
59
11.6. MOCK POLL ON THE DAY OF POLL
1. Start Mock Poll 90 minutes before scheduled poll time, if 2 or more polling agents available
2. Wait for 15 minutes, if one or no polling agents available
3. Place BU & VVPAT in actual Voting Compartment. These should not be moved after mock poll.
4. Place CU on Table of Presiding Officer/Polling Officer (In-charge CU)
5. Connect cable of BU with VVPAT and Cable of VVPAT with CU
6. Unlock (Working Position) Paper Roll knob of VVPAT
7. Show that VVPAT is empty
8. Switch ON the CU
9. Demonstrate no vote in CU
10. Cast at least 50 votes and record number of votes given to each (ensure votes recorded for each
of the contesting candidates including NOTA)
11. After mock poll votes, press ‘CLOSE’ button of CU
12. Thereafter, press ‘RESULT’ button of CU to ascertain mock poll result and tally with record
13. Remove mock poll VVPAT slips from VVPAT and tally with CU result
14. Press ‘CLEAR’ button of CU to clear mock poll result from CU and show to polling agents
15. Stamp mock poll VVPAT slips with stamp ‘MOCK POLL SLIP’
16. Keep mock poll VVPAT slips in Black Envelope and then seal the envelope with Pink Paper
Seal
17. Switch OFF the CU and Seal the CU with Green Paper Seal, Special Tag and Address Tag
18. Show empty drop box of VVPAT and then seal the drop box with Address Tag
19. Fill Mock Poll Certificate Part-I of Presiding Officer’s report – Annexure- 27 carefully
20. Switch ON the CU for Actual Poll and press “Total” button to confirm Zero votes.
21. Switch ON the CU for Actual Poll

60
11.7 Mock poll in case of replacement of EVM

• In case the CU or BU or VVPAT does not work properly during mock poll, replace the
respective unit only.
• In case the CU or the BU does not work properly during actual poll, replace entire set
of CU, BU and VVPAT. In such case cast only one vote to each contesting candidate
including NOTA should be polled in the Mock Poll and follow other instructions of
mock poll.
• In case the VVPAT does not work properly during actual poll, replace only VVPAT. NO
MOCK POLL is required in case of replacement of VVPAT only.
NOTE:
1. Provide adhesive stickers with inscription ‘MOCK POLL REPLACED’ to Sector
Officers for affixing on carrying case of rejected BU/CU/VVPAT replaced during mock
poll.
2. Paste ‘MOCK POLL REPLACED’ sticker on non-functional Machines carrying cases.
3. Specification of sticker:
i) Dimension: 15 cm x 10 cm
ii) Color: Pink for AC and White for PC elections.
11.8 Recording of Poll Start and Poll End Date and Time
The Presiding Officer, at the end of Mock Poll at the Polling Station, shall check and note
the date and time shown in the display of the CU and also the actual date and time as well
as any discrepancy between the two, if any, in the mock Poll certificate (Annexure-27) and
also in the Presiding Officer Diary.
11.9 Critical Mistakes
• Not pressing the CLOSE button of CU after mock-poll.
• Not matching the mock-poll result of the CU with the VVPAT Paper Slips.
• Not removing the mock-poll paper slips from VVPAT.
• Non-deletion of mock-poll data from the Control Unit.
• When setting up the EVMs and VVPATs in the polling station, the VVPAT to be
positioned so as to avoid direct light from falling on it.
• Do not position the VVPAT near an open window or directly under a bulb or
halogen lamp.
NOTE:
• Advise the Presiding Officer to show the Machine Numbers to the agents present before
the commencement of the mock Poll.
• The Presiding Officer will note the number and Serial Number of CU, BU and VVPAT
used at the Polling Station in his/her Diary.
• Keep Ballot Unit(s) and VVPAT in voting compartment when conducting mock poll.
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11.10. Various types of seals and tags used for Sealing EVMs
a. Common Address Tags for BU/CU/VVPAT
b. Special Tags
c. Green Paper Seals
d. Pink Paper Seals for sealing black envelope containing mock poll VVPAT slips
e. Thread and sealing wax etc.
PINK PAPER SEAL (TWO PARTs)
GREEN PAPER SEAL
COMMON ADDRESS TAG SPECIAL TAG

11.11 Sealing of EVMs on Poll day
A. At the Polling Stations on Poll Day after Mock Poll
(i) Sealing of black envelope having mock poll printed ballot slips with Pink
Paper Seal
62
After the mock poll, Presiding Officer removes all the printed paper (ballot) slips
from the drop box in the VVPAT unit, stamps the printed paper slips of the mock poll
on their back side with rubber stamp having inscription “MOCK POLL SLIP’ before
keeping and sealing these printed paper slips in the thick black envelope supplied for
the purpose. The envelope is sealed with the seal of the PO and Pink Paper Seals.
The following shall be written on the mock poll envelope:
VVPAT MOCK POLL SLIPs

Name of Election:
No. and Name of AC/PC:
No. and Name of Polling Station:
VVPAT ID:
Date of Poll:
(ii) Fixing of Green Paper Seal in Control Unit after Mock poll and before starting
actual poll on poll day
After mock poll and clearing mock poll data, switch off the Control Unit for sealing
Result Section of the CU.
Fixing of Green Paper Seal and closing of inner compartment
63
Affix Green paper seal on the inner side of door of Result Section as shown in the
above figure and close the door in such a manner that the two ends of the paper seal
project outwards from the sides of the inner compartment.
(iii) Sealing of inner door compartment (inner Result Section) with Special Tag
Seal the inner door of the Result Section by passing a thread through hole provided
on the left side using Special Tag showing the particulars of the election with the seal
of the Presiding Officer.
(iv) Sealing of outer door Result Section of CU with thread seal using Address Tag
and Green Paper Seal
After sealing inner door of Result Section of CU with Special Tag, close the outer
door of the Result Section ensuring that loose ends of the Green Paper Seal protrude
out from both the sides of the closed outer door. Then the Presiding Officer shall
64
seal the outer door by passing a thread through hole provided on the left side using
Address Tag showing the particulars of the election with the seal of the Presiding
Officer.
Thereafter, remove the wax paper from ‘A’ side of the Green Paper Seal and paste on
the outer door of the Result Section. Then remove the wax paper from ‘B’ side and
paste on top of the underlying ‘A’ side of the Green Paper seal in such a way that the
serial no. of the seal is visible on the top.
(v) Sealing of drop box of VVPAT with thread using Address Tag
Thereafter, seal the drop box with the thread and Address Tag before actual poll starts.
NOTE : All seals used on the poll day for sealing of EVMs & VVPATs shall be signed by the
Presiding officer and polling agents.
11.12. Handling Contingencies during Poll
11.12.1. Replacement of units during Actual Poll
(Switch OFF CU before any sort of replacement)
1. If CU or the BU does not work properly. Replace full set (BU + CU + VVPAT).When full
set is replaced then conduct Mock Poll by casting one vote to each contesting candidate
including NOTA.
2. If CU shows “Low Battery” for VVPAT, then replace power pack of VVPAT
3. If VVPAT does not work properly, replace VVPAT only. In this case No mock-poll is
required to be undertaken.
4. Replacement of Power Pack of the Control Unit: In case the Power pack of CU does
not function properly or show low battery, replace Power pack of CU. For this purpose
Presiding Officer shall replace the Power pack of CU in presence of polling agents and
Sector Officer and again seal the Battery Section of CU with Address Tag and obtain
their signatures. Presiding Officer shall submit a report in Format prescribed by the
Commission (Part-II of the Presiding Officer’s report Annexure-27).
5. If VVPAT has not printed the paper slip, or the printed paper slip remains uncut, then
i. Do not try to remove/cut hanging slip from the paper roll, no effort should be made
to make it fall into the drop box. It should be allowed to remain hanging as it means
that the vote has not been recorded in Control Unit and as it is not to be counted
at the time of counting of the printed-paper slips. The details of such an occurrence
should be clearly recorded in the Presiding Officer’s dairy in the following format: -
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a. The date and time of the occurrence.

b. The name of the voter and his serial number in the part in the electoral roll, who
was allowed to cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT.
c. Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went away
without casting his vote.
d. The Total number of votes cast before the occurrence.
ii. The last voter is allowed to cast his vote after the replacement of VVPAT.
In case of contingencies, the Presiding Officers may also refer to Annexure-23 for
solutions.
11.12.2. Wrong Printing Complaint
If any voter alleges about the wrong printing of particulars of a candidate and/or symbol
of that candidate on VVPAT paper slip printed by the printer on pressing of concerned
blue (candidate) button on the Balloting Unit to which the printer is connected, the Presiding
Officer of the polling station should provide his/her a ‘Form of Declaration’ (Annexure- 26)
to lodge a complaint and follow the procedure prescribed under rule 49MA, which reads as
under:
• “49MA. Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed on paper slip
Where printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote under
rule 49M alleges that the paper slip generated by the printer has shown the name or
symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for, obtain a written declaration
from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the elector about the consequence
of making a false declaration.
• If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1) - make a
second entry related to that elector in Form 17A, and permit the elector to record a
test vote in the voting machine in her presence and in the presence of the candidates
or polling agents who may be present in the polling station, and observe the paper
slip generated by the printer.
• If the allegation is found true - report the facts immediately to the RO to stop
further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the direction that may
be given by the RO.
• If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under
sub rule (1) matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2),
then-
a) Make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in
Form 17A mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom
b) Obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against such remarks;
and make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part I of Form
17C.”.
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11.13. Closure of Poll

1. Close the poll at the time fixed for the purpose, even if it had commenced somewhat
later than the hour appointed for the commencement of poll owing to some
unavoidable reason.
2. Presiding Officer will ensure that after the last voter has voted, the ‘CLOSE’ button
is pressed on the Control Unit. Note the total number of votes recorded in the EVM
in Item 6 of Part I of Form 17C.
3. Make note of the Poll end date and time displayed on the CU in the Presiding Officer’s
diary.
4. After prescribed Forms have been carefully and duly filled for the election,
disconnect the Balloting Units and VVPATs from the Control Units and seal them
in their respective carrying cases. In the case of simultaneous election, the papers
should be prepared and sealed separately.
11.14. Sealing of EVM in the carrying case after the close of Poll
1. First Switch off the CU and then disconnect BU, CU and VVPAT. Put back BU and
CU in their respective carrying cases.
2. Presiding Officer will remove the power pack (battery) from VVPAT in the
presence of polling agents. Only after removal of power pack (battery) form VVPAT,
seal the carrying case of VVPAT in the presence of polling agents. The removed
power pack (battery) of the VVPAT shall be deposited at the collection centre. These
power packs will not be stored in strong room.
3. Seal each carrying case at both ends by passing a thread through the two holes
provided for the purpose on both sides of the carrying case and putting thread seal
with an address tag.
4. Presiding Officer shall put his/her signature on address tags and also obtain the
signatures of polling agents.
5. Deposit all the sealed EVMs and VVPATs and election records to the Returning
Officer, at the reception/collection centre, as per the prescribed procedure.
11.15. Presiding Officer’s Report Format (Annexure-27) to be obtained on Poll Day.
a) Part-I (Mock Poll Certificate).
b) Part-II (Replacement of Power Pack of the Control Unit): To be filled whenever
Power Pack of the Control Unit is replaced.
c) Part-III (Pressing of Close Button after completion of Poll Certificate): To be filled
after completion of Poll.
d) Part-IV (EVM replacement Report, if replaced during Mock Poll).
e) Part-V (EVM replacement Report, if replaced during Actual Poll).
Collection of Presiding Officer’s Report
(i) Part-I, Part-II and Part-III of the Presiding Officer’s Report shall be kept in an envelope.
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Details to be printed on envelope:
Name of election:...............................................................................(to be pre-printed)

No. and Name of AC/AS:...................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of PC:.........................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Polling Station No:...........................................................................................................
The Presiding Officer shall deposit the said envelope along with EVM and other
election material at Receiving Centre.
(ii) Part-IV and Part-V of the Presiding Officer’s Report shall be collected by the Sector
Officer, whenever any replacement is done. Sector Officers shall submit the said
Reports to the Returning Officer.
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CHAPTER-12
STORAGE OF POLLED AND UN-POLLED EVMS AFTER POLL
12.1 The Four categories of EVMs and VVPATs after Poll:

1. Category ‘A’ - Polled EVMs
2. Category ‘B’ - Non-functional Polled EVMs (Replaced during actual poll)
3. Category ‘C’ - Non-functional Un-polled EVMs (Replaced during mock poll)
4. Category ‘D’ - Unused Reserve EVMs
Three categories of strong rooms:
1. Polled Strong Room (Store category ‘A’ & ‘B’)
2. Repair Strong Room (Store category ‘C’), not in the vicinity of AC/AS strong room
3. Reserve Strong Room (Store category ‘D’), not in the vicinity of AC/AS strong room
Common Instructions for Safe Storage and Safety of all 04 Categories of EVMs
1. Advance identification of storage space & earmark as per Category A, B, C & D and intimation to
all contesting candidates in writing with acknowledgement.
2. Under any circumstances don’t store C & D category machines in Polled Strong Room having
category A & B machines for ensuring that unused machines are not blocked with the polled
machines till the EP period is over.
3. Armed Police cover for all Polling parties or authorized officials at all times.
4. After the Polls also follow the same protocol for all categories of EVMs.
5. After the Polls, safely deposit all categories of EVMs at the pre-designated receipt centre on the
same day.
6. Do not keep any election related material in EVMs Polled Strong Room other than materials
-Form-l 7C, Pr. O’s Declaration and Envelope containing mock poll slips or as specifically
prescribed by the Commission.
7. Security arrangements for all categories of machines as per ECI instructions.
Store Category ‘A’ & ‘B’ in Polled Strong Room

1. Store Polled and Non-functional Polled EVMs in the same strong room as per procedure.
2. Ensure that 2 or more than 2 ACs machines are not stored in the same strong room after
completion of poll and counting of votes till the completion of the EP period.
3. Safely keep the machines in demarcated space or the racks for safe storage as per ECI
guidelines with prior intimation to the candidate & under proper Videography.
4. For detail instructions kindly see para-6.1.2 to 6.1.4 Chapter-6
Store Category ‘C’ in Repair Strong Room
1. Store category ‘C’ separately in a separate room other than vicinity of the polled strong room.
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Store Category ‘D’ in unused Reserve Strong

Room
1. Store unused Reserve EVMs in a separate room other than vicinity of Polled Strong room so
that these are made available for the purpose of any Re-Polls.
2. Paste ‘Unused EVMs’ on the carrying cases of such category of BUs, CUs and VVPATs.
3. Sector Officers shall submit a detailed account of the Reserve EVMs in Annexure-28 at the
time of deposition of the Reserve EVMs/VVPATs after the close of poll on the same day.
4. The RO shall furnish a Certificate in the prescribed format (Annexure-29)
12.2 Storage of Non-functional un-polled EVM (Category-C) and un-used reserve

E V M (Category-D)
• In case of State Legislative Assembly Election
(a) Store Category-C EVMs of all Assembly Constituencies in respective
District Headquarters.
(b) Store Category-D EVMs of all Assembly Constituencies in a single
warehouse with proper categorization of AC with temporary partition.
• In case of election(s) to the Parliamentary Constituency (ies)/Lok Sabha
(a) Store Category-C EVMs of all Assembly Segments at District warehouse.
(b) Store Category-D EVMs of all Assembly Segments in a single warehouse
with proper categorization of AS within Parliamentary Constituency.
• Categories C & D EVM are deposited at the same time when all polled EVMs
(Category-A) and polled non-functional EVMs (Category-B) are stored in the
strong room under written intimation to candidates and proper videography.
Candidates may depute their representatives.
• Minimum 1/2 Section Armed security to warehouse/strong room, where
Categories C & D EVMs are stored.
12.3 SoP on handling of damaged/broken EVMs during election process.
1. With regard to handling of damaged/broken EVMs, after dispersal to mock poll on
poll day and during actual poll on poll day, by miscreants or any other reason, the
following SoP shall be followed:
i) After dispersal to Mock poll on poll day: EVM damaged after dispersal to
mock poll on poll day shall be stored in the strong room having defective
un-polled EVMs (Category C).
ii) During actual poll on poll day/before counting: Handling of EVM having
polled data damaged/broken during actual poll on poll day
(a) Such EVM shall be kept in the strong room having polled EVMs
(Category A) and defective polled EVMs (Category B), if the polled
votes can be retrieved/paper slips are intact to obtain result during
counting of votes.
(b) Such EVM shall be kept in the strong room having un-polled defective
EVMs (Category C), if the polled votes cannot be retrieved/paper slips
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are not intact.

2. The damaged/broken machines shall be marked as damaged in EVM Management
System (EMS) by the DEO.
3. In all such cases an FIR shall be filed under the relevant Sections of the Representation
of the People Act, 1951, as under, and a detailed report with a copy of FIR shall be
sent to the Commission:
i) Section 129 (Officers, etc., at elections not to act for candidates or to influence
voting)
ii) Section 132 (Penalty for misconduct at the polling station)
iii) Section 134 B (Prohibition of going armed to or near a polling station)
iv) Section 135 (Removal of ballot papers from polling station)
v) Section 135A (Offence of booth capturing)
vi) Section 136 (Other offences and penalties therefore)
vii) In addition to the aforesaid offences under the Representation of the People Act,
1951, Section 171C (Undue influence at elections), Section 506 (Punishment
for criminal intimidation), 425 (Mischief), etc. of IPC shall also be suitably
considered along with any other applicable provisions/statutes while filing
FIR in all such cases.
4. The Chief Electoral Officer concerned shall follow up the FIR case with Police
Department concerned.
5. The damaged/broken machine mentioned at para l (ii)(a) above shall be inspected
only on the order of the competent court as Rule 93 (IA) of the Conduct of Elections
Rules, 1961, which specifies that the control units sealed under the provisions of rule
57C and kept in the custody of the District Election Officer shall not be opened and
shall not be inspected by or produced before, any person or authority except under
the orders of a competent court.
6. The damaged / broken machine mentioned at para 1(i) and 1(ii)(b) above shall be
provided for investigation purpose, if required. However, such EVM shall be in the
custody of District Election Officer concerned.
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CHAPTER-13
USE OF EVMs IN CASE OF RE-POLL
In case of re-poll:
1. Draw EVMs from the unused reserve list and inform their numbers to the candidates/ agents
in writing.
2. Ensure that the address tag on the EVMs clearly mentions that EVMs are for use in the re-poll
indicating the date and Polling Station number.
3. Paste “Re-poll EVM” pre-printed sticker on the EVMs and on their carrying cases.
4. After re-poll, re-open the strong room in presence of the candidates/ their agents and observer
for storage of the re-polled EVMs.
5. Place re-polled EVMs together with the old EVMs which were used earlier in the original
poll. Paste “TO BE COUNTED’ sticker with bold print at the time of placing the ‘Re-poll
EVM’ in the strong room.
6. Paste ‘NOT TO BE COUNTED’ sticker with bold print on the old EVMs/VVPATs, to
remove any confusion at the time of counting.
7. Enter the unique ID number of the EVMs used in re-poll in EMS.
8. Specification of sticker:
Dimension: 15 cm x 10 cm
Color: Pink for AC and White for PC elections.
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CHAPTER-14
COUNTING OF VOTES
14.1 General Instructions
(a) Polled Strong Room shall be opened in the presence of candidates/their authorised
representatives, ECI observer, RO/ARO, under videography.
(b) At the time of counting, only bring CUs to the Counting Hall. In case of polling station(s)
the repoll was held, the CU on which sticker “TO BE COUNTED” is pasted shall be brought
to the Counting Hall.
(c) The movement of EVMs to the counting hall should be in the most secure manner
in a barricaded passage/secured passage. The movement of EVMs from the Strong
Room to the Counting Hall shall be under CCTV coverage.
(d) Verify the unique ID of the CU, the Pink Paper Seal and the green paper seal and
show to the counting agents before starting the counting.
(e) Press ‘TOTAL’ button of CU to ascertain total votes polled in CU and compare/
match with total votes polled in EVM mentioned in form 17C.
(f) Verify the poll start date & time and poll end date & time displayed on the CU and
show to the counting agents.
(g) Before taking signature of candidates/their agents/counting agents in Part II of Form
17C, in space between counting supervisor signature and signature of candidates/
their agents/counting agents, write in pen - “We, hereby certify that CU No(s) i s /
are the same which were used in the Polling Station No...................
14.2 Procedure in case of discrepancy in the date & time of start and end of poll in Control
Unit
(a) Compare the difference with the date & time noted in the mock poll certificate.
(b) If the difference does not match with the date & time difference of start and end of poll
at the time of counting, keep the EVM (Control Unit) aside and refer the matter to the
Commission.
(c) If matches with the difference of date & time of start and end of poll noticed at the
time of counting, explain the discrepancy to the candidates and their representatives.
(d) Count the votes polled in the EVM (Control Unit) in the usual manner.
14.3 Procedure in case the close button is not pressed at the end of the poll-
(a) Take the following action during counting of votes, in the presence of candidates/their
authorized agents, under videography:
(b) Press ‘TOTAL’ button of the CU to see total votes polled in the CU. If total votes
polled in the CU tally with total votes polled in CU mentioned in Form-17C, Counting
Supervisor should press the “Close” button of the Control Unit(s) and then press
“Result” button for getting result data.
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(c) If total votes polled in the CU don’t tally with total votes polled in CU mentioned
in Form-17C, keep the CU back inside its carrying case and keep under Returning
Officer’s custody in the counting hall. Count the votes in other machines as usual.
Action shall be taken as mentioned in para 14.5.
14.4. Instructions in case of Control Unit does not display result at the time of Counting.
a) First install new power packs in CU to obtain Result. Even then CU does not display
result, keep the CU inside its carrying case and then under the Returning Officer’s
custody in the counting hall. Counting of votes in other machines should continue
as usual.
b) Corresponding VVPAT shall be counted as per 14.8.
c) A report regarding counting of printed ballot slips of VVPAT should be sent to the
information.
S.No. No. and Name of AC/ Polling Unique ID Unique ID of CU for

AS (in case of PC) Station No. of VVPAT which VVPAT paper
slips counted
14.5. Issues regarding counting of VVPAT slips: non-deletion of mock poll data from the
Control Unit or non-removal of mock poll slips from VVPAT or total votes polled in
CU does not match the record of votes in Form 17C-
(a) Pre-identified cases (on poll day, during scrutiny of documents on P+l day etc.),
where mock poll is either not erased from the Control Unit or VVPAT paper slips
pertaining to mock poll not removed (fully or partially).
(b) During the round-wise counting of EVMs, if there is any case in which the total votes
polled in CU does not match the record of votes in Form 17-C, it is an indication
that the Close Result-Clear (CRC) protocol after mock poll was not correctly done in
respect of this polling station during the actual poll.
In the above cases, the following action shall be taken:
i) In all such cases, the CU shall be kept aside i.e. these polling stations will not
be taken up for counting during the regular round-wise counting of the Control
Units. The Table allocated to such polling stations shall be kept vacant during
the relevant round of counting.
ii) The list of all pre-identified polling stations shall be shared with the contesting
candidates before the commencement of process of counting.
iii) After the completion of all regular rounds of Control Unit counting, the following
procedure shall be followed:
A. For State Assembly Elections:
(i) If the winning margin is more than the total votes polled in all such polling
stations, these polling stations, identified as mentioned above, will not be
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taken up for counting and the result will be declared without these polling
stations.
(ii) If the winning margin is equal to or less than total votes polled in these
polling stations, in such case only counting of the respective VVPAT paper
slips will be done and the Control Units shall be discarded for counting
purpose i.e. the Control Units shall not be used for counting of votes.
(iii) Even in cases where VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock poll have not
been taken out from the drop box of the VVPAT, the VVPAT slips shall be
counted and the candidate wise votes from mock poll certificate shall be
deducted to arrive at correct count of candidate wise votes polled.
(iv) The VVPAT slip count result of all these polling stations shall be added to
the candidate-wise tally and the final result compiled.
B. For Lok Sabha Elections:
(i) For all the polling stations where EVM and VVPAT has been kept aside
as mentioned above, will not be taken up for counting in any Assembly
Segment of the Parliamentary Constituency till completion of counting of
votes in all Assembly Segments of that Parliamentary Constituency.
(ii) If the winning margin is more than the total votes polled in all such polling
stations of all the Assembly Segments, these polling stations, identified as
per para 14.5 (a) and (b), will not be taken up for counting and the result
will be declared without these polling stations.
(iii) If the winning margin is equal to or less than total votes polled in these
polling stations of the Assembly Segments, in such case only counting of
the respective VVPAT paper slips will be done in the respective Assembly
Segment and the Control Units shall be discarded for counting purpose i.e.
the Control Units shall not be used for counting of votes.
(iv) Even in cases where VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock poll have not
been taken out from the drop box of the VVPAT, the VVPAT slips shall be
counted and the candidate wise votes from mock poll certificate shall be
deducted to arrive at correct count of candidate wise votes polled.
(v) The VVPAT slip count result of all these polling stations shall be added to
the candidate-wise tally and the final result compiled.”
C If there is any discrepancy or difficulty to arrive at correct count of candidate wise
votes polled, the matter shall be referred to the Commission for further direction
in the matter.
D Since, in the aforesaid cases, the Control Unit(s) will be discarded/not used for
counting of votes, these polling stations will be excluded from the random
selection of 5 (five) Polling Stations for Mandatory Verification of VVPAT paper
slips count.
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14.6. Candidate Demanding VVPAT Paper Slips Counting under Rule 56D
(1) After announcement of result sheet entries, any candidate, their election agent or
their counting agents may apply in writing to the RO for counting the printed VVPAT
paper slips in any or all polling stations. If such application is received, the RO should
pass a speaking order on whether the VVPAT paper slips should be counted. If the RO
decides to allow the counting of the VVPAT paper slips of any or all polling stations,
such decision of the RO must be recorded in writing along with the reasons thereof.
The RO should give due consideration to the following:
(a) Whether the total number of votes polled in that polling station is greater
or lesser than the margin of votes between winning candidate and candidate
demanding the counting.
(b) Whether EVM had a problem and was replaced at that polling station during
poll
(c) Whether there was any complaint about VVPAT not printing or complaints by
any voter under Rule 49MA in that polling station during the poll.
(2) A report regarding counting of printed ballot slips of VVPAT should be sent to the
information.
S. No. and Name Polling Unique ID Unique ID of CU for which

No. of AC/AS (in Station of VVPAT VVPAT paper slips counted
case of PC) No. under Rule 56D of the Conduct
of Elections Rules 1961
14.7. Mandatory Verification of VVPAT Paper Slips:

(a) Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 05 (five) polling
stations must be conducted in all General and Bye Elections to the House of the
People and State Legislative Assemblies, in addition to the provisions of Rule 56D
of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, after the completion of the last round of
counting of votes recorded in the EVMs, as under:
i. In case of General and Bye elections to State Legislative Assemblies, verification
of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 05 (five) polling stations per
ii. In case of General and Bye elections to the House of the People, verification
of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected OS(five) polling stations of each
Assembly Segment of the Parliamentary Constituency concerned. For this
mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips, the following procedure to be
followed:
(b) The verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 05 (five) polling stations
for each Assembly Constituency/Segment should be done after the completion of the
last round of counting of votes recorded in the EVMs and VVPAT paper slips count
due to non-display of result from the Control Unit(s) or under Rule 56(D) of the
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Conduct of Elections Rules 1961 or whatsoever the reason.

(c) The random selection of 05 (five) polling stations per Assembly Constituency/
Segment to be done by Draw of lots, by the Returning Officer concerned, in the
presence of candidates/their agents and the General Observer appointed by the
Commission for that Constituency.
(d) The draw of lots must be conducted immediately after the completion of the last round
of counting of votes in the designated Counting Hall for the particular Assembly
Constituency/Assembly Segment.
(e) A written intimation regarding the conduct of draw of lots for the random selection
of 5 (five) polling stations for verification of VVPAT Slips should be given by the
Returning Officer to the Candidates/their election agents well in advance.
(f) The following procedure to be followed for the conduct of draw of lots:
i) Use White colour paper cards of postcard size for conducting the draw of lots.
ii) Total number of such paper cards must be equal to total number of polling
stations in the Assembly Constituency.
iii) Do not include the polling stations where VVPAT paper slips have been counted
due to non display of result from the Control Unit(s) or under Rule 56(D) of
the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, polling station (s) mentioned in para
14.5 or whatsoever the reason in the draw of lots by mandatory verification of
VVPAT slips count.
iv) The paper cards to have pre-printed Assembly Constituency/Assembly
Segment number, AC/AS name and date of polling on the top, and the polling
station number in the Centre.
v) Each digit of the polling station number should be at least l”xl”(l inch by 1
inch) size and printed in black ink.
vi) The paper cards to be used for draw of lots should be four-folded in such a
way that polling station number is not visible.
vii) Show each paper card to the candidates/their agents before folding and
viii) Keep the paper cards in a big container and shake well before picking up one-
by-one 5 (five) slips by the Returning Officer.
(g) The verification of VVPAT paper slips should be done in a VVPAT Counting
Booth’(VCB), specially prepared for this purpose inside the Counting Hall. The
booth should be enclosed in a wire mesh just like a bank cashier’s cabin so that no
VVPAT paper slip can be accessed by any unauthorized person. One of the Counting
tables in the Counting Hall can be converted into the VCB and can be used for
normal counting of round-wise EVM votes before the count of VVPAT slips as per
random selection after the completion of round- wise EVM counting.
(h) Conduct the Verification count of the VVPAT paper slip of the randomly selected 5(five)
polling stations sequentially i.e. one after another.
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(i) Strictly conduct the verification count of the VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected
05 (five) polling stations in accordance with the instructions of the Commission on
counting of printed paper slips.
(j) The Returning Officer and the Assistant Returning Officer, as the case may be, should
personally supervise the counting of VVPAT paper slips at the VCB. The Observer
concerned should maintain close and direct oversight on the entire exercise and
ensure strict compliance of the Commission’s instructions.
(k) In case there is any mismatch between electronic count of the Control Unit and
VVPAT slips manual count, recounting of the VVPAT slips of that particular EVM
to be counted till it tallies either with the EVM count or one of the previous VVPAT
slips counts.
(l) After completing the process as specified in para 14.7.10. above, if there is any
discrepancy between EVM count and VVPAT paper slips count, as per Rule 56(D)
(4)(b) of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, the VVPAT paper slips count should
prevail. Hence, if there is any discrepancy between the count of votes displayed on
the Control Unit and the count of printed paper slips in respect of that polling station,
amend the result sheet as per the printed paper slips count.
(m) The above process must be fully video recorded.
(n) After completion of the above process, the Returning Officer should give a certificate
in the annexed format (Annexure-30) separately for each polling station to the Chief
Electoral Officer concerned. The CEO should compile the reports for the entire
State/UT and submit a consolidated summarized report to the Commission within 7
days from the end of counting process.
(o) The Observer appointed by the Commission should also submit their report to the
Commission in the annexed format (Annexure-31)
14.8 Sequence of VVPAT Slips Count
a) Count the VVPAT slips of polling station(s) for which result is not displayed on the
Display Panel of the Control Unit.
b) Count the VVPAT slips of polling station(s) ordered/instructions issued by the
Commission due to improper conduct of mock poll procedure by non-clearance
of mock poll data/slips or mismatch of votes polled in CU and Form-l 7C.
c) Counting of VVPAT slips under Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules
1961, if any.
d) Mandatory verification of VVPAT slips of randomly selected 05 polling
stations per Assembly Constituency/each Assembly Segment of Parliamentary
Constituency.
e) Further, count the VVPAT paper slips one by one not simultaneously.
f) Every VVPAT paper slips count to be considered as a separate round.
g) In respect of Step c & d, amend the result sheet as per the printed paper slips
count, if the paper counts differ from electronic count (CUs) to VVPAT paper
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slips count in terms of Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961.
14.9 Arrangements for Counting of VVPAT Paper Slips:
a) Returning Officer should earmark one of the Counting Tables inside the Counting
Hall as VVPAT Counting Booth (VCB) for Counting of VVPAT Paper Slips.
b) VCB should have minimum length 6 ft, breadth 6 ft and height 8 ft.
c) All four sides and ceiling should be covered with narrow wire mesh and a circular
hole of 5 cm radius at suitable height for the counting agents’ transactions.
d) Installation of CCTV on ceiling just above the counting table for monitoring and
recording purpose.
e) Seating arrangements for at least 4 persons inside the VCB.
14.10 Procedure to Count VVPAT Paper Slips:
If the RO decides to count the printed paper slips of any polling station(s) on an appeal
for recounting of any polling station(s), the following procedures to be strictly followed:
Step-1:
a) For keeping VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the Drop Box of the VVPAT, a
sufficiently sized container with lid, of dimensions 14 inch X 10 inch X 5 inch (length x
breadth x height), to easily accommodate around 1400 Printed Paper Slips, to be kept
on the table of VCB. This Container should be made of sturdy transparent material
like plastic etc. Sample images of the Container are available in Annexure-32.
b) For keeping VVPAT paper slips of the respective candidates, a Pigeonhole Framework
should be prepared in advance according to the number of candidates including
NOTA, with one additional pigeonhole for keeping self-test slips of the VVPAT, and
to be kept on the table of VCB.
i. The minimum number of Pigeonholes in the Framework must be equal to the
number of candidates plus 2 (two).
ii. The size of each compartment (Pigeonhole) must be at least 6 inch X 4 inch X 4
inch (length x breadth x height).
iii. The pigeonhole structure should be made of sturdy transparent material like
plastic etc, having a fixed base, to prevent any VVPAT paper slip from slipping
underneath.
iv. The symbol of each contesting candidate as per the Ballot Paper should be affixed
on the wall of the pigeonhole allotted to the particular candidates. The symbol
should be printed in black and white on a plain paper of minimum size 4inch X
3 inch. Sample images of the Pigeonhole Framework are placed in Annexure-32.
c) At least 100 Rubber bands for making bundles of25 VVPAT paper slips.
Step-2
a) Bring the VVPAT unit(s) of the respective polling station(s) to the VCB one by one.
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b) In case a VVPAT unit was replaced during poll at that polling station, bring all the
VVPAT units used at that polling station to the VCB.
Step-3
a) Take out the printed paper slips from VVPAT used at the polling station, before
beginning the counting of VVPAT paper slips for that polling station. In case more
than one VVPAT were used, count slips of each VVPATs separately, one by one and
enter the result of each VVPAT in the Annexure-33 (separate for each VVPAT).
Thereafter, prepare the Final Result sheet by combining all results of that particular
polling station and attach the same to Form-l 7C.
Before taking out the VVPAT Paper Slips from the drop box, cross check the address
tag(s) of the drop box to ascertain that the VVPAT pertains to the respective polling
station.
i. Keep the VVPAT Paper Slips taken out from the Drop Box of the VVPAT first in the
container as per specification at Step l(a).
ii. After taking out the VVPAT paper slips from Drop Box, the Counting Supervisor
must ensure that no VVPAT paper slip is left inside the VVPAT drop box and show the
empty drop box to the counting agents.
iii. In case a VVPAT unit was replaced, it may so happen that an uncut fully or partially
VVPAT paper slip is hanging and has not got cut and dropped in the drop box and
still connected to the paper roll. This uncut VVPAT paper slip should not be tom and
counted because the vote is not recorded electronically in the CU unless the VVPAT
paper slip is cut. In such an event, the last voter whose VVPAT paper slip was not cut
would have been given an opportunity to cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT
and the VVPAT paper slip of the vote cast by him will be in the next VVPAT used in
iv. The drop box of the VVPAT should also have VVPAT slips of self-test report.
These are easily identified, as they do not have either the name or the symbol of any
candidate. These self-test report slips are to be preserved along with the VVPAT
paper slips as part of the record but they are not to be counted.
Step-4
a) Segregate the VVPAT paper slips one-by-one and put in respective pigeon holes after
showing each slip to the Counting Agents. The paper slips bearing self-tests report
should also be segregated and put in a separate pigeonhole provided for the purpose.
b) Prepare bundles of 25 VVPAT paper slips of respective candidates for counting
purpose.
c) Counting staff should then count VVPAT Paper Slips.
d) Prepare result of the VVPAT paper slips count in the format as per Annexure-33 and
attach to Part-II of Form 17-C (Annexure-34).
e) Announce the result of the count of VVPAT paper slips in the counting hall and show
it to the counting agents.
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f) As per Rule 56D (4) (b) of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, if there is any
discrepancy between EVM count and paper slip count, the paper slip count should
prevail. Hence, if there is discrepancy between the counts of votes displayed on the
Control Unit and the count ofprinted paper slips in respect of that Polling Station,
amend the result sheet as per the printed-paper slips count.
Step-5
a) After completion of counting of VVPAT paper slips, keep the bundle of the VVPAT
Paper Slips back in the Drop Box of the respective VVPAT and seal the door of the
Drop Box using address tags.
b) Allow the candidate(s)/their agents to affix their signature with party abbreviation on
the Address Tags.
14.11 Sealing of EVMs after counting of votes
After completion of counting, keep all Control Units, after removing power packs from
CUs, whether result has been retrieved from it or not back inside its carrying case and seal
the carrying cases once again. The Returning Officer should put their signatures on the seal.
Allow all candidates and their election agents to put their signature on the seal. Then keep
the Control Unit in the strong room(s).
NOTE :All seals used on the counting day for sealing of EVMs & VVPAT slips taken out from
VVPATs shall be signed by the RO, ARO and candidate/Counting agents.
14.11. A Removal of VVPAT slips from VVPATs after completion of Counting of Votes -
After the result is announced, the VVPAT paper slips will be taken out of the VVPAT printer
unit, irrespective of whether the slips were counted or not, as per the following procedure:
i) Thorough checking of officials deputed for the removal of VVPAT slips and their
sealing must be ensured. All pockets need to be emptied before entering the Sealing
Room/Strong Room and thorough checking of officials leaving the sealing room
should be done in addition to DFMD/Metal Detector Checking.
ii) The VVPAT paper slips shall be taken out from the drop box of VVPAT and kept in a
paper envelope made of thick black paper polling station wise; it shall be sealed using
red wax with the bilingual secret seal of the Commission provided to the Returning
Officer. If more than one VVPAT was used in a particular polling station, the VVPAT
slips taken out from each VVPAT slips should be kept in the separate envelope.
Following shall be written on the envelopes:
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(a) Name of election

(b) Number and Name of Parliamentary/Assembly Constituency
(c) Particular of polling station:
(d) Unique Serial Number of the Control Unit
(e) Unique Serial Number of VVPAT unit
(f) Date of poll
(g) Date of counting.
iii) Candidates and their authorised agents shall be allowed to witness the process and
their signatures shall also be obtained on every envelope. (Candidates/their authorized
agents)
iv) All the envelopes of a particular Assembly Constituency/Assembly Segment must
be kept in a separate big trunk. The trunk must be sealed using red wax with the
bilingual secret seal of the Commission provided to the Returning Officer. Following
shall be written on the trunk:
VVPAT SLIPs OF POLL DAY

(a) Name of election
(b) Number and Name of Parliamentary/Assembly Constituency
(c) Date of poll
(d) Date of counting.
Similarly, mock poll VVPAT slips envelopes shall also be kept in a separate trunk.
v) The said trunk shall be kept with all the statutory documents relating to that election
and shall be disposed of as mentioned in the Rule 94 of the Conduct of Elections
Rules 1961. If any Election Petition is pending, the same shall be preserved till the
final disposal of the election petition.
vi) Once the VVPAT paper slips have been taken out, the VVPAT must be kept in a
designated warehouse. VVPAT should not be kept in the same strong room where
EVMs are stored, so that even if any election petition is filed from the constituency,
the VVPAT units can be taken out for future use in subsequent elections, if required,
without opening the strong room having EVMs.
vii) The entire process should be conducted under high quality CCTV recording/
videography and under the supervision of RO/ARO concerned. CCTV recording/
videography shall be made in such a way that the entire process must be clearly
visible. Two copies of CCTV recording/videography shall be made. One copy of the
same shall be kept in the strong room having all the statutory documents relating to
that election and the trunk and one copy in the custody of the District Election Officer
concerned.
viii) RO/ARO shall be responsible for any lapses on the compliance of the aforesaid
direction of the Commission.
It should again be ensured that the thermal paper rolls and power pack, if any, are
taken out of the VVPAT before keeping the units in the designated warehouse.
14.12 Storage of EVMs (BUs and CUs) and VVPAT slips after counting of votes:
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After completing counting of votes, keep the EVMs (BUs and CUs) in the District Strong
Room and trunk containing printed paper slips of VVPATs in the strong rooms having
statutory document. Do not open the Strong rooms till the completion of Election Petition
(EP) period i.e. till EP list is received from respective High Court. [Kindly ref: Para 6.2. of
Chapter-6)
14.13 Storage of VVPAT Paper Slips after expiry of period of filing of Election Petitions
A. In the case of elections, where no election petition has been filed or no other court
cases are pending, after the aforesaid period VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock
poll and actual poll shall be disposed of as per relevant provision mentioned in the
Rule 94 of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961. These VVPAT paper slips shall be
disposed of as per following procedure:
(i) VVPAT paper slips may be disposed of by using Paper Shredding Machine
within seven days of the order of District Election Officer.
(ii) The above shredding shall be done in the presence of a Gazetted Officer duly
nominated by the District Election Officer concerned in the format attached
as Annexure-35.
(iii) The District Election Officers shall submit a certificate in the format attached
as Annexure-36, to the Chief Electoral Officer concerned in this regard within
15 days
(iv) The Chief Electoral Officers shall submit a consolidated certificate in the
format attached as Annexure-37 to the Commission within 30 days.
B. In case of any election where election petition has been filed, the following action
should be taken:-
(i) If the EVMs (BUs and CUs) or Counting of Votes are the subject of the
election petition, the EVMs used at all Polling Stations in the constituency
concerned should continue to be kept in the safe custody of the District
Election Officer, till such time the Election Petition is finally disposed of
by the Courts. However, for releasing Ballot Units, action shall be taken as
mentioned in sub para (e) (i) of para 6.2.2 of Chapter-6.
(ii) If the EVMs (BUs and CUs) or counting of votes are not the subject of the
election petition, an application may be moved to the concerned Court for
allowing the EVMs concerned to be taken out of the strong room for any
future election or any other purpose like movement, physical verification etc.
(iii) If any Election Petition is pending, the VVPAT slips shall be preserved till the
final disposal of the election petition. Thereafter, the slips will be disposed as
per the process mentioned in 14.13 A.
14.14 Storage of EVMs in Educational Institutional
A) Where EVMs are stored in any School/Educational Institution due to Election
Petition and where the educational institution has requested to vacate the same,
the Chief Electoral Officers shall immediately file an application before the Court
concerned for shifting EVMs from School/Educational Institution to alternate storage
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place (warehouse). The application should contain the purpose of vacation of School/
Educational Institution and also the following protocol to be followed for shifting of
EP blocked EVMs:
(a) A Notice informing the opening of strong room having EVMs involved in
EP shall be given to the petitioner(s) and respondent(s) of the EP in writing
at least 48 hours in advance, requesting them to remain present at the time of
opening of the strong room.
(b) The strong room shall be opened in the presence of the District Election
Officer and Petitioner(s)/Respondent(s) of the EP.
(c) Petitioner(s) and Respondents(s) of the EP shall be allowed to follow the
vehicles carrying EVMs.
(d) EVMs shall be stored under double-lock system, in the presence of District
Election Officer and Petitioner(s)/Respondent(s) of the EP.
(e) The strong room shall be sealed in the presence of District Election Officer
and Petitioner(s)/Respondent(s) of the EP and Petitioner(s)/Respondent(s)
shall also be allowed to put their own seals.
(f) The entire process shall be videographed.
B) Where reason for not vacating educational institute cited is lack of space the Chief
Electoral Officer shall review and certify that all other warehouses, including the
option of hiring warehouses, has been explored and still there is no space available
anywhere in the entire district to store these EVMs.
14.15 Disposal of unusable/expired Power Packs of EVMs
For disposal of the power packs, ECI instruction, dated 26/10/2022 shall be followed.
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SAMPLE OF POSTER TO BE DISPLAYED ON COUNTING DAY
START OF COUNTING OF VOTES FROM CONTROL UNIT

General Instructions
• Start EVM counting after 30 minutes of start of postal ballot counting.
• At the time of counting only bring CUs in Counting Hall.
• Verify the unique ID of the CU, the Pink Paper Seal and the green paper seal and intactness of
seals and show to the counting agents before starting the counting.
• Press RESULT button of CU and show result display on CU to the counting agents.
• Before taking signature of candidates/their agents/counting agents, in space between
counting supervisor’s signature and signature of candidates/their agents/counting agents in
Part II of Form 17C, write in pen - “We, hereby certify that CU No(s) is/are the same
which were used in the Polling Station No...................
Procedure in case of discrepancy in the date & time of start and end of poll
• Compare the difference with the date & time noted in the mock poll certificate or Pre-
siding Officer’s Diary.
• If the difference does not match, refer the matter to the Commission.
• If the difference matches, count the votes polled in the usual manner.
Procedure in case the close button is not pressed at the end of the poll
• Press TOTAL button to see total votes polled in this CU and compare with the total votes
polled mentioned in Form-l 7C.
• If tallies, the Returning Officer/Counting Supervisor should press the “Close” button of the
Control Unit(s) so that “Result” button can be pressed for getting result data.
• If does not tally, keep the CU back inside its carrying case and then under Returning
Officer’s custody.
• After completion of counting of votes from all CUs, seethe winning margin.
• If winning margin is more than the total votes polled in that polling station, declare the
result without obtaining result from the CU/CUs.
• If winning margin is less than the total votes polled in that polling station, count VVPAT
slips of
In case Control Unit does not display result
• Install new power packs in CU to obtain Result.
• Even then CU does not display result, count the VVPAT slips of the corresponding VVPAT,
after completion of counting of votes from all the Control Units.
Issues regarding counting of VVPAT slips: non-deletion of mock poll data from the Control
Unit or non-removal of mock poll slips from VVPAT or total votes polled in CU does not
match the record of votes in Form 17C
• Keep the CU back inside its carrying case and then keep it under Returning Officer’s custody.
• After completion of counting of votes from all CUs, see the winning margin.
• If winning margin is more than the total votes polled in that polling station, declare the
result without obtaining result from the CU/CUs.
• If winning margin is less than the total votes polled in that polling station, count VVPAT
slips of that polling station. If there is any discrepancy or difficulty to arrive at correct
count of candidate
wise votes polled, the matter shall be referred to the Commission for further direction.
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Candidate Demanding VVPAT PAPER SLIPs COUNTING under Rule 56D

• Candidate/Counting agents can demand only in writing.
• RO to pass speaking order to count or not to count considering the following guidelines:
o Whether the total number of votes polled in that polling station is greater or lesser than the
margin of votes between winning candidate and candidate demanding the counting.
o Whether EVM had a problem and was replaced at that polling station during poll
o Whether there was any complaint about VVPAT not printing or complaints by any voter
under Rule 49MA in that polling station during the poll.
MANDATORY VERIFICATION OF VVPAT PAPER SLIPs:
• In case of General and Bye elections to State Legislative Assemblies, verification of VVPAT
paper slips of randomly selected 05 (five) polling stations per Assembly Constituency.
• In case of General and Bye elections to the House of the People, verification of VVPAT paper
slips of randomly selected 05(five) polling stations of each Assembly Segment of the Par-
liamentary Constituency concerned.
• Do not include the polling stations where VVPAT paper slips have been counted due to non
display of result from the Control Unit(s) or under Rule 56(D) of the Conduct of Elections
Rules 1961 or whatsoever the reason in the draw of lots by mandatory verification of VVPAT
slips count
SEQUENCE OF VVPAT SLIPS COUNT
• Count the VVPAT slips of polling station(s) for which result is not displayed on the Display
Panel of the Control Unit.
• Count the VVPAT slips of polling station(s) ordered/instructions issued by the Commission
due to improper conduct of mock poll procedure by non-clearance of mock poll data/slips.
• Counting of VVPAT slips under Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, if any.
• Mandatory verification of VVPAT slips of randomly selected 05 polling stations per Assembly
Constituency/each Assembly Segment of Parliamentary Constituency.
• Further, count the VVPAT paper slips one by one not simultaneously.
NOTE: If there is any discrepancy between EVM count and VVPAT paper slips count, as per
Rule 56(D)(4)(b) of the Conduct of Elections Rules 1961, the VVPAT paper slips count should
prevail.
SEALING OF EVMs AND VVPATs AFTER COUNTING OF VOTES
• Remove Power Pack from Control Units before re-sealing.
• Remove VVPAT slips from VVPATs and seal in black envelope and store as per existing
direction of the ECI.
• Remove Paper Roll from VVPATs.
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CHAPTER-15
CHECKLIST AND PRECAUTIONS
I. Examples of Critical Mistakes
1. First Level Checking of EVMs
• Non-updation of FLC-OK or FLC-Reject status in EMS through Mobile-App on
day to day basis.
• FLC of EVMs without using Dummy Ballot Paper on BU.
• Non-Uploading of 16 candidates (including NOTA) Dummy Symbols in the
1% VVPATs which are used for testing with 4-BUs having 64 dummy symbols
(including NOTA)
• Irregularity on use of Dummy Symbols
2. Commissioning of EVMs
• Non-checking of candidate symbols uploaded in VVPAT during commissioning.
• Not connecting VVPAT with CU at the time of candidate setting in CU.
3. Transportation of VVPATs
• Not Locking paper roll when transporting the VVPAT from one place to another
4. Dispersal
• Checking of VVPAT by connecting it to CU and BU at the time of dispersal.
5. Mock-Poll on Poll Day
• Not pressing the CLOSE button of CU after mock-poll.
• Not matching the mock-poll result of the CU with the VVPAT Paper Slips.
• Not removing the mock-poll paper slips from VVPAT
• Non-deletion of mock-poll data from the Control Unit.
• When setting up the EVMs and VVPATs in the polling station, the VVPAT should
be positioned so as to avoid direct light from falling on it.
• Do not position the VVPAT near an open window or directly under a bulb or
halogen lamp.
6. During Poll
• Conducting mock poll, in case of replacement of VVPAT only as Mock poll is
not required to be conducted in case of only VVPAT being replaced.
• In case of non-functioning of CU or BU replacing only CU or BU. In such case both
BU and CU along with VVPAT shall be replaced.
• Non-pressing of CLOSE Button after completion of Poll.
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• Damaging any seal of BU/CU/VVPAT.

7. General
• Do not repeatedly switch ON and OFF the VVPAT as it will deplete the battery as well
as paper roll.
• Switch OFF the CU when connecting or disconnecting the EVMs/VVPATs and do not
pull the cable for disconnecting.
• VVPAT status will be displayed on the CU Display Panel.
II. A Para-wise Checklist of Don’ts
1. GENERAL
1 Don’t allow the units to be handled by any unauthorised personnel/staff
2 Don’t move/keep/store EVM in any unauthorised place.
3 Don’t’ shift any EVM without making entry in EMS.
4 Don’t leave any EVMs without 24X7 security.
5 Don’t damage any seal of the BU, CU & VVPAT.
6 Don’t burn any VVPAT slip.
7 Don’t’ leave VVPAT Paper Lock in vertical position during transportation.
8 Don’t position the EVM near an open window or any direct light/high- illumination source in
the polling Station.
9 Don’t forget to put paper lock position in vertical position before switching ON the CU.
10 Don’t move/shift the units anywhere during the period from - Commissioning to the
Counting Day - except EVMs required for use in poll.
11 Don’t switch ON CU before VVPAT paper roll knob is in unlocked condition (vertical position).
12 Don’t remove cables without pressing the clips on the connectors.

13 Don’t insert cables by pressing the clips on the connectors.
14 Don’t switch OFF CU unless all 7 slips are printed and cut.
15 Don’t connect or disconnect EVM cables when CU switch is ON.
16 Don’t switch ON/OFF CU repeatedly.
17 Don’t leave EVMs unattended.
2. DURING STORAGE OF EVMs
1 Don’t open and close EVM warehouse without intimation and participation of the
representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties
2 Don’t keep other material whether election related or not (except the documents/materials
prescribed by the Commission) with EVM.
3 Don’t forget to install fire extinguisher at FLC centre, Warehouse, Strong Room.
4 Don’t store EVM at any place below the Tehsil Headquarters-level
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5 Don’t keep various models of EVM in same room/hall of the warehouse

6 Don’t keep/mix EVM of other election management bodies (viz. State
Election Commission etc.) with ECI EVM
7 Don’t forget to disconnect electricity inside room/hall having EVM
8 Don’t forget to seal all other doors/windows (except entry/exit door) using brick-masonry
or concrete
9 Don’t make EVMs warehouse in the Educational Institute.
10 Don’t open the strong room/warehouse having EVM pertaining to Election
Petition for any purpose without approval of the Court concerned
11 Don’t forget videography of opening and closing of warehouse/strong room
12 Don’t forget to maintain Log Book for each entry and exit.
13 Don’t forget to maintain Duty Roster of security personnel.
3. TRANSPORTATION
1 Don’t transport EVM without GPS/Mobile app-based tracking.
2 Don’t transport EVM in un-containerized vehicles
3 Don’t transport EVM without armed security
4 Don’t transport VVPAT in unlock position of the paper roll knob (vertical position)
5 Don’t forget to invite the representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties
while sending or receiving EVMs from warehouse/ strong room.
6 Don’t forget to coordinate with the DEOs concerned in case of Factory to State, State to
Factory, Inter-State and Intra-State transportation of EVMs.
4. FIRST LEVEL CHECKING
1 Don’t allow to take any electronic device inside FLC Hall except those items permitted
by ECI.
2 Don’t forget to install Door Frame Metal Detector (DFMD) at FLC centre.
3 Don’t allow any person inside the FLC hall without proper frisking.
4 Don’t forget to dispatch the FLC rejected Units to the factory for repairs after completion
of FLC.
5 Don’t forget to mark FLC OK, FLC rejected unit in EMS on a daily basis.
6 Don’t’ forget to conduct mock poll in 5% randomly selected EVMs (1200
votes in 1% EVMs, 1000 votes in 2% EVMs and 500 votes in 2% EVMs)
7 Don’t forget to paste pink paper seal on CU
8 Don’t use real election symbol during FLC and Training & Awareness
9 Don’t leave VVPATs slips generated during FLC / T&A without shredding on daily basis.
10 Don’t forget to install fire extinguisher at FLC centre, Warehouse, Strong room.
11 Don’t forget to intimate in writing FLC schedule to National and State Recognised
Political parties at District Headquarters as well as State Headquarters
12 Don’t appoint FLC Supervisor below the rank of Deputy Election Officer
13 Don’t forget to submit FLC Preparedness Certificate before starting FLC
14 Don’t allow other equipment inside the FLC hall except those mentioned in FLC SoP
15 Don’t forget to barricade and sanitize FLC area by police.
16 Don’t allow entry to FLC hall without production of Identity Card issued by the DEO.
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17 Don’t forget frisking of every person/officer/engineer at every entry and exit.

18 Don’t forget install TV/Monitor display with HDMI input for each SLU under use in
FLC hall.
19 Don’t forget to paste FLC SoP in FLC Hall.
20 Don’t allow any person/official except authorized staff and engineers of Bharat Electronics Limited and
Electronics Corporation of India Limited, as the case may be, to conduct FLC
21 Don’t keep FLC OK and FLC Reject EVM in the same strong room
22 Don’t forget to share list of FLC OK units to National and State Recognised Political
Parties after completion of FLC with proper acknowledgment
23 Don’t pre-signed on FLC OK (Green) and FLC Reject (Red) stickers before confirming
FLC OK or FLC Reject
5. TRAINING & AWARENESS
1 Don’t forget to mark those EVM in EMS as ‘Training/Awareness’
2 Don’t forget to paste a yellow colour sticker mentioning Training /Awareness on
T&A EVMs.
3 Don’t take out T&A EVMs more than 10% of total number of PS in the district.
4 Don’t use units without FLC OK sticker for T&A.
5 Don’t use real election symbol during training, Awareness, FLC of EVMs.
6 Don’t forget to share list of EVM and VVPAT taken out for T&A to National and State
Recognised Political Parties after completion of FLC with proper acknowledgment
7 Don’t keep T&A units in FLC Strong Room or vicinity of FLC OK Strong Room. Keep
them in separate designated warehouse/nearby training areas.
8 Don’t forget to share the information of the designated warehouse to keep T&A EVMs
9 Don’t forget to destroy VVPAT slips generated during Training and Awareness on daily
basis
10 Don’t operate EVM Demonstration Centre(s) set up at DEO, RO Headquarters/ Revenue
Sub-Division Offices after announcement of election by the ECI.
11 Don’t forget to re-introduce T&A EVMs as Poll Day Reserve after de-novo
FLC, randomizations, candidate setting etc.
6. RANDOMIZATIONS
1 Don’t forget to intimate in writing 1st Randomization schedule to National and State
Recognised Political parties with proper acknowledgment
2 Don’t allocate EVM AC-wise unevenly during 1st Randomization
3 Don’t allocate Ballot Units more than Control Units during 1st Randomization
4 Don’t forget to receipt EVM AC-wise by scanning after lstRandomization
5 Don’t forget to share list of 1st Randomized EVM (AC-wise) with National
and State Recognised Political Parties with proper acknowledgment
6 Don’t forget to intimate in writing 2ndRandomization schedule to all the contesting
candidates/their agents with proper acknowledgment
7 Don’t forget to share list of 1st Randomized EVM (AC-wise) with the
respective contesting candidates/their agents with proper acknowledgment
8 Don’t miss out to update polling stations before 2nd Randomization
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9 Don’t forget to share list of2nd Randomized EVM with all the contesting candidates/their
agents with proper acknowledgment
7. DURING COMMISSIONING
1 Don’t forget to intimate in writing schedule of Commissioning of EVMs to
all the contesting candidates/their agents with proper acknowledgment
2 Don’t leave VVPATs slips generated during commissioning without shredding on a daily
basis.
3 Don’t forget to check correct loading of Serial Numbers, Names of Candidate and their
Symbols in VVPATs
4 Don’t forget to conduct mock poll of 1000 votes on 5% randomly selected EVMs
during commissioning.
5 Don’t keep VVPAT knob in Working mode (Vertical position) after commissioning
6 Don’t set candidates in CU without connecting BU(s) and VVPAT.
7 Don’t forget to share lists of EVMs to be used in polling stations (polling
station-wise) and reserve EVMs and VVPATs with contesting candidates
8. DURING DISPERSAL TO POLLING STATIONS
1 Don’t forget to ensure EVM/VVPAT is related to the particular polling station for which it
has been allotted.
2 Don’t take away any EVM to any unauthorised place like residence, etc.
3 Don’t repeatedly switch ON and OFF the VVPAT as it will deplete the battery as well as
paper roll causing problems during the poll day.
4 Don’t forget to switch OFF the CU while connecting or disconnecting the EVM units and
VVPAT using cables
5 Don’t pull the cable of BU & VVPAT while disconnecting from the CU.
6 Don’t forget to earmark a government building as the cluster point for polling parties and for
EVMs dispatch to polling stations on P-2/3. Don’t use Police stations for such
cluster points.
7 Don’t switch on the VVPAT at the time of dispersal.
8 Don’t connect Ballot Unit, Control Unit and VVPAT during dispersal
9 Don’t keep VVPAT knob vertical (Working mode) while transporting.
10 Don’t stay at any place other than designated place.
11 Don’t remove any seal from BU, CU and VVPAT.
12 Don’t use vehicle other than vehicle provided for dispersal.
9. DURING MOCK POLL ON POLL DAY
1 Don’t start mock poll, if no or one election agent is present. Wait for 15 minutes.
2 Don’t stop mock poll without casting at least 50 votes.
3 Don’t keep BU, CU and VVPAT on one table for mock poll. (Keep BU & VVPAT at
voting compartment)
4 Don’t forget to cast at least one vote to each candidate button including NOTA during
mock poll
5 Don’t leave any mock poll slips inside the VVPAT slips compartment after completion of
mock poll on poll day.
6 Don’t forget to delete mock poll data from the CU before starting of actual poll.
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7 Don’t keep mock poll VVPAT slips unstamped in black envelop.

8 Don’t forget to tally EVM (CU) count with VVPAT slips count during mock poll.
9 Don’t forget to fill Mock Poll Certificate (Part-I of Presiding Officer Report)
10 Don’t start actual poll without sealing Result Section of CU and Drop Box of VVPAT and
taking signatures of polling agents.
10.DURING POLL
1 Don’t operate the paper roll knob till the end of the poll.
2 Don’t forget pressing of close button of CU after completion of poll.
3 Don’t conduct mock poll in case of replacement of only VVPAT during the actual poll.
4 Don’t hang any high illumination bulb over VVPAT at Voting Compartment
5 Don’t Switch ON the Control Unit at the time of connection and disconnection of Ballot
Unit, Control Unit and VVPAT
6 Don’t Switch ON Control Unit when VVPAT paper roll knob is in lock position (horizontal
position)
7 Don’t forget to tape the interconnecting cable of BU/VVPAT to the leg of then table with
‘transparent’ adhesive tape.
8 Don’t forget to press both side latches of connector while disconnecting the cable
9 Don’t forget to clear mock poll data from the Control Unit and VVPAT mock slips from
VVPAT in mock poll process
10 Don’t enter into the voting compartment to educate illiterate how to cast vote. Use
cardboard BU for this purpose.
11 Don’t Switch OFF/Switch ON EVM during poll process
12 Don’t forget to remove VVPAT Power Pack (Battery) from VVPAT before sealing of
VVPAT in its carrying case after completion of poll
11. AFTER POLL
1 Don’t keep polled units and reserve units in the same strong room
2 Don’t transport EVM in unauthorized vehicle (not notified for transport of EVM).
3 Don’t store the “C” & “D” category of EVMs in the vicinity of “A” & “B” category of
EVMs.
4 Don’t’ leave the VVPAT battery inside the VVPAT after completion of poll.
5 Don’t forget to intimate all the contesting candidates about the storage place of category A,
B, C and D.
6 Don’t keep polled units of two or more Assembly Constituency/Segment in the same
strong room, after poll
7 Don’t transport EVMs without escort after poll from polling stations to
collection centre.
12. DURING COUNTING
1 Don’t obtain result from CUs without verifying seals.
2 Don’t forget to write in pen, in space between counting supervisor’s signature and signature
of candidate/their agents/counting agents in Part-II for Form-l 7C “We, hereby certify that
CU No.(s)..................................... is/are the same which were used in the Polling Station
No ..................“.
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13. AFTER COUNTING

1 Don’t leave CU batteries inside CUs before storing them in the strong room after counting
of votes.
2 Don’t forget to remove VVPAT slips from all VVPATs after counting of votes before
storing VVPAT in warehouse.
3 Don’t open the strong room till the completion of EP period i.e. till EP list is received from
respective High Court.
4 Don’t store 2 or more than 2 ACs machines in same strong room after completion of poll
and counting of votes till the completion of EP period.
14.FOR PENDING EP EVMs and VVPATs
1 Don’t open the strong room where EP related EVMs are stored,
without permission of the Court, except in exceptional cases like flood, fire, etc.
III. DOs AND DONTs ON USE OF VVPAT
Dos DON’Ts
Ensure paper roll knob is locked (horizontal
position) before transportation.
In Polling Station, unlock the paper roll knob Don’t switch ON CU before VVPAT paper
(vertical position), before switching ON the roll knob is in unlocked condition (vertical
CU. position).
Position BU and VVPAT in Voting

Compartment. Position CU on PO’s Table
Establish right connection by following the Don’t allow direct light or high power
colour scheme. illumination over VVPAT.
Ensure the connectors are inserted Don’t remove cables without pressing the clips
properly. on the connectors.
Switch ‘ON’ CU, the Power-On Green LED on Don’t switch OFF CU unless all 7 slips are
VVPAT glows and VVPAT prints all 7 slips. printed and cut.
Check for any “ERROR” message on CU. Don’t start polling in case of” PRINTER ERROR”
Inform Sector Officer (SO) in case of any message on CU.
“ERROR”.
Always switch OFF CU before making any Don’t operate the paper roll knob till the end of
connection or disconnection including change the poll.
of battery.
NOTE: In M3 VVPAT, VVPAT related messages are displayed on the CU’s Display.
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CHAPTER-16
DOCUMENTATION AND MONITORING
Offices of the Chief Electoral Officers and District Election Officers shall maintain a folder in which a
copy of the following documents shall be kept for records purpose.
S.No. Activity Required document(s)

1 Opening and Closing of EVM • Intimation given to the National and State Recognised
warehouse for any purpose like Political Parties and their acknowledgement.
(a) Quarterly inspection • Proceeding of opening and closing of EVM warehouse
(b) Receiving or Sending of EVMs
and VVPATs
(c) First Level Checking
(d) Taking of EVMs and VVPATs
for training and awareness
from FLC Strong room etc.
2 First Level Checking of EVMs and • Intimation given to the National and State Recognised
VVPATs Political Parties for and their acknowledgement.
• Attendance Register for the National and State Recognised
Political Parties on daily basis.
• Certification of EVMs by BEL/ECIL i.e. components of
the EVMs are original countersigned by the representatives
of National and State Recognised Political Parties.
• Mock poll certification during FLC regarding participation
and satisfaction of the representatives of National and State
• List of FLC-OK EVMs and VVPATs shared with the
National and State Recognised Political Parties.
3 Taking out of EVMs and VVPATs • Intimation given to the National and State Recognised
for Training and Awareness after Political Parties and their acknowledgement.
FLC • Acknowledgment of the National and State Recognised
Political Parties regarding getting list of EVMs and
VVPATs taken out for T&A.
• Acknowledgment of the National and State Recognised
Political Parties regarding getting information of storage
place(s) of EVMs and VVPATs pertaining to T&A.
• Proceeding of the entire process with the acknowledgment
of the National and State Recognised Political Parties.
4 First Randomization of EVMs and • Intimation given to the National and State Recognised
VVPATs Political Parties and their acknowledgement.
of the National and State Recognised Political Parties.
• Acknowledgment of the National and State Recognised
Political Parties regarding getting AC/AS wise allocated
randomized lists of EVMs and VVPATs.
94
5 Second Randomization of EVMs • Intimation given to all the contesting candidate and their
and VVPATs acknowledgement.
of the contesting candidates/their representatives.
• Acknowledgment of all the contesting candidates regarding
getting Polling Station wise allocated randomized lists of
EVMs and VVPATs and reserve EVMs and VVPATs.
6 Commissioning of EVMs and • Intimation given to all the contesting candidate and their
VVPATs acknowledgement.
of the contesting candidates/their representatives.
• Attendance Register for the contesting candidates/their
representatives on daily basis.
• Mock poll certification during commissioning regarding
participation and satisfaction of the contesting candidates/
their representatives.
• Revised lists of EVMs and VVPATs to be used in
polling station(s) and reserve EVMs and VVPAT to all
the contesting candidates/their representatives, if any
replacement of BU/CU/VVPAT due to non-functional
during commissioning.
7 Dispersal of EVMs and VVPATs • Intimation given to all the contesting candidate and their
acknowledgement.
• Revised lists of EVMs and VVPATs to be used in
polling station(s) and reserve EVMs and VVPAT to all
the contesting candidates/their representatives, if any
replacement of BU/CU/VVPAT due to non-functional
during dispersal.
8 Transportation of polled EVMs and Intimation given to all the contesting candidate regarding
VVPATs from Polling Stations to allowing them/polling agents to follow the vehicles carrying
Collection Centre polled EVMs and VVPATs and their acknowledgement.
9 Storage of various categories of Intimation given to all the contesting candidate regarding
EVMs and VVPATs after poll. storage place(s) of various categories of EVMs and VVPATs
(polled, reserve and non-functional) and for deputing their
representatives and their acknowledgement.
10. Meeting with National and State • Meeting Notice issued to the National and State Recognised
Recognised Political Parties Political Parties.
• Attendance sheet.
• Proceeding of the meeting.
11. Objection/complaints of the • Complaints/objections of the National and State
National and State Recognised Recognised Political Parties and Candidates.
Political Parties and Candidates • Disposal of the complaints/objections in the form of
during various processes related to proceeding/letter.
use of EVMs and VVPATs.
Note: All these documents shall be retained for at least five years at the office of DEOs and six years
at the office of CEOs.
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Destruction
S.No. Particulars Period
VVPAT Slips generated during: Daily Basis
a) First Level Checking
1.
b) Training and Awareness
c) Commissioning
VVPAT Slips generated during: Rule 94 of the Conduct of Elections
2. a) Mock Poll on Poll day Rules 1961.
b) Actual Poll
3. Power Packs of EVMs/VVPATs After Expiry Date
4. Indelible Ink After Expiry Date
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Proceeding of all the activities related to EVM shall be made as per the following draft sample:
SAMPLE PROCEEDING
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Name of Election:
Name of PC/AC:
Venue:
Date:
Time:
Purpose: [like Opening and Closing of EVM warehouse/Strong Room, First Level Checking of EVMs,
1st Randomization of EVMs, 2nd Randomization of EVMs, Commissioning of EVMs, Dispersal of
EVMs, Meeting with the Recognised Political Parties/Candidates on……………. Etc.]
Brief description:
Example:All the Recognised Political Parties have been invited vide………………………………………
(Notice No. and date) to remain present during opening and closing of EVM warehouse for the purpose
of ………………(like shifting of EVMs) from……………to…………
The warehouse has been opened in the presence of the Recognised Political Parties at……………
AM/PM on ……………….(date) and closed at………….AM/PM on,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, (date), under
videography.
All are satisfied with the entire processes.
Participants:
Administrative/Election Machinery
S.No. Name & Designation Dept. ID No. Signature
Recognised Political Parties/Candidates

S.No. Name and designation Party Affiliation, if any / Signature
Independent
97
SoP for EVM NODAL OFFICER
INTRODUCTION
EVM Nodal Officer will be In-charge and responsible for all matters related to EVM-VVPAT. He/she
works under the CEO of the State and co-ordinate with ECI, manufacturers of EVMs and VVPATs
(M/s Bharat Electronics Limited and M/s Electronics Corporation of India Limited) and manufactur-
ers of various consumables related to EVMs and VVPATs (BEL and ECIL for EVM-VVPAT related
various consumables like Power Packs for EVMs and VVPATs, Paper Rolls for VVPATs and India
Security Press for Common Address Tags, Pink Paper Seals, Green Paper Seals) and local vendors
for Special Tags etc.
PLANNER : KEY ACTIVITIES

NON-ELECTION PERIOD
(From C+45 days to First Level Checking)
S.No. Particulars Time Line
1 Ascertaining the position of Election Petition for Next day of completion of Election Petition
High Court concerned period (i.e. C+45 days)
(Written as well as personally)
a) Confirm whether Election Petition(s) is related to Within 7 days of getting confirmation of EP
EVM-VVPAT and Counting of Votes or not. status
b) Marking of Election Petition status in EVM On the same day of getting confirmation of EP
Management System (EMS) with relevant documents. status
c) If EVM-VVPAT is NOT the subject matter of Within 10 days of getting confirmation of EP
Election Petition(s), ensure filing an application status
before the High Court concerned for releasing the
EVMs and VVPATs for further use.
d) Whenever, EVM-VVPATs are released from EP, On the same day of getting confirmation from
the EVMs and VVPATs should be marked in EMS as the Court
“Available for use”.
2 Sending of non-functional EVMs and VVPATs Within 10 days of getting confirmation of EP
pertaining to commissioning, dispersal, poll status/ Court clearance status
and counting etc., which are not involved in any
Election Petition/ Court cases, to manufacturer
concerned (BEL/ECIL).
3 Regularly check Physical Aspects of the EVM-VT Warehouse to ensure compliance of ECI
Instructions including Security & Safety arrangements.
a) Monthly Inspection Report 15th day of every month (except April, July,
October and January)
b) Quarterly Inspection Report 15th day of April, July, October and January
(Inspection to be carried out during March,
June, September and December)
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4 Monitoring of movement of EVMs and VVPAT Daily basis

related to your State or EVM vehicle passing (Instant issue of instruction to different Offices
through your State. in the State to co-operate in safe, secure and
error-free transportation).
a) Factory to State
b) State to Factory
c) Inter-state movement
d) Intra-state movement
5 First Level Checking (FLC) of EVMs and VVPATs
a) Ensure required quantity of EVMs and VVPATs At least 30 days before start of FLC
to be deployed.
b) Ensure FLC workshop for District Election At least 20 days before start of FLC
Officers and FLC Supervisor in consultation with
ECI.
c) Fixation of FLC schedule in consultation with At least 20 days before start of FLC
BEL/ECIL and intimation to ECI.
d) Ensure availability of required Power Packs for At least 15 days before start of FLC
EVMs and VVPATs and Pink Paper Seals to be
used during FLC and also to send procurement
orders of all consumables related to EVMs and
VVPATs including Indelible Ink.
e) Randomization of FLC engineers and intimation At least 10 days before start of FLC
to BEL/ECIL and DEOs concerned.
f) Intimation of FLC schedule to ECI for deputing At least 10 days before start of FLC
EVM Nodal Officer(s) of other States/UTs.
g) Sharing of webcasting link to ECI. One day before FLC
h) Collection of FLC-Preparedness Certificates At least 2 days before start of FLC in a

from DEOs concerned and intimation to ECI. particular district
i) Visit to districts to oversee FLC and FLC quality. During FLC
j) Monitoring of FLC process through webcasting. On daily basis
k) After completion of FLC in districts, obtaining Next day of completion of FLC

FLC completion certificates from DEOs
concerned and intimation to ECI.
NON-ELECTION PERIOD
(From completion of First Level Checking to Announcement of Election)
1 Sending of FLC rejected EVMs and VVPATs to Within 7 days of completion of FLC
BEL/ECIL under intimation to ECI.
99
2 Ensure taking out of 10% (maximum 10% of Immediate after completion of FLC
total polling stations) for EVM-VVPAT training
and awareness purpose with Yellow Stickers. Also
ensure marking these units as “Awareness” units
in EMS.
a) Ensure storage of training and awareness EVMs Immediate after completion of FLC
and VVPATs in a separate designated warehouse.
b) Ensure and monitor setting up of EVM Daily basis
Demonstration Centres (EDC) at DEO and RO
HQs/Revenue Sub-Division Offices.
c) Ensure and monitor Mobile Demonstration Daily basis
Van (MDV) to cover all polling stations for
awareness purpose.
d) Submission of progress report to ECI. Weekly basis
e) Comprehensive plan for Training and Awareness Within 5 days of completion of FLC
Program for EVM-VT.
f) Ensure NO physical display through EDC and Announcement of election day
MDV after announcement of election by the
ECI.
ELECTION PERIOD
(From Announcement of Election to Election Petition Period i.e. C+45 days)
1 First Randomization of EVMs and VVPATs through EMS
a) Ensure timely completion of First Randomization Within 2-3 days of announcement of election
of EVMs and VVPATs.
b) Ensure identification of AC Strong room and Well before First Randomization
mapping the same in EMS.
c) Ensure compliance of ECI SoP on storage and Within 2-3 days of announcement of election
security. Obtain Strong Room Safety Certificate
from DEO and SP.
d) Co-ordination with ECI-EMS Team for technical Need base
support.
2 Second Randomization of EVMs and VVPATs through EMS
a) Ensure timely completion of 2nd randomization. Within 2 days of finalization of list of contesting
candidates and before commissioning.
b) Ensure updation of polling stations before 2 nd
Randomization.
c) Co-ordination with ECI-EMS Team for technical Need base
support.
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3 Commissioning of EVMs and VVPATs

a) Ensure preparedness of commissioning of
EVMs and VVPATs as per ECI instructions.
b) Check issue of NOTICE by RO to candidates.
c) Ensuring safe keeping of SLU as prescribed.
d) Sending report on replacement of non-functional Daily basis
EVMs and VVPATs.
4 Dispersal Day
a) Co-ordination with District EVM-VVPAT Nodal Same day of dispersal day as well as on poll
Officer and ensure proper dispersal of polling parties day
and send the dispersal report of EVM-VVPAT to ECI.
b) Ensure movement of EVMs and VVPATs through
GPS/Mobile app based tracking
5 Poll Day
a) Closely monitor the mock poll and ensure mock Poll day
poll replacement report to be sent to ECI timely. (by 9.00 AM)
b) Closely monitor the Actual Poll replacements Poll day
and reports to be sent to ECI timely. (11.00 AM, 1.00 PM, 3 PM and 5 PM)
c) Set up Rapid Response Teams towards media Poll day
reporting and timely respond to misinformed
and baseless aspersions cast on the credibility
of EVMs.
d) Closely monitor the End of Poll and send the Poll day
required reports in the prescribed formats to ECI (Final Report)
timely.
e) Ensure updation of replacement of EVM- Next day of Poll Day
VVPAT during Mock Poll, Actual Poll in EMS.
f) Ensure the Storage of Polled and Un-Polled Next day of Poll Day
EVMs-VVPATs as per ECI Instructions.
6 Counting Day
a) Ensure timely sending of Counting Reports to After completion of Counting of Votes
ECI (VVPAT slips count report).
b) Ensure VVPAT slips are removed from all
VVPATs after completion of counting of votes.
c) Ensure compliance of storage and security of
EVMs at DEO level in EVM Strong Rooms, and
metal trunk containing VVPAT slips along with
statutory documents in strong room meant for
keeping statutory documents.
d) Ensure VVPATs are not stored in the strong
room with EVMs during EP Period.
Note: Above SoP is only illustrative based on important activities related to EVMs and VVPATs. However, EVM
Nodal Officer shall go through the latest EVM VVPAT Manual and instructions on EVMs and VVPATs issued
from time to time. Non-compliance of any instructions on EVMs and VVPATs shall be viewed seriously by the
ECI and EVM Nodal Officer shall be responsible for any lapse on his part.
101
DON’TS FOR EVM NODAL OFFICER

 Don’t interact with any Media, Political Parties etc. without consent of the Chief Electoral Officer.
 Don’t send any field report without any observation and comment/remark/recommendation.
 Don’t withhold any information and incidence related to EVMs and VVPATs.
 Don’t send any request for exemption from meeting, field visit etc. without unavoidable reason.
 Don’t hesitate to call ECI Officer concerned for any clarification or doubt.
 Don’t seek any direction of the ECI on EVM/VVPAT matter, where there is clear cut instructions or direc-
tions of the ECI.
 Don’t be fully dependent on technical person on operation of EMS.
 Don’t forget to ensure daily shredding of VVPAT paper slips generated till P-1 day.
 Don’t have non-serious approach to any EVM related matter.
102
PART–III
(Introduction of EVM & VVPAT)
INTRODUCTION OF EVM
1 Chapter –17 INTRODUCTION 104-106
LEGAL PROVISION FOR THE USE OF

2 Chapter – 18 107-118
EVMs
3 Chapter – 19 EVM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 119-120
103
CHAPTER-17
INTRODUCTION
CU VVPAT BU
An EVM consists of three units, namely, Control Unit (CU), Ballot Unit (BU) with a cable (5mt.
long) and VVPAT unit with a cable (5mt. long). A Ballot Unit caters upto16 candidates. In case of
M3-EVMs, 24 (Twenty Four) Ballot Units can be cascaded together for catering to 384 candidates
(including NOTA) which can be used with one Control Unit. It runs on a power pack (Battery)
having 7.5 volts. In case of M3 EVM, power packs are inserted in 5th, 9th, 13th, 17th & 21st Ballot
Units, if more than 4 BUs are connected to a Control Unit. On the right side of the BU along the
candidates’ vote button, digits 1 to 16 are embossed in Braille signage for guidance of visually
impaired electors.
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail is an independent system attached with the Electronic Voting Machines
that allows the voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended. When a vote is cast, a slip is
printed on the VVPAT printer containing the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate and
remains exposed through a transparent window for about 7 seconds. Thereafter, this printed slip
automatically gets cut and falls in sealed drop box of the VVPAT.
VVPAT runs on a power pack (Battery) of 22.5 volts. Control Unit is kept with the Presiding
Officer/ Polling Officer and Ballot Unit and VVPAT are kept in the voting compartment.
For details, kindly read Status Paper on Electronic Voting Machine and Presentation on EVMs
available in the ECI’s website.
104
FLOW CHART
Use of EVMs in Elections
District Election Officer

(Testing Checking & Allocation of EVMs Assembly Constituency/Segment wise)
• Custodian of EVMs
• First Level Checking (FLC) of EVMs done at his level by the Manufacturers
• Representatives of Recognized National & State Political Parties participate in the FLC process.
• First Randomization of EVMs & VVPATs done after FLC to allocate EVMs assembly
constituency/segment wise.
Returning Officer
(Commissioning of EVMs & Allocation of EVMs Polling Station wise)
• • Store first randomized EVMs in Strong Rooms
• After finalization of List of contesting Candidates Second randomization of EVMs is done to
allocate EVMs/VVPATs Polling Station wise before preparation of EVMs.
• Commissioning of EVM is done in the presence of Candidates/their Agents.
• Prepared EVMs are again stored in Strong Room in the presence of Candidates/their Agents.
• On day of dispersal of polling parties, Strong rooms are reopened and EVMs with election
materials handed over to polling parties in the presence of Candidates/ their agents.
Polling Parties
(Conduct of Poll)
• After receiving EVMs & election materials, polling parties move to their designated polling
stations under security.
• Before actual poll, Mock-poll is conducted by Presiding Officer in the polling station in the
presence of polling agents of the contesting candidates.
• After Mock-poll, data of mock poll is cleared and Result section and drop box of VVPAT
resealed with paper & thread seals.
• After completion of poll, EVMs are escorted back to strong room.
• Polled EVMs are stored under 24 X 7 security of Returning Officer
Returning Officer
(Counting of Votes)
• On counting day, Strong Rooms are opened in the presence of Candidates/their Agents and
Observers of the ECI.
• Counting of Votes is done in the presence of Candidates/ their Agents and Observers of the ECI.
• After counting of votes EVMs are sealed and stored in Strong Rooms. VVPAT slips are taken
out, kept in sealed black envelope and preserved as per Rule 94 of CER, 1961.
105
Retention of Polled Data in EVMs

• Period for filing Election Petition (EP) is 45-days from the date of declaration of result.
• Data Retention period for EVMs involved in EP is till the final disposal of EP including Appeal,
if any.
• DEOs can clear data from the EVMs involved in any EP, but where use of EVMs is not in
question, after obtaining permission from the concerned High Court, for using in any subsequent
election.
• DEOs can clear data from EVMs where no EP is filed, after verifying the position from the High
Court after period for filing EPs is over.
Standard Schedule for Upcoming/Poll Going States
PROCESS TIME SCHEDULE (Atleast)

1 2
Allocation of EVMs by ECI P-200
Ordering of consumables LOI P-200
FLC start P-120 (Assembly Election) &
P-180 (Parliamentary Election)
FLC completion P-50
Dispatch of FLC not ok to BEL/ECIL P-45
1st Randomization of EVMs P-21
2nd Randomization of EVMs P-14

Handing over of non-functional EVMs to C+7
manufacturers for repair
Completion of Repairs C+90
P= Poll day
C = Counting day
Standard Schedule for Bye-Election
PROCESS TIME SCHEDULE

1 2
Assessment of EVMs by CEO V+l
Ordering of consumables LOI V+l
FLC start V+15
FLC completion V+30
V= Vacancy date
106
CHAPTER-18
LEGAL PROVISION FOR THE USE OF EVMs
The Electronic Voting Machines were used for the first time during the General Election to the
Kerala Legislative Assembly held from Parur Assembly Constituency in May, 1982 at 50 polling
stations. Thereafter, these machines were used in ten other constituencies in 1982-83.
After 1983, the EVMs could not be used, as in the Election Appeal arising out of the election
petition relating to the use of the machines in the election from Parur Assembly Constituency in
Kerala, the Supreme Court ruled that there should be specific provision in the law providing for
use of EVMs in elections.
There upon, the Election Commission of India recommended to the Government of India to amend
the law suitably to provide legal sanction for the use of EVMs.
In December,1988 a new section 61 A was inserted in the Representation of the People Act, 1951,
empowering the Election Commission of India to use Electronic Voting Machines in elections,
which reads as under -
“61A. Voting machines at elections-Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or the rules
made there under, the giving and recording of votes by voting machines in such manner as may be
prescribed, may be adopted in such constituency or constituencies as the Election Commission may,
having regard to the circumstances of each case, specify. “
Explanation.-For the purpose of this section, “voting machine” means any machine or apparatus
whether operated electronically or otherwise used for giving or recording of votes and any reference
to a ballot box or ballot paper in this Act or the rules made thereunder shall, save as otherwise
provided, be construed as including a reference to such voting machine wherever such voting
machine is used at any election.
The Supreme Court upheld the validity of the above provision in All India Anna Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam v/s. Chief Election Commissioner and others [2002(UJ)(1)387]
[NOTE: In case of any discrepancy kindly refer Manual of Election Laws] The
Representation of the People Act, 1951 -
58. Fresh poll in the case of destruction, etc., of ballot boxes-
1) If at any election,-
a) any ballot box used at a polling station or at a place fixed for the poll is unlawfully taken
out of the custody of the presiding officer or the returning officer, or is accidentally or
intentionally destroyed or lost, or is damaged or tampered with, to such an extent, that the
result of the poll at that polling station or place cannot be ascertained; or
b) any voting machine develops a mechanical failure during the course of the recording of
votes; or]
c) any such error or irregularity in procedure as is likely to vitiate the poll is committed at a
polling station or at a place fixed for the poll, the returning officer shall forthwith report
the matter to the ECI.
107
2) There upon the Election Commission shall, after taking all material Circumstances into
account; either-
a) declare the poll at that polling station or place to be void, appoint a day, and fix the hours,
for taking a fresh poll at that polling station or place and notify the day so appointed and
the hours so fixed in such manner as it may deem fit, or
b) if satisfied that the result of a fresh poll at that polling station or place will not, in any way,
affect the result of the election or that the mechanical failure of the voting machine or]
the error or irregularity in procedure is not material, issue such directions to the returning
officer as it may deem proper for the further conduct and completion of the election.
The provisions of this Act and of any rules or orders made there under shall apply to every
such fresh poll as they apply to the original poll.]
135A. Offence of booth capturing.-
[(1)] Whoever commits an offence of booth capturing shall be punishable with imprisonment for
a term which [shall not be less than one year but which may extend to three years and with
fine, and where such offence is committed by a person in the service of the Government, he
shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than three years but
which may extend to five years and with fine].
Explanation - For the purposes of [this sub-section and section 20B], “booth capturing”
includes, among other things, all or any of the following activities, namely:-
(a) seizure of a polling station or a place fixed for the poll by any person or persons, making
polling authorities surrender the ballot papers or voting machines and doing of any other
act which affects the orderly conduct of elections;
(b) taking possession of a polling station or a place fixed for the poll by any person or
persons and allowing only his or their own supporters to exercise their right to vote and
[prevent others from free exercise of their right to vote];
(c) [coercing or intimidating or threatening directly or indirectly] any elector and preventing
him from going to the polling station or a place fixed for the poll to cast his vote;
(d) seizure of a place for counting of votes by any person or persons, making the counting
authorities surrender the ballot papers or voting machines and the doing of anything
which affects the orderly counting of votes;
(e) doing by any person in the service of Government, of all or any of the aforesaid activities
or aiding or conniving at, any such activity in the furtherance of the prospects of the
election of a candidate.]
(2) An offence punishable under sub-section (1) shall be cognizable.]
169. Power to make rules-
(1) The Central Government may, after consulting the Election Commission, by notification
in the Official Gazette, make rules for carrying out the purposes of this Act.
(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing power, such
rules may provide for all or any of the following matters, namely-
108
[(a) the form of affidavit under sub-section (2) of section33A;]

[(aa)] the duties of presiding officers and polling officers at polling stations; [(aaa) the
form of contribution report;]
(a) the checking of voters by reference to the electoral roll;
[(bb) the manner of allocation of equitable sharing of time on the cable television
network and other electronic media;];
(b) the manner in which votes are to be given both generally and in the case of illiterate
voters or voters under physical or other disability;
(c) the manner in which votes are to be given by a presiding officer, polling officer, polling
agent or any other person, who being an elector for a constituency is authorised or
appointed for duty at a polling station at which he is not entitled to vote;
(d) the procedure to be followed in respect of the tender of vote by a person representing
himself to be an elector after another person has voted as such elector;
[(ee) the manner of giving and recording of votes by means of voting machines and the
procedure as to voting to be followed at polling stations where such machines are
used;]
(e) the procedure as to voting to be followed at elections held in accordance with the system
of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote;
(f) the scrutiny and counting of votes including cases in which a recount of the votes may be
made before the declaration of the result of the election;
[(gg) the procedure as to counting of votes recorded by means of voting machines;]
(g) the safe custody of [ballot boxes, voting machines], ballot papers and other election
papers, the period for which such papers shall be preserved and the inspection and
production of such papers;
[(hh) the material to be supplied by the Government to the candidates of recognised
political parties at any election to be held for the purposes of constituting the
House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of a State;]
(h) any other matter required to be prescribed by this Act.
(3) Every rule made under this Act shall be laid as soon as may be after it is made before each House
of Parliament while it is in session for a total period of thirty days which may be comprised
in one session or [in two or more successive sessions, and if, before the expiry of the session
immediately following the session or the successive sessions aforesaid, both Houses agree in
making any modification in the rule or both Houses agree that the rule should not be made,] the
rule shall thereafter have effect only in such modified form or be of no effect, as the case may be;
so, however, that any such modification or annulment shall be without prejudice to the validity of
anything previously done under that rule.].
Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 (Statutory Rules and Order) with Conduct of
Elections (Amendment) Rules, 2013
Voting by Electronic Voting Machines & EVMs with VVPATs 49A. Design of Electronic
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Voting Machines-
Every electronic voting machine (hereinafter referred to as the voting machine) shall have a control
unit and a balloting unit and shall be of such designs as may be approved by the Election Commission.
Provided that a printer with a drop box of such design as may be approved by the Election
Commission may also be attached to a voting machine for printing a paper trail of the vote, in
such constituency or constituencies or parts thereof as the Election Commission may direct.
49B. Preparation of voting machine by the returning Officer.-
(1) The balloting unit of the voting machine shall contain such particulars and in such
language or languages as the Election Commission may specify.
(2) The names of the candidates shall be arranged on the balloting unit in the same order in
which they appear in the list of the contesting candidates.
(3) If two or more candidates bear the same name, they shall be distinguished by the addition
of their occupation or residence or in some other manner.
(4) Subject to the foregoing provisions of this rule, the returning officer shall-
(a) fix the label containing the names and symbol of the contesting candidates in the
balloting unit and secure that unit with his seal and the seals of such of the contesting
candidates or their election agents present as are desirous of affixing the same;
(b) set the number of contesting candidates and close the candidate set section in the
control unit and secure it with his seal and the seals of such of the contesting
candidates or their election agents present as are desirous of affixing the same;
(c) where the printer for paper trail is used under the proviso to rule 49A, set the
printer as per the number of contesting candidates set in the Control Unit by-
i) loading in the printer the serial numbers and names of candidates and symbols
allotted to them as given on the balloting units under clause (a);
ii) loading paper in the printer; and
iii) sealing the printer in such manner as may be directed by the Election
Commission”.
49C. Arrangements at the polling stations-
(l) Outside each polling station there shall be displayed prominently-
(a) a notice specifying the polling area, the electors of which are entitled to vote at the polling
station and, when the polling area has more than one polling station, the particulars of
the electors so entitled; and
(2) At each polling station there shall be set up one or more voting compartments in which the
electors can record their votes free from observation.
(3) The returning officer shall provide at each polling station one voting machine and copies of
relevant part of the electoral roll and such other election material as may be necessary for
110
taking the poll.

(4) Without prejudice to the provisions of sub-rule (3), the returning officer may, with the previous
approval of the Election Commission, provide one common voting machine for two or more
polling stations located in the same premises.
49E. Preparation of voting machine for poll-
(1) The control unit and balloting unit of every voting machine used at polling station and the
printer for paper trail where used, shall bear a label marked with-
(2) Immediately before the commencement of the poll, the presiding officer shall demonstrate
to the polling agents and other persons present that no vote has been already recorded in the
voting machine and it bears the label referred to in sub-rule (1), and where the printer for
paper trail is used that the drop box of the printer is empty.
(3) A paper seal shall be used for securing the control unit of the voting machine, and the presiding
officer shall affix his own signature on the paper seal and obtain thereon the signature of such of
the polling agents present as the desirous of affixing the same.
(4) The presiding officer shall thereafter fix the paper seal so signed in the space meant therefore in
the control unit of the voting machine and shall secure and seal the same.
(5) The seal used for securing the control unit shall be fixed in such manner that after the unit has
been sealed, it is not possible to press the “result button” without breaking the seal.
(6) The control unit shall be closed and secured and placed in full view of the presiding officer
and the polling agents and the balloting unit placed in the voting compartment.
(7) Where the printer for paper trail is used, the printer shall also be kept along with the balloting
unit in the voting compartment and shall be connected to the EVM in the manner as directed
by the Election Commission.
49L. Procedure for voting by voting machines. -
(l) Before permitting an elector to vote, the polling officer shall-
(a) Record the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the marked copy of the
electoral roll in a register of voters in Form l 7A.
(b) Obtain the signature or the thumb impression of the elector on the said register of votes;
and
(c) Mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that he
has been allowed to vote:
(d) Give details of the document produced by the elector in proof of his/her identification.]
Provided that no elector shall be allowed to vote unless he has his signature or thumb
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impression on the register of voters.

(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (2) of rule 2, it shall be necessary for any
Presiding Officer or polling officer or any other officer to attest the thumb impression of the
elector on the register of voters.
49M. Maintenance of secrecy of voting by electors within the polling station and voting
procedures.
(1) Every elector who has been permitted to vote under rule 49L shall maintain secrecy of voting
within the polling station and for that purpose observe the voting procedure hereinafter laid
down.
(2) Immediately on being permitted to vote the elector shall proceed to the presiding officer or the
polling officer in-charge of the control unit of the voting machine who shall, by pressing the
appropriate button on the control unit, activate the balloting unit; for recording of elector’s
vote.
(3) The elector shall thereafter forthwith
(b) record his vote by pressing the button on the balloting unit against the name and symbol of
the candidate for whom he intends to vote; and
(c) come out of the voting compartment and leave the polling station:
Provided that where printer for paper trail is used, upon casting the vote by
pressing the button under clause (b), the elector shall be able to view through the
transparent window of the printer, kept along with the balloting unit inside the
voting compartment, the printed paper slip showing the serial no, name and the
symbol of the candidate for whom he has cast his vote before such paper slip gets
cut and drops in the drop box of the printer”.
(5) No elector shall be allowed to enter the voting compartment when another elector is inside it.
(6) If an elector who has been permitted to vote under rule 49L or rule 49P refuses after warning
given by the presiding officer to observe the procedure laid down in sub-rule (3) of the said
rules, the presiding officer or a polling officer under the direction of the presiding officer shall
not allow such elector to vote.
(7) Where an elector is not allowed to vote under sub-rule (6), a remark to the effect that voting
procedure has been violated shall be made against the elector’s name in the register of voters
in Form17A by the presiding officer under his signature.
49MA Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed on paper slip-
(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote under rule
49M alleges that the paper slip generated by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a
candidate other than the one he voted for, the presiding officer shall obtain a written declaration
from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the elector about the consequence of
making a false declaration.
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(2) If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (l), the presiding officer shall
make a second entry related to that elector in Form17A, and permit the elector to record a test
vote in the voting machine in his presence and in the presence of the candidates or polling
agents who may be present in the polling station, and observe the paper slip generated by the
printer.
(3) If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the facts immediately to the
returning officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the
direction that maybe given by the Returning Officer.
(4) If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under sub-rule
(1) matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the presiding
officer shall-
(i) Make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form
17A mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test vote
has been recorded;
(iii) make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part I of Form-l7C.
49N. Recording of votes of blind or infirm electors.-

(1) If the presiding officer is satisfied that owing to blindness or other physical infirmities
an elector is unable to recognize the symbol on the balloting unit of the voting machine or
unable to record his vote by pressing the appropriate button there on without assistance
the presiding officer shall permit the elector to take with him a companion of not less
than eighteen years of age to the voting compartment for recording the vote on his behalf
and in accordance with his wishes: Provided that no person shall be permitted to act as
the companion of more than one elector at any polling station on the same day: Provided
further that before any person is permitted to act as the companion of an elector on any
day under this rule that person shall be required to declare that he will keep secret the
vote recorded by him on behalf of the elector and that he has not already acted as the
companion of any other elector at any other polling station on that day.
(2) The presiding officer shall keep a record in Form 14A of all cases under this rule.
49Q. Presiding Officer’s entry in the voting compartment during poll.-
(1) The presiding officer may whenever he considers it necessary to do so, enter the voting
compartment during poll and take such steps as may be necessary to ensure that the balloting unit
is not tampered or interfered with in any way.
(2) If the presiding officer has reason to suspect that an elector who has entered the voting
compartment is tampering or otherwise interfering with the balloting unit or has remained
inside the voting compartment for unduly long period, he shall enter the voting compartment
and take such steps as may be necessary to ensure the smooth and orderly progress of the poll.
(3) Whenever the presiding officer enters the voting compartment under this rule, he shall permit
the polling agents present to accompany him if they so desire.
49R. Closing of poll.-
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(1) The presiding officer shall close a polling station at the hour fixed in that behalf under section
56 and shall not thereafter admit any elector into the polling station:
Provided that all electors present at the polling station before it is closed shall be allowed to
cast their votes.
(2) If any question arises whether an elector was present at the polling station before it was closed
it shall be decided by the presiding officer and his decision shall be final.
49S. Account of votes recorded.-
(1) The presiding officer shall at the close of the poll prepare an account of votes recorded in
Form l 7C and enclose it in a separate cover with the words ‘Account of Votes Recorded’
superscribed thereon.
(2) The presiding officer shall furnish to every polling agent present at the close of the poll a true
copy of the entries made in Form l 7C after obtaining a receipt from the said polling agent
therefore and shall attest it as a true copy.
49T. Sealing of voting machine after poll.-
(1) As soon as practicable after the closing of the poll, the presiding officer shall close the control
unit to ensure that no further votes can be recorded and shall detach the balloting unit from
the control unit and from the printer, where printer is also used, so that the paper slips
contained in the drop box of the printer shall remain intact.
(2) The control unit and the balloting unit and the printer, where it is used, shall thereafter be
sealed, and secured separately in such manner as the Election Commission may direct and
the seal used for securing them shall be so affixed that it will not be possible to open the units
without breaking the seals.
(3) The polling agents present at the polling station, who desire to affix their seals, shall also be
permitted to do so.
49U. Sealing of other packets-
(1) The presiding officer shall then make into separate packet
(b) the register of voters in Form17A;
(c) the cover containing the tendered ballot papers and the list in Form 17B;
(e) any other papers directed by the Election Commission to be kept in a sealed packet.
(2) Each packet shall be sealed with the seal of the presiding officer and with the seal either of
the candidate or of his election agent or of his polling agent who may be present at the polling
station and may desire to affix his seal thereon.
49V. Transmission of voting machines, etc., to the returning officer-
(1) The presiding officer shall then deliver or cause to be delivered to the returning officer at such
place as the returning officer may direct-
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(b) the account of votes recorded in Form -l 7C;
(c) the sealed packets referred to in rule 49U; and
(2) The returning officer shall make adequate arrangements for the safe transport of the voting
machine, packets and other papers for their safe custody until the commencement of the
counting of votes.
49X. Closing of voting machine in case of booth capturing-
Where the presiding officer is of opinion that booth capturing is taking place at a polling station
or at a place fixed for the poll, he shall immediately close the control unit of the voting machine
to ensure that no further votes can be recorded and shall detach the balloting that from the
control unit.]
49W. Procedure on adjournment of poll.-
(1) If the poll at any polling station is adjourned under sub-section (1) of section 57, the
provision of rules 49S to 49V shall, as far as practicable, apply as if the poll was closed at
the hour fixed in that behalf under section 56.
(2) When an adjourned poll is recommended under sub-section (2) of section 57, the electors
who have already voted at the poll so adjourned shall not be allowed to vote again.
(3) The Returning Officer shall provide the presiding officer of the polling station at which
such adjourned poll is held, with the sealed packet containing the marked copy of the
electoral roll, register of voters in Form17A and a new voting machine.
(4) The Presiding Officer shall open the sealed packet in the presence of the polling agents
present and use the marked copy of the electoral roll for marking the names of the electors
who are allowed to vote at the adjourned poll.
(5) The provisions of rule 28 and rules 49A to 49V shall apply in relation to the conduct of
an adjourned poll before it was so adjourned.
66A. Counting of votes where electronic voting machines have been used.-
In relation to the counting of votes at a polling station, where voting machine has been used
the provisions of rules 50 to 54 and in lieu of rules 55, 56 and 57, the following rules
shall respectively apply, namely:-
‘55C. Scrutiny and inspection of voting machines-
(1) The returning officer may have the control units of the voting machines used at more than
one polling station taken up for scrutiny and inspection and votes recorded in such units
counted simultaneously.
(2) Before the votes recorded in any control unit of voting machine are counted under sub-
rule (]), the candidate or his election agent or his counting agent present at the counting
table shall be allowed to inspect the paper seal and such other vital seals as might have
been affixed on the unit and to satisfy themselves that the seals are intact.
115
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none of the voting machines has in fact
been tampered with.
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any voting machine has in fact been tampered with,
he shall not count the votes recorded in that machine and shall follow the procedure laid
down in section 58, or section 58A or section 64A, as may be applicable in respect of the
polling station or stations where that machine was used.
56C. Counting of votes.-
(l) After the returning officer is satisfied that a voting machine has in fact not been tampered
with, he shall have the votes recorded therein counted by pressing the appropriate button
marked “Result” provided in the control unit whereby the total votes polled and votes
polled by each candidate shall be displayed in respect of each such candidate on the
display panel provided for the purpose in the unit.
(2) As the votes polled by each candidate are displayed on the control unit, the returning
officer shall have,-
(a) the number of such votes recorded separately in respect of each candidate in Part II on
Form17C;
Provided that the test vote recorded, if any, for a candidate, as per item 5 in
Part I of Form 17C, shall be subtracted from the number of votes recorded for
such candidate as displayed on the control unit.
(b) Part II of Form l 7C completed in other respects and signed by the counting supervisor
and also by the candidates or their election agents or their counting agents present; and
(c) corresponding entries made in a result sheet in Form 20 and the particulars so entered in
the result sheet announced.
“56D Scrutiny of paper trail-
(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, after the entries made in the result sheet are announced,
any candidate, or in his absence, his election agent or any of his counting agents may apply in
writing to the returning officer to count the printed paper slips in the drop box of the printer in
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer shall, subject to such general or special
guidelines, as may be issued by the Election Commission, decide the matter and may allow
the application in whole or in part or may reject in whole, if it appears to him to be frivolous
or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule (2) shall be in writing and shall contain
the reasons thereof.
(4) If the Returning Officer decides under sub-rule (2) to allow counting of the paper slips either
wholly or in part or parts, he shall-
a) do the counting in the manner as may be directed by the Election Commission;
b) if there is discrepancy between the votes displayed on the control unit and the counting of
the paper slips, amend the result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips count;
116
c) announce the amendments so made by him; and

d) complete and sign the result sheet.” 57C. Sealing of voting machines.-
(1) After the result of voting recorded in a control unit has been ascertained candidate wise and
entered in Part II of Form 17C and Form 20 under rule 56C, the returning officer shall reseal
the unit with his seal and the seals of such of the candidates or their election agents present
who may desire to affix the seals thereon so however that the result of voting recorded in the
unit is not obliterated and the unit retains the memory of such result and where printer for
paper trail is used, the returning officer shall seal the paper slips in such manner, as may
be directed by the Election Commission.
(2) The control unit and the paper slips so sealed shall be kept in specially prepared boxes on
which the returning officer shall record the following particulars, namely:-
a) the name of the constituency;
b) the particulars of polling station or stations where the control unit has been used;
c) serial number of the control unit and printer wherever used;
d) date of poll; and
e) date of counting.
(3) the provisions of rules 60 to 66 shall, so far as may be, apply in relation to voting by voting
machines and any reference in those rules to,-
a) ballot paper shall be construed as including a reference to such voting machine;
b) any rule shall be construed as a reference to the corresponding rule in Chapter II
of Part IV or, as the case may be, to rule 55C or 56C or 57C].
92. Custody of ballot boxes and papers relating to election-
(lA) All voting machines used at an election shall be kept in the custody of the concerned
district election officer.
(2) The district election officer shall keep in safe custody-
(cc) the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of rule 57C.
(dd) The packets containing registers of voters in Form-l 7A
93. Production and inspection of election papers.-
(1) While in the custody of the district election officer or, as the case may be, the returning
officer-
a) the packets of unused ballot papers with counterfoils attached thereto;
b) the packets of used ballot papers whether valid, tendered or rejected;
c) the packets of the counterfoils of used ballot papers;
(cc) the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of rule 57C.
d) the packets of the marked copy of the electoral roll or, as the case may be, the list
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maintained under sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) of section 152; and

[(dd) the packets containing registers of voters in form 17-A;]
e) the packets of the declarations by electors and the attestation of their signatures; shall not
be opened and their contents shall not be inspected by, or produced before, any person or
authority except under the order of a competent court.
[IA) The control units sealed under the provisions of rule 57C and kept in the custody of the
district election officer shall not be opened and shall not be inspected by, or produced
before, any person or authority except under the orders of a competent court.]
(2) Subject to such conditions and to the payment of such fee as the Election Commission may
direct,-
a) all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection; and
b) copies thereof shall on application be furnished.
(3) copies of the returns by the returning officer forwarded under rule 64, or as the case may be,
under clause (b) of sub-rule(1) of rule 84 shall be furnished by the returning officer, district
election officer, chief electoral officer or the Election Commission on payment of a fee of two
rupees for each copy.]
94. Disposal of election papers.-
Subject to any direction to the contrary given by the Election Commission or by a competent
court or tribunal-
[(a) the packets of unused ballot papers shall be retained for a period of six months and shall
thereafter be destroyed in such manner as the Election Commission may direct;]
[(aa) the voting machines kept in the custody of the district election officer under sub-rule
(1A) of rule 92 shall be retained intact for such period as the Election Commission may
direct and shall not be used at any subsequent election without the previous approval of
the Election Commission;]
(b) the other packets referred to in sub-rule (]) of rule 93 shall be retained for a period of
one year and shall thereafter be destroyed:
[Provided that packets containing the counterfoils of used ballot papers and the printer
paper slips, if any, shall not be destroyed except with the previous approval of the
Election Commission;]
(c) all other papers relating to the election shall be retained for such period as the Election
Commission may direct.
95. Power of the Election Commission to issue directions.-
Subject to the other provisions of these rules, the Election Commission may issue such
directions as it may consider necessary to facilitate the proper use and operation of the voting
machines.
[For provisions regarding use of VVPAT system please refer to the Conduct of Elections
(Amendment) Rules, 2013]
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CHAPTER-19
EVM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (EMS)
EVM Management System (EMS) 2.0 is a Cloud native application developed for managing
inventory of EVMs owned by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The system offers
transparency by recording all EVM related activities and ensures no manual intervention at any level
from manufacturer to polling stations.
The EMS 2.0 is designed and developed using state-of-the-art Micro services and distributed computer
architecture. The system is modular in nature, secure, highly scalable and has quick and fast response
features.
This application comprises of both Web and Mobile Versions (Android and iOS based mobile
application). ECI, Chief Electoral Officers, District Election Officers, Warehouse in-charges,
Returning Officers of assembly constituencies, Assistant Returning Officers of parliamentary
constituencies and Manufacturers of EVMs (M/s. Bharat Electronics Limited and M/s. Electronics
Corporation of India Limited) are the stakeholders of this application.
It allows tracking inventories of Control Units (CU), Balloting Units (BU) and VVPATs with
their locations. It also allow management of warehouses and election related activities viz. FLC Process,
Randomisation.
EMS 2.0 application has following modules
o User Management
o WH & SR Management
o Order Management
o Unit Management
o Support
o EVM Consumable Management
o Other Aggregate Services
User Management
User Management module allows user creation, updating/editing user details, resetting of passwords
as per the roles & permissions provided to the User. ECI Admin can create CEO level users; CEO
can create one CEO office and DEO level users. DEOs can create DEO office, warehouse in-
charges and Temporary Users. Updating/editing user details and resetting of passwords can be
done by the ECI Admin, CEO and DEO for the users created by them.
CEO office user and DEO office user has the same right & privileges as given to CEO & DEO
respectively.
WH & SR Management
Warehouse and Strong-room management module allows the DEOs to create warehouse and strong
room in the respective districts. It also facilitate DEOs to conduct monthly and quarterly inspection
of the warehouse and upload inspection reports in EMS 2.0
119
Order Management
This module allows ECI to create orders for Inter-State shifting of EVMs and shifting from factories
to the State/UT. It also allow the CEOs to create inter-district shifting within State/UT and DEOs
can create orders for shifting of EVMs within district or to the factories. Status of execution of
the created order can also be monitored in EMS 2.0. While allocating orders, the system has the
facility to shows the distances for the near by warehouses.
Unit Management
This module helps in managing the life cycle of the EVMs as well as various election related
activities viz. scheduling of election, randomisation of EVMs and marking of units for Training/
Awareness and Election Petition etc.
Support
This module is developed to provide support to the end users, if they find any difficulty in use of any
of the functionalities of EMS 2.0. It has the facility for peer to peer and higher level communication.
EVM Consumable Management
This module provides a dashboard for managing the inventory of consumable items being used
with the EVMs at various election related processes.
Other Aggregate Services
Under the Other Aggregate Services user has the facility of Global Search of the Unit ID with its
current location and History, FLC Status and status of FLC non-functional units at a Glance. A
dashboard for the manufacturers is also available in this module to have a status and make wise
abstract status of EVMs available at factory premises and in the States/UTs.
Reports
Various reports are made available in the EMS 2.0 for its users at the level of ECI Admin/ CEO/
DEO/WH Manager/Manufacturer to check the status of work allocated and to identify pending
issues.
EMS 2.0 Application for Android and iOS
Most of the functions available in the web-version of EMS 2.0 are also available in the mobile
application of EMS 2.0. In addition, mobile application also provide facility to scan the barcodes/
QR codes of unit ID and Pink Paper Slips affixed to Control units during FLC.
120
PART–IV
ANNEXURES
1 ANNEXURES ANNEXURES 122-175
121
122
1
1
Box No. Box No.
2
2
BU ID No CU ID No.
Name of District:
3
3
Address of Warehouse:
Name of Manufacturer Name of Manufacturer Name of sub-division/ Taluka:
4
4
Year of Manufacture Year of Manufacture
Name of State/ Union Territory:
5
5
Date of Receipt Date of Receipt
6
6
Receipt Challan No. Receipt Challan No.
VVPAT
684
Ballot Unit
Control Unit
Date on receipt Chal- Date on receipt Chal-
7
7
lan lan
Master Stock Register
Name and designation Name and designa-
8
8
of receiver tion of receiver
9
9
Signature of receiver Signature of receiver
(Note: Separate Register for Ballot Units, Control Units and VVPATs)
Signature of Warehouse Signature of Ware-
10
10
In-charge house-In-charge
11
11
Remarks Remarks
ANNEXURE-1
Edition 8 August 2023
Name and desig-

nation of receiver
Year of Manufac-
Receipt Challan
Name of Manu-
Date of Receipt
Date on receipt
VVPAT ID No
Warehouse-in-
Signature of
Signature of
Remarks
facturer
receiver
Challan
charge
S. No.
ture
No.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Gist of Control Unit, Ballot Unit and VVPAT in Separate Register
Total Unit re-ceived Da- Total Units shifted from Dateof Net availability in ware- Re-
in ware-house teof warehouse des- house marks
re- patch
BU CU VVPAT ceipt BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT
123
ANNEXURE-2 (A)
Certificate of monthly inspection of EVM warehouse (s)
I, hereby, certify that as per the Commission’s instruction, I personally visited the EVM warehouse(s)
and I am satisfied with the arrangements as under:
S. No. Particulars Inspection Report

1. EVM warehouse(s) (a) District Headquarters
(b) Tehsil Headquarters
(c) Other(specify the
name)
2. How many entry point(s) is/are there in EVM-warehouse(s)?
3. What type of lock system is observed in EVM-warehouse.
4. Other doors and windows, if any, in the warehouse are sealed with
which material.
5. (a) Number of CCTV installed
(b) Whether DVR was connected with laptop to inspect the activities
in WH? What was the observation?
6. (a)Whether log-book showing the duty of the security personnel Yes/No
was inspected?
(b) How many security personnel deployed in each shift?
(c) When was the warehouse opened last time?
(d) Kindly mention reason for opening of warehouse and who
authorised the opening of warehouse..
(a) Where is the main switch of the warehouse installed?
7. (b) Whether main switch installed outside has been switched off in Yes/No
warehouse?
8. (a) How many fire-fighting equipment are installed?
(b) Date of expiry of the fire-extinguisher
9. Kindly attach Photographs of inspection of warehouse(s)
Date of Inspection:
Signature ….............…….
(Name of District Election Officer)
Name of District ….............…….
124
ANNEXURE -2 (B)
Certificate of Quarterly Inspection of EVM Warehouse(s)
I, hereby, certify that as per the Commission’s instruction, I personally visited the EVM-VVPAT
warehouse(s) and I am satisfied with the arrangements as under:
S. No. Particulars Inspection

Report
1. EVM-VVPAT warehouse is at (a) District Headquarters
(b) Tehsil Headquarters
(c) Other (specify the same)
2. a)How many entry point(s) is/are there in EVM-VVPAT warehouse?
(b) If more than one entry point, whether other entry point (s) is Yes/No
sealed with brick- masonry or concrete.
3. (a) What type of lock system is put in place in EVM-VVPAT
warehouse.
(b) Who are the custodian of Keys of the Locks? Name & designation
of officers
4. Other doors and windows, if any, in the warehouse,
are sealed as per extant instructions? Specify material used for seal-
ing.
5. (a) Number of CCTV cameras installed
(b) Have you seen the past CCTV recording after the last inspection Yes/No
to verify that recording is happening and is satisfactory?
6. (a) Whether log-book showing the duty of the security Yes/No
personnel was inspected by senior police officers?
(b) How many security personnel were deployed in each shift?
(c) When was the warehouse opened last time?
(d) Kindly mention reason for opening of warehouse and who autho-
rized the opening of warehouse.
(e) Whether at the time of opening and closing of warehouse (s) Yes/No
signature of representatives of National and State Political Parties
obtained in logbook? If No, reason thereof.
(f) Where is the copy of videography of opening and closing of ware-
house(s) kept?
7. (a) Where is the main switch of the warehouse installed?
(b) Whether main switch of warehouse installed outside has been Yes/No
switched off?
125
8. (a) How many fire- fighting equipment are installed?

(b) Dates of expiry of the fire extinguishers
(c) Is Fire NOC available for the building from the municipal or other Yes/No
competent authority?
9. Details of the representatives of National/State Recognized political
parties, who are present at the time of inspection.
10. Check for dampness/water logging/rodents/any other abnormality
etc. and remarks on the internal conditions of the Warehouse.
11. Whether any other materials (other than EVMs & VVPATs) are kept
with EVMs & VVPATs in Warehouse(s)
12. Kindly attach 4-5 photographs of inspection of warehouse (s) mainly Yes/No
covering the entrances/exits.
13. Whether the warehouse is in flood-prone area considering the trend Yes/No
in the past 5 years?
14. If the warehouse is in a flood-prone area as per (Q.13), whether nec- Yes/No
essary SOP/Plan is in place for safe keeping of the EVM stock in such
eventuality?
15. (i) Whether the necessary NOC from CPWD/ PWD (Civil and Elec- (i) Yes/No
trical) has been taken on record at the time of putting to the Ware- (ii) Yes/No
house to use &
(ii) Whether the NOCs are still valid?
16. If the answer to the Q. No. 15 is No, provide details of action taken
thereof?
17. Any other Remark/observation
Date of Inspection:
Signature ….............…….
(Name of District Election Officer)
Name of District ….............…….
126
ANNEXURE-3
(Attendance Register for National and State Recognised Political Parties-FLC Hall)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date:.....................
Name of Name of representative of Identity

S. Signature of Remarks,
National/State political party with party document No.
No. with date representative if any.
Party affiliation
Note: If the representative of a party is absent the proof of due service of notice to the party
should be pasted in the register.
(Name, Designation and Signature of officer nominated by District Election Officer)
127
ANNEXURE-4
SOP for Cleaning of Plastic Cabinet and Carrying Cases
Purpose: The purpose of cleaning of cabinets and carrying cases of EVM/VVPATs is to remove all
the previous traces, tags, markings, stickers and any other display tags related to its earlier usage
which if not removed properly, may mislead information in its future assigned use.
Objects for Cleaning on the Cabinet & Carrying Case:
Tags, Seal, FLC Stickers, Pink Paper Seal, Other previous poll displays, Markings over Boxes.
Detail: The following Tags, Seal, display are normally found on the cabinet/ carrying case of
EVM/ VVPAT after being used for Election.
(a) BU: Ballet Papers, Transparent Ballot Paper screen address Tag, Top & Bottom Latches
address Tag, Pink Paper Seal, Green FLC Sticker.
(b) CU: Battery Compartment address Tag, Candidate Set compartment address Tag, Special
Tag, Green paper Seal, Outer paper strip seal, CRC door address Tag, Green FLC sticker, Pink
Paper Seal, Superscriptions.
(c) VVPAT: Paper Roll Compartment address tag Seal, Ballot Slip Compartment Address Tag
Seal, Green FLC sticker, superscription.
(d) Carrying Case: Marking/display of information such as District Name, AC/PC number &
Name, Polling Station number, other information of previous poll.
Method: For Surface Cleaning & to remove the Stickers and Tags, the recommended chemical
is “lso Propyl Alcohol”. The Cotton waste is to be used to apply the chemical on the surfaces of
Cabinet & Carrying case.
The Cotton waste should be soaked sufficiently with the Iso Propyl alcohol and gently rubbed on
the stickers/tags which are to be removed without any damage or scratching on the body. Cleaning
process may be repeated till the stickers are completely removed.
In any case, the Iso Propyl alcohol should not be directly poured on the Cabinet or Carrying case
body, but it has to be applied through cotton waste only. Other solvents like Thinner, Water etc.
should not be used to avoid damage to EVM/VVPAT units.
Other Instructions:
1. Writing on the carrying case body using permanent marker should be avoided and appropriate
stickers to be used for display of other relevant information such as AC/PC number, AC/PC
name, district name etc. Removal of permanent marker “markings” require repeated forced
rubbing even with the Iso Propyl alcohol and may damage the surface.
2. Iso Propyl alcohol being a flammable material, proper storage & handling protocol to be
maintained.
3. The General instruction on safety and handling of Iso Propyl alcohol are as under. Specific
instructions can be referred from the Material Safety Data Sheet supplied along with the Iso
Prophyle alcohol by the suppler/ manufacturer:-
128
HAZARDS IDENTIFICATION
(a) Primary Entry Routes: Inhalation, skin, eyes and ingestion.
(b) Acute Effects: Inhalation of vapours irritates the respiratory tract. Exposure to high
concentration has a narcotic effect producing symptoms of dizziness, drowsiness, headache,
staggering, unconsciousness and possibly death.
(c) Aggravation of Pre-existing conditions: Persons with pre-existing skin disorders or impaired
liver, kidney or pulmonary function may be more susceptible to the effects of this chemical.
FIRST AID MEASURES
(a) Eyes: Immediately flush eyes with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes. Lifting lower &
upper eye lids occasionally. Get medical attention immediately.
(b) Skin : Immediately flush skin with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes. Call a physician,
if irritation develops.
(c) Inhalation : Remove affected person to fresh air. If not breathing, give artificial respiration.
If breathing is difficult, give oxygen. Get medical attention.
(d) Ingestion: Give large amount of water to drink. Never give anything by mouth to an
unconscious person. Get medical attention.
FIRE FIGHTING MEASURES
(a) Extinguishing media: Water spray, Dry chemical, Alcohol Foam or CO2 Water Spray may
be used to keep fire expose container cool, dilute spills to non-flammable mixtures and to
protect personnel attempting to stop leak and disperse vapours.
(b) Fire fighting instructions:In the event of fire, wear full protective clothing and self-contained
breathing apparatus with full face piece.
STORAGE REQUIREMENTS: Store in a cool, dry, well ventilated area away from heat
source. Storage and usage area should be clarified as “No smoking Area”.
ECOLOGICAL INFORMATION: Prevent spillage from entering drains or water sources. After
spills, wash area with water preventing run-off from entering drains. When released into water, this
material may bio-degrade to a moderate extent.
129
ANNEXURE-5
(Certification of EVMs by BEL/ECIL)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of FLC Hall:
Date:................
It is certified that tests prescribed by BEL/ECIL to ascertain that all components are original were
carried out on the EVMs (BU & CU) listed below on........... (date). On the basis of these tests it is
certified that all components of the EVMs listed below are original.
CU Identification No. BU Identification No.
(Name & Signature of BEL/ECIL engineers with ID No.)
(Names of Representatives of political parties with their party affiliation and signature)
(Name, designation and signature of officer nominated by District Election Officer)
130
ANNEXURE-6
Tools and Spares to be brought by BEL/ECIL Engineers for FLC
1. TOOLS TO BE CARRIED BY ENGINEERS
a) Screw Drivers, forceps, nose-pliers;
b) Multi-meter;
c) Symbol loading Unit with Accessories (SLMD with all connecting cables); and
d) P-FLCU
2. SPARE-PARTS AND OTHER MATERIAL TO BE BROUGHT BY ENGINEERS
a) Flaps
b) Close Caps
c) Latches
d) Cables (BU,VVPAT)
e) Buttons (Ballot, Total, Close, Result, Clear & Candidate)
f) Spare parts mentioned above (a) to (e) should be 20% of the number of EVMs to
be tested
g) High Resolution Photographs of component side of CU-PCB and BU-PCB
h) FLC Stickers {FLC-OK (Green), FLC-Failed (Red)}
i) Tamper seals
j) VVPAT Stickers (Transportation, Working and Unlock before Switch ON); and
k) Ballot Paper of Dummy symbol
131
ANNEXURE-7
(Mock Poll Selection Certificate during FLC of EVMs)
Date: .................
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
It is certified that I have been allowed to pick machines (EVMs as well as VVPATs) randomly for the
purpose of mock-poll.
Name of Name of representative Identity

SL Signature of Remarks, if
National/State of political party with document No.
No. representative any.
Party party affiliation with date
132
ANNEXURE-8
(Mock Poll by Representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties during
FLC of EVMs)
Date:.................
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
It is certified that I have done mock poll on..............EVMs along with VVPATs and I am fully satisfied
with the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs.
Name of
Name of Identity
representative of Signature of Remarks, if
S. No. National/State document No.
political party with representative any.
Party with date
party affiliation
133
ANNEXURE-9
(Mock Poll certification during FLC of VVPATs)
Date:.................
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
It is certified that the results of the printed ballot slips of VVPATs (list of unique ID of
VVPATs attached) have been tallied with the electronic result of the respective Control Units.
There are no discrepancies between the electronic count of the Control Units and count of
printed ballot paper slips of VVPATs.
Name of
Name of Identity
representative Remarks,
S. National/ document Signature of
of if
No. State Political No. representative
political party with any.
Party with date
party affiliation
Name and Signature of BEL/ECIL Engineers

1.
2.
3.
(Signature) ...........................
Name of FLC-Supervisor...........................
Designation ....................................
134
ANNEXURE-10
Flow Chart for FLC Procedure of EVM
START
END
135
ANNEXURE-11
(Sealing of Control Unit of EVMs using Pink Paper Seal)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date: ....................
It is certified that the sealing of the Control Units using Pink Paper Seals has been done in my presence.
I have put my signature on the Pink Paper Seals after sealing of the Control Units and I am satisfied with
the sealing of the Control Units.
SI. No. Unique ID No. of Control Unit Pink Paper Seal Number
(Name, Designation and Signature of officers nominated by District Election Officer)
136
ANNEXURE-12
Part-I (Inspection Report of arrangement for FLC)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date………………
S.No. Particular Yes / No

1. Whether FLC hall is sufficiently large to accommodate the EVMs and VVPATs to
be checked, officials nominated by the DEO, engineers of BEL and ECIL and also
representatives of political Parties.
2. Whether FLC Hall well-lighted, well ventilated and dust free.
3. Whether FLC area has been barricaded and sanitized by police
4. Whether adequate arrangement of fire extinguishers and fire alarm has been made
inside and outside the hall.
5. Whether hall is free from any other electronic device or components of electronic
devices other than permissible devices
6. Whether facilities of drinking water, toilet, first aid etc. are available
7. Whether there is only one entry and exit point to the hall and guarded by armed
Police force round the clock.
8. Whether arrangement for installation of TV/Monitor (minimum 24 inches) with
HDMI input for each SLU has been made.
9. Whether arrangement of one PC/Laptop with internet connectivity outside FLC
Hall for transmission of FLC data from P-FLCU has been made.
10. Whether arrangement has been made for pasting SoP on FLC procedure in the FLC
Hall.
11. Whether arrangement has been made for shredding of VVPATs slips by shredding
machine.
12. Whether Door Frame Metal Detector are installed.
13. Whether arrangement for frisking has been made.
14. Whether Identity Cards for entry into the FLC hall to the authorized officials/ Rep-
resentatives of political parties have been issued by the District Election Officer
15. Whether arrangement of webcasting have been made.
16. Whether log book to record entry of every person has been kept at FLC Hall.
17. Whether a separate log book (i.e. duty roster) to be maintained for armed police
force deployed for FLC hall has been kept at FLC hall.
18. Whether all required registers and formats are ready and kept in FLC Hall.
19. Number of Armed Police Personnel in each shift
I have personally inspected the above arrangements.
137
ANNEXURE-13
(Certificate on completion of FLC process)
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Date:.......................
It is certified that FLC process has been completed on..............(date) as per instructions of the
Commission on First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs. I personally inspected FLC on following
dates:
The status of EVMs and VVPATs after completion of FLC is as under:
Name of Available in the District FLC Ok Quantity FLC Reject Quantity

District BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT
The Non-functional EVMs and VVPATs shall be shifted to the manufacturer (BEL/ECIL) on
….i.e. within 7 days from the date of completion of FLC process in the district.
138
ANNEXURE-14
Part-I (Inspection Report of arrangement for FLC)
Name of State/UT: ……………………………….
Name of District: ………………………………..
Address of FLC Hall: ………………………………..
EVMs/VVPATs of BEL/ECIL : ………………………
Date:...........................
S. No. Particular Report

1. Total Number of Polling Stations.
2. Quantity of units
(a) Ballot Units (b) Control Units ( c) VVPATs
3. Number of engineers deployed by BEL/ECIL.
4. Expected FLC start date.
5. Whether FLC hall is sufficiently large to accommodate the EVMs and VVPATs to be
checked, officials nominated by the DEO, engineers of BEL/ECIL and also representa-
tives of political parties.
6. Whether FLC hall well-lighted, well ventilated and dust free.
7. Whether adequate arrangement of fire extinguishers and fire alarm has been made
inside and outside the FLC hall.
8. Whether FLC area has been barricaded and sanitized by police.
9. Whether the hall is free from any other electronic device or components of electronic
devices other than permissible devices.
10. Whether facilities of drinking water, toilet, first aid etc. are available.
11. Whether there is only one entry and exit point to the hall and guarded by armed police
force round the clock.
12. Whether Door Frame Metal Detector are installed.
13. Whether arrangement for frisking has been made.
14. Whether Identity Cards for entry into the FLC hall to the authorised officials/representa-
tives of political parties have been issued by the DEO.
15. Whether webcasting showing FLC tables clearly visible in DEO’s chamber.
16. Whether log book to record entry of every person has been kept at FLC hall.
17. Whether a separate log book (i.e. duty register) to be maintained for armed police force
deployed for FLC hall has been kept at FLC hall.
18. Whether all required registers and formats mentioned in the Commission’s letter No.
51/8/INST/2022-EMS, dated 13th September, 2022 are ready and kept in FLC hall.
19. Number of Armed Police Personnel planned in each shift.
20. Whether all National and State Recognized Political Parties at district and State level
have been invited in writing and notices duly served.
(Signature)
Name and Designation
139
Part-II (Inspection Report of quality of FLC)

Name of State/UT: ..........................................................
Name of District:............................................................
Address of FLC Hall:.......................................................
EVMs/VVPATs of BEL/ECIL:. ...........................................
Date : ……………………
S. No. Particular Report

1. Total Number of Polling Stations.
2. Quantity of units subject to FLC
(a) Ballot Units
(b) Control Units
(c) VVPATs
3. Total number of BEL/ECIL authorised engineers present.
4. Date of FLC start
5. Quantity of units FLC done so far
(a) Balloting Units
(b) Control Units
(c) VVPATs
6. Name and designation of FLC Supervisor appointed by DEO
7. Photocopies of attendance register of political parties
8. Who is monitoring Webcasting of FLC process in the Control Room?
9. SoP to confirm that all components of the EVMs are original is available
with authorised engineers of BEL/ECIL.
10. SoP mentioning the step-by-step instructions of checking of the ma-
chines is pasted prominently at FLC hall.
11. PCB and other components of EVMs are shown to the representatives of
political parties.
12. Whether DEO is conducting a daily inspection of the FLC venue and
FLC process.
13. Whether ECI instructions on FLC process are being followed in letter
and spirit.
14. Kindly mention below shortcomings or suggestions for improvement.
(Signature)
Name and Designation
140
Checklist on Probable Shortcomings During FLC

(To be submitted with Part-II of Inspection Report)
Name of State/UT:..........................................................
Name of District : ............................................................
Address of FLC Hall: . ................................................................
EVMs/VVPATs of BEL/ECIL: .................................................
Date of visit:..,,,,,........................
S.No. Particular Report

1. Whether web-casting is covering the entire FLC process i.e. CCTV coverage
is available in all Halls where FLC process is going on and same is visible at
web-casting.
2. Quality of cleaning of cabinets and carrying cases of machines
3. Whether FLC-OK and FLC-Rejected units are kept in separate rooms.
4. Whether FLC-OK and FLC-Rejected status is updated in EMS on daily basis
i.e. no FLC-OK machine of previous day is pending for updating in EMS.
5. Whether Pink Paper Seals are affixed on FLC-OK CUs properly.
6. Whether sufficient quantity of spare plastic parts viz. buttons, covers and
latches etc. are available at FLC Hall.
7. Whether paper shredding machine is available in the FLC Hall to shred the
VVPAT slips.
If Yes, whether VVPAT slips are disposed of on daily basis.
8. Observations on functional and physical status of randomly selected 10 FLC-
OK units (i.e. 5 CU + 5 VVPAT) checked on the visit date.
9. Observations on functional and physical status of randomly selected 10
FLC-Rejected units (i.e. 5 CU + 5 VVPAT) checked on the visit date.
10. Whether the reason of rejection mentioned for the FLC-rejected units checked
by you was correctly mentioned in the record.
11. a) No. of Engineers Deployed in the District
b) No. of Engineers available in the District
c) If there is any difference between 11(a) & 11(b), reasons thereof.
(Signature)
Date: Name and
Designation
141
ANNEXURE- 15
Plan on Awareness for EVMs
Name of State:................
EVM Demonstration Centre (EDC)
Name of No. of EVMs Address of No. and No. of EDC Address of Remarks,
District Demonstration DEO HQs, name of As- set up at Re- Returning Of- if any
Centres (EDC) where EDC is sembly Con- turning Offi- ficer/Revenue
set up at DEO set up stituency cer/Revenue Sub-Division
HQs Sub-Division
offices offices where
EDC is set up
Mobile Demonstration Van (MDV)
Name of No. and No. of Mo- Total No. of Date of Start Plan to cover Remarks,
District Name of bile Demon- Polling Sta- of MDV in all Polling if any
Assembly stration tion Location AC Station
Constituency Vans (MDV) in Assembly Location in
in the district deployed in Constituency
AC AC (atleast
once)
142
ANNEXURE-16
Progress on EVMs Awareness
(To be submitted every Monday till the date of announcement of elections)
Name of State: ……………................…………..

Date of Report: ……………................…………..
EVM Demonstration Centre (EDC)
At DEO At RO/Revenue Sub-

Particulars Total (2+3)
Headquarters Division Headquarters
1 2 3 4
1. No. of people came to EVM
Demonstration Centre till previous
day of the Report.
2. No. of people cast mock vote

at EVM Demonstration Centre till
previous day of the Report.
Mobile Demonstration Vans (MDV)
AC Wise Polling Loca- AC Wise Polling

Name of No. & Name of AC Wise Polling
tions Covered Till Previ- Locations Balance
District ACs in District Locations
ous Day Of Report To Cover
143
ANNEXURE-17
Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) for Training including demonstration and awareness
program of EVMs and VVPATs
Following SoP shall strictly be followed for Training including demonstration and awareness
program of EVM and VVPAT:
• EVM and VVPAT used for the aforesaid purpose shall be checked/tested by authorized
engineer(s) of M/s Bharat Electronics Limited and M/s Electronics Corporation of India
Limited, as the case may be, during First Level Checking (FLC).
• Only ‘FLC-OK’ units shall be used for training, demonstration and awareness campaign.
• Engineer(s) of BEL and ECIL shall ensure that there is no data (including ballot paper, in case
of Ballot Unit) of previous election in the EVM and VVPAT.
• Engineers shall only use dummy symbols for ballot paper(s) and VVPAT as mentioned below:
o For name of candidate-AAA, BBB, CCC,... and so on.
o For symbol of candidates-Alpha (a) Beta W), Gama (y)... and so on. Sample
For Training/Demonstration/Awareness
1 AAA
2 BBB
3 CCC
• Only Sample ballot papers, having dummy names and symbols shall be used for training,
demonstration, awareness campaign and First Level Checking. Any modification or alteration
in the Dummy Name, Symbol or Sequence shall require prior approval of the Commission.
• BEL/ECIL shall ensure that engineers deputed for training, demonstration, awareness
campaign and First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs must carry necessary equipment/
SLU for symbol loading and preparation of sample ballot Paper.
• The VVPAT shall have dummy symbols which should match with the symbols of the ballot
paper.
• Demonstration and Awareness shall not be given in an open area as the VVPATs have to be
shielded from direct sunlight.
• During demonstration/awareness, Ballot Unit and VVPAT shall be kept together so that voters
can see the printed paper slip in VVPAT.
• Voters should be explained about the process using EVM with VVPAT and also informed about
the use of VVPAT with EVM in election.
• A Register should be maintained to record votes and signatures of all the participants on daily
basis in the demonstration process.
• At the end of demonstration, the electronic result of the Control Unit shall be cleared and
VVPAT slips shall be removed from the VVPAT drop box. Further, it has to be ensured that on
the next day the same process is repeated.
• Proper Security arrangement shall be made for movement of EVM/VVPAT and awareness
centers.
144
ANNEXURE-18
Potential Errors
• Irregularity on use of Dummy Symbols. Hence, it shall be ensured that VVPAT slips print as
per dummy ballot papers, before using for awareness purpose.
• VVPATs should be connected at the time of commissioning of the EVMs otherwise EVM
will not accept a VVPAT at a later stage. Hence, the candidate setting process in EVMs should
be done using Ballot Unit and VVPAT connected.
• Ensure to lock paper roll while transporting the VVPAT from one place to another, otherwise,
VVPAT may go into error mode.
• Do not switch on the VVPAT in broad daylight or directly under a bulb or halogen lamp at the
time of awareness as the VVPAT may go into error mode. Hence, ensure that awareness on
EVM and VVPAT shall be done in shaded/closed area.
• Do not repeatedly switch ON and OFF the VVPAT as it will deplete the battery as well as
paper roll.
• Switch OFF the CU when connecting or disconnecting the EVMs/VVPATs and do not pull
the cable for disconnecting.
• Non-adherence of SoP on Awareness of EVMs and VVPATs.
145
ANNEXURE - 19
Register for Preparation of EVMs
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Name of Assembly/Parliamentary Constituency:
No. and Name of Assembly Segment (in case of PC):
Address of EVM-VVPAT Preparation hall:
Date:.................................................
Name of Representative Identity Signature of

Sl. Name of Can- Remarks, if
of Candidate with Party Document No. Candidate/His
No. didate any
Affiliation, if any with Date representative
Note: If a candidate or his representative is absent the proof of due service of notice to the
candidate should be pasted in the register.
(Name and signature of engineers of BEL/ECIL with ID No.)
146
ANNEXURE - 20
Part-I
Certification of EVMs by BEL/ECIL
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
No. and Name of Assembly Segment (in case of PC) :
Address of EVM-VVPAT Preparation Hall:
Date:..........................
It is certified that tests prescribed by BEL/ECIL to ascertain that all components are original
were carried out on the Ballot Unit listed below on.......(date). On the basis of these tests it is
certified that all components of the Ballot Unit listed below are original.
BU Identification No.
(Name & Signature of BEL/ECIL engineers with ID No.)
147
Part-II
Register for Sealing of Ballot Unit of EVMs using Pink Paper Seal
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Address of Preparation hall:
Date:
It is certified that the sealing of the Ballot Units using Pink Paper Seals has been done in my
presence. I have put my signature on the Pink Paper Seals after sealing of the Ballot Units and I am
satisfied with the sealing of the Ballot Units.
Sl. No. Unique ID of Ballot Unit Pink Paper Seal Serial No.
Name of Representative of Signature of

Name of Can- Identity Document
Sl. No. Candidate with Party Affilia- Candidate/his
didate No. with Date
tion, if any representative
148
ANNEXURE - 21
INSTALLATION OF PAPER ROLL IN VVPAT
b) Remove “Spindle” from its position by pulling towards upward direction.
c) Insert “Spindle” into “Thermal Paper Roll”.
d) Place the “Thermal Paper Roll” with “Spindle” into its position (i.e Paper Roll
compartment) and press it towards down.
e) Insert “Thermal Paper Roll” edge into the “Guide -Paper Entry”. Ensure that the plain
paper should be on the top surface and the printed band should be on the lower surface of the
Paper.
f) Move the paper into the slot by rotating the paper feed knob clock wise.
149
ANNEXURE - 22
Mock Poll certification during Preparation of EVMs
Date:.............................
Name of State/UT:
Name of District:
Name of Assembly Segment (in case of PC) :
Address of EVM-VVPAT Preparation hall:
It is certified that during commissioning of EVMs and VVPATs, mock poll of 1000 votes have been
cast on 5% randomly selected EVMs, as well as VVPATs. The electronic result tallied with paper count,
picked up by me. There are no discrepancies between the votes polled during the mock poll.
Name of Representative Identity Signature of

Sl. Name of Can- Remarks, if
of Candidate with Party Document No. Candidate/his
No. didate any
Affiliation, if any with Date representative
150
ANNEXURE-23
HANDLING OF NON-FUNCTIONAL CU-BU-VVPAT DURING POLL (PREPARATION OF
POLLING OFFICIALS FOR FAULT HANDLING) - SUGGESTIONS
Certain contingencies may arise during the polling process which may require certain actions.
These are as follows: -
a. In case the CU or the BU does not work properly: (i) Switch off the CU and don’t switch it on
again (ii) Replace the complete set of EVM and VVPAT by another set of BU, CU and VVPAT
(iii)However, in such case only one vote to each contesting candidate including NOTA should
be polled in the mock poll. (iv) Continue the poll with the new EVM set, after clearing mock
poll data and removing printed paper slips from VVPAT Drop Box.
b. In case Display Panel of the CU displays “Link Error”:
(i) Check that the cable connections are proper by visual inspection (don’t remove and
reconnect the connectors);
(ii) If “Link Error” still persists, replace the complete set of EVM and VVPAT.
c. In case the printed paper slip has not been cut and is hanging from the paper roll: Replace
the Printer, but no effort should be made to make it fall into the drop box. It should be
allowed to remain hanging, as it is not to be counted at the time of counting of the ballot
slips. The details of such an occurrence should be clearly recorded in the Presiding Officers
diary in the following format:
ii. The name of the voter and his serial number in part in the electoral roll who was
iii. Whether the voter cast his vote after replacement of VVPAT or went away without
casting his vote.
d. In case a voter alleges after recording his/her vote that the printed paper slip generated
by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he/she
voted for: Action should be taken as per provisions of Rule 49MA of the Conduct of Elections
(Amendment) Rules, 2013:
(i) Obtain a declaration from the complainant in the Declaration Form (Annexure-25)
under his/her signature/thumb impression;
(ii) Proceed to the voting compartment along with the complainant and polling agents
present in the polling station at that moment;
(iii) The voter shall be asked to cast a test vote in favour of any candidate and make second
entry related to that elector in the Form-17A;
(iv) Observe carefully whether the Printer has printed the paper slip correctly;
(v) If the complaint of the elector is found genuine, the Presiding Officer shall report the
facts immediately to the RO and stop further polling at the station;
151
(vi) If the complaint of the elector is found false, make a remark to that effect against the
second entry relating to that elector in Form-l 7A mentioning the serial number and
name of the candidate for whom such test vote has been recorded and obtain the
signature or thumb impression against such remark. Further make necessary entries
regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part-I of Form -l 7C.
152
ANNEXURE - 24
CHECK LIST OF ADDITIONAL ITEMS OF POLLING MATERIALS TO BE
PROVIDED TO THE POLLING PARTY
2. Form of declaration by elector under rule 49MA of the : 10 copies
3. Small roll of half inch width transparent cello tape : 1 No.
(For securing connecting cable to the leg of table)
4. Pink Paper Seals for sealing black envelop : 2 No.
153
ANNEXURE - 25
Voting Compartment–Dimensions & Cascading of Ballot Units
SELF-ADHESIVE STICKERS-THREE SIDES
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VOTING COMPARTMENT
Name of Election:
Name of State/UT:
AC/PC No. and Name:
Date of Poll:
Polling Station No. and Name :
Note : The font and size printed on the stickers shall be clearly legible and readable.
154
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BU CASCADING OF TWO BALLOT UNITS
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VVPAT
BU
CASCADING OF THREE BALLOT UNITS
CASCADING OF THREE BALLOT UNITS
VVPAT
BU
CASCADING OF FOUR BALLOT UNITS
156
ANNEXURE- 26
General/Bye-Election to........................................................................
SL No. and Name of Parliamentary/Assembly Constituency ......................................
No. and Name of Polling Station..................................................................
FORM OF DECLARATION BY ELECTOR
UNDER RULE 49MA OF CONDUCT OF ELECTIONS RULES, 1961
(1.) I hereby solemnly declare and affirm under sub-rule (1) of Rule 49 MA of the Conduct of
Elections Rules1961 that the paper slip generated by the printer attached to the Balloting Unit
has shown the name and/or symbol of a candidate other than the candidate for whom I voted
by pressing the concerned blue button against the name and symbol of the candidate of my
choice on the Balloting Unit. I am ready to cast a test vote again to show that the allegation
made by me is true and bona fide.
(2) I am aware of the penal provisions of Section 177 of the IPC that I shall be liable to be
punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which
may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both, if the declaration given by me in para-1
above to the Presiding Officer appointed under Section 26 of the RPAct, 1951 is found to be
incorrect.
Name of the Elector. ..................................................
Father/Mother/Husband’s Name.................................
Part No. of elector roll. ................................................
SI. No. of elector in that Part.........................................
SI. No. in Register of Voters (Form 17A).......................
Dated.......................................
Certified that the above declaration was made and subscribed by the elector above named before me.
Dated............................. Signature of the Presiding Officer .......................................
157
ANNEXURE-27
PRESIDING OFFICER’S REPORT
PART-I: MOCK POLL CERTIFICATE
Name of election: .....................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of AC/AS ........................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of PC ........................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Polling Station No. and Name : ..........................................................................
(a) Conduct of mock poll and verification of mock poll data
Sl. Name of Candi- No. of Votes No. of Vote No. of VVPAT Result Displayed Signature of
No. date including Cast During Displayed Printed Paper in CU and Print- Polling Agents
NOTA (to be Mock Poll in CU on Slips Against ed Paper Slip with Party
pre-printed) Checking Candidates Count Tallied Abbreviation/
the Result with Each Other Independent
(Yes/No)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
NOTA
TOTAL
(b) ‘CLEAR’ button on the Control Unit has been pressed to clear mock poll data (Yes/ No)
If Yes, then write the above sentence in ink........................................................................................
...........................................................................................................................................................
(c) All paper slips taken out from VVPAT after mock poll (Yes/No)
(d) Empty VVPAT shown to all polling agents (Yes/No)
(e) Before actual poll ensure that no printed paper slip is in VVPAT Drop Box and shown to polling
agents (Yes/No)
(f) ‘TOTAL’ button on the Control Unit has been pressed to show total vote’0’ to polling agents (Yes/
158
No)
(g) Mock poll VVPAT slips stamped with ‘MOCK POLL SLIP’ and sealed in black envelope and then
sealed with Pink Paper Seal (Yes/No)
(h) Following polling agents witness the above process and certify that mock votes tallied, mock votes
erased from the Control Unit and mock poll VVPAT slips removed from the VVPAT after mock
poll and sealed in black envelope.
Sl. Name of Signature of

Name of Polling Agent Name of Party
No. Candidate Polling Agent
(i) Time display on the Control Unit is................minutes more/less than Indian Standard
Time (IST), if any.
(j) Signature of Micro-Observer (if posted at the polling station)
Name and Signature of the Presiding Officer
(1) It is, hereby, certify that before commencement of actual poll, ‘TOTAL’ button of the Control
Unit has been pressed in the presence of all polling officials to ensure that ‘Total Vote is O’.
Tick the appropriate observation:
(i) Control Unit shows total vote ‘O’ OR
(ii) Control Unit shows total vote more than ‘O’ (means mock poll votes not cleared),
hence, clear the mock poll data.
(Signature of Presiding Officer)
Following Polling officers witness the above process and certify that mock votes erased from the
Control Unit and mock poll VVPAT slips removed from the VVPAT before start of actual poll:
Sl. No. Name of Polling Officer Signature
159
PART-II: POWER PACK REPLACEMENT IN CU

(TO BE FILLED DURING MOCK POLL, POLL & AFTER COMPLETION OF POLL
DEPENDING ON CASE/SITUATION)
Name of election: ...................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of AC/AS .......................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of PC .............................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Polling Station No. and Name :........................................................................
(a) Details of replacement of Power Pack of the Control Unit during mock poll/ actual poll (strike out
which one is not applicable)
(i) Unique ID of Control Unit: .............................................
(ii) Reason for replacement of Power Pack of the Control Unit:.......................................
(iii) Unique ID of old address tag that was cut by the Presiding Officer to replace the Power Pack
of the Control Unit:..................................................
(iv) Unique ID of new address tag used by the Presiding Officer to seal the Battery Section of the
Control Unit:....................................................
(b) Following polling agents witness the replacement of power pack from the Control Unit:

Repeat the above information in same format, if multiple replacements happen.
Signature of Presiding Officer
Signature of Sector Officer
160
PRESIDING OFFICER’S REPORT

PART-III: PRESSING OF CLOSE BUTTON
AFTER COMPLETION OF POLL
Name of Election.........................................................................................( to be pre-printed)
No. & Name of AC/AS ................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. & Name of PC.......................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Date of Poll...................................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Number & Name of Polling Station: ....................................................................................
It is certified that I have pressed the “Close Button” of the Control Unit at the end of poll in the
presence of the following:
Sl. No. Name and Designation of Polling Officer Signature

161
PART-IV:
EVM/VVPAT REPLACEMENT DURING MOCK POLL (TO BE FILLED IF THERE IS
ANY REPLACEMENT DURING MOCK POLL)
Name of election: .............................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of AC/AS ..................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of PC.........................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Polling Station No. and Name :........................................................................
(a) Details of Electronic Voting Machine and VVPAT used- (BU- Ballot Unit, CU- Control Unit
and VVPAT- Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail)
Signature of
Sl. Sector Officer, in
Particulars BU CU VVPAT
No. case of
Replacement
Unique ID of units given at the time of
1
dispersal
(a) Tick( ) which one found non
2 functional during mock poll
(b) Reason for non-functioning
(mention error/code noticed in CU)
Unique ID of unit(s) given as replace-
3
ment during mock poll
(b) Following polling agents witness the replacement process:

(Signature of Presiding Officer)
162
PART-V:
EVM REPLACEMENT DURING POLL
(TO BE FILLED IF THERE IS ANY REPLACEMENT DURING POLL)
Name of election:...............................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of AC/AS:...................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
No. and Name of PC ..........................................................................................(to be pre-printed)
Polling Station No. and Name: ........................................................
a) Replacement of EVM and VVPAT during actual poll process
Sl. No. Particulars BU CU VVPAT

1 (a) Unique ID of unit(s) found non-functional during
actual poll
(b) Time of occurrence of defects
(c) No. of votes recorded in the Control Unit by the time
the unit(s) got non-functional
(d) Reason for non-functioning
(mention error/code noticed in CU)
(e) Beep Sound is heard Yes/No
(f) Unique ID of new unit(s) provided as replacement
(g) Time of re-starting poll
2 Remarks, if any
b) Following polling agents witness the replacement process during actual poll:

Repeat the above information in same format, if multiple replacements happen.
Signature of Sector Officer
163
ANNEXURE - 28
CERTIFICATE
FOR SECTOR OFFICERS/ ZONAL MAGISTRATE etc.
a) Name of election: ............................................................................................................................
b) No. and Name of Parliamentary/ Assembly Constituency: ..........................................................
c) No. and Name of Parliamentary Constituency: .............................................................................
(In case of Parliamentary Constituency)
(To be filled at the time of dispersal)
a) Name of Sector Officer/Zonal Magistrate: ......................................................................................
b) Cell No.: .........................................................................................................................................
c) Polling Station Nos. assigned : ........................................................................................................
d) Date and Time of receiving Reserve EVMs/VVPATs.....................................................................
e) Details of reserve EVMs and VVPATs provided ............................................................................
Sl. No. Unique ID of BU Unique ID of CU Unique ID of VVPAT
(To be filled on Poll day)

(a) At the time of mock poll on poll day
Sl. No. & Unique ID of Units Replaced at Unique ID of Units Provided at Signature
No. Name of Polling Station Polling Station of Presid-
Polling BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT ing Officer
Station
(b) At the time of Actual poll on poll day
No. & Unique ID of Units Replaced at Unique ID of Units Provided at

Signature
Sl. Name of Polling Station Polling Station
of Presid-
No. Polling
BU CU VVPAT BU CU VVPAT ing Officer
Station
(c) At the time of deposition of EVMs and VVPATs at Reception Centre

(i) Date and Time of Deposition of the Reserve EVMs/VVPATs ......................
(ii) Detail of unused/Non-functional unused EVMs and VVPATs deposited at reception centre
164
Sl. No. Unique ID of BU Unique ID of CU Unique ID of VVPAT
It is certified that the above information is correct.
(Signature)
Name of Sector Officer Designation
It is certified that I have received the unused/Non-functional unused EVMs and VVPATs as
mentioned above from the Sector Officer (Name)
(Signature)
Name of RO/ ARO
165
ANNEXURE-29
CERTIFICATE
I......................(name), Returning Officer of......................(No. and name of AC/PC) of......................
(district) in.........................(State/UT) for the election to......................................................................
(General/Bye-election to AC/PC) hereby certify that all the unused reserve EVMs and VVPATs and
Non-functional unpolled EVMs and VVPATs in respect of my AC/PC have been received from all the
Sector Officer, the number tallied and accounted for and all these units have been safely stored in the
earmarked strong-rooms, as per the extant instruction of the Commission.
(Signature)
Name of RO
Date:
Place:
166
ANNEXURE - 30
Mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 randomly
selected polling stations
(Separate for each polling station)
Name of State/UT: ...................................................................................................................................
No. and Name of Assembly/Parliamentary Constituency: .......................................................................
No. and Name of Assembly Segment (in case of PC): .............................................................................
SL No. and name of Polling Station: ........................................................................................................
Unique ID of Control Unit: ......................................................................................................................
Unique ID of VVPAT: .............................................................................................................................
It is to certify that mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 randomly selected polling
station has been conducted as per the instructions of the Commission.
No. of Votes Cast

Name of Candidate As per Printed Paper Discrepancy, if any
As per EVM
Slips
1
2
3
NOTA
TOTAL VOTES

1. .........................
2. .........................
3. ........................
Signature of General Observer
167
ANNEXURE- 31
Mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 randomly
(To be sent to the Commission through the Zonal Secretary concerned)
Name of State/UT: .....................................................................................................................................
No. and Name of Assembly/ Parliamentary Constituency: ......................................................................
No. and Name of Assembly Segment (in case of PC): .............................................................................
SL No. and name of Polling Stations:
1. ...........................................................................
2. ...........................................................................
3. ...........................................................................
4. ...........................................................................
5. ...........................................................................
It is to certify that the entire process of mandatory verification of counting of paper slips of VVPATs
of randomly selected 05 polling stations has been conducted under my close and direct oversight with
strict compliance of the Commission’s instructions.
-Signature-
(Name of ECI Observer)
Observer Code:.....................
168
ANNEXURE - 32
169
ANNEXURE - 33
ANNEXURE to PART-II OF FORM 17-C
Polling Station No. Total number of VVPATs used:
Unique ID of VVPAT:
No. of Votes As Per Count No. of Test Votes to be

Sl. No. of Name of No. of Valid Votes
of Printed Paper Slips of Deducted as per Item 5 of
Candidate Candidate (3-4)
VVPAT Part-I
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Total
item 6 of Part I (YES/NO)
or any discrepancy noticed between the two totals................................
Place.......................
Date.........................

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Place.......................
Date..................
170
ANNEXURE - 34
FORM 17C
[See rules 49S and 56C(2)]
PART I-ACCOUNT OF VOTES RECORDED
Election to House of the People/Legislative Assembly of the State/Union Territory ...............................
from ..............................constituency.
Number and Name of Polling Station:
Identification Number of voting Control Unit ..........................................
Machine used at the Polling Station: Balloting Unit .......................................
Printer (if used) .....................................
1. Total number of electors assigned to the Polling Station
2. Total number of voters as entered in the Register for Voters (Form 17A)
3. Number of voters deciding not to record votes under rule 49-O
4. Number of voters not allowed to vote under rule 49M
5. Test votes recorded under rule 49MA (d) required to be deducted-
(a) total number of test votes to be deducted: Total No. SLNo.(s) of elector(s) in Form 17A
............... .................................................
(b) Candidate(s) for whom test vote(s) cast: SL No. Name of candidate No. of votes
............... ............................... ...................
6. Total number of votes recorded as per voting machine: ....................................................................
7. Whether the total number of votes as shown against item 6 tallies with the total number of votes as
shown against item 2 minus numbers of voters deciding not to record votes as against item 3 minus
number of voters as against item 4 (i.e. 2-3-4) or any discrepancy noticed: .....................................
8. Number of voters to whom tendered Ballot papers were issued under rule 49P: .............................
9. Number of tendered Ballot papers: SL No.
Total From To
(a) received for use .............................................................................................................
(b) issued to electors .............................................................................................................
(c) not used and returned ......................................................................................................
10. Account of papers seals Signature of polling agents
1. Paper seals supplied for use: Total No................................... 1 .........................................
SL No. from ............................. To ......................................
2. Paper seals used: Total No................................... 2 .........................................
SL No. from ............................. To ......................................
3. Unused paper seals returned to Returning Officer:
Total No................................... 3 .........................................
4. Damaged paper seal, if any: SL No. from ............................. To .....................................
Total No................................... 4 .........................................
SL No. from ............................. To ......................................
Date ....................................
Place ....................................
Polling Station No..........................
171
PART II- RESULT OF COUNTING

Sl. No. of Name of No. of Votes As Per Count No. of Test Votes to be No. of Valid Votes
Candidate Candidate of Printed Paper Slips of Deducted as per Item 5 of (3-4)
VVPAT Part-I
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Total
item 6 of Part I or any discrepancy noticed between the two totals.
Place.......................
Date.........................
Name of candidate/election agent/counting agent
Full signature
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Place.......................
Date.........................
172
ANNEXURE - 35
Appointment of Officer for shredding VVPAT slips
It has been confirmed that no EP/Court Case is pending with regard to election
(Name of Election).
I hereby nominate Smt./Sh.............................................................(name and designation), Officer in-

charge responsible to shred VVPAT Paper slips pertaining to mock poll and actual poll
(Name of election).
The Officer shall submit a certificate that all VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock poll and actual poll
of ......................................... (name of election) have been shredded by using Paper Shredding Machine
in his/her presence, within 7 days of issuing of this order.
By Order,
(District Election Officer)

Name of District:..................
173
ANNEXURE - 36
CERTIFICATE
I,................................, District Election Officer, ... , hereby, certify that all the VVPAT paper slips
pertaining to mock poll and actual poll of....................................
(name of election), which are not involved in any Election Petition or Court Case, have been shredded
out as per Commission’s letter No. 51/8NVPAT/2019-EMS, dated 23rd September, 2019.
I, further certify that all the VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock poll and actual poll of
........................................ (name of election, if any), which are involved in Election Petition or Court
Case, have been kept, as per the Commission’s instructions.
(District Election Officer)

Name of District:...................
174
ANNEXURE - 37
CERTIFICATE
I, hereby, certify that certificates regarding disposal of all the VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock
poll and actual poll of ................................... (name of election), which are not involved in any
Election Petition or Court Case, have been received from all District Election Officers in the State.
VVPAT paper slips pertaining to mock poll and actual poll of .................................
(name of election) of the following district(s), have not been disposed of due to pendency of Election
Petition or Court Case:
1 ................................................
2. ...............................................
3. ...............................................
(Chief Electoral Officer)
Name of State/UT: ...............
175
Instructions issued after publication of EVM Manual

(Edition December, 2022) till June, 2023
Sl.
Letter No. Date Subject
No.
1. 51/8/NO Meeting/2023- 11th April, 2023 SoP for State Level Officers
EIMS EVM Nodal Officers
2. 51/8/3/2023-EIMS 17th April, 2023 Sop for movement of EVMs and VVPATs through
the State/UT that are under going elections.
3. 51/8/WH- 4th May, 2023 Storage and safety arrangements of EVMs and
Inspection/2023-EMS VVPATs – Monthly/Quarterly Inspection of EVM
Warehouse
176
739
NOTES
740
NOTES
741
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/41
742
HEADNOTES:
1. The principle of the public nature of elections emerging from Article 38

in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law (Grundge-
setz – GG) requires that all essential steps in the elections are subject
to public examinability unless other constitutional interests justify an
exception.
2. When electronic voting machines are deployed, it must be possible for
the citizen to check the essential steps in the election act and in the
ascertainment of the results reliably and without special expert knowl-
edge.
1/37
743
Judgment of the Second Senate of 3 March 2009
on the basis of the oral hearing of 28 October 2008
– 2 BvC 3/07, 2 BvC 4/07 –
in the proceedings regarding the complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election
I. of Dr. W…
- authorised representative:1. Prof. Dr. …,

2. lawyers …
– against the resolution of the German Bundestag of 14 December 2006 – WP

145/05 – (Bundestag document (Bundestagsdrucksache – BTDrucks)
16/3600) – 2 BvC 3/07 –,
II. of Prof. Dr. W…
- authorised representative: Prof. Dr. …

– against the resolution of the German Bundestag of 14 December 2006 – WP
108/05 – (Bundestag document 16/3600) – 2 BvC 4/07 –.
RULING:
1. The Ordinance on the Deployment of Voting Machines in Elections to the Ger-

man Bundestag and of the Members of the European Parliament from the
Federal Republic of Germany (Federal Voting Machine Ordinance (Bun-
deswahlgeräteverordnung – BWahlGV)) of 3 September 1975 (Federal Law
Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt – BGBl) I p. 2459) in the version of the Ordinance
Amending the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance and the European Election
Code (Verordnung zur Änderung der Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung und der
Europawahlordnung) of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749) is not
compatible with Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic
Law insofar as it does not ensure monitoring that complies with the constitu-
tional principle of the public nature of elections.
2. The use of the electronic voting machines of N.V. Nederlandsche Apparaten-
fabriek (Nedap) of type ESD1, hardware versions 01.02, 01.03 and 01.04, as
well as of type ESD2, hardware version 01.01, in the elections to the 16th Ger-
man Bundestag was not compatible with Article 38 in conjunction with Article
20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law.
3. The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election are rejected in other re-
spects.
4. The Federal Republic of Germany is ordered to reimburse to the complainant
re 1. the full amount of the necessary expenses from these proceedings and to
reimburse to the complainant re 2. three-quarters of his necessary expenses
2/37
744
GROUNDS:
A.
The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election relate to the permissibility of 2
the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines, which are also referred to as
electronic voting machines or “election computers”, in the elections to the 16th Ger-
man Bundestag.
I.
1. Roughly two million persons eligible to vote in Brandenburg, Hesse, North Rhine- 3
Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt cast their votes in the elections
to the 16th German Bundestag via computer-controlled voting machines which are
manufactured by the Dutch company Nedap and have been sold in Germany since
1999 as a central component of the “Integral Election System” (IWS) of H. GmbH.
The type designations of these voting machines are composed of a name for the de-
vice generation (ESD1 or ESD2), as well as in each case of a version number for the
hardware (HW) and for the software (SW). The types ESD1 (HW 1.02; SW 2.02), ES-
D1 (HW 1.02; SW 2.07), ESD1 (HW 1.03; SW 3.08), ESD1 (HW 1.04; SW 3.08) and
ESD2 (HW 1.01; SW 3.08) have so far been used in elections to the German Bun-
destag.
These voting machines are controlled via a microprocessor and a software program. 4
The votes cast are exclusively stored on an electronic storage medium and are count-
ed electronically by the voting machine at the end of the election day. After the elec-
tronic ascertainment of the results, the voting machine shows the total votes cast for
the respective electoral proposals; the results can be printed out via a printer that is
integrated into the voting machine. The software program which controls the registra-
tion of the ballot and the ascertainment of the results is to be found on two electronic
storage modules (so-called EPROMs; EPROM = Erasable Programmable Read-
Only-Memory) which are installed in the device under a screwed-on cover and are se-
cured by two seals applied by the manufacturer. The votes cast at the voting machine
– including the linkages (first vote and connected second vote) – are stored on a re-
movable cassette-like storage medium – the so-called vote storage module, also re-
ferred to as “electronic ballot box” (see Schönau, Elektronische Demokratie, 2007, p.
53). The data of the voting slips, the attribution of the individual keys to the electoral
proposals, as well as the date of the election and the polling station, are also stored
on the vote storage module.
The voting machines have a keypad (“the voter tableau”) over which an insertion 5
sheet is placed portraying a voting slip imitating the official voting slip. Above the key
field one finds a display (LCD display) which guides the voter through the election
procedure and enables him or her to examine her or her entries. The keypad and the
LCD display are flanked by two vision-shielding panels on either side. On the reverse
of the voting machine are the abovementioned printer and a slot for the vote storage
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module. The voting machines are linked with a control unit on the returning commit-
tee’s table. The control unit shows the returning committee the casting of the votes by
the respective voter such that the display of the number of voters increases by one.
After the voter has cast his or her votes, the voting machine is blocked for further bal-
loting until the returning committee releases it for the next voter.
An element of the “Integral Election System” sold by H. is a programming and read- 6

ing out device which enables the local authority to prepare the vote storage modules
in conjunction with a personal computer prior to the elections and to read out the bal-
lot information from the storage module after the election and to make it available for
further data processing. The storage modules can be read out once more after the
election day with the aid of a voting machine. The software of the “Integral Election
System“ also makes it possible to print the stored votes at a computer as voting slips
with the corresponding crosses.
An individual identification number of the individual voting machine, as well as the 7

version numbers of the hardware and the software, and two checksums which are
constituted by a checksum algorithm contained in the voting machine software, can
be shown and printed on the voting machine. These data can be compared with the
information on the nameplate of the voting machine and in the declaration of identity.
2. An attempt was already made in Germany in the nineteen-sixties to replace the 8

manual counting of the voting slips linked to the traditional election event using more
rational methods and by deploying voting machines. According to § 35.3 of the Fed-
eral Electoral Act (Bundeswahlgesetz – BWG) of 7 May 1956 (Federal Law Gazette I
p. 383 – Federal Electoral Act), the Federal Minister of the Interior was able to permit
officially authorised vote counting devices to be used instead of voting slips. The Or-
dinance on the Use of Vote Counting Devices in Elections to the German Bundestag
(Verordnung über die Verwendung von Stimmenzählgeräten bei Wahlen zum
Deutschen Bundestag) of 24 August 1961 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1618) was hand-
ed down on this basis. § 35.3 of the Federal Electoral Act was rescinded by means of
the Act Amending the Federal Electoral Act (Gesetz zur Änderung des Bun-
deswahlgesetzes) of 24 June 1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1593), and replaced by
a more detailed provision on “balloting with voting machines”, which since the promul-
gation of the new version of the Federal Electoral Act of 1 September 1975 (Federal
Law Gazette I p. 2325) can be found in § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act. The Ordi-
nance on the Deployment of Voting Machines in Elections to the German Bundestag
(Federal Voting Machine Ordinance) (Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung – BWahlGV) of
3 September 1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459) provided in § 1 that mechanically
or electrically driven voting machines may be used in elections to the German Bun-
destag if their type is authorised and their use was approved.
On the basis of the Ordinance on the Use of Vote Counting Devices of 24 August 9
1961 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1618) and of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance
of 3 September 1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459), voting machines were initially
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authorised and used in Germany which worked on the basis of (electro)mechanical
counting devices (see Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bun-
destag, 7th ed. 2002, § 35, marginal no. 5). These voting machines worked mechan-
ically; a count was mechanically increased by activating a button or by placing an
election token in an opening allotted to the respective electoral proposal. They did not
catch on since the cost of procuring, transporting, storing and maintaining the devices
was compared to a relatively minor gain in time, and the devices could frequently only
be deployed in elections with a small number of electoral proposals (see Bundestag
document 8/94, p. 2).
These disadvantages were to be avoided by the deployment of electronic voting ma- 10

chines. In 1997, Nedap applied to the Federal Ministry of the Interior for a type ap-
proval for an electronic voting machine which it manufactured. The Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance of 3 September 1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459), at that
time most recently amended by Ordinance of 15 November 1989 (Federal Law
Gazette I p. 1981) was not amenable to examine and approve such a device type. Af-
ter the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, referring to this circumstance in an
examination report of 8 September 1998, had made a positive evaluation of the
Nedap voting machine in technical terms and a test of the voting machine in Cologne
had been assessed as satisfactory, the Federal Ministry of the Interior decided to
make it possible to deploy computer-controlled voting machines in the European
elections in June 1999. For this reason, amendments were also prepared to § 35 of
the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance for the deploy-
ment of computer-controlled voting machines in future Bundestag elections.
§ 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act in the version promulgated on 23 July 1993 (Fed- 11
eral Law Gazette I p. 1288, 1594), most recently amended by Act of 1 July 1998 (Fed-
eral Law Gazette I p. 1698, 3431), applicable at that time was worded as follows:
Voting machines with separate counting devices may be used in place of voting 12
slips, election envelopes and ballot boxes to make the casting and counting of the
votes easier.
The words “with separate counting devices” were deleted with the Act on General 13
and Representative Election Statistics in Elections to the German Bundestag and in
the Election of Members of the European Parliament from the Federal Republic of
Germany (Gesetz über die allgemeine und die repräsentative Wahlstatistik bei der
Wahl zum Deutschen Bundestag und bei der Wahl der Abgeordneten des Europäis-
chen Parlaments aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland) of 21 May 1999 (Federal Law
Gazette I p. 1023). The amendment to § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act was regarded
as being necessary in order to be able to adjust the Federal Voting Machine Ordi-
nance to technical developments in voting machines (see Bundestag document 14/
401, p. 5).
The Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance and the European 14
Election Code of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749) already entered into
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force on 24 April 1999 and amended a large number of provisions of the Federal
Voting Machine Ordinance in order to create the preconditions for the deployment
of computer-controlled voting machines. The words “including computer-controlled”
were added in § 1 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance after the words “electri-
cally driven”. Further amendments were effected where the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance had previously used the term “counting devices”. § 2.6 of the Federal Vot-
ing Machine Ordinance was added, obliging the manufacturer to enclose a declara-
tion of identity.
3. § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act applied to the elections to the 16th German Bun- 15
destag, in the version of the Federal Electoral Act promulgated on 23 July 1993 (Fed-
eral Law Gazette I p. 1288, corrected p. 1594), most recently amended by the Eighth
Competence Adjustment Ordinance (Achte Zuständigkeitsanpassungsverordnung)
of 25 November 2003 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2304).
The provision read as follows: 16
§ 35 17
Voting with voting machines
(1) Voting machines may be used in place of voting slips and ballot boxes to make it 18
easier to cast and count the votes.
(2) Voting machines within the meaning of subsection 1 must guarantee that the bal- 19
lot remains secret. Their type must be authorised for use in elections to the German
Bundestag officially for individual elections or generally. The Federal Ministry of the
Interior shall decide on authorisation on request by the manufacturer of the voting
machine. The use of an officially authorised voting machine shall require approval
by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Approval may be issued for individual elec-
tions or in general terms.
(3) The Federal Ministry of the Interior is herewith empowered to hand down by 20
means of a legal ordinance which shall not require the consent of the Bundesrat
more detailed provisions regarding
1. the preconditions for the official approval of the type of voting machine, as well as 21
for the withdrawal and revocation of approval,
2. the procedure for the official approval of the type, 22
3. the procedure for the examination of a voting machine for construction corre- 23
sponding to the officially approved type,
4. the public testing of a voting machine prior to its use, 24
5. the procedure for the official authorisation of the use, as well as for the withdrawal 25
and revocation of the authorisation,
6. the particularities related to the elections caused by the use of voting machines. 26
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The legal ordinance shall be handed down in agreement with the Federal Ministry of 27
Economics and Labour in cases falling under nos. 1 and 3.
(4) § 33.1 sentence 1 and§ 33.2 shall apply mutatis mutandis to the operation of a 28
voting machine.
The provisions of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance of 3 September 1975 29

(Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459), which were most recently amended by ordinance of
20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749), relevant to the proceedings at hand, re-
late to the approval of voting machines and their deployment in elections. The voting
machines require a type approval and a use authorisation (see § 1 of the Federal Vot-
ing Machine Ordinance). According to § 2.2 sentence 1 of the Federal Voting Ma-
chine Ordinance, the type approval may be granted if the voting machine corre-
sponds to the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines (Richtlinien für die
Bauart von Wahlgeräten) according to Annex 1 to the Federal Voting Machine Ordi-
nance. These guidelines regulate in particular the technical requirements to be made
on the voting machines, and contain detailed stipulations for the identification, techni-
cal structure and functioning of the voting machines. Statements are made in this
context on the portrayal of the electoral proposals, on operation and operability, on
the ballot, on the storage of votes and on the creation of backups. The examination of
the compliance of the voting machine with the above guidelines is a matter for the
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt.
The use of approved-type voting machines requires authorisation prior to each elec- 30
tion (§ 4.1 sentence 1 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). Only those voting
machines may be used which, once the election date has been set, have been exam-
ined by the manufacturer or the local authority using the operating manuals and main-
tenance regulations and with regard to which it has been ascertained that they are
functional (§ 7.1 sentence 1 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). In the con-
stituencies in which voting machines are used, the local authority is to familiarise the
head of the returning committee and his or her deputies with the voting machines pri-
or to the elections and to familiarise them with their operation (§ 7.3 of the Federal
Voting Machine Ordinance). Prior to the commencement of the election act, the local
authority assigns the devices to the head of the returning committee with the neces-
sary operating manuals and the declaration of the manufacturer according to § 2.6 of
the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance that the device is constructed identically to the
tested, approved type sample (see § 8 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance).
Prior to the commencement of the ballot, the returning committee must ascertain
amongst other things that the counting and storage devices are set to zero or have
been erased (§ 10.1 no. 3 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance) and must close
the voting machine needed (§ 10.2 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). Prior
to reading the displays of the votes counted by a voting machine, the number of the
ballot records in the voter list is to be added to the number of election slips taken in
and compared with the number of votes displayed (§ 13 of the Federal Voting Ma-
chine Ordinance). Deviations are to be noted and explained in the election record
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(§ 13 sentence 3 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). If the total of the counter
results displayed does not tally with the number of the total votes cast as displayed,
the returning committee must show the difference and note it in the election record
(§ 14.5 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). The head of the returning com-
mittee, the local authority and the district returning officer must ensure on completing
the tasks of the returning committee and returning the voting machines that the vot-
ing machines used or the vote storage devices removed from them and the election
record with the Annexes are not made available to unauthorised parties until the Land
(state) returning officer has revoked the blocking and sealing of the voting machines
and of the vote storage devices (see § 16.2 and § 17.3 of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance).
4. The Federal Ministry of the Interior issued type approvals for the voting machines 31
used in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag. On 15 August 2005, it an-
nounced the authorisation of the use of computer-controlled voting machines made
by Nedap in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag with details on hardware
versions, storage module types and software versions (Federal Gazette (Bunde-
sanzeiger) no. 158 of 23 August 2005, pp. 12747-12748). Invoking company secrets
of Nedap, the Ministry however refused to make available to the interested public
documents which Nedap had provided to the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt
for the examination of the samples, or test reports of the Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt.
5. The decision as to whether voting machines are acquired, and in which con- 32
stituencies they are used, is a matter for the towns and local authorities. As a reason
for the acquisition and the deployment of voting machines, in addition to the more
rapid calculation of the election result and to the anticipated cost savings, it is stated
that it is virtually impossible to inadvertently cast invalid votes; cases of doubt as to
the validity of individual votes because of ambiguous markings on the voting slip and
unintended errors in counting the votes are said to be virtually ruled out (see
Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag, 7th ed. 2002, § 35,
marginal no. 2). The recruitment of voluntary election assistants is also said to be
made much easier because less time is needed to ascertain the election result (see
Schönau, Elektronische Demokratie, 2007, p. 50). These advantages are said to be
evident in particular in local elections, which in many Länder (states) were said to
have been made more complex because of possibilities of cumulative voting and vot-
ing for candidates from different party lists.
II.
1. With their complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election, both complainants 33
target the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance insofar as
they facilitate the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines. They complain
of the authorisation of the use and deployment of the voting machines; furthermore,
the type approvals which were issued for the Nedap voting machines used in the
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Bundestag election are said to be unlawful. The complainant re 2. complains over
and above this that the proceedings of the German Bundestag suffered from a num-
ber of faults.
a) aa) The complainant re 1. objected to the result of the elections to the 16th Ger- 34
man Bundestag in 30 constituencies in Brandenburg, Hesse, North Rhine-
Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt referred to in greater detail. He
moved to ascertain the constituencies in which computer-controlled voting machines
had been used, and the number of the votes cast with these voting machines, and to
repeat the elections in the constituencies concerned. The deployment of computer-
controlled voting machines was said to have violated the principle of the public nature
of elections and the principle of the official nature of elections. Over and above this,
the voting machines were said not to be compatible with the Guidelines for the Con-
struction of Voting Machines.
The principle of the public nature of elections was said to guarantee the proper im- 35
plementation of the elections and the correct constitution of Parliament. The monitor-
ing of the election act was said to have to encompass above all ensuring that the
marking of the vote took place secretly and that the votes cast by the voters were in-
serted into the ballot box without a change, that the votes were not subsequently al-
tered and that only the votes from the ballot box were counted at the end of the elec-
tion. In the deployment of the voting machines complained of, effective monitoring by
the public and by the returning committee were said to be prevented since a major
part of the election act and the investigation and ascertainment of the election result
were said to take place inside the voting machine.
If voting machines were deployed, it was said to only replace the public nature of 36
elections possible in an election with voting slips if equivalent and publicly verifiable
control mechanisms existed, such as a paper record of the votes cast printed by the
voting machine which the voter could inspect. Corresponding control possibilities
were however said not to be available to the public in deployment of the Nedap voting
machines.
It was said not to be possible for the public to check the trustworthiness of the soft- 37
ware installed in the voting machines. The examination by the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt and the type approval were said not to have taken place
publicly; also, the voting machines were said not to be made available to the interest-
ed public for independent examination. The source code software of the voting ma-
chines was said not to be open. Ultimately, it was said also not to be possible to ex-
amine whether the copies of the software used in the polling stations were identical to
the sample examined by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and whether
they were free of manipulations. It was said to be possible to effect authentication by
a chain of characters (“hash value”) being calculated for each original program and
the copy and then compared, so that agreement between the two values was said to
document the authenticity of the software. This was however said not to be reliably
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guaranteed in the voting machines which were the subject of the complaint since the
checksums displayed and printed when the device was launched were calculated by
the software installed in the voting machine itself, so that it was alleged not to be ruled
out that the calculation of the checksums provided the expected chain of characters
because of a prior deliberate manipulation of the software.
The particular danger in computer-controlled voting machines was said to lie in the 38
fact that elections could be much more effectively influenced via manipulation of the
software by the device manufacturer than in ballot box elections. For instance, it was
said to be possible for faulty software to allot a certain share of the votes cast to a cer-
tain party regardless of the election decision by the respective voter or for the total
votes cast to be divided among the parties standing for election according to a set
proportion. Manipulations were said to be possible both by politically or financially
motivated “insiders”, in particular employees of the manufacturer, and by external
third parties who gained access to the computers used by the manufacturer (for in-
stance via viruses or trojans); they were said with regard to the complexity of the soft-
ware used not always to be discovered even in careful quality control effected by the
manufacturer. Although it was said to be necessary to prevent unauthorised access
to the devices between the elections through suitable security measures, no such
monitoring was said to take place in Germany; there were also said to be no suitable
regulations in force that were able to guarantee protected storage of the voting ma-
chines.
It was said that the proceedings for the examination of the type sample by the 39
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and the approval of the type by the Federal
Ministry of the Interior should be public as a part of the preparations for the elections.
Any interests of the manufacturer in protecting its business secrets should be subor-
dinate to the principle of democracy. For a lack of a possibility to check the device in-
dependently, the publication of the control documents and reports of the
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and of the source code of the voting machine
software was said to be the only possibility in order to be able to judge the integrity of
the elections. The non-publication of the control reports and documents and of the
source code was hence said to constitute an electoral error.
It was said not to be compatible with the “principle of the official nature of the elec- 40
tions” that the functionality of the voting machines could only be examined by the
manufacturer (§ 7.1 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance), and that there was no
official control of freedom from manipulation of the voting machines. Over and above
the declaration of identity, there was said to be no authentication of the software im-
plemented on the individual voting machines, so that the election bodies had to rely
on effective quality assurance by the manufacturer and on there being no manipula-
tion after the examination had been carried out by the manufacturer. The tests carried
out by the district returning officer in the context of preparation for the election and by
the returning committee in the polling station were said not to be suited to recognise
any manipulations.
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The voting machines were said not to be compatible with the “Guidelines for the 41
Construction of Voting Machines” (Annex 1 to § 2 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordi-
nance). They neither complied with the general state-of-the-art, nor were they con-
structed in compliance with the rules of technology for systems with grievous conse-
quences in case of misconduct (letter B no. 2.1subsection 1 of the Guidelines for the
Construction of Voting Machines). In contravention of to letter B no. 1 item 2 of the
Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines, the software used was said not to
be clearly identifiable.
It is also said to be objectionable that § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act only calls for 42
the ballot to be held in secret, but not for adherence to the other electoral principles.
The examinability of the election result provided for in Article 41 of the Basic Law was
said to be undermined if as a result of the type it were no longer to be possible to es-
tablish whether the outcome of the election had been reached lawfully.
bb) The complainant re 2. also submitted an objection to the elections to the 16th 43
German Bundestag.
He takes the view that the deployment of the computer-controlled voting machines 44
in at least 1,921 polling districts and 39 constituencies in five Länder had violated the
principle of democracy, the principle of the rule of law and the principles of the public
and official nature of elections. The deployment of the voting machines was said to vi-
olate the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance from multi-
ple points of view. Neither § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act, nor the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance, were said to comply with the constitutional principles of the law
on elections of the public and official nature of elections.
The complainant re 2. moved inter alia for a finding that the election results in the 45
constituencies designated by the complainant re 1., in the constituencies that were
manifest from a “Customer overview [of Nedap] on the 2005 Bundestag election” pro-
vided by the Federal Statistical Office and in all other constituencies in which voting
machines of the impugned nature might have been deployed, had come about unlaw-
fully and were hence allegedly invalid. It was said that the elections needed to be re-
peated in these constituencies. Furthermore, the complainant re 2. applied for the
publication of the examination documents of the Physikalisch-Technische Bunde-
sanstalt regarding the voting machines to which the complaint referred, as well as for
the holding of an oral hearing as soon as possible and the summons of specific wit-
nesses and experts.
The more detailed statements of the complainant re 2. correspond to the objection 46

submitted by the complainant re 1.
cc) The Federal Ministry of the Interior moved to reject the objections. 47
The public nature of the ballot was said to have been guaranteed in the deployment 48
of the voting machines. The public was said to be able to check that only entitled vot-
ers were granted access to the voting booth. The returning committee was able to
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check by reading the control unit that each voter had in fact voted and had only done
so once. Moreover, it was said that the principle of the public nature of elections was
not guaranteed without restriction. It was said to be in conflict with the goal of form-
ing a viable people’s representation in a short time. The Federal Electoral Act was
said to attach greater significance to the goal of elections being held in good time and
to ascertaining the outcome of the election within a reasonable time than to detailed
monitoring by the public.
The public nature of the vote counting was said to have been guaranteed. The pub- 49
lic was said to be able to check how the result of the constituency ascertained by the
voting machine on conclusion of the election act was printed by the returning commit-
tee and included in the election record. The returning committee and each election
observer were said to be able to compare the ballot records in the voter register and
the valid and invalid first and second votes registered by the voting machine, and
hence to ascertain whether the device had covered and added all the votes cast. It
was said to be not possible to physically cover the individual votes; a totalling proce-
dure which was verifiable for the public was however said not to be necessary since
protection against falsification of the election result was said to be ensured by a num-
ber of other measures guaranteeing the reliability of the result as with ballot box elec-
tions. For instance, the voting machine was examined thoroughly prior to being ap-
proved by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt. Comprehensive monitoring
by local authorities and returning committees also took place in the run-up to the elec-
tions. The local ascertainment of the results was said to guarantee that manipulations
on the part of individuals could at most impact the outcome of the election in the re-
spective constituency.
Public monitoring was said to be only one factor among many in order to prevent ir- 50
regularities in the elections, albeit an important one. No measure was said to be able
to prevent manipulations or unintentional falsification of the election result by itself. All
measures together were however said to guarantee very broad protection of the elec-
tions against election falsifications.
Since the principle of the public nature of elections had not been violated, it was said 51
not to be necessary to bring forward the public nature of elections by publishing the
control results of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and the source code for
the voting machine software. The fundamentally public nature of the preparations for
the election and of the election itself could be restricted for reasons of the protection
of private data or of operational and business secrets. The type approval, the exami-
nations of the voting machines by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, as
well as the conclusive examination by the local authorities, were said to replace moni-
toring by the public in this respect.
The paper record called for by the complainants for subsequent checking of the stor- 52
age of the votes was said to be by no means non-contentious in expert circles be-
cause of its disadvantages. It was said that such a record could be manipulated just
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like any paper product. Further, it was impossible for a paper record to eliminate a
lack of trust in the viability of the voting machine since it was created by the voting
machine.
Since the preparation and implementation of the elections were said to be public 53
tasks, it was said to be irrelevant whether this was actually expressed in a “principle
of the official nature of the elections”. It was only required that the state bodies provid-
ed the facilities and resources and took responsibility for organising the elections. It
was said to be unobjectionable that private individuals effected individual actions; in
this respect, the state bodies only had to carry out the monitoring required. For in-
stance, the official voting slips were printed by private printers and the election notifi-
cations and postal voting documents were sent via private postal companies. It was
said to always have been sufficient that the election authority classed the enterprises
commissioned as trustworthy in each case. The same was said to apply to the manu-
facture and supply of voting machines with a declaration of identity of the manufactur-
er.
The voting machines were said to be compatible with the Guidelines for the Con- 54
struction of Voting Machines. The voting machine software was said to be identifiable
at any time by virtue of a comparison of the version number and the checksums with
the information contained in the declaration of identity. Also the authenticity of the
software was said to be guaranteed by a combination of protective measures.
Certainly, any electoral errors were said not to be relevant to mandates. Not con- 55
crete information had been put forward indicating that different election results had
been achieved in specific polling stations because of the deployment of voting ma-
chines than would have been the case with a ballot box election.
dd) The German Bundestag rejected the election objections by resolution of 14 De- 56
cember 2006. The resolution recommendation of the Committee for the Scrutiny of
Elections of 30 November 2006 (Bundestag document 16/3600, Annexes 1 and 2)
considered the objections of both complainants to be manifestly unfounded.
The constitutionality of individual provisions of electoral law was said not to be 57

amenable to a review by the German Bundestag since the German Bundestag and
the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections were not called on to find provisions of
electoral law unconstitutional.
The deployment of the voting machines was said to have violated neither the con- 58
crete form given to the principle of the public nature of elections in non-constitutional
law (§§ 10 and 31 of the Federal Electoral Act; § 54 of the Federal Electoral Code
(Bundeswahlordnung – BWO), nor a principle of the public nature of elections going
beyond this. The principle of the public nature of elections was said certainly not to
entail each individual act being subject to an individual check. The public nature of the
ballot was also said to be heavily restricted in postal voting. The election was said to
be operated in the voting machines which were the subject of the complaint in princi-
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ple in the same manner as in the ballot box election. Although marking of the voting
slip and the ballot were carried out on one single device in the voting booth, the act of
balloting was said to be transparent for the returning committee and the public since
only the voter who had submitted his or her election notification card was able to vote
using the voting machine.
In legal reality, when it came to the deployment of voting machines the concrete 59
election act of voting was said to be in a conflict of interests between the principle of
secret elections and that of the public nature of elections. It was said to be acceptable
against this background that in the deployment of computer-controlled voting ma-
chines each sub-act of vote registration was not transparent to all. It was said to be
one of the particularities of the advance in technology that one could presume that the
systems deployed were viable if they had been examined in a special procedure prior
to their deployment. This was said to be all the more valid given that the necessary
monitoring took place in all other procedural steps, and hence the results that were
obtained could be examined to determine their plausibility. The only decisive aspect
was said to be whether the public had the fundamental possibility to become con-
vinced of the viability of the election procedure. This was said to be accounted for by
voting with voting machines: In particular, the public was able to check the printout of
the result of the constituency ascertained by the voting machine and the transfer of
the result into the election record, and hence the counting as a whole. By means of
the comparison of the ballot records in the register of voters with the valid and invalid
first and second votes registered by the device, as prescribed by § 14 of the Federal
Voting Machine Ordinance, it was said also to be possible to check whether the vot-
ing machine had recorded all the votes and added them correctly. All the stored votes
could be printed out as voting slips with the corresponding crosses and subsequently
counted by hand.
The proceedings for type approval were said not to give rise to an election error. 60
There was also said not to be a right to inspect the source code of the voting machine
software with regard to the principle of the public nature of elections since the protec-
tion of the operational secrets of the manufacturer of the voting machines was said to
outweigh the interest of the public in revealing the source code.
According to the convincing descriptions contained in the statement made by the 61

Federal Ministry of the Interior, the voting machines which were the subject of the
complaint were said to have complied with the provisions of the Federal Voting Ma-
chine Ordinance and with the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines. Ac-
cording to the statements of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, manipulations were
said to be theoretically possible, but hardly conceivable in practice. There were said
to be no indications of deliberate manipulations or accidental alterations to the voting
machines used in the Bundestag election forming the subject of the complaint. Even if
none of the security measures mentioned were able by themselves to prevent manip-
ulations, all the measures together were said to guarantee a very high degree of se-
curity against manipulation of the voting machines.
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Where the complainant was complaining about a shift of state tasks towards private 62
parties, this was said not to constitute an electoral error, even if the submission was
assumed to be correct. In particular, the fact that the preparation and implementation
of elections was a public task did not force the conclusion to be drawn that all neces-
sary acts may only be carried out by officials. The necessary state control was said to
be ensured.
Since no electoral error was therefore ascertainable, it was said not to be necessary 63
to investigate any impact on the result of the ballot and on the distribution of seats in
the German Bundestag. No oral hearing was set regarding the objection of the com-
plainant re 2. according to § 6.1a no. 3 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections (Wahl-
prüfungsgesetz – WahlPrüfG), old version.
b) Both complainants have submitted a complaint requesting the scrutiny of an elec- 64

tion to the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht).
aa) The complainant re 1. moves to rescind the resolution of the German Bundestag 65
of 14 December 2006 and to declare the elections to the 16th German Bundestag in-
valid in the constituencies referred to in the objection procedure insofar as computer-
controlled voting machines were used there, and to order a repeat of the elections
with voting slips and ballot boxes. Alternatively, he moves for a finding that the use of
software-controlled voting machines in elections to the German Bundestag is not
compatible with the Basic Law, furthermore as an alternative that the deployment of
voting machines is not compatible with the Basic Law unless the transparency of the
elections for the public, the examinability of the correctness of the election result and
security against manipulation is guaranteed in a manner corresponding to elections
with voting slips and ballot boxes.
The complainant re 1. repeats and expands his submission from the objection pro- 66
cedure, and submits the following as a supplement:
The deployment of the electronic voting machines, because of their technical and 67
constructional security faults, was said to have violated the principles of electoral law
set out in Article 38 of the Basic Law, the unwritten constitutional principles within
electoral law of the public and official nature of elections, as well as the non-
constitutional provisions of electoral law.
The public nature of the elections was also said to have been violated by virtue of 68
the fact that the monitoring had been shifted to a non-public approval procedure and
the publication of the examination results, examination documents, construction char-
acteristics and of the source code of the devices had been refused. An evaluation of
the votes cast that was verifiable by the public was said not to be possible because
the individual votes could not be physically recorded.
The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance was said to contain serious faults insofar as 69
it built on the principle of the declaration of identity; for there was said to be no moni-
toring as to whether the devices actually used corresponded to the software and
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hardware checked by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt.
It was said not to be compatible with the principle of official nature of the implemen- 70
tation of the election for the state election authorities to relinquish control over the en-
tire course of events, including the technical details. Democracy and the rule of law
were said rather to demand that the entire election events, ranging into the ramifica-
tions of the technical details, could be traced both by state bodies and by the people.
The design of the election procedure, the monitoring and the parliamentary and judi-
cial examinability of the election results, were said to be subject to the state’s reserve
as core state tasks.
The technical and constructional security faults in the voting machines were said to 71
violate the principles of electoral law as to the freedom, equality and secrecy of the
elections. If votes were diverted, electronically “caught” and “spied on”, the freedom
of the elections was said to be placed at risk. Equality was also said to be affected if it
was not sure whether the vote that had been cast had been counted at all, and if so
whether it was counted correctly. What is more, it was said that the secrecy of elec-
tions could suffer damage were manipulations to occur. It was said to be sufficient for
a violation of the principles of electoral law that a situation had been created by the
deployment of electronic voting machines in which the errors described were possi-
ble.
The restrictions of the principles of electoral law were said not to be justified by con- 72
trary constitutional provisions. Nedap’s company secrecy interests that are protected
by fundamental rights had to be subordinated to the interest of the public in informa-
tion and to the public monitoring which was fundamental to democracy. The gain in
democracy (rapidity of ascertaining the election results and increased level of security
of the election procedure), linked with the deployment of computer-controlled voting
machines, was also said to be unable to justify the impairment of public elections.
The election errors were said to be relevant to mandates. Major alterations were 73
said to be possible in the mandate structure because of the major part of the votes af-
fected by the election errors. The complainant re 1. was said not to bear the burden of
proof for the elections having led to a different result without voting machines than
had in fact been the case in the constituencies in which voting machines had been
deployed. For the election errors which had been complained of, in particular the vio-
lation of the principle of the public nature of elections, were said to have eliminated
the actual possibility to demonstrate a manipulation in concrete terms.
bb) The complainant re 2. is essentially moving to rescind the rejection of his objec- 74
tion by the German Bundestag and to repeat the elections in the constituencies des-
ignated in the written objection of 15 October 2005, as well as basically to establish
the unconstitutionality of § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting Ma-
chine Ordinance.
The complainant re 2. challenges both the constitutionality of the legal basis for the 75
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deployment of computer-controlled voting machines (§ 35 of the Federal Electoral
Act and the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance), and the concrete deployment of the
Nedap voting machines in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag. The elec-
tronic voting machines used were said to violate as to their construction and func-
tioning the principles of electoral law of the public and official nature of elections and
Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Basic Law, as well as the Federal Voting Machine Ordi-
nance. The procedures for the approval of the voting machines by the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt and the Federal Ministry of the Interior which were the
subject of complaint were also said not to comply with the principles of democracy
and the rule of law, as well as with the principles of electoral law of the public nature
of elections and the sovereign implementation of elections.
As grounds, the complainant re 2. repeats the arguments that he already submitted 76

in the objection procedure before the German Bundestag. He additionally alleges that
the equality of elections had been violated by differing treatment of voting slip voters
and voting machine voters since the principles of democracy and the rule of law, as
well as of the public and official nature of the elections, were said to apply to the same
degree to voting slip voters and to voting machine voters, and that the legislature had
not provided legal provisions for the deployment of the electronic voting machines
which were identical and equivalent to those in the Federal Electoral Code for voting
slip elections. Insofar as it was not possible to rule out that because of the technical
shortcomings of the voting machines there might be discrepancies between the ballot
intended by voters and the ballot registered by the voting machine, the principle of
equality between “successful” and “unsuccessful” voters was said to have been vio-
lated.
He also objects to the proceedings before the German Bundestag. The length of the 77
proceedings was said not to be acceptable. The German Bundestag was said to have
taken its decision on the basis of an insufficiently verified set of facts. The impugned
resolution of the German Bundestag was said to have not come into being effectively
for a lack of a quorum since 40 Members at most had attended the ballot. The deliber-
ations of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections were said to have taken place in
camera. The Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag (Geschäftsordnung des
Deutschen Bundestages – GO-BT) were said to be unconstitutional because they
had not provided for the hearings, deliberations and rulings of the committee in the
election scrutiny procedure to be held in public. Despite an explicit motion, no date
had been set for an oral hearing.
2. The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election were served on the German 78
Bundestag, the Bundesrat, the Federal Government, all Länder Governments, the
federal associations of the parties represented in the German Bundestag (CDU, SPD,
The Greens, FDP, Linkspartei, CSU) and the federal returning officer. The
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and the Federal Office for Information Secu-
rity were afforded the opportunity according to § 27a of the Federal Constitutional
Court Act (Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgesetz – BVerfGG) to make a statement on
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the technical questions that had been put forward.
a) The federal returning officer considers the deployment of the electronic voting 79
machines to be lawful.
b) The Federal Ministry of the Interior has extended and supplemented its state- 80
ments from the objection procedure before the German Bundestag on the use of the
voting machines allegedly having been constitutional and lawful.
The public nature of elections was said to be overstretched if it were to be demand- 81

ed that anyone should be able to verify the entire election events, including the prepa-
rations for the election, right down into the ramifications of the technical details and
the entire state activity in an election, including the type approval of the voting ma-
chines, and that the other preparatory work of the election bodies and other institu-
tions were subject to public monitoring.
The local organisation was said to be one of the most important means to prevent 82
manipulations in the use of voting machines. Since the local authorities decided on
their own responsibility on the acquisition of the voting machines and were said to be
responsible for the proper storage of the voting machines, and for their examination
prior to deployment, manipulation of the voting machines was said to require, in addi-
tion to the appropriate technical skills, a knowledge of the manner in which each indi-
vidual local authority stored the voting machines and how the security measures
could be overcome. The local organisation was said to also include the ascertainment
of the results in the respective polling station. This meant that it was not possible to
manipulate the voting machine during transportation. Impacts of any irregularities
were hence restricted to the election result in the respective constituency.
c) The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt explained the examination concept 83

on which the type sample check was based, and stated that the security requirements
should be judged in the context of the implantation of the voting machines into the
proven processes in traditional elections. The arguments of the complainant were
said not to take this into account.
3. a) The Chaos Computer Club e.V. refers in its statement to an examination of the 84
security and manipulability of Nedap election computers which was implemented in
2006 in cooperation with the Dutch initiative “We do not trust voting computers” (“Wij
vertrouwen stemcomputers niet”). The software and the hardware of the Dutch ES3B
type, which in the view of the study’s authors differed only slightly from the ESD 1 and
ESD 2 types used in Germany, was said to have been susceptible to manipulation
with relatively little effort. The test indicates that the processes and programming
methods analysed by reconstructing the source code of the voting machine were triv-
ial and only constituted the state-of-the-art of the early nineteen-nineties.
The voting machines could be manipulated by the votes cast for an electoral propos- 85
al being altered prior to their storage, so that they would be stored on the vote storage
module as votes cast for another party. This was said not to require any knowledge of
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the list place of the party or of the candidate. A further manipulation variant was said
to consist in already providing for a preset percentage final result for a specific elec-
toral proposal prior to commencement of the elections without this coming to light in
a test election. It was said to be possible in practice to exchange the software without
encountering difficulties. The storage media could be removed from the voting ma-
chine, read out, deleted and re-programmed using widely available tools. A person
with a modicum of technical knowledge could exchange a storage medium within less
than five minutes after brief training; someone with experience could have effected a
swap in about one minute. Manipulations to the hardware were also simple without
this being identifiable by any testing procedure used or proposed by Nedap or by the
All in all, the tests had shown that the Nedap voting machines did not meet the re- 86
quirements of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance. The dynamics of the develop-
ment in the potential for attack and manipulation were said to constitute one of the
main risk factors of computer-aided election procedures. In contradistinction to estab-
lished procedures, it was possible at any time for attack methods to be developed
which were as yet unknown and the consequences of which were not foreseeable
which remained unrecognised and made it possible to falsify an election. None of the
fundamental difficulties in the use of computer-controlled voting machines was said to
be solvable by technical means with sufficient reliability since greater technical secu-
rity measures would of necessity lead to more complex systems which could be ex-
amined by even fewer people.
b) The Federal Ministry of the Interior takes the view that the statement of the Chaos 87
Computer Club showed all in all an over-evaluation of technical security requirements
as to the voting machines. There was said to be no way to guarantee absolute securi-
ty against falsification in elections. Ballot box election and postal voting was said to be
theoretically susceptible to manipulation in a similar way to elections with voting ma-
chines. Any technical security measure could be circumvented with the correspond-
ing effort.
The criticised manipulation possibilities still in existence despite a protected environ- 88

ment were said not to differ from the risks also existing in classical elections. The ex-
isting regulations were said to be adequate.
4. In the oral hearing, the Senate furthermore heard Dr. Jörn Müller-Quade, Euro- 89
pean Institute for Systems Security (Europäisches Institut für Systemsicherheit) in
Karlsruhe, and Melanie Volkamer, Institute of IT-Security and Security Law (Institut
für IT-Sicherheit und Sicherheitsrecht) of the University of Passau, as experts. Dr.
Müller-Quade particularly made a statement on the question of whether and to what
degree manipulation to the hardware or software could be discovered by subsequent
examinations of the voting machines. Ms Volkamer explained how the concurrence of
the software with the samples installed in the individual voting machines could be ex-
amined prior to the elections.
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B.
Insofar as the complainant re 2. objects to the proceedings before the German Bun- 91
destag, his complaint requesting the scrutiny of an election is unsuccessful.
The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election are well-founded insofar as 92

they complain about the Federal Voting Machines Ordinance permitting the use of
computer-controlled voting machines without ensuring effective monitoring of the
election act and effective subsequent monitoring of the ascertainment of the result. In
this respect, there is a violation of the principle of the public nature of elections under
Article 38 of the Basic Law in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law.
The use of Nedap’s computer-controlled voting machines was also not compatible
with the principle of the public nature of elections. Both election errors however do not
lead to the elections being declared invalid in the constituencies designated by the
complainant.
It can remain open whether the constructive characteristics of the voting machines, 93
and hence also the type approvals and the use authorisation, were compatible with
the requirements contained in the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance, and in particu-
lar in the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines, and with the principles
of electoral law under Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Basic Law. The same applies as
to the complaints that the voting machines used had not been subject to adequate of-
ficial monitoring, that the examination of the samples by the Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt and that the type approval procedure had not taken place in public, as
well as that the examination reports and documents of the Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt, and the source code of the voting machine software, had not been
made available to the public.
I.
The complaint requesting the scrutiny of an election of the complainant re 2. is un- 94
successful insofar as the complainant complains of the length of the proceedings be-
fore the German Bundestag and that the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections had
not deliberated in public and wrongly had not set an oral hearing. The complaint that
the German Bundestag had not been quorate on accepting the resolution recommen-
dation of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections is also not well-founded.
In the context of the complaint proceedings, the Federal Constitutional Court re- 95
views the impugned resolution of the German Bundestag in formal and substantive
terms. Faults in the proceedings of the German Bundestag, as they are claimed by
the complainant, can only be relevant to the complaint if they are material and deprive
it of the basis for its decision (see Decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court
(Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts – BVerfGE 89, 243 (249); 89, 291
(299)). No such procedural violations are recognisable here.
1. Even if the proceedings took more than one year between the submission of the 96
objection to the election and the decision of the German Bundestag, this does not yet
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constitute a grievous procedural error. The length of the proceedings by itself does
not remove the basis for the decision (see Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesver-
fassungsgericht – BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/
07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht – NVwZ 2008, p. 991 (992)).
2. The fact that the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections refrained from holding an 97
oral hearing on the complainant’s objection to the election, and also deliberated in
camera in other respects, also does not constitute a grievous error removing the ba-
sis for the decision of the German Bundestag.
a) According to § 6.1a no. 3 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections in the version of 98
24 August 1965 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 977 (Law on the Scrutiny of Elections,
Wahlprüfungsgesetz – WahlPrG, old version)), which applied at the time of the deci-
sion on the complainant’s objection, the committee was able to refrain from holding
an oral hearing if the preliminary review revealed that the objection was manifestly
unfounded. Since the amendment of § 6.1 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections by
the Act Amending the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections of 6 June 2008 (Federal Law
Gazette I p. 994), a date for an oral hearing is only to be set if the preliminary exami-
nation reveals that this can be expected to further promote the proceedings.
An objection is manifestly unfounded if no aspect is recognisable at the time of the 99

decision which may help it to succeed (see BVerfGE 89, 243 (250); 89, 291 (300)).
The evaluation is not conditional on the unfoundedness of the appeal being evident; it
may also be the result of a prior thorough examination (see BVerfGE 82, 316
(319-320) on the regulation of § 24 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act with identi-
cal content).
Even if there may be reasons according to the submission of the complaint suggest- 100
ing that the objection was not manifestly unfounded, in particular with regard to com-
pliance with the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines, refraining from
holding an oral hearing is certainly not so grievous that the decision of the German
Bundestag would be deprived of its basis by these means. It based its decision pri-
marily on the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines not violating the
principle of the public nature of elections and the concrete non-constitutional provi-
sions contained in electoral law. In this respect, the German Bundestag has ad-
dressed the complainants’ arguments in detail and made a detailed statement on the
questions raised. Where it deals with the question of the approval of the Nedap voting
machines used in the Bundestag election, it takes as a basis the statement of the
Federal Ministry of the Interior, according to which manipulations are theoretically
possible but, because of the bundle of technical and organisational security mea-
sures, are ruled out to the same degree as in classical voting slip elections.
b) In contradistinction to the view taken by the complainant re 2., the Committee for 101
the Scrutiny of Elections was not obliged to deliberate in an open hearing.
The Law on the Scrutiny of Elections regulates in the provisions on oral hearings 102
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(§§ 6 et seq. of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections) the preconditions under which
the proceedings of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections are held in public. If
an oral hearing is not waived, the hearing takes place in public. According to § 10.1
of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections, the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections
deliberates in secret on the result of the oral hearing. According to the system of the
Act, this applies in the same way if an oral hearing is waived. No constitutional as-
pects are evident which might oblige the legislature to enact any different regulation
when legislating on the scrutiny of elections (Article 41.3 of the Basic Law).
3. The complaint of the complainant re 2. that the resolution of the German Bun- 103
destag of 14 December 2006 had allegedly not effectively come into being for a lack
of a quorum is also unsuccessful. The German Bundestag decides with a simple ma-
jority on the recommendation for a resolution of the Committee for the Scrutiny of
Elections (§ 13.1 sentence 1 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections). According to
§ 45.1 of the Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag, the Bundestag is quorate
if more than half of its members are present in the plenary. The Bundestag is regard-
ed as being quorate regardless of the number of its members present until it is found
to not be quorate in the proceedings prescribed in § 45.2 of the Rules of Procedure of
the German Bundestag. This provision does not come up against any constitutional
reservations (see BVerfGE 44, 308 (314 et seq.) on the provisions of § 49.2 of the
Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag, old version, the content of which is
largely identical).
As is shown by the record of the session, the German Bundestag unanimously ac- 104
cepted the resolution recommendation of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections
on 14 December 2006 (see Minutes of plenary proceedings 16/73, Stenographic
Record p. 7259 B). It cannot be derived from the minutes how many delegates were
present in the house when the ballot was held. There is no record that it had been
doubted, or indeed ascertained, whether the German Bundestag was quorate. There
is hence no indication that the Bundestag was not quorate.
II.
1. In the context of a complaint requesting the scrutiny of an election according to 105
§ 13 no. 3 and § 48 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act, the Federal Constitutional
Court has not only to guarantee compliance by the competent election bodies and the
German Bundestag with the provisions of federal election law, but also to review
whether the provisions of the Federal Electoral Act comply with the requirements of
the constitution (see BVerfGE 16, 130 (135-136); BVerfG, judgment of the Second
Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht
2008, p. 991 (992)). This examination also covers the validity of legal ordinances.
2. The deployment of computer-controlled voting machines is in particular to be re- 106

viewed against the standard of the public nature of elections (Article 38 in conjunction
with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law).
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The public nature of elections is a fundamental precondition for democratic political 107
will-formation. It ensures the correctness and verifiability of the election events, and
hence creates a major precondition for the well-founded trust of the citizen in the cor-
rect operation of the elections. The state form of parliamentary democracy, in which
the rule of the people is mediated by elections, in other words is not directly exer-
cised, demands that the act of transferring state responsibility to parliamentarians is
subject to special public monitoring. The fundamentally required public nature of the
election procedure covers the electoral proposal procedure, the election act (broken
regarding the ballot by the secret nature of elections) and the ascertainment of the
election result (see BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/
07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (992) with further refer-
ences).
a) The basis for public elections is formed by the fundamental constitutional options 108
for democracy, the republic and the rule of law (Article 38 in conjunction with Article
20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law).
aa) In a representative democracy, the elections of the people’s representation con- 109
stitute the fundamental act of legitimisation. The ballot in the elections to the German
Bundestag forms the major element of the process of will-forming from the people to
the state bodies, and hence at the same time constitutes the basis for political inte-
gration. Compliance with the election principles applicable to this, and confidence in
compliance with them, hence constitute preconditions for a viable democracy. Only
by the possibility of monitoring whether the elections comply with the constitutional
election principles is it possible to ensure that the delegation of state power to the
people’s representation, which forms the first and most important part of the uninter-
rupted legitimisation chain of the people to the bodies and office-holders entrusted
with state tasks, does not suffer from a shortcoming. The democratic legitimacy of the
elections demands that the election events be controllable so that manipulation can
be ruled out or corrected and unjustified suspicion can be refuted. This is the only way
to facilitate the well-founded trust of the sovereign in the correct formation of the rep-
resentative body. The obligation incumbent on the legislature and on the executive to
ensure that the election procedure is designed constitutionally and is implemented
properly is not sufficient by itself to impart the necessary legitimacy. Only if the elec-
torate can reliably convince itself of the lawfulness of the transfer act, if the elections
are therefore implemented “before the eyes of the public” (see Schreiber, Handbuch
des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag, 7th ed. 2002, § 31 marginal no. 2) is it
possible to guarantee the trust of the sovereign in Parliament being composed in a
manner corresponding to the will of the voters that is necessary for the functioning of
democracy and the democratic legitimacy of state decisions (see North Rhine/West-
phalia Constitutional Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof Nordrhein-Westfalen – NRW
VerfGH), judgment of 19 March 1991 – VerfGH 10/90 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwal-
tungsrecht 1991, p. 1175 (1179); Hanßmann, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von Inter-
netwahlen, 2004, p. 184).
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bb) In a republic, elections are a matter for the entire people and a joint concern of 110
all citizens. Consequently, the monitoring of the election procedure must also be a
matter for and a task of the citizen. Each citizen must be able to comprehend and ver-
ify the central steps in the elections reliably and without any special prior technical
knowledge.
cc) The public nature of the elections is also anchored in the principle of the rule of 111
law. The public nature of the state’s exercise of power, which is based on the rule of
law, serves its transparency and controllability. It is contingent on the citizen being
able to perceive acts of the state bodies. This also applies as to the activities of the
election bodies.
b) The principle of the public nature of elections requires that all essential steps in 112
the elections are subject to public examinability unless other constitutional interests
justify an exception. Particular significance attaches here to the monitoring of the
election act and to the ascertainment of the election result.
An election procedure in which the voter cannot reliably comprehend whether his or 113
her vote is unfalsifiably recorded and included in the ascertainment of the election re-
sult, and how the total votes cast are assigned and counted, excludes central ele-
ments of the election procedure from public monitoring, and hence does not comply
with the constitutional requirements.
c) Despite the considerable value attaching to the constitutional principle of the pub- 114
lic nature of elections, it does not ensue from this principle that all acts in connection
with the ascertainment of the election result must take place with the involvement of
the public so that a well-founded trust in the correctness of the elections can be creat-
ed. For instance, activities of the district returning officer with which according to
§ 76.1 of the Federal Electoral Code the – public – ascertainment of the election re-
sult is prepared by the district election committee are not constitutionally obliged to be
subject to the principle of the direct public nature of elections (see BVerfG, judgment
of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Ver-
waltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (992)).
d) The requirements as to the examinability of the election events apply to the imple- 115
mentation of parliamentary elections regardless of the responsibility of the state bod-
ies which have a constitutional structure (see BVerfGE 20, 56 (113); 41, 399 (414);
Seifert, Bundeswahlrecht, 3rd ed. 1976, p. 130).
It is primarily a matter for the legislature to regulate how the retraceability of the es- 116
sential steps in the election procedure is ensured. Article 38.3 of the Basic Law em-
powers and obliges the legislature to determine the details of the structure of electoral
law (in particular the election system and the election procedure) and compliance
with the principles of electoral law (see Magiera, in: Sachs, GG, 5th ed. 2009, Art. 38,
marginal nos. 106 et seq. and 113 et seq.). The design of the technical aspects of the
election events also falls within the regulatory mandate under Article 38.3 of the Basic
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Law (see Morlok, in: Dreier, GG, Vol. 2, 2nd ed. 2006, Art. 38, marginal no. 127), and
hence the decision on deployment of voting machines and the determination of the
more detailed preconditions for their deployment. Details may be regulated by means
of a legal ordinance on the basis of a statutory authorisation (see Magiera, in: Sachs,
GG, 5th ed. 2009, Art. 38, marginal no. 114).
The legislature is entitled to broad latitude when lending concrete shape to the prin- 117
ciples of electoral law within which it must decide whether and to what degree devia-
tions from individual principles of electoral law are justified in the interest of the unifor-
mity of the entire election system and to ensure the state policy goals which they
pursue (see BVerfGE 3, 19 (24-25); 59, 119 (124); 95, 335 (349)). The Federal Con-
stitutional Court only reviews whether the legislature has remained within the bound-
aries of the latitude granted to it by the Basic Law, or whether it has violated a valid
constitutional election principle by overstepping these boundaries. It is not a matter
for the Court to find whether the legislature has found solutions which are expedient
or desired in terms of legal policy within the latitude to which it is entitled (see BVer-
fGE 59, 119 (125)).
3. The deployment of voting machines which record the voters’ votes in electronic 118
form and ascertain the result of the election electronically is hence only compatible
with the Basic Law subject to strict preconditions.
a) When electronic voting machines are deployed, it must be possible to check the 119
essential steps in the election act and in the ascertainment of the results reliably and
without special expert knowledge.
The necessity of such monitoring emerges not lastly from the susceptibility to ma- 120
nipulation of electronic voting machines and their amenability to error. In these, the
acceptance of the voters’ votes and the calculation of the election result is based on a
calculation act which cannot be examined from outside or by persons without special
computer knowledge. Errors in the voting machine software are hence difficult to
recognise. Over and above this, such errors can affect not only one individual election
computer, but all the devices used. Whilst manipulations or election falsifications are
virtually impossible in classical elections with voting slips under the conditions of the
valid provisions, including the provisions on the public nature of elections – or at least
are only possible with considerable effort and with a very high risk of discovery which
has a preventive impact – a major impact may in principle be achieved with relatively
little effort by encroachments on electronically controlled voting machines. Manipula-
tions of individual voting machines can already influence not only individual voters’
votes, but all votes cast with the aid of this device. The scope of the election errors
which are caused by alterations and malfunctions of a single software program affect-
ing multiple devices is even wider. The major scope of the effect of possible errors in
the voting machines or targeted election falsifications requires special precautions to
be taken in order to comply with the principle of the public nature of elections.
aa) The voter himself or herself must be able to verify – also without a more detailed 121
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knowledge of computers – whether his or her vote as cast is recorded truthfully as
a basis for counting or – if the votes are initially counted with technical support – at
least as a basis for a subsequent re-count. It is not sufficient if he or she must rely
on the functionality of the system without the possibility of personal inspection. It is
hence inadequate if he or she is exclusively informed by an electronic display that his
or her ballot has been registered. This does not facilitate sufficient monitoring by the
voter. Equal viability must also apply to the election bodies and to interested citizens.
The consequence of this is that the votes may not be stored exclusively on an elec- 122
tronic storage medium after the ballot. The voter may not be required to trust solely in
the technical integrity of the system after the electronic ballot. If the election result is
ascertained by computer-controlled processing of the votes stored in an electronic
storage medium, it is not sufficient if only the result of the calculation process as im-
plemented in the voting machine can be taken note of using a summary paper print-
out or an electronic display. By these means, voters and election bodies can only ex-
amine whether the voting machine has processed as many votes as voters have
been admitted to operate the voting machine in the elections. It is not easily recognis-
able in such cases whether there have been programming errors in the software or
targeted election falsifications through manipulation of the software or of the voting
machines.
bb) The legislature is not prevented from using electronic voting machines in the 123
elections if the constitutionally required possibility of a reliable correctness check is
ensured. In particular, voting machines are conceivable in which the votes are record-
ed elsewhere in addition to electronic storage. This is for instance possible with elec-
tronic voting machines which print out a visible paper report of the vote cast for the re-
spective voter, in addition to electronic recording of the vote, which can be checked
prior to the final ballot and is then collected to facilitate subsequent checking. Monitor-
ing that is independent of the electronic vote record also remains possible when sys-
tems are deployed in which the voter marks a voting slip and the election decision is
recorded simultaneously (for instance with a “digital election pen”, see on this Schie-
dermair, Juristenzeitung 2007, p. 162 (170)), or subsequently (e.g. by a voting slip
scanner; see on this Schönau, Elektronische Demokratie, 2007, pp. 51-52; Khorrami,
Bundestagswahlen per Internet, 2006, p. 30) by electronic means in order to evaluate
these by electronic means at the end of the election day.
It is certainly ensured in these cases that the voters are in charge of their ballot and 124
that the result of the election can be reliably checked by the election authorities or by
interested citizens without any special prior technical knowledge. Whether there are
still other technical possibilities which create trust on the part of the electorate in the
correctness of the proceedings in ascertaining the election result based on verifiabili-
ty, and which hence comply with the principle of the public nature of elections, need
not be decided here.
b) Restrictions on possibilities for citizens to monitor the election events cannot be 125
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compensated for by sample devices in the context of the type approval procedure or
in the selection of the voting machines specifically used in the elections prior to their
deployment being subjected to verification by an official institution as to their compli-
ance with certain security requirements and their proper technical performance. The
monitoring of the essential steps in the election promotes well-founded trust in the
correctness of the election certainly in the necessary manner that the citizen himself
or herself can reliably verify the election event.
For this reason, a comprehensive bundle of other technical and organisational secu- 126
rity measures (e.g. monitoring and safekeeping of the voting machines, comparability
of the devices used with an officially checked sample at any time, criminal liability in
respect of election falsifications and local organisation of the elections) is also not
suited by itself to compensate for a lack of controllability of the essential steps in the
election procedure by the citizen.
Accordingly, neither participation by the interested public in procedures of the exam- 127
ination or approval of voting machines, nor a publication of examination reports or
construction characteristics (including the source code of the software with computer-
controlled voting machines) makes a major contribution towards ensuring the consti-
tutionally required level of controllability and verifiability of the election events. Tech-
nical examinations and official approval procedures, which in any case can only be
expertly evaluated by interested specialists, relate to a stage in the proceedings
which is far in advance of the ballot. The participation of the public in order to achieve
the required reliable monitoring of the election events is hence likely to require other
additional precautions.
c) The legislature can permit exceptions to the principle of the public nature of elec- 128
tions to a restricted degree in order to bring other constitutional interests to fruition, in
particular the written principles of electoral law from Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Ba-
sic Law. For instance, restrictions of public monitoring of the ballot with postal voting
(§ 36 of the Federal Electoral Act) can be justified with the aim of achieving as com-
prehensive participation in the elections as possible, thereby complying with the prin-
ciple of generality of elections (see BVerfGE 21, 200 (205); 59, 119 (125)). When de-
ploying computer-controlled voting machines, however, no contrary constitutional
principles are recognisable which are able to justify a broad restriction of the public
nature of elections and hence the controllability of the election act and the ascertain-
ment of the results.
aa) Where the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines aims to rule out 129
inadvertent incorrect markings on voting slips, unwanted invalid ballots, unintentional
counting errors or incorrect interpretations of the voters’ intention when votes are
counted (see Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag, 7th
ed. 2002, § 35, marginal no. 2) which repeatedly occur in classical elections with vot-
ing slips, this serves the interest of the implementation of the equality of elections un-
der Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Basic Law. What weight attaches to this purpose
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can however be left open. It certainly does not justify by itself forgoing any type of ver-
ifiability of the election act. Unintentional counting errors or incorrect interpretations
of the voters’ intention can also be ruled out by voting machines if supplementary
monitoring by the voter, the election bodies or the public is made possible in addition
to electronic recording and counting of the votes. Corresponding monitoring is for in-
stance possible with electronic voting machines which record the votes not only in
electronic form in the voting machine, but at the same time in a form which is inde-
pendent of this (see II. 3. a) bb above). Apart from this, user errors – such as pushing
the “invalid” key presuming that this made it possible to correct an erroneous entry
– cannot be ruled out in the voting machines approved for the elections to the 16th
German Bundestag.
bb) The principle of the secrecy of elections certainly does not constitute a counter 130
constitutional principle which can be used as a basis for a broad restriction of the con-
trollability of the election act and of the ascertainment of the results. There is no “con-
flict of interest” between the principle of secret elections and the principle of the public
nature of elections which might justify such restrictions (Bundestag document 16/
3600, Annex 1, p. 20).
The principle of secret elections guarantees that the voter alone is aware of the con- 131
tent of his or her election decision, and obliges the legislature to take the necessary
steps to protect the election secret (see H.H. Klein, in: Maunz/Dürig, GG, Art. 38,
marginal no. 110 [March 2007]; Pieroth, Juristische Schulung – JuS 1991, p. 89 (91)).
The secrecy of elections constitutes the most important institutional protection of the
freedom of elections (see BVerfGE 99, 1 (13)). In historic terms, secret elections may
have been a caesura in the public nature of the election procedure because they re-
nounced the open ballot in order to protect the freedom of election (see Breidenbach/
Blankenagel, Rechtliche Probleme von Internetwahlen, Berlin 2000, pp. 34-35). Un-
der the regime of the Basic Law, which explicitly prescribes elections as secret in or-
der to protect their freedom, however, the principle of the public nature of elections
from the outset does not apply to the act of the ballot. If the public nature of the elec-
tions is not ruled out in order to enable the ballot to be cast unobserved, the election
procedure is subject to the principle of the public nature of elections (see H.H. Klein,
in: Maunz/Dürig, GG, Art. 38, marginal no. 113 [March 2007]; Seifert, Bun-
deswahlrecht, 3rd ed. 1976, Art. 38, marginal no. 35). Accordingly, the impact of the
principle of secrecy of elections is not to restrict the principle of the public nature of
elections for the ballot act. It also does not justify a restriction of public monitoring in
the casting of the – previously secretly marked – vote carrier or in the ascertainment
of the results. This already follows from the fact that it does not oppose additional pre-
cautions enabling the voter to monitor whether his or her vote is recorded in an unfal-
sified manner as a basis for a subsequent re-count.
cc) Finally, the goal of being able to form a viable people’s representation in a short 132
period does not constitute a restriction of the principle of the public nature of elections
in the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines. The clarification of the
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correct composition of the people’s representation within a suitable period is one as-
pect which can be taken into account when shaping the election procedure and the
election scrutiny procedure (see BVerfGE 85, 148 (159)). The matter of the assembly
of a new Bundestag in good time (see Article 39.2 of the Basic Law) is however not
endangered by sufficient precautions being taken to ensure public elections. There is
no constitutional requirement for the election result to be available shortly after clos-
ing the polling stations. What is more, the past Bundestag elections have shown that
the preliminary official final result of the elections can as a rule be submitted in a mat-
ter of hours, even without the deployment of voting machines. The interest in rapidly
clarifying the composition of the German Bundestag is therefore not a constitutional
interest that is suited to impose restrictions on the public nature of the election event.
4. The normative level on which the questions related to the deployment of voting 133
machines are to be regulated is determined in line with the requirements of the parlia-
mentary reservation and the requirements which are placed on the authorisation to is-
sue legal ordinances (Article 80.1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law).
a) The parliamentary reservation rooted in the principle of the rule of law and in the 134
principle of democracy requires that the major decisions are to be taken by the legis-
lature in fundamental normative areas, especially in the area of the exercise of funda-
mental rights, insofar as this is amenable to state regulation (see BVerfGE 49, 89
(126-127); 61, 260 (275); 80, 124 (132); 101, 1 (34)). The obligation to legislate re-
lates here not only to the question of whether a certain article must be regulated by
law at all, but also to how far these individual regulations have to go (see BVerfGE
101, 1 (34)).
According to Article 80.1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law, the content, purpose and 135
scope of the authorisation to issue legal ordinances must be laid down in the statute
concerned. The legislature itself must decide which questions are to be regulated by
the legal ordinance, within what limits and with what goal (see BVerfGE 2, 307 (334);
5, 71 (76-77); 23, 62 (72)). The wording of the authorisation need not be formulated
as precisely as possible; it must constitutionally only be sufficiently determined (see
BVerfGE 55, 207 (226); 58, 257 (277); 62, 203 (209-210). It is sufficient if the limits of
the authorisation are determinable by interpretation using the interpretation principles
that are generally recognised; the goals of the statute, the context together with other
provisions and the genesis of the statute are significant here (see BVerfGE 8, 274
(307); 23, 62 (73); 55, 207 (226-227); 80, 1 (20-21)). In detail, the requirements as to
the level of determinedness depend on the particularities of the respective object of
regulation and on the intensity of the measure (see BVerfGE 58, 257 (277-278); 62,
203 (210); 76, 130 (143)). Whilst less stringent requirements are to be made with cir-
cumstances that are highly varied and subject to rapid change, more stringent re-
quirements apply to the degree of determinedness of the authorisation with those
regulations which are linked to more intensive encroachments on legal positions
which are protected by fundamental rights (see BVerfGE 58, 257 (278); 62, 203
(210)).
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b) Because of their particularities, regulations relating to the deployment of voting 136
machines are reserved for parliamentary decision insofar as they relate to the major
requirements for the deployment of such devices. This includes the decisions on the
permissibility of the deployment of voting machines and the fundamental prerequi-
sites for their deployment. These decisions cannot be left to the institution adopting
the ordinance.
The more detailed preconditions for the approval of voting machines and the proce- 137
dures to be complied with here, the details of the use of the voting machines in the
elections and the guarantee of the principles of electoral law in the concrete deploy-
ment of voting machines, by contrast, do not require any detailed parliamentary regu-
lation, but can be regulated by the institution adopting the ordinance. The respective
requirements of the voting machines depend heavily on the nature of the respective
voting machine, and hence do not already have to be legislated in detail at the level of
the parliamentary statute. Thus, for instance, the requirements for the deployment of
electronically operated voting machines differ from those for the deployment of exclu-
sively mechanical voting machines. Because voting machines are subject to ongoing
technical development, a rapid adjustment of the law is better guaranteed if the de-
tailed regulations are transferred to the institution adopting the ordinance.
III.
According to these standards, the authorisation to hand down ordinances contained 138
in § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act does not give rise to any profound constitutional
objections.
1. The parliamentary legislature was not obliged over and above the regulation con- 139
tained in § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act to regulate the deployment of computer-
controlled voting machines since the major questions in connection with the deploy-
ment of computer-controlled voting machines are determined in § 35 of the Federal
Electoral Act. Where § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act authorises the adoption of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance, the content, purpose and scope of the authorisa-
tion that has been issued is adequately regulated (Article 80.1 sentence 2 of the Ba-
sic Law).
The parliamentary legislature made the fundamental decision in § 35.1 of the Feder- 140
al Electoral Act for the deployment of voting machines. By restricting the deployment
of the voting machines to facilitating the casting and counting of votes, the legislature
clearly determined the goal of the authorisation to issue ordinances. It made it clear
by deleting the words “with separate counting devices” in 1999 that § 35 of the Feder-
al Electoral Act also covers the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines.
The fundamental prerequisites for the deployment of the voting machines are 141
named in § 35.2 sentences 2 to 5 and 35.3 of the Federal Electoral Act, in particular
the official type approval and the official authorisation of the use of the voting ma-
chines. Of the constitutionally guaranteed election principles, only the secrecy of the
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ballot and the keeping of the secrecy of elections are explicitly spoken of in § 35.2
sentence 1 of the Federal Electoral Act. The other principles of electoral law are reg-
ulated in § 1.1 sentence 2 of the Federal Electoral Act. They therefore certainly al-
so apply to the deployment of voting machines in the elections to the German Bun-
destag. Finally, the legislature provided in § 35.3 sentence 1 no. 6 of the Federal
Electoral Act that the Federal Ministry of the Interior may regulate the particularities
in connection with the elections brought about by the use of voting machines. This
provision forms not only a sufficient normative basis in order to account for the con-
stitutional particularities of the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines.
It also makes it recognisable for citizens that an election with voting machines may
entail modifications in comparison with the classical ballot box election. It is not con-
stitutionally required that all details of the content of a legal ordinance can be derived
from the respective basis for the authorisation. The latitude which can be granted to
the institution adopting the ordinance in this respect is also to be measured account-
ing for the complexity of the material and the dynamics of development processes in
voting machines. The parliamentary legislature is hence certainly not constitutional-
ly obliged to make detailed regulations for the deployment of electronic voting ma-
chines.
2. § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act is compatible with the principle of the public na- 142
ture of elections.
a) It is not constitutionally objectionable that § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act per- 143
mits voting machines “in place of voting slips and ballot boxes”. For § 35.1 of the Fed-
eral Electoral Act does not rule out with this wording the approval and use of voting
machines with control devices which record the votes in addition to (electronic)
recording in the voting machine in a manner controlled by the voter. According to the
systematic status of § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act, the words “in place of voting
slips and ballot boxes” refer to the classical election procedure set out in § 34 of the
Federal Electoral Act in which exclusively official voting slips and ballot boxes are
used. § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act, by contrast, does not rule out the adoption
of provisions which provide for devices for a verifiability of the election result that is in-
dependent of the electronic recording and evaluation of votes.
b) It is unobjectionable for the principle of the public nature of elections contained in 144
§ 35 of the Federal Electoral Act to not be explicitly listed once more as a precondition
for the authorisation and use of computer-controlled voting machines. These require-
ments emerge directly from the constitution, and hence are also binding on the insti-
tution adopting the ordinance in lending concrete form to § 35 of the Federal Electoral
Act. Independently of this, it also emerges from other provisions of the Federal Elec-
toral Act that the use of voting machines is only permissible if the principle of the pub-
lic nature of elections is adhered to. § 31 of the Federal Electoral Act determines that
the election act is public. § 35.3 sentence 1 no. 4 of the Federal Electoral Act permits
regulations to be made on the open testing of a voting machine prior to its use.
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IV.
The Federal Voting Device Ordinance is unconstitutional on grounds of a violation of 145
the principle of the public nature of elections from Article 38 in conjunction with Article
20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law. It does not already encounter legal reservations be-
cause the expansion of the area of application of the Federal Voting Device Ordi-
nance to cover computer-controlled voting machines effected by the Ordinance
Amending the Federal Voting Device Ordinance of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law
Gazette I p. 749) had exceeded the framework of the provision on authorisation of
§ 35 of the Federal Electoral Act. The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance does not
however contain any provisions ensuring that only those voting machines are ap-
proved and used which comply with the constitutional preconditions of the principle of
the public nature of elections.
1. Insofar as the Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance of 146
20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749) with effect from 24 April 1999 regulates
the preconditions for the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines, it re-
mains within the authorisation contained in the version of § 35 of the Federal Elec-
toral Act still applicable on 24 April 1999. The latter permitted the use of voting ma-
chines “with separate counting devices” (§ 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act). The
subsequent deletion of the words “with separate counting devices” was considered
necessary “in order to adjust the Federal Voting Device Ordinance to technical devel-
opments in voting machines” (Bundestag document 14/401, p. 5). This exception
from the legislative procedure to amend § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act cannot
however exert a decisive influence on the interpretation of the provision in the version
which it had prior to the amendment. The expansion of the area of application of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance to cover computer-aided voting machines was
compatible with the wording of this earlier version. The term “counting device” only re-
quires that item numbers, flow volumes or other values are calculated and shown au-
tomatically (see Duden, Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 3rd ed.
1999). According to the wording, this therefore also covers electronic or software-
controlled counting devices in computer-controlled voting machines. The characteris-
tic “separate counting devices” is intended in the view of the institution adopting the
ordinance to refer merely to the requirement of “independent counting of first and sec-
ond votes”; such independent counting of first and second votes is also possible with
computer-controlled voting machines using an electronic counting device. Even if the
legislature was not yet able to consider deployment of microprocessor-controlled vot-
ing machines in the original version of § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act (see Brei-
denbach/Blankenagel, Rechtliche Probleme von Internetwahlen, Berlin 2000, p. 7),
neither the wording nor the purpose of § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act in the version
applicable on entry into force of the Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance on 24 April 1999 suggest that these voting machines were intended to be
ruled out from the legislative authorisation of the institution adopting the ordinance.
2. The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance violates the principle of the public nature 147
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of elections under Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic
Law because in the use of computer-controlled voting machines it guarantees neither
effective monitoring of the election act nor the reliable verifiability of the election re-
sult. This shortcoming cannot be remedied by means of an interpretation in conformi-
ty with the constitution.
a) The public nature of elections requires in the deployment of computer-controlled 148

voting machines that the essential steps in the election act and the ascertainment of
the results can be reviewed reliably and without special expert knowledge. Such pro-
visions are not contained in the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance.
It particularly does not emerge from the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance that only 149
voting machines may be deployed which enable the voter in casting his or her vote to
ensure reliable monitoring of whether his or her vote is recorded in an unfalsified
manner. The ordinance also does not make any concrete content and procedural re-
quirements as to reliable subsequent monitoring of the ascertainment of the results.
The obligation to seal computer-controlled voting machines and the containers in 150
which the vote storage media are located after ascertaining the election result (§ 15.3
of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance), as well as to ensure that the vote storage
media are not accessible to unauthorised parties (§ 16.2 of the Federal Voting Ma-
chine Ordinance), is not sufficient in this respect. Even if the vote storage media can
be read out once again at any time after the election day with the aid of a voting ma-
chine, the object of such a re-count is only the electronically stored votes, with regard
to which neither voters nor the returning committee can examine whether they were
recorded without falsification. The citizen cannot examine the essential steps in the
ascertainment of the results if the re-count again takes place inside a voting machine.
In addition, the counting of the ballot records entered in the list of voters and of the 151
election slips which have been accepted, as well as the comparison with the numbers
for the total first and second votes at the voting machine shown (see § 13 of the Fed-
eral Voting Machine Ordinance) only facilitates monitoring as to whether the voting
machine has processed as many votes as voters have been admitted for the opera-
tion of the voting machine. This does not guarantee the public monitoring of the es-
sential steps in the election act and the ascertainment of the results.
b) The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance cannot be interpreted in conformity with 152
the constitution such that only voting machines may be deployed which comply with
the principle of the public nature of elections.
An application of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance in conformity with the con- 153
stitution such that type approval and use authorisation may only be issued by the
Federal Ministry of the Interior if effective monitoring of election acts and ascertain-
ment of the results is guaranteed (see Schiedermair, Juristenzeitung – JZ 2007, p.
162 (170)) would overstep the boundaries of an interpretation in conformity with the
constitution. In principle, the institution handing down the ordinance has various pos-
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sibilities at its disposal to ensure that the central steps in ballot and vote counting
can be checked. Since the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance in its current version
does not make it possible to recognise what such monitoring should look like, there
is no constitutionally required provision, and hence there are no adequate indications
which an interpretation in conformity with the constitution could take as its starting
point.
It must also be taken into consideration here that the Federal Ministry of the Interior, 154
as the institution handing down the ordinance, as it has also clearly confirmed in its
statements in the proceedings at hand, considers the possibilities for monitoring
which are constitutionally necessary for effective monitoring of election acts and as-
certainment of the results to be neither legally required nor expedient.
V.
The computer-controlled voting machines used in the elections to the 16th German 155
Bundestag also did not meet the requirements made by the constitution as to the use
of electronic voting machines.
The use of the Nedap electronic voting machines of Type ESD1 hardware versions 156
01.02, 01.03 and 01.04, as well as of Type ESD2 hardware version 01.01, violates
the principle of the public nature of elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article
20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law) because these voting machines did not facilitate ef-
fective monitoring of the election act or the reliable verifiability of the election result.
The votes were exclusively recorded on an electronic storage medium after the bal- 157
lot. Neither the voter nor the returning committees, nor the citizens present in the
polling station, were able to check whether the votes cast were recorded by the voting
machines without falsification. Using the display on the control unit, the returning
committees could only recognise whether the voting machines registered a ballot, but
not whether the votes were recorded by the voting machines without changing the
content in any way. The voting machines did not provide a possibility to record the
votes independently of the electronic record on the vote storage module enabling the
respective voter to check his or her ballot.
The essential steps in the ascertainment of the results by the voting machines also 158
could not be verified by the public. Since the ascertainment of the results exclusively
formed the object of a data processing procedure running inside the voting machines,
it was possible for neither the election bodies nor the citizens participating in the as-
certainment of the results to verify whether the valid votes cast were correctly allotted
to the electoral proposals and the votes accounted for by the individual electoral pro-
posals in total were correctly ascertained. It was not sufficient that the result of the
computing process implemented in the voting machine could be taken note of using a
summary paper printout or an electronic display. A public examination by means of
which the citizen could have reliably verified the ascertainment of the election result
himself or herself without prior special technical knowledge was hence ruled out.
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VI.
It may remain open whether the further complaints are well-founded. The com- 159
plainants complain amongst other things that the characteristics of the voting ma-
chines and of the software used do not meet the requirements of the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance, in particular the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Ma-
chines (Annex 1 to § 2 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). The voting ma-
chines used were also said not to have been subject to sufficient official monitoring
and examination of the samples by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, and
that the type approval procedure should have been designed differently. The com-
plainants hence ultimately object to the deployment of the computer-controlled voting
machines used in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag. Even if these com-
plaints were well-founded, in addition to the finding of the violation of the principle of
the public nature of elections from Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2
of the Basic Law, these election errors would not take on any particular weight.
VII.
The election errors that were ascertained do not lead to the complaints requesting 160
the scrutiny of an election being permitted or to the repetition of the elections in the
constituencies designated.
1. The election error emerging from the fact that the type approvals for Nedap 161
computer-controlled voting machines were granted, that the use of these voting ma-
chines in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag was approved and that the vot-
ing machines were indeed deployed in the elections without an effective legal basis,
has no relevance to mandates. Approval and use of voting machines despite inade-
quate design of the legal basis do not lead as such to an influence on the election re-
sult.
2. The election error emerging from the fact that computer-controlled voting ma- 162
chines were approved and deployed the characteristics of which were not compatible
with the requirements of effective verifiability of the election events, even if its rele-
vance to mandates were to be assumed, does not lead to a partial declaration of inva-
lidity of the elections to the 16th German Bundestag.
a) In the cases in which an election error may have had an impact on the distribution 163
of mandates in the Bundestag, the election scrutiny decision of the Federal Constitu-
tional Court is subject to the principle of the least incisive encroachment. The decision
may only go so far as is demanded by the election error that has been ascertained. In
principle, the requirement of the protection of the status quo of an elected people’s
representation (see BVerfGE 89, 243 (253)), which finds its legal basis in the principle
of democracy, must be weighed up with the impact of the election error that has been
ascertained. Simple influences on the election carrying no weight whatever do not
therefore lead to the invalidity of an election. The encroachment on the composition
of an elected people’s representation by a decision under the law that regulates the
35/37
777
scrutiny of elections must be justified in light of the interest in conserving the elected
people’s representation (see BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008
– 2 BvC 1/07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (997) with
further references). Even where an election error that is relevant to mandates can
be restricted to certain mandates, in other words where the whole election did not
have to be declared invalid, a weighing up is to be undertaken which may come out
in favour of the interest in protecting the status quo.
b) The interest in the protection of the status quo of the people’s representation 164
composed in trust in the constitutionality of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance
outweighs the election errors that have been ascertained. Given that there are no in-
dications that voting machines worked incorrectly or might have been manipulated,
and hence that the election result would have been different in the constituencies
concerned without the deployment of the computer-controlled voting machines, its
possible impact on the composition of the 16th German Bundestag can be regarded
as marginal at most. Such uncertain impacts do not justify the partial declaration of
the invalidity of the elections to the 16th German Bundestag applied for. It should also
be taken into account here that the violation of the constitution that was ascertained
did not take place with intent, but when the legal situation was still unclear. Under
these circumstances, after the above there is no election error making the continua-
tion of the elected people’s representation appear untenable.
B.
With regard to the fact that the complainants rightly complain of the unconstitutional- 166
ity of the use of computer-controlled voting machines, the necessary expenses which
they have incurred are to be refunded to them according to §§ 18 and 19 of the Law
on the Scrutiny of Elections in conjunction with § 34a.3 of the Federal Constitutional
Court Act in this respect. Accordingly, the complainant re 1. is to be refunded the nec-
essary expenses in full, and the complainant re 2., whose complaints are partly un-
founded, is to be refunded three-quarters of the necessary expenditure.
Lübbe-
Judges: Voßkuhle, Broß, Osterloh, Di Fabio, Mellinghoff, Gerhardt, Landau
Wolff,
36/37
778
Bundesverfassungsgericht, Urteil des Zweiten Senats vom 3. März 2009 - 2 BvC 3/07
Zitiervorschlag BVerfG, Urteil des Zweiten Senats vom 3. März 2009 - 2 BvC 3/07 -
Rn. (1 - 166), http://www.bverfg.de/e/cs20090303_2bvc000307en.html
ECLI ECLI:DE:BVerfG:2009:cs20090303.2bvc000307
// True Copy //
37/37
ANNEXURE C/42
779
PRESENTATION ON
EVM & VVPAT
September 2019.
780
AGENDA
1. History
2. Technical Expert Committee (TEC)
3. Technical Security
4. Administrative safeguards
5. Debate around EVMs- Explained
6. Aspersions Vs. Confidence
7. Past Judgements
8. VVPAT
2
781
HISTORY OF EVM
Four Decades and more
3
782
HISTORY OF EVM – 40 YEARS
1977 CEC- S L Shakdar talked about introducing an Electronic machine.
EVMs developed and demonstrated by ECIL and BEL.

1980-81
EVMs used first time in 50 polling stations of Parur AC in Kerala.
1982-83 And then in 11 Assembly Constituencies: 8 states, 1UT.
1984 SC suspends EVM usage: cannot be used till RP Act is amended.
RP Act amended: enabling use EVMs wef 15.03.1989.

1988
2018 SC dismissed petition asking for return to Ballot papers!
Since 2000, EVMs have been used in all elections: 4 Lok Sabha and 122 State
Legislative Assemblies. Till date, >315 crore votes cast on EVMs.
4
783
TECHNICAL EXPERT
COMMITTEE
INDEPENDENT EVALUATION
5
784
T E C- HISTORY & ROLE
TEC constituted for

1st Technical evaluation of upgraded
Expert Committee EVMs Submitted an
(TEC) formed Evaluation Report in 2006
January, 1990 December 2005
November 2010
April 1990
Current TEC
Recommended use of
the EVMs unanimously • Approves EVM Design
• Vets and seals the software
• Recommends continuous design
improvement
• Monitors Secure Manufacturing 6
785
Past TECs
Composition of First Technical Expert Committee on EVMs – 1990
1. Professor S. Sampath, Chairman Technical Advisory Committee, Defence Research &

Development Organization DRDO), Ministry of Defence.
2. Professor PV Indiresan of the IIT Delhi.
3. Dr. Rao C. Kasarabada, Director, Electronic Research & Development Centre (ERDC),
Trivandrum.
Composition of Second Technical Expert Committee – Dec 2005
1. Prof P.V. Indiresan, Ex-Director, IIT Madras as Chairman of TEC.

2. Prof. D.T. Shahani of IIT Delhi.
3. Prof. A.K. Agarwala of IIT Delhi.
7
786
PRESENT TEC COMPOSITION
4 Eminent Professors from IITs: Renowned Experts in their Fields.
Prof D T Shahani, 1 2 Prof Rajat Moona,

Director IIT Bhilai,
Prof Emeritus, IIT-Delhi
3 Former Director General CDAC
Prof A K Aggarwala, Prof Dinesh K Sharma,

IIT Delhi 4 Prof Emeritus, IIT Bombay
8
787
TECHNICAL
SECURITY
DESIGN, PROCESS AND MANUFACTURING
9
788
1. SECURED DESIGN FEATURES
Population
No Radio
Frequency
One Time Dynamic
transmission or Programmable
Standalone Coding Date and Time
reception (OTP) chip:
Machine of Key Stamping of
possible: Software cannot
Press every key press
No wireless be modified
communication
10
possible
2. SECURE DEVELOPMENT 789
&
MANUFACTURING
Manufactured by Premium PSUs- BEL & ECIL: Both deal with manufacturing of sensitive
equipment critical to the safety and security of the Nation and have strong security
protocols.
In-house SOFTWARE Developed. Fully vetted by TEC. Never sub-contracted.
Secure Manufacturing: 3-level Physical/Process access Control, Regular frisking,

Outside e-gadgets prohibited, CCTV Coverage, Access Data and Process Data logging,
Alarm and Alert generation.
Third Party Testing by Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) as per
Standards & Quality Process set by TEC. Software is also tested & checked by STQC
for authentication.
11
790
ADMINISTRATIVE
SAFEGUARDS
SECURE HANDLING &
MANAGEMENT OF EVMS/VVPATs
12
791
ADMINISTRATIVE SAFEGUARDS
1. Stakeholder Participation
2. Allocation & Secure Movement
3. First Level Checking
4. Randomization
5. Candidate Setting
6. Mock Poll
7. Poll Day Checks
8. Poll Closure & Transportation
9. Storage & Security
10. Counting Day Protocol
13
792
1. STAKEHOLDER PARICIPATION
Active Participation of & Witness by Political-

Parties/Candidates in All Processes
Opening & Sealing 1 2 First Level Check (FLC)

& Candidate Setting
of EVM Warehouses
& Strong-rooms
Conduct mock poll
3 List of EVMs after 1st & 2nd
randomization shared
and receive mock
poll results 5 4 Sign on Paper Seals on
EVMs after all processes Participation During
FLC
14
793
2. ALLOCATION & MOVEMENT
Planned Allocation Secured Transportation

EVMs are allocated to poll going State • Movement of EVMs/VVPATs mandatorily
by the Commission. managed through EVM Management System
(EMS).
• Only Containerized/Sealed Trucks used.
Received by District Election Officer (DEO) • All Trucks sealed with Lock and Paper Seals.
who is personally responsible for secured
• Mandatory GPS tracking of EVM vehicles.
storage.
• All movement under 24X7 Police Escort.
• Videography done of shifting process.
EMS used for inventory management • Political parties informed in advance about the
of all EVMs nationwide for the sake of opening, stocking and sealing of warehouses
transparency. while moving EVMs/VVPATs.
15
794
3. FIRST LEVEL CHECKING (FLC)
• FLC is mandatorily done in the

presence of representatives of political
parties.
• Fully sanitized hall under videography
and full security.
• Full functionality and behavioural check
is done on every EVM.
• Defective (non-functional) EVMs are
kept aside and not used in election.
• FLC status captured in EMS.
16
795
FLC PROCESS
Complete physical Higher vote mock poll on CU sealed after EVMs/VVPATs

check up (switches, randomly selected 5% FLC using ‗Pink stored in Strong
cable, latches etc) EVMs. (1200 votes in 1%, Paper Seal‘ Room under 24X7
& functional test 1000 in 2% & 500 in 2%) security
Mock Poll on All Electronic Result in Signing on Photocopies of record

EVMs/VVPATs CU is tallied with seals by registers shared with political
VVPAT Slip count Engineers and party representatives
and results shared representatives
with representatives
796
4. RANDOMIZATION (1/4)
• EVMs are Randomized twice using EMS.

• No human intervention in randomisation.
• Only FLC approved EVMs as per EMS get picked up for first
randomisation.
1st Randomization
• Done after FLC

• To allocate EVMs from district, randomly, to a particular AC/AS.
• In presence of representatives of political parties.
• List of AC/AS-wise Randomized EVMs shared with political
parties. 18
797
• EVMs are Randomized twice using EMS.

• No human intervention in randomisation.
• Only FLC approved EVMs recorded in EMS get picked up for first
randomisation.
1st Randomization 2nd Randomization
• Done just before ‗candidate setting‘.

• To allocate EVMs available in an AC/AS to polling
stations.
• In presence of candidates/election agents and list shared.
19
798
PS1
1st Randomization 2nd Randomization
AC 1 PS2
District
AC 2
PS(n)
AC (n)
20
799
4. RANDOMIZATION- THE FOUNDATION
OF EVM SECURITY (4/4)
• Till first randomization- no one knows which EVM is going to which Constituency.
• Till nomination finalization- no one knows the sequence of names on the ballot paper.
• Hence, till candidate setting no one (not even RO/DEO/CEO/Commission) knows

which button on which BU will be assigned to which candidate, making even an
attempt to tamper absolutely futile.
• Till 2nd Randomization- no one knows which EVM will go to which PS.
• Added to this is the 3 stage Randomization of polling officials to different polling stations.
21
800
5. CANDIDATE SETTING
The Process
Mock Poll on Every
Insert ballot paper in
EVM with VVPAT +
the Ballot Unit & Set Seal Ballot Unit 1000 vote on 5% EVMs
Number of Candidates with VVPATs
Security Measures
Done only after finalization of the names of contesting
1
candidates.
2 Fully sanitized hall under videography and full security.
3 Done in the presence of candidates or their agents. 22

801
6. MULTIPLE MOCK POLLS
• Each EVM undergoes mock poll during FLC, and

again during Candidate Setting. In addition 10%
EVMs are randomly picked up for higher vote (500-
1200) mock poll.
• 10% EVMs randomly taken out for Training and

Awareness undergo Mock Polls several times.
During LSE 2019 approx 9 crore mock votes cast
and checked on around 1 lakh EVMs during
awareness camps.
• Before start of actual poll, Mock poll on each EVM

with at least 50 votes in the presence of polling
agents.
23
802
7. POLL DAY CHECKS
• Polling Agents
• Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) and
Micro Observers deployed at polling stations.
• Web Casting/CCTVs
• Frequent visits (Sector Officers /Senior
officers/ Observers)
• 2 hourly reporting of votes polled
• Media vigil
24
803
8. POLL CLOSURE & TRANSPORTATION
Poll Closed on EVM by pressing CLOSE button – EVM

cannot accept any further vote.
EVMs sealed in carrying cases & polling agents sign on them.
EVMs transported back to the reception centres under

armed escort. Candidates‘ representatives are allowed to
follow them.
25
804
9. SECURE STORAGE IN STRONGROOMS
TILL COUNTING
Polled EVMs kept in strong room,

sealed in the presence of the
Candidates and Observer.
Facilitation for Candidates to watch

the Polled EVM Strong Room 24/7.
Starting from FLC of EVMs to

Counting of votes, EVMs are kept in
Strong-room with full 24/7 security.
26
805
10. STORAGE & SECURITY (1/3)
• EVM Warehouse/Strongroom with only One Entry Point.

• Entry secured by a Double Lock System with DEO & Dy DEO, each having
custody of keys of one lock each.
• 24X7 Armed security.
• The opening & closing of EVM warehouse ONLY in presence of Political
party representatives- advance written intimation mandatory.
• Every EVM/VVPAT moved is managed by ECI through EMS.
Post Polling:
• Polled EVMs/VVPATs are stored in strong room having double lock system.
• Candidates allowed to put their own seals on locks.
27
806
Various layers of security of polled EVMs/VVPATs
1. Unique ID of BUs, CUs & VVPATs shared with political parties/candidates.
2. Sealing of CU and BU with Pink Paper Seals at FLC and commissioning

respectively on which political parties and candidates put their signatures.
3. Sealing of EVMs/VVPATs before starting actual poll on which polling agents also
put their signatures.
4. Seals on carrying cases of EVMs/VVPATs after closing of poll on which polling

agents also put their signatures.
28
807
5. Double lock system at the door of strong room on which candidates also
put their own seals.
6. CCTV feed to Candidates Camping Area to monitor strong room.
7. Two Cordoned round-the-clock security (Inner perimeter manned by CAPF

and Outer perimeter by State Armed Police.
8. Log-book and videography of officers inspecting the two cordons daily.
5. 24/7 security arrangement for unused EVMs also.
29
808
11. COUNTING DAY PROTOCOL
• On the day of counting, strong room opened in the presence of

Candidates, RO and Observer under videography.
• Round-wise CUs are brought to the counting tables from

Strongrooms under CONTINUOUS CCTV Coverage.
• Unique ID number of the CU & the signed seals are verified and
shown to the polling agents.
• EVMs & VVPATs are stored back in Strong Room in the presence of
candidates/their representatives till the completion of the Election
Petition period.
30
809
ELECTION PETITION
PERIOD
REGISTERING COMPLAINT
31
810
ELECTION PETITION PERIOD
• Election Petitions can be filed within 45 days of result declaration.
• EVMs (BU+CU) & VVPATs remain under sealed conditions till EP position
is ascertained.
• EVMs and VVPATs under EP, are kept under safe custody of DEO (Strong
Room) till final disposal of EP.
• Print on VVPAT Slips remains for 5 years.
• Remaining EVMs and VVPATs not in EP are now free for re-use.
32
811
EVM Management System (EMS)
• In house EVM Stock Management Software
• Barcode of every EVM is scanned into EMS every time it moves from one Warehouse to another
• All EVM Allocations done on EMS
• FLC status(OK/Rejected) captured in EMS
• EVMs Randomisation twice on EMS
• EVM sent for repair captured in EMS
• EVMs under EP marked in EMS
33
812
DEBATE AROUND
EVMs-EXPLAINED!
CLARIFICATION ON ALL ISSUES
34
813
DOUBTS CREATED AROUND EVM
Remotely
Vote
Altered
Hacked Stuffing
Control
EVM after Poll
Unit
Closure
Display
Altered
software
code
Replaced International
Memory Microcontr Comparison
Manipulati oller or
on Memory
chips
35
814
NO POSSIBILITY OF EVM HACKING
„Hacking‟ is unauthorised access to or control over computer

network security systems for some illicit purpose.
In the case of ECI EVMs, the word ‗Hacking‟ is not applicable for
following reasons:
The EVM is a stand-alone machine and is not connected to any
network through wire or wirelessly.
The SW programme in the OTP Microcontroller can neither be
read nor modified.
36
815
NO POSSIBILITY OF REMOTELY ALTERED DISPLAY
THROUGH WIRELESS COMMUNICATION
It is alleged this can be done by either replacing the original

display module with another display fitted with a wireless device or
inserting an extra circuit board which can communicate with an
external unit via a wireless device and tamper the result by
controlling the CU display used for declaring the result.
Such a modification would require unfettered access to the

EVM after FLC – Ruled out.
37
816
MEMORY MANIPULATION RULED OUT
• It is alleged that voting data can be altered by

clipping a Memory Manipulator IC to the memory
chip where Vote data is stored.
This would need,

• Full and free access to CUs after the Polling is over-
Ruled Out !!
• Breaking the seals and locks of the strong room in
the presence of two layers of security plus the
representatives of the candidates camping near the
strong room- Ruled Out !! 38
817
REPLACEMENT OF MICROCONTROLLER/MEMORY CHIP
or MOTHERBOARD IMPOSSIBLE
Administrative Safeguards
• Chip replacement would require access to EVM Warehouses – Ruled Out.
• Any chip replacement before FLC will get caught during FLC.
• Chip Replacement after FLC would require access to Strong Rooms and breaking
of EVM Pink Paper seals– Ruled Out.
Technical Security
• BUs and CUs communicate only amongst themselves and go into error mode if
connected to any other machine. Thus, any modified EVM (with
microcontroller /memory changed) would not be usable even if someone is
able to hypothetically bypass security arrangements and modify EVM.
39
TAMPERED SOURCE CODE 818
“TROJAN”
RULED OUT
• It is alleged that Trojan can be introduced in the

following manner
• by reprogramming the chip, or
• by the chip manufacturer during fusing of the software.
Re-programming Ruled Out as these are OTP

chips.
Code tampering by the chip manufacturer Ruled
Out as it will get caught during the code integrity
check.
40
819
NO POSSIBILITY OF VOTE STUFFING
AFTER POLL CLOSURE
Administrative safeguards
• Poll closed by pressing the ―CLOSE‖ button on the CU after last vote,
Representatives of candidates who are present signs on the seals.
• EVM seals checked on counting day.
What if seals broken and votes stuffed while transporting?

• EVM does not accept any votes after CLOSE button pressed in CU.
What if CLOSE button not properly pressed and Votes Stuffed while
transporting?
• Poll Closure time recorded in the PO‘s diary and any votes polled in the EVM after
this time can be identified due to time stamping of key presses.
41
820
DEFECTIVE VS
TAMPERED
42
821 VS
DEFECTIVE/NON-FUNCTIONING
MANIPULATION/TAMPERED (1/2)
• Tampered machine is one which would behave in a predefined biased manner to favor
someone.
• Malfunctioning machine is one which would randomly behave erroneously, but without
a predefined biased manner.
• Defective or Non-functioning machine is one which becomes in-operative.
• While 1-2% EVMs may become Defective/Non-functional (and are replaced with good
EVMs), no case of Malfunctioning EVM (i.e. one recording wrong vote) ever
reported.
• Question of Tampering absolutely ruled out due to several layers of technical and
administrative safeguards. 43
822VS
DEFECTIVE/NON-FUNCTIONING
MANIPULATION/TAMPERED (2/2)
Defective/Non-functional Manipulation/Tampering
An EVM can be said defective/non-functional, if they An EVM can be said manipulated/Tampered, if someone
do not work due to any mechanical/electronic fault. has made unauthorised alteration to interfere in its working.
The same is ruled out due to technical security implemented
in EVM and administrative safeguards prescribed by ECI.
Dictionary meaning- ‗Failing to work or function Dictionary Meaning- ‗to interfere in an illegal & disruptive
properly‘. manner or to make alterations or adjustments, especially
secretly so as to subvert an intended purpose or function.
EVMs, like any other machines can become non A tampered EVM must behave in a pre-defined and biased
functional. Such defects get detected during the 3 manner to favour a particular candidate and this partisan
mock polls and are replaced. behaviour of the machine must be replicable/demonstrable.
All such defective EVMs are promptly removed from No evidence of any incident of any EVM Tampering, ever
the election process and replaced with a full has been produced.
functional EVM.
However, No incident of EVM tampering ever found. 44

823
DEFECTIVE EVM PROTOCOL
Defective EVMs
EVMs that fail to function due to any mechanical, structural or physical
defect like faulty switches, broken button, faulty connections etc.
However, these NEVER record Wrong Vote.
• EVMs are checked for defects 3 times - during FLC, candidate setting, before
start of poll.
• Serial Numbers and defects of these EVMs are noted and EVMs are sent to the
manufacturers for analysis and repair.
• Manufacturers follow same security protocols during repair as they do for

manufacturing new EVMs. 45
824
Electronic Voting in Other

Countries
46
825
VARIOUS FORMS OF ELECTRONIC VOTING
IN OTHER COUNTRIES
Electronic Voting (Fully /Partially)

• 19 Countries using electronic voting in some form through EVMs
(Direct Recording Machines), some with Paper Trail.
• India, USA, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Switzerland,
Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Armenia, Namibia, Nepal,
Bhutan, Bangladesh.
Electronic Counting
• 13 Countries are using e-technology for counting of votes
• Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Lithuania,
Bulgaria, Belgium, Australia, South Korea, Philippines, Mongolia,
Bhutan, Namibia.
47
826
Country Specific Details
Other countries using EVMs (DRMs):
USA, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Namibia, Nepal, Bhutan, Armenia, Bangladesh.
Currently, in the USA, the Direct Recording Machines are used in 27 states, among
which paper audit trails are used in 15 states.
The other voting methods include: Optical Scan Paper Ballot Systems, Ballot Marking
Devices, and the Punch Card Ballot.
48
827
Why Some Countries

Discontinued Electronic Voting
49
828
ECI EVM Foreign EVM
Standalone Mostly networked
Manufactured in Premium PSUs Manufactured entirely by private entities
Verified and certified by an independent No such robust and independent certification/
Technical Experts Committee checks
Data is stored internally and not transferrable Voting data recorded in the DRM is transferred
by any device by means of CD, etc
Full end to end security protocol and No such protocols, e.g. in Ireland
administrative safeguards for the use, storage,
transportation and tracking
Administrative and physical security as per No such legal framework, e.g. in Netherlands
legal framework across the country.
Voter verifiability and auditability of every vote Lack of such facility in the NEDAP machines-
cast un-Constitutional by German Supreme Court
as lacked public examinability 50
829
ASPERSIONS VS
CONFIDENCE
Between MAR-DEC 2017
51
830
BHIND FINDINGS
Commission‘s enquiry found 4 buttons of BU pressed in the following order and

VVPAT printed corresponding slips-
Button no Symbol Name of Candidate
04 Lotus SatyaDev Oanchori
01 Hand Ambuj Shukla
It is pertinent to mention here that it is completely false to say that multiple

times slips of lotus were printed during the demo on 31st March as alleged.
52
831
Between March-May 2017
120 Petitions Received
41 alleging wrong results
17 Related to SEC Evidence Sought from 24
Reply by 3 Evidence by none
53
832
EVM CHALLENGE- 2017 (1/2)
• Commission organized an EVM Challenge on 3rd June 2017.
• All National and State Political Parties invited to participate in the Challenge.
• Parties allowed to pick EVMs/VVPATs of their choice from the 5 poll-gone

States (UP, Punjab, UK, Goa, Manipur), which were securely held in the
Strongrooms under 24*7 armed security.
• Parties given opportunity to demonstrate EVM manipulation/tampering in the

votes recorded in the EVMs/VVPATs of their choice, as variously alleged
earlier.
54
833
EVM CHALLENGE- 2017 (2/2)
• NO Political Party participated in the Challenge.
• Only 2 parties i.e. NCP & CPI-M reported to venue, ONLY TO

UNDERSTAND THE EVM PROCESS BETTER and were given
detailed briefing.
• The credibility and integrity of ECI-EVMs has always remained

perfectly intact and unscathed.
55
834
Aspersions in the 5 State Assembly
Elections Nov-Dec 2018: (1/2)
Allegation/Aspersion Fact Action Taken
1. In Khurai (Madhya Pradesh) some Violation of ECI instructions for Returning Officer and
reserve EVMs and VVPATs reached deposition of all Reserve Assistant Returning Officer
the strong room 48 hours after the EVMs/VVPATs on the same day. of Khurai were suspended.
polling was completed. However no impact on secured
storage of polled EVMs.
2. CCTV cameras outside the EVM Due to power failure in the area, the An inverter and a generator
strong room in Bhopal, MP did not recording could not be done. were installed in order to
function from 8.19 am to 9.35 am on However no impact on secured ensure continuous power
30th November, 2018 - allegations of storage of polled EVMs, as there are supply.
manipulations. 7 layered security.
3. A Security personnel allegedly found Laptop can never connect to an Sub-inspector of the 175th
using Laptop outside EVM strong EVM. Manipulation in EVMs stored battalion of the BSF was
room in Bemetara district of inside Strongroom by laptop outside replaced.
Chhattisgarh. the building absolutely ruled out.
56
835
Aspersions in the 5 State Assembly
Elections Nov-Dec 2018: (2/2)
4. A sector officer with Reserve Sector Officer halted at night at a EVM taken out of election
EVM at a private hotel owned private hotel-Violation of ECI system. Sector Officer
by a candidate in MP. instruction. However all seals were suspended.
intact, and the Reserve EVM not used.
5. 1 EVM was alleged to be found Sector Officer had gone to his house, EVM taken out of election
at a candidate‘s residence in which was close to the candidate‘s system. The Sector Officer
Pali, Rajasthan. house. Violation of ECI Instructions. was suspended and the
However all seals were intact, and the Returning Officer, Pali was
Reserve EVM not used. transferred.
6. 01 reserve EVM found lying on Fallen from the jeep while transpoting. EVM taken out of election
road in Baran district Violation of secure EVM transportation system. Patwari and
(Kishanganj AC) in Rajasthan. protocol. Inspector were suspended.
57
836
Aspersions in the Lok Sabha Elections 2019: (1/5)

1. Transporting of unused Tezpur DEO failed to inform The Commission conducted an
EVMs from Tezpur to the Kamrup (Rural) DEO before shifting enquiry in the matter.
office of DC Kamrup (Rural), of ―Unused EVMs/VVPATs‖ to State Disciplinary action has been taken
without inviting political Central Warehouse at Kamrup. against DEO, Tezpur.
parties at Kamrup.
2. News 18 alleged that EVMs The said news pertained to unused The said EVMs/VVPATs verified in
found in the vehicle of City EVMs, which were brought for front of the complainant candidates
Magistrate Jhansi (Uttar storing in the strong room situated and they were fully satisfied.
Pradesh). at Bhojla Mandi, Jhansi (Uttar Thereafter, the said EVMs/ VVPATs
Pradesh). stored in the respective strong
rooms (different from Polled EVM
Strong Rooms).
58
837

3. Suspicious movement of The EVMs under question were unused The matter was explained to
EVMs in 60-Dumariganj PC EVMs. As per ECI instructions unused the contesting candidates by
of Uttar Pradesh. EVMs/VVPATs were being stocked at the District Election Officer
central locations for quickly shifting to and they were satisfied.
subsequent phases whenever required.
4. Suspicious movement of 50 Poll in the State of Tamil Nadu was held on There was no violation of
Ballot Units from Coimbatore 18.4.2019 and on 6th & 7th May, 2019, the any instructions of the
to Theni, 20 VVPATs from unused reserve EVMs and VVPATs were Commission, as the
Coimbatore to Erode and 20 moved under intimation to the political movement of EVMs was
Control Units and 30 parties for the purpose of use in expected done as per instructions of
VVPATs from Tiruvalllur to repoll in some polling stations. Some of the the Commission.
Theni. representatives of the political parties were
also present during the actual shifting.
59
838

5. In mock poll at polling station During mock poll, there was no complaint However, the set of
No.31 of 34-Cuncolim AS of from the polling agents that the votes machines was replaced
South Goa PC, 8 additional shown on VVPAT slip having any with reserve set of machines
votes in favour of BJP instead mismatch. However repeat Mock poll and poll was held after
of INC. done, again with no mismatch between conduct of mock poll to the
EVM and VVPAT slips count. satisfaction of candidates‘
representatives.
6. Pressing any button on EVM, DEO clarified that the complaint is wrong A clarification was given to
vote goes to BJP. No Written and no such thing happened anywhere in Lokmat TV 9 & TV 18 News
complaint, just a vague Solapur PC. channels. They immediately
statement in an interview to TV stopped broadcasting the
9/TV 18 Lokmat News channels wrong news.
on 18/4/2019 at Solapur.
60
839

7. Theft of DVRs from the DVRs and TVs installed at police guard room Departmental action
intermediate strong room of Umred were not uninstalled while polled machines has been taken
AS of Ramtek PC on 12th/13th April, were shifted from intermediate strongroom, against the ARO &
2019. Allegation of wilful default in Umred to main strong room at Nagpur. Tehsildars and
providing security to EVMs enabling Later DVRs found on 4th May, 2019 near explanation of DEO,
the miscreants to lay their hands on temporary strong room, Umred. Forensic Nagpur called.
EVMs and tamper with EVM. test of DVR established that there was no 1 year increment
attempt to tamper with EVM. withheld for Police
Inspector.
8. News item that in PS in Lumani of Sector Magistrate visited the said PS and The facts of the
Zunhebotu district, Nagaland only investigated. It was found that the EVM was matter were shared
one button on ballot unit was functioning normally and no variation was with the media
getting lighted and the VVPAT slips observed. during the press
showing the symbol of only one conference after the
party regardless of the buttons poll was over. 61
pressed.
840

9. EVMs kept at Badaun strong room No such incident occurred. CEO UP issued Press Note on
have been tampered after 3rd May 2019 clarifying that no
breaking the seal of the strong such incident actually occurred.
room.
10. Complaint that at PS No. 151 of No such incident occurred. Sector Officer and ARO visited the
139—Kovalam AS of Polling agents and polling PS. There was no issues.
Thiruvananthapuram PC, Kerala, parties inside the polling station It was clarified by the DEO that
there was discrepancy between were not even aware that such such an information was false.
the button that was being pressed a news was spreading outside. Observer also arrived and
and the vote that was being explained to the candidates the
actually cast. false nature of the widespread
complaint.
62
841
PAST JUDGEMENTS
63
842
JUDGEMENTS
Karnataka High Court 1999

‗This invention is undoubtedly a great achievement in the electronic and
computer technology and a national pride‘.
Madras High Court 2001

‗There is also no question of introducing any virus or bugs for the reason
that the EVMs cannot be compared to personal computers.‘
Kerala High Court 2002

The High Court recorded its appreciation on the efficiency of the
mechanism of detecting votes cast by impersonators. Upheld by the
Hon‘ble Supreme Court in 2003.
64
843
Forensic Checking and Secured Storage
Bombay High Court: Order dated 23.02.2018:
The Bombay High Court ordered a detailed Forensic Examination of the EVMs
from CFSL, Hyderabad for checking any manipulation etc. The CFSL report
clearly ruled out any tampering, alteration or manipulation in the EVMs.
High Court of Madhya Pradesh: Order dated 05.12.2018:
In Writ Petition (Civil) No. 28016/2018 Naresh Saraf Vs ECI & Anr, Hon‘ble High
Court of Madhya Pradesh expressed satisfaction at the Security and Storage
Protocols for EVMs and VVPATs established by the ECI and rejected petition to
give directions for any changes.
65
844 Ballot
Hon‟ble Supreme Court: Dismissed
Paper Request
Order dated 22.11.2018:
In Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1332/2018, Nyaya Bhoomi & Anr Vs ECI, Hon‘ble
Supreme Court dismissed the petition requesting for return to Ballot paper
system.
Upon hearing the counsel the court made the following ORDER-
“Having heard learned counsel for the petitioners and upon perusing the
relevant material, we are not inclined to entertain the writ petition. The
same is, accordingly, dismissed.”
66
845
The Hon‟ble Supreme Court on VVPAT counts
• “We are certain that the system ensures accurate electoral results.”
• “Verification of VVPAT slips of 5 Polling Stations per Assembly Constituency or Assembly

Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency would lead to greater satisfaction.”
• Review Petition against above order dismissed on 07.05.2019.
The Supreme Court on 21.05.2019 dismissed a PIL seeking counting of VVPAT slips of all
EVMs while rebuking the petitioner NGO for making a “mockery of democracy” by moving
the court despite a clear ruling by the apex court directing counting of VVPAT slips of five
Polling Stations per assembly segment.
67
846
VOTER VERIFIABLE
PAPER AUDIT TRAIL
(VVPAT)
68
847
VVPAT
VVPAT- allows the voters to verify that

their votes are cast as intended. 69
848
VVPAT
• Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail is an independent system, attached with the
Electronic Voting Machines, that allows the voters to verify that their votes are
cast as intended.
• When a vote is cast, the elector shall be able to view through the transparent
window of the VVPAT, the printed paper slip showing the serial no, name and
the symbol of the candidate of his choice.
• The slip is visible through the VVPAT window after which it automatically gets
cut and falls in the sealed drop box of the VVPAT.
• Since June 2017, VVPATs are being used in all Elections. 70

849
HISTORY OF VVPAT
 4th October 2010: An all-party meeting agreed to incorporate VVPAT with EVM.
 14th August 2013: The Conduct of Elections Rules 1961 amended to use VVPAT.
 September 2013: First used in Bye-election for 51-Noksen AC in Nagaland.
 October 2013: Hon‘ble Supreme Court allowed ECI to introduce the VVPAT system
in a phased manner.
 4th March 2017: Goa became the first State where 100% coverage of VVPATs
with EVMs during Goa Legislative Assembly Election, 2017.
 12th August 2017: In all party meeting, the Commission committed to ensure 100%
coverage of VVPATs in all future elections.
 April-May 2019: 100% Deployment of VVPATs in Lok Sabha Elections 2019.
71
850
VVPAT Complaint – Rule 49MA
In case a voter complains of wrong printing by VVPAT:
• He will report to Presiding Officer.

• Presiding Officer will take a declaration explaining that if found false he can be
penalized.
• PO will then record in 17A and permit him to cast a ‗test vote‘ in presence of PO and
Polling Agents.
• If found false PO will record in 17A and 17C so that the test vote is not counted.
• If found true then PO will stop poll and report to RO.
• Since the introduction of VVPATs, more than 83 crore voters have cast their
votes with full satisfaction & ONLY 17 (seventeen) complaints received u/r 49MA,
which were all FOUND TO BE FALSE.
72
851
VVPAT RECOUNTING PROCESS
• Counting of votes according to Rule 56C of Conduct of Election Rules,1961.
• After announcement of result any candidate/ his agent may apply in writing to the RO for
counting of paper slips of VVPAT under Rule 56D.
• The RO shall pass a speaking order on whether the slip counting to be allowed.
• Till date, in 16 (Sixteen) instances RO has allowed slip counting since 2017. All counts
matched.
73
852
VVPAT RECOUNTING PROCESS
• Between Dec 2017- Dec 2018 VVPAT slip count done in 1500 randomly
selected PS and all these counts matched.
• In 2019 Lok Sabha Elections 20,687 VVPATs counted and around 1.25 crore
slips matched with EVM count. A total count variance of only 0.0004% found in
8 VVPATs, that too due to human errors and not machine errors, which are
being looked into.
74
853
Why Going Back to Ballot not a Solution
1. Average around 2000 invalid votes in each Constituency when ballots used.
2. Vote stuffing was very easy with Ballot papers. EVMs designed to allow only 4 votes per
minute ruling out vote stuffing.
3. Counting of Ballot Papers was always prone to manual errors. EVM counting both quick
and accurate.
4. Retrograde step in the era of Technology when even financial transactions done
electronically.
5. Ballot papers are made of wood pulp and hence made at a cost to environment.
75
854
THANK YOU
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/43
855
LEGAL HISTORY OF
EVMs AND VVPATs
A compilation and analysis of case laws
856
857
LEGAL HISTORY OF
EVMs AND VVPATs
A compilation and analysis of case laws
858
CONTENTS
Page No.
Preface 1
Chapter 1 EVM Inception & Milestones 2-3
Chapter 2 First usage of EVM 4-7
Legislative amendment to enable

Chapter 3 8
usage of EVM
Legal provisions regarding EVM/
Chapter 4 9-26
VVPAT
Chapter 5 Judicial Decisions on EVM/VVPAT 27-53
Chapter 6 Conclusion 54
Appendix 55-56
Additional information on EVMs/

57-58
VVPATs
859
PREFACE
This booklet will essentially service as a practical guide in making

the understanding and awareness about the legal aspects surrounding the
Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) / Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
(VVPAT) better. The subject matter is presented in such a way that this
book could be readily used by various internal stakeholders connected to
the Election Commission of India like the Chief Electoral Officers, District
Election Officers, other Election releted officials of the states and UTs,
and so on. Further, this booklet serves as a ready reckoner to the legal
practitioners of the country and assists the Hon ble Courts in cases relating
to the Electronic Voting Machines.
The booklet provides a useful insight into the relevant statutory

framework governing EVMs and VVPATs. The utility of the booklet is in
extracting the significant rulings and observations of the Hon ble Supreme
Court and High Courts. Above all, it is an effort of the Election Commission
of India to inform and educate the public at large and stakeholders in the
electoral process, the evolution of Electronic Voting Machines/VVPATs in
India from a legal perspective.
LEGAL HISTORY OF EVMs AND VVPATs /1

860
CHAPTER 1: EVM INCEPTION & MILESTONES
1. Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) was first conceived in 1977. Its

prototype developed by Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. (ECIL),
Hyderabad, a PSU under Department of Atomic Energy, in 1979
was demonstrated by the Election Commission of India before the
representatives of political parties on August 06, 1980.
2. After reaching a wide consensus on its introduction, the ECI issued

directives under Article 324 of the Constitution of India for the
use of EVMs and on 19th May, 1982 EVMs were used on a pilot
basis to conduct elections.The law was amended by the Parliament
in December 1988 and a new Section 61A was included in the
Representation of the People Act 1951, thereby empowering the ECI
to use EVM. The amendment came into force on 15th March, 1989.
3. After convincing demonstration of prototypes developed, Bharat

Electronics Ltd. (BEL), Bangalore, a Defence Ministry PSU, was
selected along with ECIL to manufacture the EVM.
4. The Government of India instituted an Electoral Reforms Committee

(ERC) in January 1990, consisting of representatives from several
national and state-level political parties under the chairmanship of
Mr. Dinesh Goswami. The ERC recommended the examination of
EVM by a team of technical experts.
5. A Technical Expert Committee (TEC) was formed under the

chairmanship of Mr. S. Sampath, Chairman, RAC, DRDO with
eminent scientists like Dr. P.V. Indiresen (IIT, Delhi), Dr. Rao C.
Kasarbada (ER&DC, Trivandrum) in the list among others. In April
1990, the Expert Committee unanimously recommended the use of
EVMs without any further loss of time marking it technically sound,
secure and transparent.
6. In 1998, a general consensus was reached on the use of EVMs

for conducting Indian elections. In 1998, EVMs were used in 16
Legislative ACs across three states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan,
and Delhi.
2/ LEGAL HISTORY OF EVMs AND VVPATs
861
7. The use of EVMs further expanded in 1999 to 46 Parliamentary

Constituencies (PC), and later, in February 2000, EVMs were used in
45 ACs in Haryana state assembly polls. In 2001, the state assembly
elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, and West Bengal were
completely conducted using EVMs. All state assembly elections
thereafter witnessed the use of this machine.
8. In 2004, the EVMs were used in all 543 Parliamentary Constituencies

for the elections to the Lok Sabha. A new technologically advanced
voting system completely replaced the erstwhile voting method of
using ballot papers.
9. A number of technological changes were made in the EVMs in 2001

and the machines were further upgraded in 2006. The pre-2006 era
EVMs are known as Ml EVMs , while EVMs manufactured between
2006 to 2010 are called M2 EVMs . The latest generation of EVMs,
produced since 2013 are known as M3 EVMs .
10. To improve the transparency and verifiability in poll process, the

conduct of Election Rules, 1961 were amended and notified on 14th
August 2013, thereby, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) was
introduced. They were first used in the by-election for 51-Noksen AC
in Nagaland.

862
CHAPTER 2 : FIRST USAGE OF EVM
EVM was first used by the Election Commission in fifty polling stations
for election to No. 70 Parur Assembly Constituency in Kerala on May
19, 1982.
The returned candidate had secured 30450 votes, out of which

11268 votes were cast manually, according to the conventional method
provided in the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 ( Rules ) made under
the Representation of the People Act, 1951 ( Act ), and 19182 votes were
cast by means of electronic machines. Votes by the mechanical process
were cast in 50 out of the 85 polling stations.
Voting by way of EVM was done in pursuance of the direction issued

by the Commission under Article 324 of the Constitution, by virtue of a
notification published in the Kerala Gazette on May 13, 1982.
Interestingly, prior to issuing the said notification, the Commission

had sought sanction of the Government of India, which was refused.
Usage of EVMs and election of the returned candidate was challenged,

which was ultimately decided by the Hon ble Supreme Court in A.C. Jose
v. Sivan Pillai, 1984 SCR (3) 74 (decided on March 05, 1984).
Briefly, the arguments put forth by the Commission before the Hon ble
Supreme Court were thus:
• The Commission being a creature of the Constitution itself, its

plenary powers flow directly from Article 324 and it will prevail
over any Act passed by the Parliament or Rules made thereunder.
• The manner of voting was a matter coming within the ambit of

Articles 324 and Article 327 would be deemed to be subsidiary to
the power contained in Article 324 and if there was any conflict
between a law enacted by the Parliament and the powers given to
the Commission regarding regulating the conduct of elections to
Parliament that law must yield to Article 324, otherwise the very
object of Article 324 would be defeated.

863
• Article 324 is a Code in itself and was couched in a very plain
and simple language which admits of no ambiguity and, if so
construed, it gives full powers and authority to the Commission
to give any direction in connection with the conduct of elections.
• Section 59 of the Act and Rule 49 of the Rules framed under the
Act authorizes the Commission to give direction to hold voting by
the use of a voting machines.
• The process of voting by machines eliminates a number of

drawbacks of voting by ballot boxes.
Ratio of the Hon ble Supreme Court:
• Article 324 authorizes the Commission to exercise powers

of superintendence, direction and control of preparation of
electoral rolls and the conduct of elections to Parliament and
State legislatures, but the Article has to be read harmoniously
with the Articles 325 to 329 and the powers that are given to the
Legislatures under entry No. 72 in the Union List and entry No.
37 of the State List of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution.
• The Commission in the garb of passing orders for regulating the

conduct of elections cannot take upon itself a purely legislative
activity which has been reserved under the scheme of the
Constitution only to Parliament and the State legislatures.
• Reliance was placed on the decision of a 5 ‒ Judge Constitution

Bench in Mohinder Singh Gill v. The Chief Election
Commissioner (1978) 1 SCC 405 to hold that two limitation
at least are laid on its plenary character in the exercise of
powers under Article 324. Firstly, when Parliament or any State
Legislature has made valid law relating to or in connection with
elections, the Commission shall act in conformity with, not in
violation of such provision but where such law is silent, Article
324 is a reservoir of power to act for the avowed purpose of,
not divorced from pushing forward a free and fair election with
expedition. Secondly, the Commission shall be responsible to the
rule of law, act bona fide and be amenable to the norms of natural

864
justice in so far as conformance to such canons can reasonably
and realistically be required of it as fair play-inaction in a most
important area of the constitutional order, viz., elections.
• Reliance was also placed on the decision of a 6 ‒ Judge Bench in

N.P. Ponnuswami v. Returning Officer, 1952 SCR 218 to hold
that before an election machinery can be brought into operation,
there are three requisites which require to be attended to, namely,
(1) there should be a set of laws and rules making provisions

with respect to all matters relating to, or in connection with,
elections, and it should be decided as to how these laws and
rules are to be made;
(2) there should be an executive charged with the duty of

securing the due conduct of elections; and
(3) there should be a judicial tribunal to deal with disputes

arising out of or in connection with elections.
• An absolute and uncanalised power given to the Commission

without providing any guidelines would destroy the basic structure
of the Rule of Law.
• When the Act and the Rules, prescribed a particular method

of voting, the Commission cannot innovate a new method and
contend that use of the mechanical process was not covered by
the existing law and, therefore, did not come in conflict with the
law in the field.
• Where there is an Act and express Rules made thereunder it is

not open to the Commission to override the Act or the Rules and
pass orders in direct disobedience to the mandate contained in
the Act or the Rules. The powers of the Commission are meant
to supplement rather than supplant the law in the matter of
superintendence, direction and control as provided by Article
324.
• Section 59 of the Act uses the words ballot in such manner as

may be prescribed , which means prescribed by the Rules made

865
under the Act. In this connection, reference was made to Rule
22 which relates to the form of ballot paper and its contents.
Rule 23 requires the Returning officer to record on the counterfoil
of the ballot paper the electoral roll number of the elector as
entered in the marked copy of the electoral roll. Rule 27 refers
to the return of ballot paper after an elector has recorded his
vote or made his declaration. Rule 30, which prescribes the
contents of ballot papers, is completely contrary to the concept
of ballot by machine. Similarly, Rules 33, 38, 39 and 40 seem to
be wholly inconsistent with the mechanical process but seem to
adopt the conventional method. These Rules are binding on the
Commission and it cannot by an executive fiat either override
them or act contrary to the statutory provisions of the Rules. On
a proper and detailed analysis of these Rules it is clear that the
Act by framing the Rules completely excluded the mechanical
process which, if resorted to, would defeat in a large measure the
mandatory requirements of the Rules.
• In 1951 when the Act was passed or the Rules were made, the
system of voting by machine was not in vogue in this country.
Therefore, the word ballot in its strict sense would not include
voting by the use of voting machines.
It was ultimately held that the order of the Commission regarding

casting of ballot by machines in some of the polling stations was without
jurisdiction. The election of the returned candidate with respect to the 50
polling stations where the voting machines were used was set aside.
The Hon ble Supreme Court refrained from making any comment on
either the defects or advantages of EVMs.
Incidentally, the Hon ble Supreme Court was informed by the

Commission that at eleven elections held under the Act, the mechanical
device was used and in nine, no challenge has been raised. The Hon ble
Court observed that this judgment will not affect those nine elections in
any manner.

866
CHAPTER 3: LEGISLATIVE AMENDMENT

TO ENABLE USAGE OF EVM
Subsequent to the Hon ble Supreme Court s Judgment in A.C. Jose

v. Sivan Pillai, 1984 SCR (3) 74, the Commission recommended the
Government of India to bring legislative amendment in order to provide
legal sanction for the use of EVMs.
Consequently, Section 61A was inserted in the year 1989 in the

Representation of the People Act, 1951 which reads as follows:
Section 61A. Voting machines at elections ̶
Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or the rules made

thereunder, the giving and recording of votes by voting machines in such
manner as may be prescribed, may be adopted in such constituency or
constituencies as the Election Commission may, having regard to the
circumstances of each case, specify.
Explanation ̶ For the purposes of this section, voting machine

means any machine or apparatus whether operated electronically or
otherwise used for giving or recording of votes and any reference to a
ballot box or ballot paper in this Act or the rules made thereunder shall,
save as otherwise provided, be construed as including a reference to such
voting machine wherever such voting machine is used at any election.
The constitutional vires of Section 61A of the Act was challenged

and eventually upheld by the Hon ble Supreme Court in All India Anna
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam v. Chief Election Commissioner, Special
Leave Petition (Civil) 2824 ‒ 25 of 2001 (decided on April 23, 2001).
The Hon ble Supreme Court distinguished the decision in A.C. Jose
v. Sivan Pillai, 1984 SCR (3) 74 by stating that in A.C. Jose case, EVMs
were sought to be used by way of an executive order which was not
permissible being contrary to the Rules. It was held that after introduction
of Section 61A in the Act, usage of EVMs cannot be challenged on the
basis of the said ruling.

867
CHAPTER 4: LEGAL PROVISIONS REGARDING

EVM & VVPAT
Along with introduction of Section 61A to the Representation of the
People Act, 1951, several amendments were made to the Act and Conduct
of Election Rules, 1961 to enable smooth usage of EVMs/ VVPAT (Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trail).
Relevant statutory provisions under the Representation of the

People Act, 1951 are as follows:
Section 58. Fresh poll in the case of destruction, etc., of ballot boxes
(1) If at any election ̶
(a) any ballot box used at a polling station or at a place fixed for
the poll is unlawfully taken out of the custody of the presiding
officer or the returning officer, or is accidentally or intentionally
destroyed or lost, or is damaged or tampered with, to such an
extent, that the result of the poll at that polling station or place
cannot be ascertained; or
(aa) any voting machine develops a mechanical failure

during the course of the recording of votes; or
(b) any such error or irregularity in procedure as is likely to vitiate

the poll is committed at a polling station or at a place fixed for
the poll, the returning officer shall forthwith report the matter
to the Election Commission.
(2) Thereupon the Election Commission shall, after taking all material
circumstances into account; either̶
(a) declare the poll at that polling station or place to be void,

appoint a day, and fix the hours, for taking a fresh poll at that
polling station or place and notify the day so appointed and the
hours so fixed in such manner as it may deem fit, or
(b) if satisfied that the result of a fresh poll at that polling station
or place will not, in any way, affect the result of the election or

868
that the mechanical failure of the voting machine or the error or
irregularity in procedure is not material, issue such directions
to the returning officer as it may deem proper for the further
conduct and completion of the election.
(3) The provisions of this Act and of any rules or orders made
thereunder shall apply to every such fresh poll as they apply to
the original poll.
Section 135A. Offence of booth capturing ̶
(1) Whoever commits an offence of booth capturing shall be punishable
with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than one year
but which may extend to three years and with fine, and where such
offence is committed by a person in the service of the Government,
he shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not
be less than three years but which may extend to five years and with
fine.
Explanation ̶ For the purposes of this sub-section and section 20B,
booth capturing includes, among other things, all or any of the
following activities, namely: ̶
(a) seizure of a polling station or a place fixed for the poll by any
person or persons, making polling authorities surrender the
ballot papers or voting machines and doing of any other act
which affects the orderly conduct of elections;
(b) taking possession of a polling station or a place fixed for the poll
by any person or persons and allowing only his or their own
supporters to exercise their right to vote and prevent others
from free exercise of their right to vote;
(c) coercing or intimidating or threatening directly or indirectly any
elector and preventing him from going to the polling station or
a place fixed for the poll to cast his vote;
(d) seizure of a place for counting of votes by any person or persons,
making the counting authorities surrender the ballot papers or
voting machines and the doing of anything which affects the
orderly counting of votes;
(e) doing by any person in the service of Government, of all or any
10 / LEGAL HISTORY OF EVMs AND VVPATs

869
of the aforesaid activities or aiding or conniving at, any such
activity in the furtherance of the prospects of the election of a
candidate.
(2) An offence punishable under sub-section
(a) shall be cognizable.
Section 169. Power to make rules ̶
(1) The Central Government may, after consulting the Election

Commission, by notification in the Official Gazette, make rules for
carrying out the purposes of this Act.
(2) In particular, and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing

power, such rules may provide for all or any of the following matters,
namely: ̶
(a) the form of affidavit under sub-section (2) of section 33A;
(aa) the duties of presiding officers and polling officers at

polling stations;
(aaa) the form of contribution report;
(b) the checking of voters by reference to the electoral roll;
(bb) the manner of allocation of equitable sharing of time on

the cable television network and other electronic media;
(c) the manner in which votes are to be given both generally and
in the case of illiterate voters or voters under physical or other
disability;
(d) the manner in which votes are to be given by a presiding officer,

polling officer, polling agent or any other person, who being an
elector for a constituency is authorized or appointed for duty at
a polling station at which he is not entitled to vote;
(e) the procedure to be followed in respect of the tender of vote

by a person representing himself to be an elector after another
person has voted as such elector;
LEGAL HISTORY OF EVMs AND VVPATs / 11

870
(ee) the manner of giving and recording of votes by
means of voting machines and the procedure as to voting
to be followed at polling stations where such machines
are used;
(f) the procedure as to voting to be followed at elections held in

accordance with the system of proportional representation by
means of the single transferable vote;
(g) the scrutiny and counting of votes including cases in which a

recount of the votes may be made before the declaration of the
result of the election;
(gg) the procedure as to counting of votes recorded by means

of voting machines;
(h) the safe custody of ballot boxes, voting machines, ballot papers
and other election papers, the period for which such papers
shall be preserved and the inspection and production of such
papers;
(hh) the material to be supplied by the Government to the

candidates of recognised political parties at any election
to be held for the purpose of constituting the House of the
People or the Legislative Assembly of a State;
(hhh) any other matter required to be prescribed by this

Act.
(3) Every rule made under this Act shall be laid as soon as may be after
it is made before each House of Parliament while it is in session for
a total period of thirty days which may be comprised in one session
or in two or more successive sessions, and if, before the expiry of the
session immediately following the session or the successive sessions
aforesaid, both Houses agree in making any modification in the rule
or both Houses agree that the rule should not be made, the rule
shall thereafter have effect only in such modified form or be of no
effect, as the case may be; so, however, that any such modification
or annulment shall be without prejudice to the validity of anything

871
previously done under that rule.
Relevant legal provisions under the Conduct of Elections Rules,

1961 (Statutory Rules and Order) read with Conduct of Elections
(Amendment) Rules, 2013 are as follows:
Rule 49A. Design of Electronic Voting Machines ̶
Every electronic voting machine (hereinafter referred to as the voting

machine) shall have a control unit and a balloting unit and shall be of
such designs as may be approved by the Election Commission.
Rule 49B. Preparation of voting machine by the returning Officer ̶
(1) The balloting unit of the voting machine shall contain such particulars
and in such language or languages as the Election Commission may
specify.
(2) The names of the candidates shall be arranged on the balloting unit
in the same order in which they appear in the list of the contesting
candidates.
(3) If two or more candidates bear the same name, they shall be
distinguished by the addition of their occupation or residence or in
some other manner.
(4) Subject to the foregoing provisions of this rule, the returning officer
shall ̶
(a) fix the label containing the names and symbol of the contesting
candidates in the balloting unit and secure that unit with his
seal and the seals of such of the contesting candidates or their
election agents present as are desirous of affixing the same;
(b) set the number of contesting candidates and close the candidate
set section in the control unit and secure it with his seal and
the seals of such of the contesting candidates or their election
agents present as are desirous of affixing the same.
Rule 49C. Arrangements at the polling stations ̶
(1) Outside each polling station there shall be displayed prominently̶

872
(a) a notice specifying the polling area, the electors of which are
entitled to vote at the polling station and, when the polling area
has more than one polling station, the particulars of the electors
so entitled; and
(2) At each polling station there shall be set up one or more voting
compartments in which the electors can record their votes free from
observation.
(3) The returning officer shall provide at each polling station one voting
machine and copies of relevant part of the electoral roll and such
other election material as may be necessary for taking the poll.
(4) Without prejudice to the provisions of sub-rule (3), the returning

officer may, with the prior approval of the Election Commission,
provide one common voting machine for two or more polling stations
located in the same premises.
Rule 49E. Preparation of voting machine for poll ̶
(1) The control unit and balloting unit of every voting machine used at
polling station shall bear a label marked with ̶
(b) the serial number and name of the polling station or stations as
the case may be;
(2) Immediately before the commencement of the poll, the presiding

officer shall demonstrate to the polling agents and other persons
present that no voter has been already recorded in the voting machine
and it bears the label referred to in sub-rule (4).
(3) A paper seal shall be used for securing the control unit of the voting
machine, and the presiding officer shall affix his own signature on
the paper seal and obtain thereon the signature of such of the polling

873
agents present as the desirous of affixing the same.
(4) The presiding officer shall thereafter fix the paper seal so signed in
the space meant therefor in the control unit of the voting machine
and shall secure and seal the same.
(5) The seal used for securing the control unit shall be fixed in such
manner that after the unit has been sealed, it is not possible to press
the result button without breaking the seal.
(6) The control unit shall be closed and secured and placed in full view
of the presiding officer and the polling agents and the balloting unit
placed in the voting compartment.
Rule 49L. Procedure for voting by voting machines ̶
(1) Before permitting an elector to vote, the polling officer shall̶
(a) record the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the
marked copy of the electoral roll in a register of voters in Form
17A.
(b) obtain the signature or the thumb impression of the elector on

the said register of votes; and
(c) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral
roll to indicate that he has been allowed to vote:
(d) give details of the document produced by the elector in proof of

his/her identification.
Provided that no elector shall be allowed to vote unless he has

his signature or thumb impression on the register of voters.
(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (2) of rule 2, it shall

be necessary for any presiding officer or polling officer or any other
officer to attest the thumb impression of the elector on the register of
voters.
Rule 49M. Maintenance of secrecy of voting by electors within the

polling station and voting procedures ̶
(1) Every elector who has been permitted to vote under rule 49L shall
874
maintain secrecy of voting within the polling station and for that
purpose observe the voting procedure hereinafter laid down.
(2) Immediately on being permitted to vote the elector shall proceed

to the presiding officer or the polling officer incharge of the control
unit of the voting machine who shall, by pressing the appropriate
button on the control unit, activate the balloting unit; for recording
of elector s vote.
(3) The elector shall thereafter forthwith̶
(b) record his vote by pressing the button on the balloting unit
against the name and symbol of the candidate for whom he
intends to vote; and
(c) come out of the voting compartment and leave the polling
station.
(5) No elector shall be allowed to enter the voting compartment when

another elector is inside it.
(6) If an elector who has been permitted to vote under rule 49L or rule
49P refuses after warning given by the presiding officer to observe
the procedure laid down in sub-rule (3) of the said rules, the presiding
officer or a polling officer under the direction of the presiding officer

shall not allow such elector to vote.
(7) Where an elector is not allowed to vote under sub-rule (6), a remark
to the effect that voting procedure has been violated shall be made
against the elector s name in the register of voters in Form 17A by
the presiding officer under his signature.
Rule 49MA. Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed

on paper slip ‒
(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having
recorded his vote under rule 49M alleges that the paper slip generated

875
by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other
than the one he voted for, the presiding officer shall obtain a written
declaration from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the
(2) If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1),
the presiding officer shall make a second entry related to that elector
in Form 17A, and permit the elector to record a test vote in the
voting machine in his presence and in the presence of the candidates
or polling agents who may be present in the polling station, and
observe the paper slip generated by the printer.
(3) If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the
facts immediately to the returning officer, stop further recording of
votes in that voting machine and act as per the direction that may be
given by the Returning Officer.
(4) If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so
generated under sub-rule (1) matches with the test vote recorded by
the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the presiding officer shall ‒
(a) make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating
to that elector in Form 17A mentioning the serial number and
name of the candidate for whom such test votes has been
recorded;
(b) obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against

such remarks; and
(c) make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in

Part I of Form 17C.
Rule 49N. Recording of votes of blind or infirm electors-
(1) If the presiding officer is satisfied that owing to blindness or other

physical infirmities an elector is unable to recognise the symbol on
the balloting unit of the voting machine or unable to record his vote
by pressing the appropriate button thereon without assistance the
presiding officer shall permit the elector to take with him a companion
of not less than eighteen years of age to the voting compartment for

876
recording the vote on his behalf and in accordance with his wishes:
Provided that no person shall be permitted to act as the companion

of more than one elector at any polling station on the same day:
Provided further that before any person is permitted to act as the

companion of an elector on any day under this rule that person shall
be required to declare that he will keep secret the vote recorded by
him on behalf of the elector and that he has not already acted as the
companion of any other elector at any other polling station on that
day.
(2) The presiding officer shall keep a record in Form 14A of all cases
under this rule.
Rule 49Q. Presiding Officer s entry in the voting compartment during
poll ̶
(1) The presiding officer may whenever he considers it necessary so to
do, enter the voting compartment during poll and take such steps as
may be necessary to ensure that the balloting unit is not tampered or
interfered with in any way.
(2) If the presiding officer has reason to suspect that an elector who has
entered the voting compartment is tampering or otherwise interfering
with the balloting unit or has remained inside the voting compartment
for unduly long period, he shall enter the voting compartment and
take such steps as may be necessary to ensure the smooth and orderly
progress of the poll.
(3) Whenever the presiding officer enters the voting compartment under
this rule, he shall permit the polling agents present to accompany
him if they so desire.
Rule 49R. Closing of poll ̶
(1) The presiding officer shall close a polling station at the hour fixed
in that behalf under section 56 and shall not thereafter admit any
elector into the polling station:
Provided that all electors present at the polling station before it is
closed shall be allowed to cast their votes.

877
(2) If any question arises whether an elector was present at the polling
station before it was closed it shall be decided by the presiding officer
and his decision shall be final.
Rule 49S. Account of votes recorded ̶
(1) The presiding officer shall at the close of the poll prepare an account
of votes recorded in Form 17C and enclose it in a separate cover with
the words Account of Votes Recorded superscribed thereon.
(2) The presiding officer shall furnish to every polling agent present at
the close of the poll a true copy of the entries made in Form 17C after
obtaining a receipt from the said polling agent therefor and shall
attest it as a true copy.
Rule 49T. Sealing of voting machine after poll ̶
(1) As soon as practicable after the closing of the poll, the presiding
officer shall close the control unit to ensure that no further votes can
be recorded and shall detach the balloting unit from the control unit
and from the printer, where printer is also used, so however, that
the paper slips contained in the drop box of the printer shall remain
intact.
(2) The control unit and the balloting unit and the printer, where
it is used, shall thereafter be sealed, and secured separately in such
manner as the Election Commission may direct and the seal used for
securing them shall be so affixed that it will not be possible to open
the units without breaking the seals.
(3) The polling agents present at the polling station, who desire to affix
their seals, shall also be permitted to do so.
Rule 49U. Sealing of other packets ̶

(1) The presiding officer shall then make into separate packet, ̶
(b) the register of voters in Form 17A;
(c) the cover containing the tendered ballot papers and the list in
Form 17B;

878
(e) any other papers directed by the Election Commission to be
kept in a sealed packet.
(2) Each packet shall be sealed with the seal of the presiding officer and
with the seal either of the candidate or of his election agent or of
his polling agent who may be present at the polling station and may
desire to affix his seal thereon.
Rule 49V. Transmission of voting machines, etc., to the returning
officer ̶
(1) The presiding officer shall then deliver or cause to be delivered to the
returning officer at such place as the returning officer may direct,̶
(b) the account of votes recorded in Form 17C;
(c) the sealed packets referred to in rule 49U; and
(2) The returning officer shall make adequate arrangements for the safe
transport of the voting machine, packets and other papers for their
safe custody until the commencement of the counting of votes.
Rule 49W. Procedure on adjournment of poll ̶
(1) If the poll at any polling station is adjourned under sub-section
(1) of section 57, the provision of rules 49S to 49V shall, as far as
practicable, apply as if the poll was closed at the hour fixed in that
behalf under section 56.
(2) When an adjourned poll is recommended under sub-section (2)
of section 57, the electors who have already voted at the poll so
adjourned shall not be allowed to vote again.
(3) The returning officer shall provide the presiding officer of the polling
station at which such adjourned poll is held, with the sealed packet
containing the marked copy of the electoral roll, register of voters in
Form 17A and a new voting machine.
(4) The presiding officer shall open the sealed packet in the presence of

879
the polling agents present and use the marked copy of the electoral
roll for marking the names of the electors who are allowed to vote at
the adjourned poll.
(5) The provisions of rule 28 and rules 49A to 49V shall apply in relation
to the conduct of an adjourned poll before it was so adjourned.
Rule 49X. Closing of voting machine in case of booth capturing ̶
Where the presiding officer is of opinion that booth capturing is

taking place at a polling station or at a place fixed for the poll, he shall
immediately close the control unit of the voting machine to ensure that no
further votes can be recorded and shall detach the balloting unit that from
the control unit.
Rule 55C. Scrutiny and inspection of voting machines̶
(1) The returning officer may have the control units of the voting machines
used at more than one polling station taken up for scrutiny and
inspection and votes recorded in such units counted simultaneously.
(2) Before the votes recorded in any control unit of voting machine are
counted under sub-rule (1), the candidate or his election agent or
his counting agent present at the counting table shall be allowed to
inspect the paper seal and such other vital seals as might have been
affixed on the unit and to satisfy themselves that the seals are intact.
(3) The returning officer shall satisfy himself that none of the voting
machines has in fact been tampered with.
(4) If the returning officer is satisfied that any voting machine has in fact
been tampered with, he shall not count the votes recorded in that
machine and shall follow the procedure laid down in section 58, or
section 58A or section 64A, as may be applicable in respect of the
polling station or stations where that machine was used.
Rule 56C. Counting of votes ̶
(1) After the returning officer is satisfied that a voting machine has
in fact not been tampered with, he shall have the votes recorded
therein counted by pressing the appropriate button marked Result

880
provided in the control unit whereby the total votes polled and votes
polled by each candidate shall be displayed in respect of each such
candidate on the display panel provided for the purpose in the unit.
(2) As the votes polled by each candidate are displayed on the control
unit, the returning officer shall have,̶
(a) the number of such votes recorded separately in respect of each

candidate in Part II on Form 17C;
Provided that the test vote recorded, if any, for a candidate, as

per item 5 in Part I of Form 17C, shall be subtracted from the
number of votes recorded for such candidate as displayed on
the control unit.
(b) Part II of Form 17C completed in other respects and signed

by the counting supervisor and also by the candidates or their
election agents or their counting agents present; and
(c) corresponding entries made in a result sheet in Form 20 and

the particulars so entered in the result sheet announced.
Rule 56D. Scrutiny of paper trail ‒
(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, after the entries made in the
result sheet are announced, any candidate, or in his absence, his
election agent or any of his counting agents may apply in writing to
the returning officer to count the printed paper slips in the drop box
of the printer in respect of any polling station or polling stations.
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer shall, subject to
such general or special guidelines, as may be issued by the Election
Commission, decide the matter and may allow the application in
whole or in part or may reject in whole, if it appears to him to be
frivolous or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule (2) shall be in
writing and shall contain the reasons therefor.
(4) If the returning officer decides under sub-rule (2) to allow counting of

881
the paper slips either wholly or in part or parts, he shall-

(b) if there is discrepancy between the votes displayed on the

control unit and the counting of the paper slips, amend the
result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips count;
Rule 57C. Sealing of voting machines ̶
(1) After the result of voting recorded in a control unit has been
ascertained candidate-wise and entered in Part II of Form 17C and
Form 20 under rule 56C, the returning officer shall reseal the unit
with his seal and the seals of such of the candidates or their election
agents present who may desire to affix the seals thereon so however
that the result of voting recorded in the unit is not obliterated and the
unit retains the memory of such result and where printer for paper
trail is used, the returning officer shall seal the paper slips in such
manner, as may be directed by the Election Commission.
(2) The control unit and the paper slips so sealed shall be kept in
specially prepared boxes on which the returning officer shall record
the following particulars, namely: ̶
(b) the particulars of polling station or stations where the control

unit has been used;
(c) serial number of the control unit and printer wherever used;
(e) date of counting;
(f) the provisions of rules 60 to 66 shall, so far as may be, apply

882
in relation to voting by voting machines and any reference in
those rules to, ̶
(ff) ballot paper shall be construed as including a reference to

such voting machine;
(fff) any rule shall be construed as a reference to the

corresponding rule in Chapter II of Part IV or, as the case
may be, to rule 55C or 56C or 57C.
Rule 92. Custody of ballot boxes and papers relating to election ‒
(1) All voting machines used at an election shall be kept in the custody
of the concerned district election officer.
(2) The district election officer shall keep in safe custody-
(a) the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of rule 57C.
(b) The packets containing registers of voters in Form 17A.
Rule 93. Production and inspection of election papers̶
(1) While in the custody of the district election officer or, as the case may
be, the returning officer̶
(a) the packets of unused ballot papers with counterfoils attached

thereto;
(b) the packets of used ballot papers whether valid, tendered or

rejected;
(cc) the printed paper slips sealed under the provisions of rule
57C.
(d) the packets of the marked copy of the electoral roll or, as the
case may be, the list maintained under sub-section (1) or sub-
section (2) of section 152; and
(dd) the packets containing registers of voters in form 17A;
(e) the packets of the declarations by electors and the attestation of

883
their signatures; shall not be opened and their contents shall not
be inspected by, or produced before, any person or authority
except under the order of a competent court.
(f) The control units sealed under the provisions of rule 57C and
kept in the custody of the district election officer shall not
be opened and shall not be inspected by, or produced before,
any person or authority except under the order of a competent
court.
(2) Subject to such conditions and to the payment of such fee as the
Election Commission may direct, ̶
(a) all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public
inspection; and
(b) copies thereof shall on application be furnished.
(3) Copies of the returns by the returning officer forwarded under rule
64, or as the case may be, under clause (b) of sub-rule (1) of rule 84
shall be furnished by the returning officer, district election officer,
chief electoral officer or the Election Commission on payment of a
fee of two rupees for each copy.
Rule 94. Disposal of election papers ̶
(1) Subject to any direction to the contrary given by the Election

Commission or by a competent court or tribunal̶
(a) the packets of unused ballot papers shall be retained for a

period of six months and shall thereafter be destroyed in such
manner as the Election Commission may direct;
(aa) the voting machines kept in the custody of the district election
officer under sub-rule (1A) of rule 92 shall be retained intact
for such period as the Election Commission may direct and
shall not be used at any subsequent election without the prior
approval of the Election Commission;
(b) the other packets referred to in sub-rule (1) of rule 93 shall

be retained for a period of one year and shall thereafter be

884
destroyed:
Provided that packets containing the counterfoils of used ballot

papers and the printer paper slips, if any, shall not be destroyed
except with the prior approval of the Election Commission;
(c) all other papers relating to the election shall be retained for
such period as the Election Commission may direct.
Rule 95. Power of the Election Commission to issue directions ̶
Subject to the other provisions of these rules, the Election Commission

may issue such directions as it may consider necessary to facilitate
the proper use and operation of the voting machines.

885
CHAPTER 5: JUDICIAL DECISIONS ON EVM & VVPAT
1. People s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, (2013) 10 SCC 1
Date of Order: September 27, 2013
This Writ Petition was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution of

India challenging the vires of Rules 41(2) and (3) and 49-O of the Conduct
of Elections Rules, 1961 to the extent that these provisions violate the
secrecy of voting which is fundamental to the free and fair elections and
is required to be maintained as per Section 128 of the Representation of
the People Act, 1951 and Rules 39 and 49-M of the Rules.
The Petitioner had sought inclusion of necessary provision in the

ballot papers as well as in EVMs for secrecy/ protection of right of not to
vote.
Contentions of the Election Commission of India:
It was argued on behalf of the Commission that inasmuch as secrecy

is an essential feature of free and fair elections , Rules 41(2) and (3)
and 49-O of the Rules violate the requirement of secrecy. In the larger
interest of promoting democracy, a provision for None of the Above
or NOTA button should be made in the EVMs/ballot papers. It was
contended that such an action, apart from promoting free and fair elections
in a democracy, will provide an opportunity to the elector to express his
dissent/disapproval against the contesting candidates and will have the
benefit of reducing bogus voting.
Hon ble Court s ruling:
The Hon ble Supreme Court took note of the submissions put forth
by the Commission and observed that the implementation of the None of
the Above (NOTA) button will not require much effort except for allotting
the last panel in the EVM for the same.
The Hon ble Court also held that the Rules 41(2) and (3) and Rule

886
49-O of the Rules are ultra vires Section 128 of the Representation of the
People Act, 1951 and Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution to the extent they
violate secrecy of voting.
Further, the Commission was directed to provide NOTA button in

EVMs so that the voters, who come to the polling booth and decide not to
vote for any of the candidates in the fray, are able to exercise their right
not to vote while maintaining their right of secrecy. It was observed that
the Commission can implement the same either in a phased manner or at
a time with the assistance of the Government of India. The Commission
was further directed to undertake awareness programmes to educate the
masses. The Government of India was also directed to provide necessary
help for implementation of the above directions.
2. Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013) 10

SCC 500
Date of Order: October 8, 2013
This Civil Appeal was filed against the Judgment dated 17.01.2012
passed by the Hon ble High Court of Delhi in Subramanian Swamy v.
Election Commission of India, WP (C) No. 11879 of 2009 [2012 SCC
OnLine Del 314] whereby the High Court disposed of the petition by
disallowing the prayer for issuance of a writ of mandamus directing the
Election Commission of India to incorporate a system of paper trail/
paper receipt in the electronic voting machines as a convincing proof
that the EVM has rightly registered the vote cast by a voter in favour of a
particular candidate.
The Election Commission filed a detailed affidavit highlighting the

steps taken in this regard. The Hon ble Court was apprised of the fact that
EVMs used in India are unique and they are of such high-end technology
that they cannot be hacked/ tampered.
The Commission submitted that it is exploring possibility of

incorporating voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system as part of
EVMs to make election system more transparent. It was submitted that a

887
Technical Experts Committee has approved and finalized VVPAT design.
It was also submitted before the Hon ble Court that in order to
implement new system, the Conduct of Election Rules 1961 will require
certain amendments. To this effect, the Commission had addressed a
letter to the Legislative Department of the Ministry of Law and Justice
regarding these amendments including Rules 49-A to 49-X, 66-A, 55-C,
56-C, 57-C and Form 17C of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, as well
as introduction of Rules 49-MA and 56-D in the said Rules. Accordingly,
the Ministry of Law and Justice notified the amendments to the Conduct
of Election Rules, 1961 in the Gazette of India vide Notification No. SO
2470(E) dated 14.08.2013 to enable the use of VVPAT with EVMs.
It was also argued that the Election Commission has decided to

increase the use of VVPAT units in a phased manner
The Hon ble Supreme Court held that paper trail is an indispensable
requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in
EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the paper trail .
EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. It was
held that with an intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to
restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with
VVPATs system because vote is nothing but an act of expression which
has immense importance in a democratic system.
The Hon ble Court took note of the pragmatic and reasonable
approach of the Election Commission and considering the fact that in
general elections all over India, the Election Commission has to handle
one million (ten lakh) polling booths, the Commission was permitted to
introduce VVPAT in gradual stages or geographical-wise in the ensuing
general elections. It was held that the area, State or actual booth(s) are to
be decided by Commission and that it is free to implement the same in a
phased manner.
The Hon ble Court appreciated the efforts and good gesture made by
Election Commission in introducing VVPAT system. For implementation

888
of such a system in a phased manner, the Government of India was
directed to provide required financial assistance for procurement of units
of VVPAT.
3. Reshma Vithalbhai Patel v. Union of India, (2018) 18 SCC 675

This appeal arose out of the decision passed by the Hon ble High
Court of Gujarat in Reshma Vithalbhai Patel v. Union of India 2017 SCC
OnLine Guj 1395. Before the High Court, a Public Interest Litigation was
filed seeking inter alia the following prayers:
(a) Issuance of an appropriate writ, order or direction directing that

ballot papers be used in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly Election in
place of EVMs.
(b) In case continuation of EVMs is deemed fit to be used in the

Assembly Election, issuance of an appropriate writ, order
or direction for incorporating a system of paper trail/paper
receipt in the Electronic Voting Machines.
(c) Directing that the EVMs with VVPAT system be tested, verified
and audited by competent independent technical experts /
agency having expertise in such evaluation.
The Election Commission has reiterated its commitments to 100%

coverage of VVPATs in all future elections to Parliament and State
legislative Assemblies by way of: (a) Status Paper on EVMs and VVPATs
published on its website on 09.05.2017; (b) All Political Meet conducted
on 12.05.2017 where parties were informed of the resolution to ensure
100% coverage of VVPATs in all future elections; and (c) a Press Note
dated 03.06.2017 to this effect.
The Hon ble Supreme Court observed that the Commission s affidavit
leaves no room for any doubt that all future elections will be held using
VVPATs.

889
4. Nyaya Bhoomi & Anr. v. Election Commission of India, Writ
Petition (Civil) 1332/ 2018
Date of Order: November 22, 2018
This Writ Petition was filed seeking direction to Election Commission

to hold 2019 General Election and State Assembly Polls with ballot papers
instead of EVMs.
The writ petition was vehemently opposed by the Commission.
The Hon ble Court dismissed the Writ Petition.
5. N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377
Date of Order: April 8, 2019
This Writ Petition was filed seeking the following reliefs:
(a) Quashing and setting aside Guideline No. 16.6 of the Manual
on EVM and VVPAT as framed and issued by the Commission.
(b) Issuance of writ directing that minimum of 50% randomized

VVPAT paper slip verification of EVM shall be conducted in
every General and Bye-Elections.
The Election Commission submitted that Indian Statistical Institute

[ISI], an expert body, has stated that verification of VVPAT paper trail of
479 (randomly selected) EVMs would generate over 99% accuracy in the
election results. And, as per Guideline No. 16.6, verification of VVPAT
paper trails would involve verification of VVPAT paper trail of 4125
EVMs instead of 479 EVMs which is eight times more than what has been
reported by the ISI.
Additionally, the Election Commission pointed out infrastructure

difficulties, including manpower availability, at that point of time, in
increasing the number of EVMs for verification. It was contended that
the sample verification of the VVPAT paper trail of one EVM is done by a
team of three officers under the direct supervision of the Returning Officer
and the Election Observer of the constituency. The process takes about an
hour. If verification of VVPAT paper trail of 50% of the EVMs is done as
890
sought for by the Petitioner, the declaration of result of election could be
delayed by 5-6 days.
The Hon ble Court observed that neither the satisfaction of ECI
nor the system in vogue today, is being doubted by the Court in sofar
as fairness and integrity is concerned. However, having regard to the
need to generate the greatest degree of satisfaction in all with regard to
the full accuracy of the election results, it was held that the number of
EVMs that would now be subjected to verification so far as VVPAT paper
trail is concerned would be 5 per Assembly Constituency or Assembly
Segments in a Parliamentary Constituency instead of what is provided by
Guideline No. 16.6, namely, one machine per Assembly Constituency or
Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency. It was also held that
random selection of the machines that would be subjected to the process
of VVPAT paper trail verification, in terms of the guidelines in force, shall
apply to the VVPAT paper trail verification.
6. Tech for All v. Election Commission of India, Writ Petition (Civil)
692 / 2019
Date of Order: May 21, 2019
This Public Interest Litigation was filed seeking 100 % verification of
VVPAT against the EVM outcomes.
The writ petition was vehemently opposed by the Commission.
While dismissing the PIL, the Hon ble Court lambasted the Petitioner
for making a mockery of democracy by moving the Court despite a
clear ruling N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377
directing the counting of VVPAT slips of five EVMs per assembly segment.
The Hon ble Court also underscored that it was unethical to move such a
petition when the polls were already over.
7. C.R. Jaya Sukin v. Election Commission of India, Special Leave
This SLP arose out of the decision dated August 03, 2021 passed by

891
the Hon ble High Court of Delhi in C.R. Jaya Sukin v. Election Commission
of India & Ors., Writ Petition 6635/ 2021.
Before the Hon ble High Court, a Public Interest Litigation was filed
seeking inter alia the following prayer:
Issue a writ of mandamus or any other appropriate Writ or Order
or Direction or any suggestion or observation or particularly the nature
of Writ, by giving direction to the Respondents No.1 to stop the use of
Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and use ballot paper in any forthcoming
elections.
The EVMs have been approved by the Election Commission of India
after due deliberation and also have a sanction by the Parliament under
Section 61A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
While dismissing the PIL, the Hon ble High Court observed that the
Petitioner was unable to place any material on record to show alleged
drawbacks or that EVMs can be manipulated. Thus, the PIL was dismissed
with costs.
The Hon ble Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Hon ble High
Court and dismissed SLP.
8. Madhya Pradesh Jan Vikash Party v. Election Commission of
India, Special Leave Petition (Civil) 16870/ 2022
This SLP arose out of the decision dated December 14, 2021 passed by
the Hon ble High Court of Madhya Pradesh, Principal Bench at Jabalpur
in Writ Petition 26671/2021. The Writ Petition was filed seeking directions
for ruling out discrepancies in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM).
Before the Hon ble High Court, the Petitioner sought inter alia with the
gist of prayers as under:
• To command the respondents to take effective measures to rule out
the discrepancies in the Electronic Voting Machines, stated in the petition
to conduct the free and fair upcoming assembly and general elections
with the purity of the electoral process or may be directed to conduct the

892
election with the other alternative mode in accordance with law;
• To command the respondents to take effective measures to comply
the rule 49E (2), wherein it is mandatory to show the storage empty and to
ascertain the polling agents that there is no prior voting recorded earlier;
• To command the respondents to disclose the approved hardware
configuration of the electronic voting machines and approved size, shape,
colour and number of components, before the representatives of the
candidates of the political parties;
• To issue a writ in the nature of mandamus commanding respondents to
allow the technical experts/engineers of the petitioner political party with
necessary equipment s at the time of first level checking, commissioning,
candidate setting randomization and at the time of symbol loading to
check and examine the fairness of all the stages of electoral process;
• To direct the respondent to demonstrate the source code/programming/
software to examine that there is not such a programming which benefits
the particular candidates or to the candidates of a particular party;
• To direct the respondent to permit the petitioner on the polling day,
to examine the EVMs with its technical experts/engineers in respect of
software/ source code/programming or microchip as well as any bluetooth
or wireless device, may not be available in the machines which benefits
the special candidate or particular political party as per rule 49 (E)(2) of
the election conduct rule 1961;
• To direct the respondent to certify each and every machine that it is
original and there is no tempering or manipulation;
• To direct the respondent to conduct the examination from their
own regular employee/technical engineer or expert at the time of FLC/
commissioning/ randomization/ symbol loading just after the EVMs come
into the possession of election commission;
• Even otherwise without the aforesaid measured & reliefs claimed
hereinabove in the EVM and VVPAT, respondent shall kindly be restrained
from using electronic voting machines & VVPAT in the upcoming elections
going to be conducted in future or Electronic voting machines be banned
in the conduct of elections, due to the large scale discrepancies available
in the machines as mentioned in the petition.

893
The Hon ble Court observed that EVMs have been utilized in country for
decades now but periodically issues are sought to be raised. This is one
such endeavor in the abstract. It appears that party which may not have
got much recognition from the electorate now seeks recognition by filing
petitions! The court is of the view that party which may not have got much
recognition from the electorate seeks recognition by filing such frivolous
petitions. Thus, the SLP was dismissed with costs Rs.50,000/-.

894
BOMBAY HIGH COURT
1. Abhay B. Chajed v. Smt. Madhuri Misal 2017 SCC OnLine Bom
739
In this election petition, Petitioner had sought examination of EVMs

used during the 2014 assembly election.
The Commission heavily relied on reports of the technical experts

committee to assert reliability of EVMs and introduction of VVPATs
The Hon ble Court directed that forensic scan of EVMs used in
the 2014 Assembly Elections, specifically booth number 185 in Parvati
(Assembly Constituency), Pune be conducted. This Order laid down the
questions to be put forth to Central Forensic Science Laboratory [CFSL],
Hyderabad.
2. Abhay B. Chajed v. Smt. Madhuri Misal 2018 SCC OnLine Bom

267
Date of Order: February 23, 2018
The Commission submitted that pursuant to Hon ble Supreme Court s

Order in Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013) 10
SCC 500, the Commission and Ministry of Law & Justice have taken steps
to in respect of usage of VVPAT.
The Hon ble Court observed that in report by CFSL Hyderabad, the

895
analysts have mentioned that there is no evidence of tampering, altering
or any other manipulation which could be detected. The Commission
has also assured that there will be phase wise use of VVPAT in view of
the financial burden and technical availability. Therefore, the Hon ble
Court held that it cannot be said that there is non-compliance with the
provisions of the Rules or Orders by the Election Commission of India.

896
DELHI HIGH COURT
1. Election Commission of India v. Central Information Commission,
2009 SCC OnLine Del 3515
Date of Order: November 04, 2019
The Election Commission of India had filed this Writ Petition against
the Order dated 06.06.2008 passed by the Central Information Commission
directing disclosure of information in EVMs such as date and time, votes
polled, vote tally and any other information which were noted down from
the EVM machines, including any spare machines that were used, Form
17C etc. under the Right to Information Act, 2005.
The Commission contended that the aforesaid information cannot be

made available as it is not held by or under control of the Commission as
per provisions of the Representation of Peoples. Act, 1951 and Conduct
of Election Rules, 1961.
Rule 93 stipulates that ballot papers in physical form cannot be

inspected or produced before any person or authority except under the
order of a competent court. Rule 93(1A) which deals with data stored in
the control unit in electronic form, states that the control unit cannot be
opened, inspected or produced before any person or authority except
upon an order of a competent court. Use of the word shall in said
Rule; shall…not opened except under the orders of a Competent Court. ,
makes the provision imperative or obligatory.
The Hon ble Court held that right to information is an important

right. At the same time, maintaining secrecy and confidentiality of the
ballot papers, etc. is also an equally valuable right.
It was observed that the enactment of RTI Act has not occasioned an
absolute right to citizen of India to ask for full details of electronic data

897
relating to ballot papers stored in the control unit of the EVMs.
It was held that an application under the RTI may lie only with respect
to information which the public authority can access. No confirmation of
information can be made unless the data stored in the control units is
encoded and downloaded. This is prohibited in the Election Rules. The
Election Commission would be acting contrary to the express provisions of
the Election Rules. Insisting for the information on the basis that it is mere
confirmation and not information would only amount to indirectly
achieving something which is directly prohibited.
It was also held that taking recourse to the RTI Act, secrecy of the
data stored in the control unit of the EVMs will be obliterated and will
be open to verification and examination in spite of strict and stringent
provisions to the contrary in the Representation of the People Act and the
Rules.
It was held that once the EVMs are sealed it is no longer open to the
Election Commission to de-seal them and re-examine the data stored in
the control unit except when the pre-conditions mentioned in the relevant
rules are satisfied. This requires an order of a competent court/tribunal
which is passed only when the stringent conditions are satisfied.
The Hon ble Court observed that the aggrieved party is not left
remediless and that in case of an election petition, the competent court
can always direct furnishing of information on being satisfied that the
parameters specified by the Supreme Court for furnishing of information
and re-examination of data stored in the EVMs are met.
2. Hans Raj Jain v. Election Commission of India 2020 SCC OnLine

Del 149
Date of Order: January 13, 2020
The Public Interest Litigation was filed with prayers seeking directions
to the Election Commission to inspect record of the printed paper slips
in the drop box of the printer of VVPAT electronic device, one by one in
respect of all Parliamentary Constituencies alleging that there is a great

898
discrepancy, mismatching in EVM vote polled and counting vote in large
scale in the 2019 general elections.
Directions were also sought for usage of appropriate prototype of

VVPAT system in future, in which the printer is kept open. The printed
ballot will get cut and fall in a tray in front of the printer. The voter
will pick it up from the tray, verify it fold it and bring it out of voting
compartment and drop the same in a sealed box kept for this purpose in
front of the presiding officer before leaving the polling station.
The Petitioner also prayed that the Commission be directed to

manually count the printed paper slips in the drop box of the printer in
respect of any polling station or polling stations in all future Legislative
Assembly elections and/or Parliamentary elections where paper trail has
been introduced.
The Election Commission denied the discrepancy alleged by the

Petitioner.
The Hon ble Court directed the Election Commission to consider

representations in accordance with law, rules, regulations and Government
policies applicable to the facts of the case after keeping in mind the various
decisions rendered by the Hon ble Supreme Court in this regard.
3. C.R. Jaya Sukin v. Election Commission of India & Ors., Writ

Petition (Civil) 6635/2021
Date of Order: August 08, 2021
This Public Interest Litigation was filed seeking directions to the

Commission to stop the use of EVMs in all forthcoming elections and to
use ballot paper instead.
EVMs have been approved by the Commission after due deliberation

899
and also have a sanction by the Parliament under Section 61A of the
Representation of the People Act, 1951.
The Petition was dismissed with costs of Rs.10,000/- whilst observation

that petition is akin to a publicity interest litigation and is based on
hearsay and baseless allegations.

900
GUJARAT HIGH COURT
1. Girish M. Das v. Chief Election Commissioner & Ors., 2012 SCC

OnLine Guj 4916
This Public Interest Litigation was filed seeking direction upon the
Commission to secure to the voters that the Electronic Voting Machines
are kept hack-proof, tamper-proof and irrigable and also for passing a
direction upon the Election Commission not to hold any election in the
State of Gujarat or in Center till the voters are secured and the Court
is assured with regard to functioning of the EVMs. It was also prayed
that Election Commission be directed to introduce and install camera and
clock in EVMs so that any fraudulent voting can be ascertained and the
offending voters as well as the polling
The Election Commission opposed the petition.
The Hon ble Court observed that the writ petitioner has failed to point
out any action or inaction of any authority that has interfered, infringed
or impeded with any of the rights of the petitioner so as to interfere in
exercise of the writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution of
India.
It was held that merely because the election can be conducted in a

wiser way or a fairer way, for that reason, Court is not competent to pass
any directions upon the Election Commission.
It was held that the courts do not and cannot act as appellate
authorities examining the correctness, suitability and appropriateness of
a policy. Courts cannot lose sight of the fact that they are not advisers to
the other constitutional authorities on the matters of policy, which such
competent authorities are entitled to formulate

901
2. Khemchand Rajaram Koshti v. Election Commission of India &
Anr., Writ Petition PIL 36/ 2019
Date of Order: March 19, 2019
The Public Interest Litigation was filed seeking directions to use

appropriate technology by which the VVPAT/ paper trail can be preserved
for at least a period of 02 years from the date of election.
The Election Commission highlighted the wide range of technical,

administrative protocol and procedural safeguards that fortify the EVMs
and VVPATs against any sort of tampering or manipulation.
It was held that the EVMs are more auditable, accurate, transparent
reducing human error. It was observed that the Commission conducted
several field trials and involved all stake holders and political parties in
evolving an error free EVM.
It was held that as evident from the extensive reproduction of the

Status Report on EVMs/VVPATs, the system of registering the vote of
the voter and reflection of his vote has become more transparent and
apparent to regain the voter s confidence in the system. What essentially
was the object of introduction of the VVPATs was the restoring of the
voter s confidence by the logging and registering of his vote correctly in
the EVM. The Voter Verifier Audit Trail as the name suggests assures the
voter of his vote having been correctly recorded in the system. Once the
object of the audit of the voter s vote, from his perception is achieved,
who is the end consumer of the franchise, the mere apprehension voiced
by the candidate, pales into insignificance.

902
KARNATAKA HIGH COURT
1. Michael B. Fernandes v. C.K. Jaffer Sharief, 2004 SCC OnLine
Kar 72
Date of Order: February 05, 2004
In election petition, efficacy and integrity of the EVM was challenged.

It was contended that EVM is vulnerable to tampering. It was contended
that an election conducted with the aid of EVM does not ensure the free
and fair polling and counting, in view of the inherent defects in the EVMs.
The contentions were refuted by the Election Commission.
The Hon ble Court observed that there has been a tremendous
advancement in the electronic technology. A scientist who is one of the
co-designer of the electronic voting machine was also examined as a court
witness and his evidence unflinchingly supports the feasibility of use of
electronic voting machines in the election. The evidence fully inspires the
confidence of the Court that the EVMs are fully tamper proof and there is
no possibility of manipulation of mischief at the instance of anyone.
The evidence discloses that the EVM has seeming advantage

over the traditional manual ballot method. In the manual method, there
is possibility of swift rigging at the end of polling time. But when the
votes are cast through EVM there has to be necessary minimum time lag
between one vote and the next vote. Therefore, when the EVMs are used,
the malpractice of rigging swiftly and quickly at the closing hours of the
polling time stands avoided.
It was noted that after thorough practical experimentation and

research, the present version of EVM is designed. This invention is
undoubtedly a great achievement in the electronic and computer
technology and a national pride.

903
MADHYA PRADESH HIGH COURT
1. Krishna Kumar Gupta v. Rajendra Shukla, 2014 SCC OnLine MP

8785
In this Election Petition, contentions were raised relating to irregulates

in EVMs concerned, which were opposed by the Election Commission.
The Hon ble Court held that all doubts and queries regarding EVMs
have already been answered in FAQs on the website of ECI wherein it has
been specifically shown that there is no possibility to vote more than once
by pressing button again and again. It was also held that EVMs are full
proof device for counting, therefore, the allegation made in the petition
in regard to mal-functioning and tampering of EVMs used in counting of
votes are baseless.
2. Naresh Saraf v. Election Commission of India, Writ Petition

28106/ 2018
Date of Order: December 06, 2018
This Writ Petition was filed expressing concern over the alleged lack
of sufficient security in some districts in respect of polled/unused EVMs
and VVPATs in the assembly election in the State.
The Election Commission refuted all allegations and submitted that

all necessary instructions were issued well in advance, for the safe upkeep
of polled EVMs/ VVPATs and unused/reserved EVMs/ VVPATs at the end
of poll.

904
The Hon ble Court held that careful reading of reports shows that
the strong rooms for storing polled EVMs/ VVPATs and warehouses for
unused/ reserved EVMs/ VVPATs are separate buildings with separate
security arrangements.
It is also clear that the strong room with polled EVMs/ VVPATs were
sealed immediately after poll to be opened on the day of counting. These
strong rooms are under the security of Central Armed Paramilitary Forces
with a triple cordon of security.
Thus, the Hon ble Court held that no further action is required in this
petition.
3. Amitabh Gupta v. Election Commission of India and Another

2018 SCC OnLine MP 1827
Date of Order: December 07, 2018
This Petition was filed seeking a direction to count all VVPAT slips
along with the counting of votes through EVMs in the ongoing State
Assembly elections.
The Commission brought to notice of the Hon ble Court that the issue
relating to counts of votes with VVPATs slips through EVMs has already
been declined by various High Courts and the Supreme Court. Further,
it was contended that the petition cannot be entertained, in view of the
constitutional bar engrafted under Article 329(b) of the Constitution as the
election process has already commenced.
The Hon ble Court perused Rule 56-D of the Conduct of Elections
Rules, 1961 to hold that in case where the printed paper trail is maintained
905
by the Election Commission during the election, the candidate or his
election agent or counting agent can apply to the Returning Officer to
count the printed paper slips in respect of any polling station or stations
under sub-rule (2) or Rule 56-D. Upon such application being made, the
Returning Officer would decide the matter and may allow the application
in whole or in part or reject if it appears to him to be frivolous or unreason
able. Sub-rule (3) or Rule 56-D requires that such decision of the Returning
Officer would be in writing and contain reasons. Under sub-rule (4) of Rule
56-D the conclusions of the Returning Officer granting the request for
counting of paper slips are specified. It was thus held that the guidelines
for mandatory counting of paper slips in one polling station per Assembly
constituency is in addition to the powers of the Returning Officer under
Rule 56-D to accept the request of a candidate for counting all the paper
slips in as many polling stations as the case for such counting is made out.
The Hon ble Court held that no direction as prayed for by the
petitioner, can be granted. It was also held that once the election process
has commenced, the writ petition cannot be entertained, in view of
constitutional bar under Article 329(b) of the Constitution of India.

906
MADRAS HIGH COURT
1. All India Anna Dravide Munnetra Kazhagam v. Election

Commission of India, 2001 SCC OnLine Mad 1398
Date of Order: April 10, 2001
This Petition was filed seeking writ of prohibition or direction

for prohibiting the ECI from using Electronic Voting Machines in the
constituencies in the ensuing General Elections to the Tamil Nadu State
A comprehensive counter was filed by the Election Commission,

wherein the functioning of EVMs was narrated in detail. An elaborate
mention was made about the design of EVMs and the voting procedure,
annexing the manuals prepared by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and
Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL).
It was categorically stated that by using the EVMs the need for
printing huge quantity of ballot papers is dispensed with saving the cost of
paper and printing to a great extent. Voting by EVMs is smooth and easy
and the result can be ascertained in few hours.
It was asserted that no rigging is possible.
The Hon ble Court held that there is also no question of introducing
any virus or bugs for the reason that the EVMs cannot be compared to
personal computers.
To expel doubts as to whether the vote of an elector has been

registered, the Hon ble Court observed that a perusal of the machine
manual reveals that whenever a person casts his vote, a beep sound will

907
be heard to those who are present in the booth concerned, and that is
the signal of the registration of the casting of vote. A safety measure is

provided that if the concerned person or agents do not hear any sound,
they will inform the Polling Officer to release the lock. The Hon ble Court
also dismissed the contentions on pre-programming of EVMs.
The advantages of using EVMs outweigh the advantages in

conventional ballot boxes. Need for printing huge quantity of ballot papers
is dispensed with saving on cost of paper and printing. The invalid votes
in the old system play a major role in turning the result of the elections. In
the EVMs, invalid vote does not arise, and every vote will be accounted.
No rigging is possible, and results can be ascertained in a shorter time.
In the ballot papers in the conventional system, the voters prefer to write
some messages leaving a bad taste and also wasting the whole exercise.
This is not possible in the EVMs.
The Hon ble Court was of the view that the voter cannot dictate that
he should be allowed to cast his vote in the method he chooses.
2. M. Varalakshmi v. K. Pandurangan & Ors., 2010 SCC OnLine Mad

5322
In this Election Petition, allegations of unreliability of EVMs were

raised, which were refuted by the Election Commission.
The Hon ble Court observed that Electronic Voting Machine is a

simple and reliable equipment for use in electing a candidate from among
many candidates. Voting by EVMs is simpler compared to the conventional
system, where one has to put the voting mark on or near the symbol of
the candidate of his choice, fold it vertically and then horizontally and
thereafter put it into the ballot box. In EVMs, the voter has to simply press

908
the blue button against the candidate and symbol of his choice and the
vote is recorded. Rural and illiterate people had no difficulty in recording
their votes and, in fact they have welcomed the use of EVMs.
3. T.R. Baalu v. The Election Commission of India & Ors., 2014 SCC
OnLine Mad 1171
This Writ Petition was filed for directions to install video-cameras

in each and every counting table and the ARO s table and consequently
to record and display lively the counting and totaling of counted votes
to be entered in Part-II in Form No. 17C, enabling the candidate or his
authorized agents to cross-check the votes displayed in the EVM and
the total entered in Part-II in Form No. 17C and simultaneously to be
displayed/transmitted in the common single screen and also by webcast
method in the official website of the Election Commission.
The Commission submitted that the plea made in this Writ Petition
to install video-cameras in each and every counting table cannot be
countenance in view of the instructions given by the Election Commission
in this regard on 30.4.2014 which reads that no camera ‒ still or video
media (except the official video camera for officially recording the entire
counting process) is allowed to be fixed inside counting halls.
The Hon ble Court held that the Election Commission is entitled to
formulate its own method for the purpose of counting of votes from the
EVMs and a detailed procedure has been prescribed to all the Counting
Halls.
So far as the installation of camera is concerned, taking into account

909
the various parameters to maintain security and also to ensure that there
is secrecy of the ballots and to curb the interference of third parties inside
the counting hall, procedure has been prescribed in paragraph No. 3.5
of the instruction of the Election Commission of India dated 30.04.2014.
There is no reason to fault the procedure.
The Hon ble Court found merit in objections raised by the Election
Commission by observing that it has to ensure that there is no third-
party interference. It was observed that the security during the process
of counting of votes in counting halls will be affected if outsiders are
allowed. This is one step in the process of free and fair election.
The Hon ble Court ultimately held that the instructions issued by the
Election Commission of India is a self-contained provision for conduct of
election and the Court will not interfere with the decision of the Election
Commission as to how it should go about conduct of election till the
declaration of results.

910
RAJASTHAN HIGH COURT
1. C.P. Joshi v. Kalyan Singh Chouhan & Anr., 2009 SCC OnLine Raj
2971
Date of Order: July 10, 2009
In this Election Petition, decoding of EVM was prayed for exclusion

of votes allegedly cast by impersonation.
The Commission contended that decoding cannot be obtained

without orders of the competent court. The Commission has no power or
jurisdiction to ask the manufacturer of EVM, to detach the particulars of
the votes polled on the EVM and to establish as to which voter voted for
whom.
In view of the above submissions, the Hon ble Court had directed
that Election Commission be deleted from array of parties.

911
UTTARANCHAL HIGH COURT
1. Dr. Ramesh Pandey v. Election Commission of India & another

2017 SCC OnLine Utt 676
Date of Order: June 02, 2017
The Petitioner had questioned EVM Challenge held by Election

Commission on 3.6.2017 as per Press Release dated 20.5.2017.
The Commission submitted that the challenge meant to put to rest all
apprehensions about tamperability of EVMs.
The Hon ble Court held that the Election Commission of India is not
comparable with any other authority. Article 324 of the Constitution of
India has to be given broadest possible meaning.
The Hon ble Court observed that the Election Commission has
successfully held the free and fair elections and the political parties cannot
be permitted to lower down the image and prestige of the constitutional
body.
However, in the larger public interest, the Hon ble Court restrain
all the recognized National Political Parties, recognized State Political
Parties, other political parties, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
and individuals from criticizing the use of EVMs in the then recently
conducted elections of the State Assemblies even by approaching the
Electronic Media, Press, Radio, Facebook, Tweeter etc. till the decision of
the election petitions.
It was left to the wisdom/discretion of the ECI to hold the

demonstration/challenge on 3.6.2017 but with a caveat that even after it
is held, as scheduled, it will not affect the outcome of the pending election
petitions.

912
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION
An analysis of all the afore-said decisions of the Hon ble Supreme Court
and High Courts clearly demonstrates that the Courts, after going through
various aspects of the technological soundness and the administrative
measures involved in the use of Election Voting Machines, have held
that they are credible, reliable and totally tamperproof. The Election
Commission of India has been among the pioneers in the introduction
of a robust electronic voting system. With the technological landscape
changing rapidly over the past decade, ECI too is exploring various
advanced voting methods aimed at improving the voter participation and
integrity of the voting process.

913
APPENDIX
Abhay B. Chajed v. Smt. Madhuri Misal 2017 SCC OnLine Bom
36
739
Abhay B. Chajed v. Smt. Madhuri Misal 2018 SCC OnLine Bom

36
267
A.C. Jose v. Sivan Pillai, 1984 SCR (3) 74 4
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam v. Chief Election

8
Commissioner, Special Leave Petition (Civil) 2824 ‒ 25 of 2001
All India Anna Dravide Munnetra Kazhagam v. Election

48
Commission of India, 2001 SCC OnLine Mad 1398
Amitabh Gupta v. Election Commission of India and Another

46
2018 SCC OnLine MP 1827
C.P. Joshi v. Kalyan Singh Chouhan & Anr., 2009 SCC OnLine
52
Raj 2971
C.R. Jaya Sukin v. Election Commission of India, Special Leave

32
C.R. Jaya Sukin v. Election Commission of India & Ors., Writ

40
Petition (Civil) 6635/2021
Madhya Pradesh Jan Vikash Party v. Election Commission of

33
India, Special Leave Petition (Civil) 16870/ 2022
Election Commission of India v. Central Information
38
Commission, 2009 SCC OnLine Del 3515
Girish M. Das v. Chief Election Commissioner & Ors., 2012
42
SCC OnLine Guj 4916
Hans Raj Jain v. Election Commission of India 2020 SCC
39
OnLine Del 149
Khemchand Rajaram Koshti v. Election Commission of India &
43
Anr., Writ Petition PIL 36/ 2019

914
Krishna Kumar Gupta v. Rajendra Shukla, 2014 SCC OnLine

MP 8785 45
M. Varalakshmi v. K. Pandurangan & Ors., 2010 SCC OnLine
49
Mad 5322
Michael B. Fernandes v. C.K. Jaffer Sharief, 2004 SCC OnLine

44
Kar 72
Mohinder Singh Gill v. The Chief Election Commissioner

5
(1978) 1 SCC 405
N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15 SCC 377 31
N.P. Ponnuswami v. Returning Officer, 1952 SCR 218 6
Naresh Saraf v. Election Commission of India, Writ Petition

45
28106/ 2018
Nyaya Bhoomi & Anr. v. Election Commission of India, Writ

31
People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, (2013) 10

SCC 1 27
Dr. Ramesh Pandey v. Election Commission of India & another
2017 SCC OnLine Utt 676 53
Reshma Vithalbhai Patel v. Union of India, (2018) 18 SCC 675 30
Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013)

28
10 SCC 500
T.R. Baalu v. The Election Commission of India & Ors., 2014

50
SCC OnLine Mad 1171
Tech for All v. Election Commission of India, Writ Petition

32
(Civil) 692/ 2019

915
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON EVMs/VVPATs

KEY FEATURES OF M-3 EVMs/VVPATs
• Standalone Machine: EVM is a standalone system not connected with

the external world through any wired or wireless network medium.
• Unauthorised Access Detection Module (UADM): UADM embedded in

the machine disables EVM permanently, if any attempt is made to access
microcontroller or memory.
• Advanced Encryption Techniques: Encrypted communication between

Control Unit, Ballot Unit and VVPAT cannot be deciphered by tapping
cables.
• Automated self diagnostics on every switch ON: EVM checks its own
health parameters each time it is Switched ON.
• Strong Mutual Authentication Capability: The strong mutual

authentication capability ensures that no unauthorised device can interact
with EVM.
• No Radio Frequency Transmission or Reception Capability: Tampering

of ECI-EVMs by any wireless coded signal using any protocol (Bluetooth,
WIFI, RFID, NFD etc.) is ruled out as EVM does not have any radio
frequency (RF) communication capability, hence, cannot communicate
through any wireless protocol.
• One Time Programmable (OTP): The programme (software) used in

these machines is key hashed and burnt into a One Time Programmable
(OTP) chip at the time of manufacturing so that it cannot be altered or
tampered with.
• Dynamic Coding of Key Presses: Every key press is coded dynamically

making it impossible for anyone to decode the signals flowing among the
Control Unit, Balloting Unit and VVPAT.
• Real Time Clock for date and time stamping of events: Every authorised
or unauthorised key press is recorded with date and time stamp on real
time basis.

916
SALIENT ASPECTS OF EVMs/VVPATs:
• The ECI-EVMs are manufactured by two PSUs namely Electronics

Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad and Bharat Electronics
Limited (BEL), Bangalore.
• An independent TEC (a) provides technical advice to build specifications

and design of newer versions of EVMs and VVPATs, in order to
incorporate the latest technology both in Hardware and Software Design
and towards improving Robustness against Tampering and operation in
the field. (b) Examines design proposals of manufacturers on EVMs and
offers recommendations for improvement. (c) Mentors design process
wherever asked. (d) Examines concerns raised on EVM tamperability.
• Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) under Ministry

of Information and Technology, an accredited third party entity, conducts
standardization and certification of ECI EVMs produced by manufacturers.
• EVMs data is stored internally and is non-transferrable to or by any

device.
• Commission has evolved end-to-end stringent security protocol and

administrative safeguards for the use, storage, transportation and tracking
of ECI EVMs.
• Since the introduction of EVMs, it has been used in various elections and
different governments are elected successfully by the voters as mentioned
in Table 1 & 2 below:
(Please turn over leaf)

917
Table-1:
Name of State/UT Elections in which EVMs used

States Year Year Year Year Year Year
Andhra Pradesh 2004 2009 2014 2019 -- --
Arunachal
2004 2009 2014 2019 -- --
Pradesh
Assam 2001 2006 2011 2016 2021 --
Bihar 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 --
Chhattisgarh 2000 2003 2008 2013 2018 --
Goa 2002 2007 2012 2017 -- 2022
Gujarat 2002 2007 2012 2017 -- --
Haryana 2000 2005 2009 2014 2019 --
Himachal Pradesh 2003 2007 2012 2017 -- --
Jammu &
2000 2004 2009 2014 -- --
Kashmir*
Jharkhand 2000 2005 2010 2014 2019 --
Karnataka 2004 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Kerala 2001 2006 2011 2016 2021 --
Madhya Pradesh 2003 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Maharashtra 2004 2009 2014 2019 -- --
Manipur 2002 2007 2012 2017 -- 2022
Meghalaya 2003 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Mizoram 2003 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Nagaland 2003 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Odisha 2000 2004 2009 2014 2019 --
Punjab 2002 2007 2012 2017 -- 2022
Rajasthan 2003 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Sikkim 2004 2009 2014 2019 -- --
Tamil Nadu 2001 2006 2011 2016 2021 --
Telangana -- -- 2014 2018 -- --
Tripura 2003 2008 2013 2018 -- --
Uttar Pradesh 2002 2007 2012 2017 -- 2022
Uttarakhand 2002 2007 2012 2017 -- 2022
West Bengal 2001 2006 2011 2016 2021 --
NCT of Delhi 2003 2008 2013 2015 2020 --
Puducheery -- 2006 2011 2016 2021 --
Total: 132 State Legislative Assembly Elections
EVMs were also used in all constituencies in General Elections to Lok

Sabha in 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019. (Please turn over leaf):
918
Table-2:
PARTY WITH MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SEATS IN
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY ELECTION
Andhra 2004 2009 2014 2019 Meghalaya 2008 2013 2018
Pradesh INC INC TDP YSRCP INC INC INC
Arunachal 2004 2009 2014 2019 Mizoram 2008 2013 2018

Pradesh INC INC INC BJP INC INC MNF
Assam 2006 2011 2016 2021 Nagaland 2008 2013 2018

INC INC BJP BJP NPF NPF NPF
Bihar 2005 2010 2015 2020 Odisha 2004 2009 2014 2019
RJD JD(U) RJD RJD BJD BJD BJD BJD
Chhattisgarh 2008 2013 2018 Punjab 2007 2012 2017 2022

BJP BJP INC SAD SAD INC AAP
Goa 2007 2012 2017 2022 Rajasthan 2008 2013 2018

INC BJP INC BJP INC BJP INC
Gujarat 2007 2012 2017 Sikkim 2004 2009 2014 2019

BJP BJP BJP SDF SDF SDF SKM
Haryana 2005 2009 2014 2019 Tamil Nadu 2006 2011 2016 2021
INC INC BJP BJP DMK AIADMK AIADMK DMK
Himachal 2007 2012 2017 Telangana 2014 2018

Pradesh BJP INC BJP TRS TRS
Jammu & 2008 2014 Tripura 2008 2013 2018

Kashmir JKNC JKPDP CIP(M) CPI(M) BJP
2009
2005 2014 2019 2007 2012 2017 2022
Jharkhand BJP & Uttarakhand
BJP BJP JMM BJP INC BJP BJP
JMM
Karnataka 2004 2008 2013 2018 Uttar 2007 2012 2017 2022
BJP BJP INC BJP Pradesh BSP SP BJP BJP
2006 2011 2016 2021 2006 2011 2016 2021

Kerala West Bengal
CPI(M) CPI(M) CPI( M) CPI(M) CPI(M) AITC AITC AITC
Madhya 2008 2013 2018 NCT of 2008 2013 2015 2020

Pradesh BJP BJP INC Delhi INC BJP AAP AAP
Maharashtra 2004 2009 2014 2019 Puducherry 2006 2011 2016 2021
NCP INC BJP BJP INC AINRC INC AINRC
Manipur 2007 2012 2017 2022

INC INC INC BJP
PARTY WITH MAXIMUM NUMBER OF SEATS IN LOK SABHA ELECTIONS
2004 2009 2014 2019
Max. Seats INC INC BJP BJP

145 206 282 303
2nd Max. Seats BJP BJP INC INC

138 116 44 52

919
INTERESTING FACTS ON EVMS:
• In 1982, when EVM was first used in Kerala, a candidate Sivan Pillai
challenged its use even before the election. But Kerala High Court did
not entertain his challenge and EVM was introduced as a pilot project.
Interestingly, Mr. Pillai, the challenger, won the election when the result
was declared. However, Mr. Pillai s opponent challenged the introduction
of EVMs thereafter. The said election was re-conducted with paper ballots
after Supreme Court ruling in 1984. However, the 1984 SC ruling against
EVMs had been on a legal technicality, and not about their fundamental
suitability, and the legal glitch was corrected through amendment of the
Representation of the People Act 1951 in 1988.
• The introduction of EVMs for voting in India was met with certain
reservations considering the then existing large-scale illiteracy and socio-
economic backwardness of the country. It was often asserted by the
naysayers that the multitudes of poor, illiterate, down-trodden, especially
in the rural areas, would face hardships and problems in accessing the
EVMs and may get dis-enfranchised out of ignorance, lack of voting
education or awareness. But, a joint study of Indian School of Business,
Indian Statistical Institute and Brookings Institution in 2017 with the help
of post-poll survey data between 2000 and 2005 from the independent
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), establishes that
introduction of EVMs led to greater participation in electoral process by
the marginalised and vulnerable voters such as women, Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribe.

920
Note
921
922
// True Copy //
ANNEXURE C/44
923
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
On
EVM (CU, BU & VVPAT)
INDEX
EVM General Section Qn.1 to Qn.18

EVM Procedures Qn.19 to Qn.36
EVM Technical Section Qn.37 to Qn.64
EVM Tamperability Qn.65 to Qn.69
Judicial Scrutiny Qn.70 to Qn.73
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EVM General Section
Q1. What is an EVM?
Ans EVM stands for Electronic Voting Machine. It is a device used to electronically record and
count votes cast in elections. The Indian Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) system is also
termed as ECI-EVM, meaning an EVM specifically designed, manufactured and used for
Elections as per election procedure and rules framed by Election Commission of India and
documented in manual on EVM and VVPAT, so as to differentiate it from EVMs used in
other countries.
ECI-EVM consists of Ballot Unit (BU), Control Unit (CU) and the later added “Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)”. EVMs come under the overall category of DRE
voting machines, or Direct Recording Electronic voting machine systems, which is one of the
many voting methodologies available worldwide. ECI-EVMs are considered more efficient
and accurate than paper ballots, as they eliminate the possibility of invalid votes due to
unclear or improperly marked (stamped) paper ballots, reduce the time required for counting
and ensure that a vote is registered for a single candidate only.
For detailed information on various aspects of ECI-EVM, the following documents may be
referred:
The Presentation on EVM booklet is a short comprehensive guide on ECI-EVMs. Starting

with a historical perspective it covers the technical safeguards and administrative safeguards,
procedures governing the secure design, production, transportation, storage and deployment
of EVMs in elections. The transparent administrative processes of ECI solicit the presence
and participation of recognised political parties at all stages of EVM deployment. The
presentation covers the debate around EVMs and the oft-repeated and misplaced international
comparisons. A few slides also cover the Judicial scrutiny the EVM has endured and passed
with flying colours.
The Manual on EVM contains the gist of all-important instructions on use of BU, CU and
VVPAT and serves as a ready reference. The Manual is divided into four parts. Part 1 covers
Storage process and Movement of EVM during Election and Non-election period, First Level
Checking, First Randomisation and Training and Awareness on EVMs. Part 2 covers all
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processes from Second randomisation to Counting of Votes. Part 3 gives the historical
perspective and legal perspective and Part 4 contains Annexures and reporting Formats.
ECI takes special care through pre-poll First Level Checking (FLC) before conducting poll to
ensure that EVMs to be used are fit for use in elections. A very secure process of handling
EVMs in poll is followed with participation of recognised political parties / candidates/their
representatives.
The EVM Storage and Movement of EVM is done through EVM Management System
(EMS) to ensure efficient management and control of ECI-EVM stock.
The booklet Status Paper on EVM covers in brief the journey of EVMs in India since its
conceptualisation in 1977 to the present along with the socio-political feedback on
introduction of EVMs. It also highlights various legal interventions and court cases in its long
journey of over four decades. The role of Technical Expert Committee, and various aspects
such as design and manufacturing protocol, EVM safety and security features, and stringent
administrate procedure for handing EVMs along with International comparison.
Appendix 1 and 2 of this booklet provide some interesting facts on use of EVMs in elections
which clearly bring out all possible permutations of electoral outcomes both favouring and
disfavouring National and State Political Parties.
The Legal History of EVMs booklet provides a useful insight into EVM inception and
milestones, first usage of EVM, Legislative amendment to enable usage of EVM, Legal
provisions regarding EVM & VVPAT, and Judicial Decisions on EVM & VVPAT.
Q.2 In what way functioning of EVMs is different from the conventional system of voting
through paper ballots? Whether technical knowledge is required for casting of vote
through EVM?
Ans. In the Paper Ballot system, the list of contesting candidates is printed on a paper (ballot
paper) along with serial number, name and symbol of the candidates. There is a specific
space allocated for each contesting candidate where a vote can be cast by voter by putting a
mark. Thereafter, voter needs to fold the ballot paper in a specified manner and to deposit in
the Ballot Box. For Counting votes obtained by that candidate, only correctly marked votes
are counted.
926
Some of the major issues with ballot paper voting are that (i) many votes become invalid due
to improper marking/ink smudging (ii) Ballot boxes are also susceptible to “stuffing with
spurious votes” by capturing the booth for few minutes. (iii) Voting with pre-marked ballot
papers. (iv) Manual counting of votes is prone to errors and mischief and takes a lot of days.
In the ECI-EVM system of voting, the Control Unit is placed with the Presiding Officer (In-
Charge CU) and the Ballot Unit(s) and VVPAT are placed inside the Voting Compartment.
Instead of issuing a ballot paper, the Polling Officer in-charge of the Control Unit releases the
electronic Ballot by pressing the “Ballot Button” on the Control Unit. This enables the voter
to cast his/her vote by pressing the “blue button” (Candidate button) on the Ballot Unit
against the candidate of his/her choice. When the voter presses a button against the candidate
of his/her choice on Ballot Unit, a red LED glows against the chosen candidate‟s button on
BU. A paper slip showing the serial number, name and the symbol of the candidate of his/her
choice is generated and is visible for about 7 seconds through transparent window of
VVPAT.
Hence the voter is able to see the “printed slip” and verify that vote is cast as per his/her
choice. Thereafter, the printed paper slip gets cut automatically and stored in sealed Drop
Box of VVPAT. A loud BEEP is heard from the Control Unit which confirms that the vote is
registered successfully. The signal flow at the time of voting between BU, CU & VVPAT is
shown in Annexure-I. The VVPAT paper slips can be later used for verifying the electronic
count obtained from CU in case of a dispute. This record of VVPAT printed paper slips
verified by voter and the process of correlating VVPAT and CU count as per established
mandatory verification procedure makes the voting on EVMs trustworthy. Hence it can be
seen that no technical knowledge is required for casting a Vote on the EVM and ordinary
citizens can easily cast their votes on ECI EVMs.
Advantages of ECI-EVM voting system:

(i) As voting is done by pressing a button, these is no invalid vote as in paper ballot
system.
(ii) Booth capturing has been eliminated by technology used in EVMs and
administrative procedures such that capturing booth is not worthwhile even if
attempted. EVM voting system does not permit more than 4 votes per minute
under any circumstances. Thus it takes too long a time to cast a substantial
927
number of votes giving sufficient time to security forces to respond to the Booth
Capturing attempt.
(iii) No possibility of voting after CLOSE button is pressed at the close of poll.
(iv) It ensures quick, error free and mischief free counting of votes.
(v) Voter is instantly able to verify that his / her vote has been cast correctly by
verifying the VVPAT‟s printed slip.
Q.3 Whether transportation of EVMs to the polling stations is more difficult compared to
the ballot boxes?
Ans. It is easier to transport the EVMs, as compared to ballot boxes as EVMs are lighter, portable
and come with custom-made carrying cases for ease of carriage/transport. EVMs are
transported under extreme security and following elaborate safeguards.
Q.4 When were EVMs used for the first time in an election?
Ans. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) consisting of Ballot Unit (BU) & Control Unit (CU)
were used for the first time in the by-elections to Parur Assembly Constituency of Kerala in
1982.
Q.5 When was VVPAT introduced?

Ans. Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with EVM was used for first time in the by
election to Noksen Assembly Constituency of Nagaland in 2013.
.
Q.6 What is the Model of EVMs used now?
Ans. Presently, the M3 Model of ECI-EVM and VVPAT are used. Similar to the earlier Models,
M3 EVMs / VVPATs are also non-networked, stand-alone units that run on power-packs /
batteries of their own.
Q.7 Where are the EVMs manufactured? Are they imported?

Ans. EVMs/VVPATs are not imported but indigenously designed and manufactured by two Public
Sector Undertakings (PSUs) namely Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), under the Ministry of
Defence and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), under the Department of
Atomic Energy under the guidance of the Technical Experts Committee (TEC) constituted by
the Election Commission of India.
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Q.8 What is the maximum number of votes which can be cast in EVMs?
Ans. The ECI-EVM system can record a maximum of 2,000 votes but generally it is used for
recording 1500 votes only.
Q9 What is the maximum number of candidates which EVMs can cater to?
Ans. Each Ballot Unit can cater to 16 candidates including NOTA. A total of 24 BUs can be
connected to a CU to make a set of EVM. Therefore, when required, one set of EVM can
cater up to a maximum of 384 candidates including NOTA.
Q.10 How can EVMs be used in areas where there is no electricity?
Ans. EVM and VVPAT do not require any external power supply. EVM and VVPAT run on their
own battery/ power-packs supplied by Bharat Electronics Limited / Electronics Corporation
of India Limited. EVM runs on a Power Pack of 7.5 Volts and VVPAT runs on a power-pack
of 22.5 Volts
Q.11 What will happen if the EVM in a particular polling station goes out of order during
poll?
Ans. During poll, as per defined Replacement protocol, if a BU or CU of a particular polling

station goes out of order, (the fault is displayed on CU display) then the full set of BU, CU,
and VVPAT is replaced with a new set from the Reserve EVMs in the presence of the polling
agents appointed by the candidates. The votes recorded until the stage when the EVM went
out of order, remain safe in the memory of the Control Unit and the VVPAT ballot slips
compartment. In case only the VVPAT goes out of order, the votes recorded in the CU
remain safe in its memory and therefore the polling is resumed after replacing the non-
functional VVPAT with another VVPAT from the Reserve machines. On the counting day,
votes recorded in all EVMs used in that polling station are counted to give the aggregate
result of that polling station. If the recorded votes in the Control Units cannot be ascertained
due to any technical reason, VVPAT slips of the respective Control Units are counted to get
the result.
929
Q.12 Is it true that many petitions have been filed against EVMs in courts? What is the
outcome?
Ans. After declaration of result, if candidate has any grievance on the voting in his/her
constituency, he/she can file an Election Petition in the court. Over the decades there have
been numerous Election Petitions. Multiple courts including the Supreme Court of India
have reposed their faith in the Indian EVMs. A comprehensive study in the booklet Legal
history of EVMs provides a useful insight into the relevant statutory framework governing
EVMs and VVPATs.
Q.13 Is it possible to use EVMs for simultaneous elections for Parliament and State
Legislative Assembly?
Ans. Yes, during simultaneous elections two separate sets of EVMs are required in a polling
station; one for the Parliamentary Constituency and the other for the Legislative Assembly
Constituency.
Q.14 How long does the Control Unit store the result in its memory?
Ans. The Control Unit can store the result in its memory until the data is deleted or cleared. Post
every election, after the Election Petition period ECI ascertains the status of Election
Petitions filed with the Hon‟ble High Courts and releases the EVMs for further use if no
Election Petitions have been filed. In cases where Election Petitions have been filed the
related EVMs are retained securely, as per defined protocol, till the final disposal of the
petition. In cases if the Hon‟ble court orders a recount the control unit can be reactivated by
fitting the battery to display the results stored in its memory. Moreover, VVPAT slips are
also preserved till final disposal of Election petition.
Q.15 How can a voter be sure that the EVM is working and his/her vote has been recorded.
Ans. As soon as the voter presses the `blue button‟ on the BU against the serial number, name and
symbol of the candidate of his/her choice, an LED against the candidate button glows red and
the VVPAT prints a slip having serial number, name and symbol of the chosen candidate
which is visible for about 7 seconds before getting cut and stored in the sealed Drop Box of
the VVPAT. A loud beep sound from the CU confirms the registration of the vote. Thus,
930
there is both audio and visual indication for the voter to be assured that his/her vote has been
recorded.
Q.16 Do EVMs malfunction?
Ans. EVMs are electronic machines and like any other machine they are also vulnerable to
failures. The failed machines are sent to the factories for rectification. However, there is no
question of any machine „malfunctioning‟ in a way so as to favour a particular candidate,
which is called tampering as per defined EVM protocol. This scenario is just not possible
with the many safeguards incorporated in design of EVM itself.
Q.17 The Ballot Unit has provision for 16 candidates. If in a constituency, there are only 10
candidates and the voter presses any of the buttons from 11 to 16 will these votes not be
wasted?
Ans. There is no wastage of any vote in EVMs. The unused BU buttons are masked. For example:
if there are only 10 candidates including NOTA in a constituency, the unused „Candidate‟
buttons provided at Sl. Nos: 11 to 16 will be physically „masked‟ (covered) at the time of
preparation of EVM by Returning Officer. Therefore, there is no possibility of any voter
pressing any of the masked buttons at Sl Nos: 11 to 16.
Q18. What is the cost of CU, BU & VVPAT? What is the life of EVM?
Ans. The cost of CU, BU and VVPAT is finalised by the Price Negotiation Committee constituted
by the Government of India. The present cost of a BU is Rs.7,991/-, CU is Rs.9,812/- and
VVPAT is Rs.16,132/-. The economic life of EVMs is approximately 15 years.
931
EVM Procedures
Q19. Is there any provision for a Voter to lodge a complaint if the paper slip generated by
VVPAT shows the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for?
Ans. Yes, if an elector after having recorded his/her vote alleges that the paper slip generated by the
printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he/she voted for, as
per the provisions of Rule 49MA of Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, the Presiding Officer
obtains a written declaration from the elector as to the allegation, after informing the elector
about the consequence of making a false declaration as per Indian Penal Code.
If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1) of Rule 49MA, the
Presiding Officer permits the elector to record a test vote in the voting machine in his/her
presence and in the presence of the candidates or polling agents who may be present in the
polling station, and observe the paper slip generated by the printer.
If the allegation is found true, the Presiding Officer will report the facts immediately to the
Returning Officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the
directions that may be given by the Returning Officer.
If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under sub-rule
(1) matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the Presiding
Officer shall:
 Make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form
17A, Rule 49L mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom
 Obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against such remarks; and
make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part I of Form 17C.
Q20. Where are the EVMs stored during election and non-election period?
After announcement of the result, where are the BU, CU and VVPATs kept and for
what period?
Ans. EVMs are always in secure storage during pre-poll, poll and post poll stages.
They are kept in EVM warehouse/Strong room under the custody of District Election
Officer at all times.
932
Also, EVMs are always stored in warehouse/strong room with:
i). 24x7 CCTV coverage
ii). Double lock System
iii). Armed security (Minimum half Section during non-election period and full section
during election period)
iv). Polled EVMs are kept in strong rooms with One Platoon of CAPF security at the inner
cordon and State Armed Police at the outer cordon
v). DEOs conduct Monthly inspections to check the external condition of the EVM
warehouse and Quarterly inspections to check the internal condition of the warehouse
and submit inspection reports along with photos.
vi). After announcement of result, in the presence of the candidates/their representatives,
BU, CU are sealed in their carrying case and VVPAT slips are taken out from the
VVPATs and sealed in black envelopes. The BU, CU and VVPAT slips and other
election materials are kept in the Strong Room under the custody of the District
Election Officer concerned till the timeframe for filing Election Petition gets over i.e.
45 days from the date of declaration of result. If any Election Petition is filed before
the Hon‟ble High Court concerned, the respective Units are kept till final disposal of
the petition. VVPAT slips are kept as per Rule 94 of the Conduct of Elections Rules
1961.
Q21. Whether representatives of recognised political parties/candidates are present while

opening and closing of EVM warehouse/strong room?
Ans. EVM warehouse/strong room is always opened and closed under prior intimation to and in the
presence of the stakeholders namely representatives of recognised political parties/candidates
and under videography.
Q22. Who conducts the First Level Checking of EVMs?

Ans. Before every election all EVMs to be used in an election undergo a thorough physical and
functional check to ensure poll worthiness. These checks are called FLC (First Level Check).
Manpower in FLC consists of only authorized engineers of the manufacturers, namely Bharat
Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), who
conduct the First Level Checking (FLC) of EVMs and VVPATs under control of District
Election Officer and direct supervision of Dy. DEO in the presence of representative of
recognised Political Parties.
933
Q23. Ballot boxes are engraved so as to avoid any scope for complaint of replacement of these
boxes. Is there any system of numbering EVMs?
Ans. Yes. Each Ballot Unit, Control Unit and VVPAT has a unique Serial Number (ID), which is
engraved on the cabinet or on metal plate riveted to the cabinet. While all EVM units are
identical in operation and looks their allocation is subject to various process like
randomisation, need to be transported and pre-tested (FLC) before polls. Hence for
accounting purpose ID is needed for every Unit. For example, EVMs go through First
Randomisation, first time to allocate them Assembly Constituency wise and Second
Randomization, second time to allocate them Polling Station wise. The list containing unique
ID number of EVM (Ballot Unit, Control Unit & VVPAT) to be used in a particular assembly
constituency and polling station is provided to the contesting candidates / their agents. The
same can be tallied anytime during the polling / counting.
i) Unique ID of Control Unit also displayed on display panel of Control Unit.
ii) Unique ID of VVPAT is printed on each VVPAT slip.
Q24. Who loads the Serial numbers, names of candidates and symbols allotted to contesting
candidates in VVPAT unit and how?
Ans. Before poll, details like serial number, symbol etc. are allocated to the candidates. During
Commissioning of EVMs or Preparation of EVMs, serial numbers, names of candidates and
symbols allotted to them are used to prepare the Ballot sheet on laptop / PC provided by
DEO. This sheet is loaded in VVPAT units using Symbol Loading Unit (SLU). The
preparation of Ballot sheet and its loading in the VVPAT is done with the help of Manpower
for preparation. (Authorised engineers of the manufacturer i.e., ECIL / BEL) in the presence
of candidates / their agents. The SLU also facilitates the representatives of recognised
political parties / candidates / their agents to simultaneously view symbols being loaded in the
VVPAT on a big monitor or TV screen.
Q25. Whether the test printout of the Serial numbers, names of candidates and symbols that
are loaded in VVPAT is taken?
Ans. During the Preparation of VVPAT, the test printout of the Serial numbers, names and symbols
of candidates loaded in VVPAT is mandated to be taken by the Returning officer /Assistant
Returning officer at the time of preparation for cross checking with the ballot paper in Ballot
Unit. Thereafter, one vote to each candidate including NOTA is cast to check that
the VVPAT is printing the paper slips correctly in respect of all the candidates.
934
Q26. Whether changing of thermal paper roll of VVPAT is allowed at polling stations?
Ans. Changing of thermal paper roll is strictly prohibited at polling stations. In case, the thermal
paper roll gets exhausted by any chance, a reserve VVPAT is used as replacement.
Q27. In the conventional system, before the commencement of poll, the Presiding Officer
shows to the polling agents present that the ballot box to be used in the polling station is
empty. Is there any such provision to satisfy the polling agents that there are no hidden
votes already recorded in the EVMs?
Ans. Yes. On the Poll Day before the commencement of poll, the Presiding Officer demonstrates
to the polling agents present that there are no “hidden” votes already recorded in the CU by
pressing the result button on CU. The CU display shows zero vote against all candidates.
Similarly, the P.O also opens the ballot compartment of VVPAT and shows to polling agents
that it is empty. Thereafter, he/she conducts a Mock -Poll with at least 50 votes in the
presence of the polling agents and tallies the electronic result stored in the CU with VVPAT
slip count. After mock poll, the Presiding Officer presses the “Clear Button” to clear the
result of the mock poll before commencing the actual poll. Then he again demonstrates to
polling agents, by pressing 'Total' button that CU display shows '0' votes and that VVPAT
ballot compartment is empty. He then seals the Control Unit and VVPAT in the presence of
polling agents before starting actual poll.
Q28. In the conventional system, it will be possible to know the total number of votes polled
at any particular point of time. In EVMs 'Result' portion is sealed and will be opened
only at the time of counting. How can the total number of votes polled be known on the
date of poll?
Ans. In addition to the 'Result' button, there is a „Total‟ button on Control Unit of EVMs. By
pressing this button any time during poll, the total number of votes polled up to the time of
pressing the button will be displayed without indicating the candidate-wise result. At the end
of poll, the „Close‟ button is pressed after which the machine does not accept any more votes.
By pressing the Total button at end of poll, the total number of votes polled in the CU after
poll is obtained and recorded by the Presiding Officer in Form 17-C and Presiding Officer‟s
diary. Copy of Form 17-C is shared with the polling agents of the candidates.
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Q29. With ballot boxes counting is done after mixing the ballot papers. Is it possible to adopt
this system when EVMs are used?
Ans. Yes, a prototype of the device called 'Totaliser' that can accommodate up to 14 CUs at a time
and aggregate votes without revealing the candidate-wise count of individual EVMs used at a
particular polling station was considered. However, Totalisers are not in use at present as its
technical aspects and other statutory/administrative related issues are under examination and
matter is sub-judice.
Q30. Whether counting of printed paper slips of VVPAT is compulsory on the counting day?
Ans. Compulsory counting of printed paper slips of VVPAT is done only in the following cases:
i) In case a of “no display” of result on the Control Unit, the printed paper slips that
have been verified by voters at time of casting votes of the respective VVPAT are
counted.
ii) As directed by the Honourable Supreme court of India, mandatory verification of
printed VVPAT paper slips of five randomly selected polling stations of each
Assembly Constituency or each Assembly Segment in case of election to the House of
the People, before declaring result.
Q31. The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines during the entire time after
polling and before counting and auditing must be ensured in a manner that is verifiable
by all. There should be no trust requirement on the custody chain.
Ans. After the poll, the EVMs are stored in a strong room with a single access door and a two
layered security cordon. Agents appointed by the candidates are allowed to keep watch over
the EVMs round the clock till the counting. Locks to the strong rooms where the EVMs are
stored are sealed with signatures of election officials as well as those of candidates or their
representatives. The extant instructions of ECI make sure that all stake holders are involved
in all the steps of EVM storage and movement. Thus, there is no implicit trust requirement
and all stake holders jointly guard the polled EVMs.
Some of the safeguards to maintain integrity are as under:

i). List of Serial numbers of EVMs used in the poll is shared with candidates/their agents
along with the detail of number of votes polled in respective EVMs to verify the same
at the time of counting of votes.
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ii). After poll, EVMs are sealed in their carrying cases at the polling stations in the
presence of polling agents and they are also allowed to put their signatures on the
seals besides the polling officer.
iii). The only power source (battery) available for the VVPAT to function is removed at
the polling station in the presence of the polling agents after completion of the poll.
iv). Live feed of CCTV covering entry of Strong Rooms of polled EVMs is given to
representatives of candidates camping at counting centre.
v). Two-tier security arrangements are made at the Strong Room having polled EVMs.
vi). Further, on counting day the EVM Seals and Serial Nos: are also checked by the
counting agents of candidates before start of counting.
As can be seen every aspect of polled EVMs is handled transparently with active
participation of representatives of candidates and nothing is left to trust on the custody chain.
Q32. The mere agreement of electronic and VVPAT counts cannot rule out spurious vote
injections or deletions in both. What are the safeguards in place on this crucial matter?
Ans. ECI-EVM is designed in such a way that no vote can be cast once the CLOSE button is
pressed. After poll, machines are sealed in their carrying cases at the polling stations in the
presence of polling agents and they are also allowed to put their signatures on the seals.
Candidates and their Agents are allowed to escort the machines to the collection centres and
permitted to watch the Strong Rooms having polled EVMs till the counting day. Further, Poll
start time and poll end time is displayed in the Control Unit at every switch ON. Hence,
spurious injection or deletion of votes after polling and before counting can be detected.
These timings are also recorded in the Presiding Officer‟s diary and can be cross verified
with the time displayed by the EVM. The number of votes as per Form 17C is also a record
of the total votes polled in EVM in that PS, thus completely eliminating the possibility of
“spurious injection or deletion” of votes.
Q33. Can the ECI implement an independent review system to review the voting system and
the integrity of election process?
Ans. The voting system designs go through an independent review and even an independent audit
by Technical Expert Committee. Various design details are also available on the site at a level
that the stakeholders may be interested in. The outcomes accepted by voters and candidates
are the biggest form of review (Annexure-II and Annexure-III).
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The ECI-EVM voting system goes through an independent review by way of third party
(STQC) checks. They also go through independent audit by various political
parties/candidates/their representatives like in mock polls. The processes are well defined and
are put on the website of the ECI for public view.
Q34. What are the provisions to handle any claimed discrepancy in the votes cast?
Ans. The contesting candidates have opportunity to request for the VVPAT slip count under Rule
56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 after completion of counting of votes from the
EVMs. Further, as per existing legislation, Rule 56D (4) (b) of the Conduct of Election
(Amendment) Rules in case of a discrepancy between the Electronic Count in the CU and the
ballot slip count of the VVPAT, the VVPAT slip count shall prevail.
Q35. ECI claims that its EVM protocols are transparent and stake holders are involved in
the various processes of EVM preparation in the run up to every Election. How are the
political parties and candidates / their representatives involved in EVM processes?
What information on EVMs is made available to them?
Ans. The Election Commission of India has put in place an elaborate administrative system of
security measures and procedural checks-and-balances aimed at prevention of any possible
misuse or procedural lapses on use of EVMs and VVPATs in elections to the State
Legislative Assembly and Parliamentary Constituencies. These safeguards are implemented
rigorously and transparently with the active involvement of the stakeholders i.e. National and
State Recognised Political Parties or candidates/their representatives covering all the
activities involving EVMs/VVPATs across the electoral process. All these activities are well
documented by way of proceedings, letters, intimation, etc. by the District Election Officers
(DEOs), Returning Officers (ROs) and Assistant Returning Officers (AROs) and other field
officials. Listed below are the various stages in the electoral process where active
participation of political parties and candidates is solicited by ECI for transparency and
confidence building of the stake holders:
1. Opening and Closing of EVM warehouse

a) During non-election period till finalization of list of the contesting candidates, EVM-
VVPAT warehouses are opened/closed (for any purpose like movement of EVMs,
quarterly inspection etc.) in the presence of the representatives of National and State
Recognised Political Parties
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b) With finalization of list of the contesting candidates, candidates and their
representatives are involved while opening and closing of EVM-VVPAT
warehouses/strong room.
c) Opening and Closing of EVM warehouse/strong room is done under videography.
2. First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs

a) First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs is conducted before every election by
the authorised engineers of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics
Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) at DEO level.
b) For this purpose, National and State Recognised Political Parties at district
headquarters are invited in writing by DEO concerned at least two days before the
beginning of FLC and a copy is endorsed to state headquarters.
c) The representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties are involved to
oversee entire FLC process.
d) Higher Mock-Poll is conducted in 5% randomly selected EVMs (i.e. 1200 votes in
1% EVMs, 1000 votes in 2% EVMs and 500 votes in 2% EVMs). The electronic
result of EVM is tallied with the VVPAT slips count. The representatives of National
and State Recognised Political Parties are allowed to pick 5% EVMs randomly and
also to do Mock-Poll.
e) List of FLC ok EVMs is shared with all National and State Recognised Political
Parties.
f) The representatives of National and State Recognised Political Parties are allowed to
sign the seals, forms, register during FLC.
3. Taking out of EVMs for Training and Awareness after FLC
a) After completion of FLC, maximum up to 10% EVMs and VVPATs are taken out for
awareness and training purpose in the presence of National and State Recognised
Political Parties.
b) The list of awareness and training EVMs is shared with them.
4. Randomization of EVMs.
a) First Randomization of EVMs is conducted in the presence of National and State
Recognised Political Parties to allocate EVMs Assembly constituency/ segment-wise.
b) List of first randomized EVMs (AC/AS-wise) is shared with National and State
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c) After finalization of list of contesting candidate, list of first randomized EVMs
(AC/AS-wise) is also shared with contesting candidates.
d) Second Randomization of EVMs is conducted to allocate EVMs polling station wise
as well as for marking the Reserve EVMs which are to be used for replacement of
machines which become non- functional on poll day. List of second randomized
EVMs is shared with candidates.
5. Commissioning of EVMs.
a) Commissioning of EVMs for use in poll is done in the presence of contesting
candidates.
b) Candidates/their representatives are allowed to sign the seals used in sealing EVMs
c) Higher Mock-Poll is conducted in 5% randomly selected EVMs by casting 1000
votes. The electronic result of CU is tallied with the VVPAT slips count.
Candidates/their representatives are allowed to pick 5% EVMs randomly and also to
do mock poll.
6. Dispersal of EVMs with Polling Parties.
a) Dispersal of EVMs is done in the presence of the contesting candidates.
7. Mock Poll and Actual Poll on Poll Day
a) Mock-Poll on Poll day is conducted at every polling station in the presence of the
polling agents nominated by the contesting candidates.
b) Polling agents nominated by the contesting candidates are allowed to remain in
polling stations to observe polling process.
c) Polling agents are allowed to sign the seals used in sealing CU,BU and VVPATs
(before commencement of poll and after close of poll).
8. Transportation of polled EVMs from Polling Stations to Collection Centre
a) Candidates/Polling agents are allowed to follow vehicles carrying polled EVMs from
polling station to collection centre.
9. Storage of Polled EVMs.
a) Polled EVMs are stored in the strong room in the presence of Candidates/their
representatives.
b) Candidates/their representatives are also allowed to put their seals on the locks of the
strong room.
c) Candidates/their representatives are also allowed to monitor storage and security of
polled EVMs.
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10. Counting Day
a) Polled EVM Strong Room is opened in the presence of Candidates/their
representatives, Returning Officer, ECI Observer on counting day.
b) Counting of votes is done in the presence of candidates and counting agents appointed
by them.
c) After completion of counting of votes, VVPAT slips are taken out from VVPATs and
stored in black envelope in the presence of the candidates/their representatives.
d) After counting of votes, CU, BU and VVPAT slips are kept in the strong rooms in the
presence of candidates/their representatives. They are allowed to put their seals on the
locks of the strong rooms.
As can be seen from the above, all stakeholders, representatives of political parties and
candidates witness and participate in all electoral processes on EVMs and are also kept well
informed about the status and list of EVMs to be used for various purposes during the
election.
Q36. Regarding Lok Sabha, 2019 elections, after the final vote was cast there were video
reports from at least 10 different places of new EVMs being moved into strong rooms.
The ECI said these were reserve EVMs but provided no evidence for this and no
explanation for why they need to be moved just before counting rather than at the time
of voting, when there were, in some cases, a period of several weeks between the voting
and counting. There were no security officers accompanying the vehicles and why these
vehicles were often unnumbered, unofficial vehicles? There have also been reports of
irregularities in the counting process.
Ans. As explained in answer to question 35 above information about EVMs being used in an
election is shared with political parties / candidates at different stages of preparation for the
election and was accordingly done in this case too. All these allegations were false and
factually incorrect. A press note No: ECI/PN/56/2019 was issued by the Commission on 21 st
May 2019 and is still available for reference on ECI website.
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EVM Technical Section
Q37. Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting, should be in sync with changing
technologies and technological practices and be subjected to public scrutiny and
examinability. Has ECI taken any steps in this regard?
Ans. The design of ECI-EVM has indeed been periodically updated to take advantage of
advancements in technology. For example, the current model (M3) of the ECI-EVM uses
public key encryption and digital certificates for mutual authentication by units of the EVM.
Thus, in EVMs, newer models have upgraded technology including security measures
commensurate with emerging threats.
The salient features of ECI-EVMs are in public domain as in publications namely,
Presentation on EVM, Manual on EVM, Status Paper on EVM and Legal History of EVM,
starting from broad overview go to minute details. Further there are Laws and Rules in above
mentioned references that allow voter or candidate to make a complaint or take a legal
recourse. ECI also holds open debates around EVM and election processes time to time.
Q38. In spite of many videos on social media regarding tampering of EVMs, why ECI is keen
to use EVMs? What steps is ECI taking to allay the fear that EVMs can be tampered?
Ans. None of the videos showing tampering of EVMs use the ECI-EVM nor do they follow the
procedure prescribed by ECI for polling.
ECI has put in stringent technical safeguards and administrative safeguards, procedures for
the EVMs so that the machines cannot be subjected to tampering or manipulation at any time.
Further, all the election activities related to the EVMs are carried out in the presence of
stakeholders, namely the political parties/candidates in the most transparent manner.
Additionally, it is worth noting that EVM units are connected only to each other and cannot
be accessed by any external machine. In this sense, the ECI-EVM units are a “stand alone”
system.
The BU, CU and VVPAT units are manufactured using a Secure Manufacturing Facility
(SMF). After the program has been loaded into the EVM unit it is one-time-programmed
(OTP), hence re-programming is permanently disabled by the secure processors used in these
units.
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Each unit of the ECI-EVMs contains an “Unauthorised Access Detection Module (UADM)”
which renders the machine unusable if it detects an attempt to open the UADM. Thus, any
attempt to modify the machine after its production will fail.
Q39. Is it possible to vote more than once on an EVM by pressing the button again and
again?
Ans. No, it is not possible to vote more than once on an ECI-EVM by a particular voter. As soon
as a particular button on the Ballot Unit is pressed, the vote is recorded on CU for that
particular candidate and a loud beep is emitted for officials and election agents to note that
the vote has been completed. Thereafter, the ECI-EVM machine does not respond any further
and any subsequent button pressing is ignored. The next vote is enabled on BU only when the
Presiding Officer in-charge of the Control Unit releases the Ballot by pressing the Ballot
Button on the Control Unit, for the next voter after due verification of his/her identity. This is
a distinct advantage of the EVM over the ballot paper system where the Ballot Box can be
physically captured and stuffed with votes.
Q40. Is it possible to program the EVMs in such a way that initially some votes will be
recorded exactly in the same way as the blue buttons of BU are pressed, but thereafter,
votes will be recorded only in favour of one particular candidate irrespective of whether
Does the
Date, Time and Session information available with EVM units not introduce a possible
way to bypass the mock poll?
Ans. No. The original program is ported onto the microcontroller during manufacturing at the
factory and is done many months before it is deployed in elections. It is impossible to know
the name and Serial number of any candidate so much in advance to be able to pre-program
the EVM to favour any particular candidate. After loading the original firmware during
production, the microcontroller is One Time Programmed (OTP) to eliminate any
programmability subsequently. During production in the factories all EVMs are checked to
ensure they carry the original programme. Once the original programme is ported onto the
microchip and it is One Time Programmed (OTP), it cannot be reprogrammed at all. One
machine is used election after election with different sets of alphabetical names of candidates
and recognised political parties. Further, before use in any election the First Level Checking
and Commissioning of all EVMs is conducted in the presence of recognised political party /
candidate representatives. High level mock poll is conducted using 1% randomly selected
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EVMs with 1200 votes, 2% randomly selected EVMs with 1000 votes and 2% randomly
selected EVMs with 500 votes. The electronic result on CU is tallied with VVPAT slip
count to ensure proper functioning of the EVMs during FLC and Commissioning. The
EVMs are stand-alone machines which are not accessible from any wired/wireless network
nor are they connected with any external devices outside the EVM system. There is no
operating system used in these machines. Therefore, there is absolutely no chance of
reprogramming or manipulation of the program of EVM in a particular way to favour a
particular candidate or political party. Various administrative safeguards, procedures and the
participation of political parties / candidates or their representatives during different
processes add strength to the overall robustness and transparency in the use of EVM systems.
Till date, slips of 38,156 randomly selected VVPATs have been counted and not a single case
of transfer of vote meant for candidate A to candidate B has been encountered. Differences, if
any, between CU and VVPAT count have always been traceable to human errors.
Q41. How can one rule out the possibility of recording further votes at any time after close of
the poll and before the commencement of counting by interested parties?
Ans. After completion of poll i.e. when the last voter has voted, the Officer in-charge of the Control
Unit/Presiding Officer presses the „Close‟ button. Thereafter, the EVM does not accept any
vote. The poll „start time‟ and „end time‟ are recorded in the machine as well as by the
Presiding Officer. After the close of poll, the Control Unit is switched off and thereafter the
Ballot Unit is disconnected from the Control Unit and kept separately in their respective
carrying cases and sealed. Further, the Presiding officer has to hand over to each polling
agent a copy of the account of total votes recorded in Form 17-C. At the time of counting of
votes, the total votes recorded in a particular control unit is tallied with this account and if
there is any discrepancy, this can be pointed out by the Counting Agents of candidates.
Q42. The ECI says an EVM can be programmed only once, making hacking unlikely.
However, there are reports that it can be programmed several times. There are other
reports saying that EVM machines can be manipulated by connecting it to cell phones,
Bluetooth devices, replacing parts of it and other forms of manipulation, apart from
Ans. The ECI-EVM use secure controllers which can disable further programming after a step
known as one-time-programming (OTP). The technical information about the micro
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controllers is available in public domain and can be accessed on the website of micro
controller manufacturers.
i). Further, ECI-EVM is a standalone device without any wired or wireless connectivity
outside the EVM systems.
ii). BU, CU, and VVPAT units have digital certificates, and carry out mutual
authentication when connected together. Hence any other look alike machine cannot
be connected to the ECI-EVM
iii). There are elaborate and robust technical safeguards and administrative safeguards,
procedures for use of EVMs. Unauthorized access to EVM units during storage,
transportations, randomisation, allocation, conduct of FLC, commissioning, conduct
of Mock-Polls, conduct of main poll, result counting etc. is not possible. All these
steps are carried out in the presence of stakeholders. Hence, there is no way anybody
can approach the machines to attempt modification of the EVMs.
iv). Mock-Polls are routinely held and five percent of randomly selected EVMs undergo a
mock poll with a large number of votes where the electronic results from CU are
tallied with VVPAT slip count to ensure proper functioning of the EVMs. Hence,
there is no question of EVMs being programmed several times, or manipulated by
connecting to cell phone, Bluetooth devices, replacing part of it or through any other
form of manipulation.
Q43. Whether it is possible to know much beforehand about the sequence of names on the
Ballot paper of the BU or about deployment of an EVM in a particular polling station?
Ans. No, the arrangement of names of candidates in the ballot paper of the Ballot Unit is in
alphabetical order, first for the National & State Recognised Political Parties, followed by
other State Registered Parties, and then by independent candidates. Thus, the sequence in
which the candidates‟ names appear on the Ballot paper of the BU is dependent on the names
of the candidates and their party affiliation and keeps changing from one election to another.
Therefore, the sequence cannot be ascertained much in advance.
EVMs are allocated to polling station after two stages of randomisation process
through EVM Management System, EMS software application developed by the
Commission. After First Level Checking FLC of EVMs, First Randomization of EVMs is
done at the District Election Officer level to allocate them Assembly Constituency-wise in
the presence of the representative of recognised political parties. Thereafter, before
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Commissioning of EVMs, Second Randomisation of EVMs is done at the Returning Officer
level to allocate them Polling Station-wise in the presence of candidates / their agents. Two
levels of randomisations eliminate any scope of determining before-hand the polling station-
wise deployment pattern of machines.
Q44. Whether the Election Commission has full control of the entire voting process through
EVM?
Ans. Yes, Election Commission has full control over entire voting process. All election officials
work directly under the direction, supervision and control of Election Commission of India
during the election period.
Q45. In case of election dispute is reconstruction of vote for authentication possible in EVM
voting?
Ans. In case of election dispute reconstruction of the vote for authentication is possible in EVM-
VVPAT system from the data stored in Control Unit of EVM. The same has been
demonstrated in the Courts whenever there was a need in cases of election disputes.
Q46. It is claimed that EVM machines can be manipulated by connecting it to cell phones,
Bluetooth devices, replacing parts of it and other forms of manipulation, apart from
Ans. The claim is baseless and unscientific claim. The technical information about the micro
controllers is available in public domain and can be accessed on the website of
microcontroller manufacturers. The EVMs / VVPATs use controllers which are One Time
Programmable (OTP). This feature is activated by a code /command, fed via a software
program, and in the first time run at power „on‟ sets an internal register to shut off any re-
programmability capability. The code / command and procedure are also available in public
domain in the datasheets/ application notes on use of these microcontrollers.
If these controllers had internal Bluetooth or Wi-Fi module then information in the form of
features, internal block diagram of the microcontrollers, pin assignment and signals at all pins
of the module would be available in the data sheets. Also, if such Transmitters or Receivers
were available in the microcontrollers then power supply pins, antenna pins, frequency
assignment pins, crystal oscillator pins etc that are specific to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi would also
be available in data sheets. The microcontrollers used by BEL ECIL do not have such
modules and this can be verified by information in their data sheets available in the public
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domain. In spite and despite above available technical information the ECI-EVM is subjected
to strong quality checks by electromagnetic testing to verify that no Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or
unwanted frequency capability is present.
Hence, ECI-EVMs are standalone devices without any wired or wireless connectivity with
units outside the EVM system. Advanced technical features and robust administrative
safeguards are in place to rule out any such possibility of manipulation. The BU, CU and
VVPATs have digital certification and carry out mutual authentication when connected
together before communicating. Any other lookalike machine, therefore, cannot be connected
to ECI EVMs. Apart from the technical safeguards there are very elaborate and tight
administrative safeguards, procedures mandated by ECI to ensure the physical safety and
security of the EVMs at all times.
In addition, only the authorised, well-trained engineers on the rolls of the PSUs (BEL / ECIL)
are entrusted with the critical task of carrying out the First Level Checking FLC and loading
of symbols, and providing other technical support as per need. The entire process is carried
out in a transparent manner in the presence of the stakeholders.
Q47. To conduct free, fair and transparent elections, elections must be conducted assuming
that the EVMs may possibly be tampered with. The long-time window-over the cycle of
design, implementation, manufacture, testing, maintenance, storage, and deployment-
may provide ample opportunity for insiders or criminals to attempt other means of
access. There is an overwhelming requirement of trust on such custody chains; such
assumptions of trust in various mechanisms make the election process unverifiable.
What are the actions taken to address this important aspect?
Ans. The EVMs were introduced for the first time in 1982, forty years ago and have been
continuously used since 2000, with all possible permutations of electoral outcomes, both
favouring and disfavouring all National and State Political Parties (Annexure-II and
Annexure-III). This would not have been possible if there was even a remote possibility of
tampering the machines. The strong technical safeguards and stringent administrative
safeguards, procedures underwritten by publicly available disclosures of its movement,
checking, randomisation and, special disclosures of detail to the National and State Political
Parties and Candidates ensure the integrity of the EVMs. The stakeholder participation is so
designed that each step of ECI-EVM deployment is in full view and participation of all
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stakeholders. More than trust on individuals or groups of persons, the system-based safety
and security protocols are the foundation of ECI-EVM secure handling.
Q48. Can the details of the EVM microcontrollers be explained along with the OTP features?
Ans. Both BEL and ECIL use standard microcontrollers available off the shelf and hence all
information on the microcontrollers is available in the public domain via manufacturers‟ data
sheets/ application notes and user manuals. The One Time Programmable (OTP) feature is
not activated by any hardware or pin-based signal/command at external pins of the
microcontrollers, rather this code/ command is fed via a software programme and in the first
time “run” at power on sets an internal register to shut off any re-programmability. Once this
is done the programme cannot be changed. The procedure is available in public domain in the
datasheets / user manuals on use of the microcontrollers.
Q49. It is claimed that the EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof so the electronic
voting system should be redesigned to be software and hard-ware independent in order
to be verifiable or auditable. Views on the same?
Ans. If a DRE produces a voter verifiable paper audit trail, it is software independent. The ECI
EVM produces a paper audit trail and is therefore software independent.
(a) Firstly, ECI-EVM is thoroughly verifiable, as the voter verifies the vote cast on BU
for candidate of his choice from the slip printed on paper by VVPAT that has details
(Serial number, name and symbol) of the candidate voted for. Secondly the
correlation between the ballot slip printed by VVPAT and the vote recorded in the
EVM is established statistically with a high degree of confidence by tallying the
electronic count of the Control Units with the VVPAT slip counts of five randomly
selected polling stations in each assembly constituency/ segment. This is done as
mandated by the Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India.
(b) Evaluation of ECI-EVM design at its formulation stage as well as prototype and pilot
stages are done traditionally by testing for worst case considerations, and performance
measured on established statistical principles. Hence, EVM design as well as voting
through EVM is reliable.
The extant instructions of ECI make sure that all stake holders are involved in all the steps of
EVM storage, movement, checking FLC and preparation, Commissioning, distribution to
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polling parties, Mock-Poll on poll day and during polling itself. This is to ensure transparency
and to build trust amongst the public at large.
Q50. VVPAT system should be redesigned to be fully voter-verified. The voter should be able
to approve the VVPAT printout before the vote is finally cast and be able to cancel if
there is an error.
Ans. Every vote is verified by the voter and given the available provision in the statute (Rule 49
MA) for the voter to report any discrepancy between his choice of vote in the BU and
VVPAT slip, such a modified system may be superfluous.
Q51. Testing is never adequate to declare an electronic system as complicated as an EVM fail
safe and verified. What are the extra precautions and control mechanisms of ECI on
this matter?
Ans. ECI-EVMs are simple to operate and use, stand-alone and robust vote recording machines.
EVMs use advanced cryptographic methods to maintain their overall integrity. EVMs cannot
be connected by wires or wirelessly to any unauthorized device. By design the EVMs are safe
and tamper-proof. However, to build trust and confidence, various
testing/checking/observation and mock poll protocols have been introduced across various
stages of EVM deployment. With the addition of VVPATs to the BU & CUs the voter can
instantly verify if his vote has been cast as intended. All processes of EVM handling are in
full view and participation of stakeholders.
Q52. EVM with VVPAT introduction is no more a standalone device since it has to be
connected to Symbol Loading Unit for symbol loading. Sensors, printer, Light
mechanism needs drivers along with micro-controller, hence how can it still be called a
rudimentary device?
Ans. Symbol Loading Unit (SLU) is part of the EVM infrastructure. The CU, BU with VVPAT
still remains a standalone device. In order to print the VVPAT slips, VVPAT needs to have
the Symbol information and the Candidate information loaded as data in graphical format.
This can only be done through an authorized EVM specific device known as Symbol Loading
Unit.
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Q53. Does the VVPAT have a programmable memory? If yes, then at what stages in the
election process is it accessed by an external device? If no, then where are the names
and symbols of the candidates stored in the VVPAT for it to print the same in the
VVPAT slip later?
Ans. A VVPAT has two different memories. One, where the program instructions are kept for the
microcontrollers, is One Time Programmed (OTP). The VVPAT firmware is stored in the
One Time Programmed memory. After the firmware is ported in the microcontroller at the
manufacturers‟ site, no changes in the program are possible subsequently. The other memory
is for storing graphical images containing serial number, name, and symbol of the candidates
as data. This is done with the help of a symbol loading unit, during the commissioning of
VVPATs before each election. Live display of the symbols being loaded into the VVPAT is
done during the Commissioning process in presence of candidates /their representatives to
make the process more transparent.
Q54. The voting system design should be subjected to independent (of the government and
the ECI) review; and the integrity of the election process should be subjected to an
independent audit. The findings should be made public.
Ans. ECI is an independent Constitutional authority in itself. The technical review of EVM is
done by TEC of ECI. The printed paper slip of VVPAT is duly verified by the voter and the
correlation between the electronic count of Control Unit and corresponding VVPAT slip
count is established statistically with high level of confidence level.
Q55. In an EVM, where votes are recorded electronically by the press of a button, and the
voter cannot examine what has been recorded, there is no way to provide a guarantee to
a voter that his/her vote is cast as intended (recorded correctly in the EVM), recorded
as cast (what is recorded in the EVM is what is collected in the final tally) and counted
as recorded. This casts doubts on a purely EVM-based system.
Ans i) The voter verifies the vote cast on BU for candidate of his/her choice from the slip printed
on paper by VVPAT that has details (serial number, name and symbol) of the candidate voted
for. Thus, there is verification that the vote has been cast as intended.
ii) The count from the Control Unit where the vote is recorded and from VVPAT slips are
strongly correlated as per the sampling plan advised by reputed experts in statistics. This
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correlation process has been accepted by the Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India in 2019,
wherein as an additional measure for enhancing public confidence, the apex court
recommended a higher sampling rate compared to that suggested by the experts. ECI has
indeed been following this higher sampling rate.
iii) The vote count reported by the Control Unit and that obtained from a count of VVPAT
slips has matched over a large number of machines and over several elections. Till date, slips
of 38,156 randomly selected VVPATs, with more than 2.3 Cr votes, have been tallied and not
a single case of transfer of vote meant for candidate A to candidate B has been encountered.
After successive elections, the excellent match between the Control Unit count and VVPAT
slip count strengthens the correlation between votes cast, votes recorded and votes counted.
A close look at the results of Legislative Assembly Elections and the Lok Sabha Elections
(Annexure-II and Annexure-III) shows how the party with maximum number of seats has
changed over time and amply proves the integrity of the EVMs. This should remove all
doubts cast on EVM-based systems used in India.
In addition to the technical strengths as summarised above, the extant instructions of ECI
make sure that all stakeholders are involved in all the steps of EVM storage, movement,
checking FLC and preparation, Commissioning, distribution to polling parties, Mock Poll on
poll day and during polling itself. This is to ensure transparency and to build trust amongst
the public at large.
Q56. Is there transparency in the counting of votes and ascertainment of the results from the
EVM reliably without special knowledge on EVM?
Ans. At time of poll, a voter casts his/her vote by pressing the candidate button of his/her choice
and verifies from printed slip of VVPAT which has the details of candidate he/she has voted
for. Counting of votes is conducted in absolute transparency in the presence of all the
contesting candidates and counting agents authorised by the candidates. To ascertain the
result from the Control Unit, no special knowledge is required. The Counting Officials just
press the “RESULT” button of the Control Unit, and Candidate-wise result is automatically
displayed on the display panel of the Control Unit. For this only the basic training required
for the officials is imparted to them. A list giving Serial Nos. of BU, CU, and VVPAT
deployed in all polling stations in the AC/AS is shared with the candidates after the second
randomisation. All votes of CUs and VVPATs are counted in the presence of political parties
and candidates present after verifying the intactness of seals and serial numbers of the EVMs
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with the list of EVMs deployed in the polling stations which was given in advance.
Subsequently, the matching of VVPAT slips of five randomly selected polling stations with
their CU counts is also done in the presence of all political parties and candidates to establish
the correlation between the „vote cast and vote counted‟ with a very high level of confidence.
The voters can therefore ascertain that their vote has been „cast as intended, recorded as cast,
and counted as recorded‟ without any expert knowledge. The tallying of a sample of five
VVPATs per AC/AS with the CU count has been mandated by the Hon‟ble Supreme Court of
India. In fact, for the parliamentary general elections this mandate boils down to tallying the
ballot slip counts of 20,625 randomly chosen VVPATs with the electronic counts of their
Control units. If no mismatch between EVM and VVPAT counts is found in such a sample,
then it provides a very high statistical guarantee that the sanctity of the election process is not
affected by the use of EVMs. Till date ballot slips of 38,156 randomly selected VVPATs
have been tallied with the electronic counts of their Control Units and not a single case of
transfer of vote meant for candidate ‟A‟ to candidate „B‟ has been encountered. Differences
in count if any have always been traceable to human errors like non-deletion of Mock-Poll
votes from Control Unit or non-removal of Mock-Poll slips from VVPAT.
Q57. How ordinary citizens can check the essential steps in the voting process without
technical knowledge on EVMs?
Ans. The EVM system is as simple as a basic calculator. No expert knowledge is required to
operate or cast votes on EVM. All ECI-EVM related processes are easy to monitor and are
conducted transparently in the presence of stakeholders. Ordinary Citizens are able to check
the truthful recording of their votes through verification of printed VVPAT ballot slip by each
voter, and the subsequent tallying of VVPAT slips of five randomly selected polling stations
of every AC/AS with the electronic count of the corresponding Control Units to establish a
strong correlation between the vote cast and the vote counted as cast with an extremely high
level of confidence.
In fact, for the parliamentary general elections the mandate of the Hon‟ble Supreme Court of
India boils down to tallying the ballot slip counts of 20,625 randomly chosen VVPATs with
the electronic counts of their Control units. If no mismatch between EVM and VVPAT
counts is found in such a sample, then it can be said with near certainty that the sanctity of the
election process is not disturbed by the use of EVMs. Till date ballot slips of 38,156
randomly selected VVPATs have been tallied with the electronic counts of their Control
Units and not a single case of transfer of vote meant for candidate ‟A‟ to candidate „B‟ has
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been detected. Differences in count if any have always been traceable to human errors like
non-deletion of Mock-Poll votes from Control Unit or non-removal of Mock-Poll slips from
VVPAT, wherein it is possible to identify and remove the mock poll votes.
Q58. Do BEL /ECIL share the confidential software programme with foreign chip
manufacturers to copy it on to microcontrollers used in the EVMs?
Ans. Microcontrollers are ported with firmware by BEL/ECIL inside their factories under high
level of security and safeguards. Out of a 4 layered secure manufacturing process (SMF) the
microcontrollers are ported in the L3 area where only designated engineers are authorised
access through access cards and biometric scans. No external agency either indigenous or
foreign is involved in loading the firmware programme in micro controllers.
Q59. In an EVM, a vote is recorded electronically by press of a button. But the voter cannot
examine what has been recorded, there is no way to provide a guarantee to a voter that
her/his vote is cast as intended, recorded as cast and counted as recorded. How then,
can elections conducted with EVMs be democratic and how then, can India continue to
be considered an electoral democracy?
Ans. ECI-EVM has always been a truthful machine. A close look at the results of Legislative
Assembly Elections and the Lok Sabha Elections (Annexure-II and Annexure-III) shows how
the party with maximum number of seats has changed over time and amply proves the
integrity of the EVMs. With the introduction of VVPAT the ECI EVM system enables voters
to immediately verify that their vote is cast as intended by observing the VVPAT ballot slip
which contains the name, serial number and symbol of the candidate for whom vote is cast.
The votes are counted as recorded in Control Unit. The correlation between the ballot slip
printed by VVPAT and the vote recorded in the EVM is established statistically with a very
high degree of confidence by tallying the electronic count of the Control Unit with the
VVPAT slip count of five randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency
/segment.
The matter regarding mandatory verification of VVPAT slips count has already been settled
by the Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India by its order dated 8th April, 2019. In pursuance of
that order ECI has been mandatorily verifying VVPAT slips of randomly selected 5 polling
stations per assembly constituency/segment (in Parliamentary constituency elections).
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It is highlighted that apart from the above, verification of VVPAT slips is done at various
stages of the election process in the presence of representatives of recognised political
parties/candidates as follows:
i) During FLC – in 5% machines selected randomly (1200 votes in 1%, 1000 votes
in 2% & 500 votes in 2%)
ii) During Commissioning – in 5% machines selected randomly (1000 votes)
iii) Mock-Poll before actual poll – in 100% machines (at least 50 votes)
The extant instructions of ECI make sure that all stake holders are involved in all the steps of
EVM storage, movement, checking FLC and preparation (Commissioning), distribution to
polling parties, Mock-Poll on poll day and during polling itself. This is to ensure transparency
and to build trust amongst the public at large.
Q60. With modern data analytics it may require targeting the EVMs in just a few polling
stations to swing the election results for a constituency. What are the safeguards against
such targeted attacks?
Ans. ECI-EVMs are absolutely stand-alone machines without any scope for wired or wireless
connectivity with any other system/machine. Having no communication channel from outside
ensures that there is no mechanism to influence data from outside. Moreover, the firmware of
the microcontrollers is One Time Programmed (OTP) and runs out of a Read only Memory
and hence cannot be updated, modified or enhanced in terms of functionality. Therefore, the
election results cannot be modified by anyone and the results will be exactly as per votes cast
by the voters through process of voting.
In addition to the technical safeguards the administrative safeguards, procedures ensure that
unfettered access to EVMs is denied to attackers. The technical safeguards and administrative
safeguards together ensure the impregnability of EVMs.
Q61. There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote count before the results are
declared. The post-counting audit should not be based on ad hoc methods but by
counting a statistically significant sample of the VVPAT slips according to rigorous and
well-
of VVPAT slips be done in some cases depending on the margin of victory?
Ans. Firstly, the counting of VVPAT slips is done as per well-established procedure as directed by
the Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India and is not done in an ad-hoc manner. Further, the statute
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also provides an opportunity for the candidates to request for the VVPAT slip count under
Rule 56 D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961. The option of filing an Election Petition
after declaration of result is also available for the contesting candidates wherein each and
every VVPAT slip may be counted as per direction of the Hon‟ble Court.
Q62. At the request of the Election Commission, a committee of eminent experts in statistics
provided a report describing how many EVMs should be cross-checked and why. The
report recommends the cross-checking of only 479 EVMs across the country,
independent of how many total EVMs are used (some reports mention that a total of
10.35 lakh EVMs were used in GE 2019). It says that, if a fraction of 2% or more of the
EVMs are faulty, cross-checking 479 chosen at random across the country will be
sufficient to detect this fact with near certainty. Therefore a) the faulty EVM in a
random sample will be detected only if the number of such EVMs in a parliamentary
election is more than 20,000; and the presumption that the entire quantity of EVMs
used in the country can be considered as the population is incorrect. Can this be
elaborated and explained?
Ans. The following two points are raised in the question above:
(i) The margin of error in the report of the Committee was put as 2%. Hence a random
sample of size 479 will detect a mismatch between EVM and VVPAT count with „virtual
certainty‟ only if the number of such mismatches in EVMs in a parliamentary election is
more than 20,000.
(ii) The premise of using the whole country as the population is „profoundly mistaken.‟
Regarding the first point-- A general perception is that a small sample will not be able to
make any valid inference about a large population. There have been several suggestions that
ECI should sample a certain minimum percentage of EVM systems and verify the electronic
counts with the slip counts for ensuring that there are no mismatches between EVM and
VVPAT counts. The suggested percentage of EVMs to be sampled varies from 10% to 50%.
This of course is completely erroneous as any of the suggested figures of 10% or 30% or 50%
has no statistical basis whatsoever and the numbers have no sanctity. The accuracy of the
results obtained by a sampling procedure mainly depends on the „absolute sample size‟ and
not on „the sample size as a percentage of the population size.‟ While non-intuitive this is the
standard statistical result and is well validated in all standard books on Sampling Theory.
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While it is true that a 2% margin of error has been considered in the report but the confidence
level considered is also far higher at 99.993665752% (4 sigma level) than considered by most
commentators.
Similarly, the question about what to use as the population for the study?
To answer this question, it was first necessary to decide over the level at which the statistical
guarantee was required. In this case the basic unit of the study was the EVM machine and it
was required to check the working of the EVM through VVPAT counts. It is noteworthy that
all EVMs are similar, having come up through the same manufacturing and testing process.
Every machine is connected to a VVPAT. Before poll each EVM undergoes FLC and
multiple mock polls and verifications as per established protocols in the presence of political
parties. It is also to be noted that there is no systematic bias in allotting particular EVMs to
particular states / constituency/ booths. Machines are randomised twice, first time for
allocating to assembly constituencies and second time for allocating to polling stations.
Thus, the report considered as a unit all the elections that are announced on a given day and
typically counted on the same day. This could be any combination of assembly elections in a
few states, or Lok Sabha elections along with assembly elections and bye elections and so on.
All were considered as one set of elections and since the Statistical unit of study was the
EVM, the population consisted of all EVMs being used in a particular set of elections for
which counting was done on the same day.
However, the mandate of the Hon‟ble Supreme Court to the ECI to tally five randomly
chosen VVPAT systems per assembly constituency /segment goes far beyond the
recommendation of taking a sample size of 479 as given by the expert committee.
In fact, for the parliamentary elections, this mandate boils down to testing 20,625 randomly
chosen VVPAT systems (five in each of the 4125 assembly segments). If no mismatch in the
EVM and VVPAT count is found in such a sample, then it can be said with very high level of
confidence or with near certainty that the sanctity of the election process is not affected by
the use of EVMs.
Q63. The ECI has to define which one is true representation of the will of the voter? Vote
recorded on Control Unit or voter verified SLIP in VVPAT? If Counting is based on the
Control Unit count what is the use of Verifiable paper SLIP?
Ans. The system of VVPAT has been introduced only for the purpose of greater transparency and
enhancing the confidence of voters by way of immediate verification of the printed ballot slip
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having the chosen candidate‟s Name, Serial Number and Symbol and recording of vote in the
Control Unit.
As per existing legislation, Rule 56 C of the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules
clearly states that after the returning officer is satisfied that a voting machine has not been
tampered with, he shall have the votes counted by pressing the appropriate button marked
“Result” provided in the control unit whereby the total votes polled and votes polled by each
candidate shall be displayed in respect of each candidate on the display panel provided for the
purpose in the unit. The candidate wise result so obtained from all control units used in the
election is to be tabulated in a result sheet in Form 20 and the particulars so entered in the
result sheet announced.
Contesting candidates have the opportunity to request for the VVPAT slip count under Rule
56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 after completion of counting of votes from the
EVMs. Rule 56D (4) (b) clearly states that in case of a discrepancy between the Electronic
Count in the Control Unit and the ballot slip count of the VVPAT, the VVPAT slip count
shall prevail.
Q64. There must be compliance audit, verifiable by all candidates and interested members of
the general public, to ensure the integrity of the VVPAT slips. The VVPAT slips may be
trustworthy at the time of voting, but it is necessary to ensure that they remain
trustworthy later while auditing.
Ans. Mandatory verification of randomly selected five polling stations per assembly
constituency/segment is a strong post audit of the veracity of vote count, all in the presence of
stakeholders. Till date, slips of 38156 randomly selected VVPATs have been counted and not
a single case of transfer of vote meant for candidate A to candidate B has been encountered.
Differences if any have always been traceable to human errors such as not removing votes
cast in the mock poll. Moreover, contesting candidates have opportunity to request for the
VVPAT slip count under Rule 56 D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 after completion
of counting of votes from the EVMs. Further, aggrieved candidate(s) / voter can challenge the
election by way of Election Petition before the competent court where upon directions of the
Hon‟ble Court each and every VVPAT slip may be counted.
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EVM Tampering
Q65. An EVM has not yet been hacked provides no guarantee whatsoever that it cannot be
hacked. Therefore, elections must be conducted assuming that the electronic voting
machines may possibly be tampered with. What is the view of the Commission?
Ans. Indeed, the design of security mechanisms incorporated in the ECI-EVM units start with the
assumption that attempts may be made to tamper their contents. Based on various scenarios
for such attempts, strong security features have been incorporated in the EVM design.
i). ECI-EVM design incorporates a "mutual authentication" process so that EVM

units cannot connect or communicate with any external device.
ii). These undergo strict quality checks to ensure that there is no Wi-Fi, or
Bluetooth connectivity.
iii). These are so designed that they can detect an attempt to tamper the unit, and
on detection of such an attempt, the EVM unit is set in a mode where it simply
cannot be used in a poll. It has to be sent to the factory for enabling it to
function as an EVM again.
iv). Additionally, administrative safeguards and robust security and stakeholder
participation and media scrutiny ensure that there is no other scope for
manipulating the EVMs.
v). Further, every EVM that is to be deployed for the election process undergoes
rigorous testing and three stages of Mock-Polls, coupled with double
randomisation of EVMs.
vi). While ECI supervises and controls the election process, it encourages
stakeholder participation across all stages.
vii). In addition to the above, ECI regularly undertakes the repair of
EVMs/VVPATs that may have become non-functional in the field. It conducts
pre-checks and preventive maintenance on EVMs to weed out machines likely
to fail during elections.
Q66. There are numerous examples of hacking electronic devices through electromagnetic
and other channels from all over the world, including of the Software Guard Extensions
of sophisticated Intel processors. In view of such possibilities, the claims that the EVM
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has no external communication channels appear to be naive, especially considering that
so much is at stake.
Ans Designers of ECI-EVMs are aware that electro-magnetic interference can impair the
operation of some electronic devices. Accordingly, sufficient care has been taken in the
design and testing of these EVMs to ensure that externally applied fields over a wide
spectrum of frequencies do not affect the correct operation of EVMs. Additionally, emissions
from the EVM units are monitored to ensure that these do not emit significant levels of RF
which could provide an "external communication channel".
During functional testing of EVMs, CU, BU and VVPAT units are subjected to RF fields
from 10 kHz to 6 GHz (from 10,000 to 6,000,000,000 cycles per second) in specified steps as
per IEC standards. RF emissions from these units are monitored to rule out the presence of
RF communication devices such as Wi-Fi or Blue tooth etc.
These measures ensure that no hidden "external channels" exist and EVM units are indeed a
closed system with no communication with external world during their operation.
Q67. The non-verifiability of the EVM and VVPAT based voting protocol makes it
impossible to rule out unpredictable manipulations by unpredictable entities, including
foreign players. It is essential that all aspects of an election be observed, audited, and
independently verified by the public to engender trust. What are the mechanisms of
ECI to avoid such a possibility?
Ans Firstly the ECI-EVM is thoroughly verifiable, as the voter verifies the vote cast on BU for
candidate of his choice from the slip printed on paper by VVPAT that has details (name,
serial number and symbol) of the candidate voted for, and secondly the result as per Control
Unit count is strongly correlated to the corresponding VVPAT slips count with a high level of
confidence as per sampling plan mandated by Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India.
Evaluation of ECI-EVM design at its formulation stage as well as prototype and pilot stages
is done traditionally by testing for worst case considerations, and performance measured on
established statistical principles. Hence, EVM design as well as voting through EVM is
reliable.
Also, the extant instructions of ECI make sure that all stake-holders are involved in all the
steps of EVM storage, movement, checking FLC and preparation Commissioning,
distribution to polling parties, Mock-Poll on poll day and during polling itself. This is to
ensure transparency and to build trust amongst the public at large.
959
Q68. tamperable and safe but this
does not make the EVM+VVPAT verifiable. None of the ECI experts have credentials
in computer security and the majority of them are not even computer scientists. In
addition to experts the ECI is also dependent on many other entities and organisations-
including hardware manufacturers, software developers and testers, system assemblers,
and un-modelled custody chains for the integrity, safety and security of its machines
and is thus not entirely in control. In this situation what is the need to use EVMs for
elections in India?
Ans. Comments on ECI experts are uncalled for. The EVM detractors, self-appointed technical experts
and certain social media personnel have repeatedly failed to realise that the EVMs cannot be
compared to a computer which runs on an operating system. The microcontrollers of EVMs
and VVPATs run on a specific program designed to faithfully record the voters‟ choice. That
the EVM is a truthful machine has been proved over decades of usage through changes in
several governments at the state and central level, whenever the public wanted to. In fact, the
EVM has made elections safe and virtually eradicated booth capturing by limiting the rate of
vote casting to four votes a minute and thus significantly increasing the time required for
stuffing false votes. Invalid votes a bane of the paper ballot system was at times greater than
the winning margins and have been completely eliminated by the EVMs. Vote cast is
verifiable by voter on VVPAT and the Control Unit-VVPAT vote count matches are done on
well-established principles of statistics to provide a very high level of confidence.
Q69. Is the entire process on use of EVMs transparent, free and fair?
Ans. The strong technical safeguards and elaborate administrative safeguards, procedures put in
place by ECI along with encouraging wide participation of all stakeholders at every stage of
the election process ensures that the elections are transparent, free and fair.
The elections are transparent as these are conducted openly under the watchful eyes of the
public. For example, all processes involving ECI-EVMs such as storage, transportation,
randomisation, FLC, Commissioning, voting procedure, Counting etc. is conducted in full
view and participation of stakeholders and representatives of recognised political parties.
Hence the election is held in transparent way.
Elections conducted with ECI-EVMs are free since elaborate security arrangements are made
at election booths and in their vicinity, so that voters can come and vote feely without
influence of inducement, fear or coercion.
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Fairness of the election is ensured through the technical design of the EVM system as well as
the strong processes followed in election steps.
A vote cast on BU is verified by the voter by viewing the slip printed on VVPAT with the
candidate‟s name, serial number and symbol on it. The voter verified slips are later correlated
with Control Unit count during counting as per specified procedure.
The EVMs used for elections are thoroughly tested during First Level Check (FLC) in
presence of stakeholders and Mock-Poll is conducted during FLC, commissioning as well as
at start of the poll to ensure that EVMs used are functioning properly.
Due to double randomisation of EVM units, which is conducted in the presence of recognised
political parties / candidates, it is not known in advance as to which machine will go to which
constituency or polling station.
Insider attacks on the machines are prevented through secure manufacturing processes, SMF
where all steps used in the manufacturing process are strictly monitored and automatically
recorded.
Thus, it can be seen that the strong technical safeguards in EVMs and elaborate
administrative safeguards, procedures and security put in place by ECI along with
encouraging wide participation of all stakeholders at every stage of the election process
ensures that the elections are transparent, free and fair.
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Judicial Scrutiny
Q70. It is claimed that ECI is silent in respect of serious discrepancies in the two sets of data
(data initially shared by the ECI and the final voter turnout/votes polled data on the
EVMs) in 373 constituencies which went to elections in the first four phases of the
elections of Lok Sabha, 2019.
Ans. There is no case where any candidate or his agent complained that there is any discrepancy in
the total votes polled in EVM and result obtained from the EVM. It is also pertinent to
highlight that the voter turnout is a dynamic figure. The final voter turnout is finalised by the
Returning Officer when related documents are scrutinised and shared with all the contesting
candidates.
Q71. It is well circulated in the Media that according to replies to Right to Information (RTI)
queries about two million EVMs were stated to be missing from ECI. Whether it is true
or not?
Ans. The matter is sub-judice and necessary clarifications have been provided to the Hon‟ble High
Court of Bombay. The issue is nothing more than the twisting, selective and wrongful
representation of facts by vested interests.
Q72. While banning electronic voting, the German Constitutional Court made the following
observation: The use of voting machines which electronically record the voters' votes
and electronically ascertain the election result only meets the constitutional
requirements if the essential steps of the voting and of the ascertainment of the results
can be examined reliably and without any specialist knowledge of
legislature is not prevented from using electronic voting machines in elections if the
possibility of a reliable examination of correctness, which is constitutionally prescribed,
is safeguarded. A complementary examination by the voter, by the electoral bodies or
the general public is possible for example with electronic voting machines in which the
votes are recorded in another way beside electronic storage. How are ECI EVMs
different from the voting systems banned by the German Constitutional Court?
Ans. Across the world, both paper ballot voting system as well as EVMs are used for conducting
elections as per the preference and mandate of the authorities concerned. The Election
Commission of India is a Constitutional Body mandated to conduct elections to State
Legislature, both the houses of the Parliament and the offices of the President of India and
962
Vice-President of India, as per Act and Rules passed by the Parliament of India. Use of ECI-
EVMs for conducting elections in India is approved by the Parliament and upheld by various
High Courts and Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India.
ECI EVMs are manufactured by central government public sector undertakings in a secure
manufacturing facility. Rigorous third-party testing is carried out by STQC (Standardization
Testing and Quality Certification) at the manufacturing premises before acceptance and
dispatch to various states of deployment. Stringent and elaborate protocols as mandated by
ECI are followed during EVM movement, storage, and deployment. The German
Constitutional Court made its observation in the context of EVMs used in German elections
and in relation to German law. Indian EVMs are robust and implement technologies and
processes which are different and noncomparable. Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India and
various High Courts have time and again scrutinised the machines and have reposed their
confidence and faith in ECI EVMs.
Q73. The general opinion was that at a time when there had been strong calls for the back to
ballot paper system, it was the duty of ECI officials, who were strongly opposed to the
demand, to ensure maximum transparency to belie any suspicion over EVMs.
Ans. EVMs are used in the Indian elections as mandated by the Representation of People Act,
1951. Therefore, EVMs are used in Indian elections as per the statutory mandate of
Parliament. The same has the backing of judiciary also. The matter of bringing back the
manual ballot system and discarding the use of EVMs has been brought up before various
courts time and again. However, on all occasions the courts including the Hon‟ble Supreme
Court of India have dismissed the petitions. In a latest such judgement dated 03/08/2021
(C.R. Jaya Sukin vs ECI, SLP (Civil) 13278/2021), the Hon‟ble High Court of Delhi, even
imposed cost on the petitioner while dismissing the pleas to stop the use of the EVMs.
Further, ECI constantly strives to bring in more transparency and wider participation in the
electoral process.
// True Copy //
I.A. NO. _____/2024 IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

….PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR.
….RESPONDENTS
AND IN THE MATTER OF:
M.G. DEVASAHAYAM ….INTERVENOR/APPLICANT
IA NO.__of 2024: Application Seeking Intervention
ADVOCATE FOR APPLICANT:- LZAFEER AHMAD B F

Code:2941
INDEX
S.No. Particulars Page Nos.
1. I.A. No. ______ of 2022 1-19

APPLICATION SEEKING INTERVENTION
WITH AFFIDAVIT
2. ANNEXURE A-1 20-288
A true copy of W.P(C) 1514 of 2018, M.G.
Devasahayam & Ors. v. Election Commission of
India
3. ANNEXURE A-2 289-298
A true copy of the common judgement in W.P. (C)
No. 273 of 2019 in N Chandrababu Naidu v. Union
of India
4. ANNEXURE A-3 299-
A true copy of R.P.(C) 1116/2019, M.G.
340
Devasahayam & Ors. v. Election Commission of
India
5. Vakalatnama 341
6. Proof of Service 342

1
I.A. NO. _____/2024 IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

….PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR.
….RESPONDENTS
M.G. DEVASAHAYAM ….INTERVENOR/APPLICANT
APPLICATION FOR INTERVENTION
TO,
THE HON’BLE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
1. That the Applicant herein is filing the present application seeking
liberty from this Hon’ble Court to intervene and assist this Hon’ble
Court in the above captioned W.P.(C) 434/2023, Association For
Democratic Reforms V. Election Commission Of India & Anr. That

2
the Applicant herein submits that it is necessary that the print out of
the VVPAT slips must be handed over to the Voter and they must
be able to deposit them in the VVPAT Ballot Box which must then
be cross verified by the electronic count in the EVMs in accordance
with the purport and object of directions of this Hon’ble Court in
Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013) 10
SCC 500.
2. That the Applicant is a former civil servant who while in service had,
at several times, performed functions and duties and officiated in
connection with elections including – as Assistant Returning Officer
for Parliamentary Constituency of Hissar in 1971; Returning Officer
for the Assembly Constituency of Jagadhri in 1972; Returning
Officer for the Parliamentary Constituency of Chandigarh in 1977;
District Electoral Officer in the Districts of Bhiwani (Haryana) and
Chandigarh from 1972 to 1977; Observer to Parliamentary and
Assembly Elections from 1978-85. He has also been convenor of
the ‘Forum for Electoral Integrity’ since 2010 – a voluntary
organisation and a campaign in which some former chief election
commissioners and election commissioners were associated. Since
early 2020 he has been the coordinator of Citizens Commission on
Elections which examined the issue of the suitability of
EVM/VVPATs for democratic elections and their compliance with

3
democracy principles and end-to-end verifiability and came out with
a comprehensive Report titled "Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT
System Fit for Democratic Elections? which report is annexed as
Annexure P10 of the above captioned petition. In August, 2023 he
initiated a public appeal to the Election Commission of India to
conduct free and fair elections as per the mandate of the Constitution
in which the first demand concerned EVM/VVPAT: "The VVPAT
system should be re-calibrated to be fully voter-verifiable. A voter
should be able to get the VVPAT slip in her hand and cast it in a
chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid. These VVPAT slips
should be fully counted first for all constituencies before the results
are declared. For this purpose, VVPAT slips should be larger in size
and must be printed in such a manner that they can be preserved for
a minimum of five years." [https://www.change.org/p/ecisveep-eci-
must-implement-its-constitutional-mandate-to-conduct-free-and-
fair-election]
3. The applicant is a prolific writer on election related matters and the
author of Books: “JP in Jail-An Uncensored Account”; “JP
Movement, Emergency and India’s Second Freedom”; “A Drop of
Love-Memoir of Saint Teresa,” and "Arc of Governance-The
Flavour of New India" (2023). He is also the Editor of the Book
“Electoral Democracy—An Inquiry into the Fairness and Integrity
of Elections in India” (2022)

4
4. That the above captioned petition has been filed seeking the
following prayers inter alia on the basis of the report titled, ‘An
inquiry into India’s Election System: Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT
system fit for democratic elections?:
I. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate writ,

order, or direction to the respondents to cross verify the
count in EVMs with votes that have been verifiably
‘recorded as cast’ by the voters themselves i.e. the
VVPATs;
II. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate writ,
order, or direction to the respondents to ensure that the
voters are able to verify through VVPATs that their vote
has been ‘counted as recorded’;
III. Declare as unconstitutional the Conduct of Election
Rules, 1961, and the practice and procedure of Election
Commission of India to the extent that they violate the
fundamental right of the voters to verify through VVPATs
that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted
as recorded’;
5. That the petitioners have also filed an interim application seeking
the following prayers:
I. Direct that the print out of the VVPAT slips must be

handed over to the Voter and they must be able to deposit
them in the VVPAT Ballot Box which must then be cross
verified by the electronic count in the EVMs;
II. Appoint an independent court monitored committee with
experts suggested by the Election Commission of India,
civil society, & political parties to audit and verify the
hardware and software used in the Electronic Voting
Machine (EVM), Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail
(VVPAT), & Symbol Loading Unit (SLU) in a time bound
manner prior to the conduct of the 2024 general elections;
6. That the Applicant herein had filed W.P(C) 1514 of 2018 titled M.G.
Devasahayam & Ors. v. Election Commission of India in which vide

5
judgement reported as N Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India,
(2019) 15 SCC 377, this Hon’ble Court, keeping in mind that the
ECI had, “pointed out infrastructure difficulties, including
manpower availability, at this point of time, in increasing the
number of EVMs for verification” (Para 6) because of which the,
“declaration of result of election could be delayed by 5-6 days,”
(Para 6) directed the ECI to count VVPATs in 5 polling stations per
assembly constituency as opposed to the prayer in the writ petition
for counting of 30% VVPATs across the country as the Court at that
point in time found that, “the proximity to the election schedule
announced by the ECI must be kept in mind.” (Para 9 emphasis
supplied). Further, vide the same order, Writ Petition (C) No. 23 of
2019 was disposed off by this Hon’ble Court expressed it’s
“reluctance to go into the issues regarding the integrity of the EVMs
which have been raised at a belated stage. The petition was filed in
the month of December 2018 raising various technical issues which
are not possible to be gone into at this stage.” (Para 12).
7. A review petition was thereafter filed by the applicant bearing RP(C)
1116 of 2019, M.G. Devasahayam & Ors. v ECI which was also
dismissed.
A true copy of W.P(C) 1514 of 2018, M.G. Devasahayam & Ors. v.
Election Commission of India along with annexures is annexed
herewith as Annexure A-1 [Pgs. 20 to 288

6
A true copy of the common judgement in W.P. (C) No. 273 of 2019
in N Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, is annexed herewith as
Annexure A-2 [Pgs. 289 to 298
A true copy of R.P.(C) 1116/2019, M.G. Devasahayam & Ors. v.
Election Commission of India, is annexed herewith as Annexure A-
3. [Pgs. 299 to 340
8. That as stated hereinabove; subsequently, the Applicant herein has
been associated with the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE)
which went into the critical aspects of the conduct of elections, call
for expert advice where necessary and come up with appropriate
suggestions. The CCE was chaired by Hon’ble Justice (retd) Madan
B. Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge, with other former statutory
and constitutional functionaries associated with it.
9. The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs
primarily on the touchstone of whether and how far their use
complied with ‘democracy principles’ viz:
1. The voting process should be transparent in a manner that

the general public can be satisfied that their vote is
correctly recorded and counted.
2. The voting and counting process should be publicly
auditable.
3. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential
steps in the voting process. If special expert knowledge is
required then all should be able to select their own
experts.
7
4. There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and
ascertainment of the results reliably without too much
special knowledge.
5. An election process should not only be free and fair, but
also be seen to be free and fair.
6. Election Commission should be in full control of the entire
voting process, and the public at large should be able to
verify.
7. Electronic processes, if they are to be used for voting,
should be in sync with changing technologies and
technological practices, and be subject to public
scrutiny/examinability
7. The group relied on depositions and expert opinions of several
national and international experts. Among the domain
knowledge holders who submitted deposition before this CCE
group were Ronald L. Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, USA; Alex Halderman of the
University of Michigan, USA; Poorvi L. Vora and Bhagirath
Narahari of George Washington University, USA; Alok
Choudhary of North-western University, USA Sandeep Shukla,
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur;
Douglas W. Jones of the University of Iowa, USA; Nasir
Memon of New York University (Brooklyn), USA; Philip B.
Stark of the University of California, Berkeley, Vanessa Teague,
Associate Professor, School of Computing and Information
Systems, University of Melbourne, Cyber security, Australia;
Bappa Sinha of Free Software Movement of India, Subodh
Sharma of Computer Science and Engineering and of the School

8
of Public Policy, IIT, Delhi; S Prasanna, Advocate, Delhi,
Venkatesh Nayak, RTI activist, KV Subrahmanyam, Professor,
Computer Science, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai,
Poonam Agarwal, media-person and Anupam Saraf, Professor
and Future Designer, Dr Sanjiva Prasad and Dr Subhashis
Banerjee of IIT, Delhi & the present applicant.
8. That broadly, the findings of the CCE in a report titled, ‘An
inquiry into India’s Election System: Is the Indian EVM and
VVPAT system fit for democratic elections?’, published in
January, 2021 are as under:
“The report has devoted considerable time and expertise

in scrutinising the technical architecture of EVMs and the
accompanying VVPATs. The ECI does not appear to
safeguard against the possibilities of ‘side-channel
attacks’, i.e. hacking electronic devices through
electromagnetic and other methods. Even the ‘software
guard extensions’ of sophisticated Intel processors have
proved vulnerable to interference and tampering. Just a
few EVMs can swing election results for a constituency.
That the processor chip in the EVM is only one-time
programmable is also in doubt. In fact, latest EVMs use
the MK61FX512VMD12 microcontroller supplied by an
US based multinational, which has a programmable flash
memory.
Further examination is possible only when the ECI makes
the EVM design and prototype available for public
technical audit. It is noted that none of the ECI’s experts
9
has credentials in computer security and the Commission
reposing trust in many other external entities and
organisations, that could lend themselves to breach of
complete security. After tracking the various stages of the
EVM’s movement within the election setup — before and
during polls, subsequent storage, counting and
declaration of results — the report opines that there are
certain intervals during which the machines could be
accessed without authority or tampered with.
The findings reveal that there is, indeed, no guarantee that
the voter’s choice has been reflected with total fidelity in
all cases and thus submit that immediate steps be taken to
rectify the ECI’s current procedures, irrespective of the
scale and extent of possible error or manipulation.
Besides, domain experts have clearly stated that the
present ‘quality assurance’ and testing strategies of the
ECI certainly do not rule out scope for mischief or
manoeuvring of results.
The VVPAT system was introduced to ensure that voters
were able to see and check physically paper slips that
emanated from the EVMs and printers attached to them.
The Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPAT
as an additional stage to assure voters about the complete
fidelity of their votes but the current procedure of voting
does not sync with this objective and leaves gaps that
could be manipulated. This paper trail has, for instance,
been rendered ineffective as the ‘marked slips’ pop up for
too brief a time for the voter to verify her/his vote before
it moves away to its sealed box. Besides, the ECI refuses
to cross check the tally of counting VVPAT paper-slips
10
with electronic results on the grounds of being
unnecessary and time consuming, even though the total
time taken is considerably less than the time spent in
counting the traditional papers received in ballot boxes.
Even though VVPAT slips of votes cast are bound to be
retained for one year after polls, the ECI has destroyed
these slips of the 2019 polls, leading to grave
apprehensions about its bona fides. Rules regarding
mandatory recount of EVM results and the compulsory
counting of the VVPAT paper slips are absolutely
unavoidable.”
9. That the conclusions of the report are as under:

a. Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability,
the present EVM/VVAPAT system is not verifiable and
therefore is unfit for democratic elections.
b. That an EVM has not yet been detected to have been
hacked provides no guarantee that it cannot be hacked.
Thus, elections must be conducted assuming that the
EVMs may possibly be tampered with.
c. In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs than
even what the civil society and the political parties
demand (30% and 50% respectively) to ensure
verification and reliable ascertainment of results.
d. There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic vote
count before the results are declared. The audit may in
some cases - depending on the margin of victory - require
a full manual counting of VVPAT slips.
11
e. The electronic voting system should be re-designed to
be software and hardware independent in order to be
verifiable or auditable.
10.That the Applicant herein submits that it is necessary that the
print out of the VVPAT slips must be handed over to the Voter
and they must be able to deposit them in the VVPAT Ballot Box
which must then be cross verified by the electronic count in the
EVMs in accordance with the purport and object of directions of
this Hon’ble Court in Subramanian Swamy v. Election
Commission of India, (2013) 10 SCC 500.
11.It is submitted that the main purpose behind the introduction of
VVPATs is to bring in accuracy, verifiability and transparency
in the casting and counting of votes. With VVPATs, voters can
verify and satisfy themselves that their vote has been accurately
recorded against the candidate they voted for; and that it
automatically follows that it is only when the paper slips as
verified by the voters are counted that the true purpose behind
introduction of VVPATs is served. Without counting of VVPAT
paper slips in a significant percentage of polling stations in each
constituency, the objectives of verifiability and transparency in
the democratic process would remain unrealized.

12
12.It is submitted that experts and professionals are of the view that
ECI’s claim that the EVM (BU-VVPAT-CU) units are “totally
standalone machines having one-time programmable chips” is
not true. With the introduction of VVPATs, the name and
symbol of the candidates will have to be uploaded to EVM using
an external device after the announcement of elections and
finalisation of candidate list. ECI Manual itself states at 8.4.2
that BEL and ECIL engineers are to use a device called Symbol
Loading Unit (SLU) to electronically upload these details to the
VVPAT. The same Manual at 8.4.4 make it clear that these
devices need not be stored in the strong room along with
EVM/VVPATs and are to be released to the engineers
immediately after the poll thus making them outside of the
custody chain of Returning Officers. This wired connection of
EVM/VVPATs to an external device not maintained within the
custody chain of Returning Officers/District Election Officers
after election is announced, candidate sequence is firmed up, and
second randomisation and booth allotment of EVMs finalised
makes the ECI’s practices in conducting elections extremely
suspect. This has exposed the voting and counting to
insider/outsider manipulation.
13.That the cross-verification and counting of VVPAT slips is
essential in the interests of ‘Democracy Principles’ and the

13
principle that elections must not only be free and fair, but also
be seen to be free. Verifiably accurate reflection of the will of
the voters in the electoral process is at heart of democracy as
Democracy is a part of the basic structure of our Constitution;
and rule of law, and free and fair elections are basic features of
democracy. [Kihoto Hollohan v. Zachillhu, 1992 Supp (2)
SCC 651]. ‘Voter’ verifiable means that it is the satisfaction and
verification of the voter that is at the heart of electoral
democracy and not just that of the ECI, domain experts, political
parties, or candidates. ‘Voter verifiable’ means that each voter
must be able to verify: firstly, that their vote has been ‘recorded
as cast’; and, secondly, that their vote has been ‘counted as
recorded’.
14.That further, Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section
66A of Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, provides that the count
of VVPATs shall prevail over the count reflected in EVMs. Rule
56(D)(4)(b) is a statutory admission/presumption of the position
in law and fact that it is finally the VVPAT which accurately
captures the will of the voter and that variance/errors/malafides
in the results captured in the EVMs cannot be ruled out for any
given reason. Given the statutory acknowledgement, it is
manifestly arbitrary and violation of Article 14 to then not cross
verify the count in EVMs with that in VVPATs.

14
Rule 56(D) provides as under:
“56-D. Scrutiny of paper trail.—(1) Where printer for
paper trail is used, after the entries made in the result
sheet are announced, any candidate, or in his absence, his
election agent or any of his counting agents may apply in
writing to the returning officer to count the printed paper
slips in the drop box of the printer in respect of any polling
station or polling stations.
(2) On such application being made, the returning officer
shall, subject to such general or special guidelines, as
may be issued by the Election Commission, decide the
matter and may allow the application in whole or in part
or may reject in whole, if it appears to him to be frivolous
or unreasonable.
(3) Every decision of the returning officer under sub-rule
(2) shall be in writing and shall contain the reasons
therefor.
(4) If the returning officer decides under sub-rule (2) to
allow counting of the paper slips either wholly or in part
or parts, he shall—
(a) do the counting in the manner as may be directed by
the Election Commission;
the control unit and the counting of the paper slips,
amend the result sheet in Form 20 as per the paper slips
count;
(d) complete and sign the result sheet.”
15
15.Furthermore, under the electronic voting system ECI has lost
control of the electoral process. Under the ballot paper system,
the ECI had full control and supervision over the manufacturing
of ballot-boxes, printing of ballot-papers its despatch and
counting of votes. Not so with EVMs. Public Sector
Undertakings (PSUs) Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL),
Bengaluru, and the Electronic Corporation of India Limited
(ECIL), Hyderabad, manufacture EVMs and they are not under
the control or supervision of the ECI. Instead, they are under the
direct control of a department of the Union Government headed
by a Minister from the ruling party. These entities share the
confidential software programme with foreign chip
manufacturers to copy it on to micro-controllers used in the
EVMs. When these foreign companies deliver micro-controllers
fused with software code to the EVM manufacturers, neither the
manufacturer nor the ECI officials nor the technical advisers can
read back their contents because they are locked. It is clear,
therefore, that EVM voting does not comply with any of the
‘democracy principles’ which are paramount. Article 324(1) of
the Constitution of India vests with the Election Commission
“the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of
the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to
Parliament and to the Legislature of every State and of elections

16
to the offices of President and Vice President”. Under Paper
Ballot system ECI had ‘control’ over the entire conduct of
election, but under EVM system it has almost completely lost
control. Therefore, elections conducted under EVM system
raises serious constitutional issues.
16.Therefore, being closely familiar with the conduct of elections
in the country in his personal capacity and in the preparation of
the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE) report titled, ‘An
inquiry into India’s Election System: Is the Indian EVM and
VVPAT system fit for democratic elections?’, published in
January, 2021, the applicant herein seeks to intervene in the
present petition to assist this Hon’ble Court.
PRAYER
In these circumstances, it is therefore most respectfully prayed
that your Lordships may graciously be pleased to:
I. Allow the applicant herein to intervene and assist this Hon’ble
Court in W.P.(C) 434/2023 titled, Association For Democratic
Reforms V. Election Commission Of India & Anr.
II. Pass such other orders or directions as this Hon’ble Court may
deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of the present
petition
17
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KINDNESS, THE APPLICANT
HEREIN AS IS DUTY BOUND SHALL EVER PRAY
Filed By
New Delhi
Dated: 20.01.2024
LZAFEER AHMAD B F
ADVOCATE-ON-RECORD FOR THE
APPLICANT
CODE- 2941
18
PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION

IN THE HON'BLE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
LA. NO. OF 2024

IN

IN THE MATTER OF:
ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS ....PETITIONER

VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. .RESPONDENTS

M.G. DEVASAHAYAM .....INTERVENORAPPLICANT
AFFIDAVIT
1, M.G. Devasahayam, S/o D. Maria Gnanaprahasam, Resident of B-402,

Spectra Raintree No: 41, Sakamma Layout, Lingarajapuram, Bengaluru
S60084, presently at Bengaluru do hercby solemnly affirm and state on oath as
under :
1. That Iam the applicant intervenor in the accompanying application and

being well conversant with the facts and records of the case, I am
competent and authorised to swear this affidavit.
2. That I have read and understood the contents of the
accompanying
application and the contents of the same are true and correct to my
knowledge, based on documentary evidence and records of the case, and
nothing material has been conccaled therefrom.
3. Ifurther state that all the Annexures to the application are true copies of
OTAR their respective originals.
MOHANK
BA,LL.B.,
MetropolitanCit
Raa.tHo.1231;
19
4. The source of information is official documents, court records, and

intornation available in the public domain.
5. That this application is only motivated by Public Interest. I affirm that I
have no personal intercst in this matter.
6. That I have done whatsoever inquiry was possible and I state that no
material or relevant facts in my knowledge have been withheld.
¾PONENT
VERIFICATION:
I, the above namcd deponent do hercby verify that the contentsof the aforesaid
affidavit from para to are true and correct to thebest of my knowledge
and belief, no part of it is false nothing material has been concealed there from.
Verified at on this the day of January, 2024
STAR
MOHANKUMAR.N
DIA
B.A.,LL.B.,
Metropolitan City DEPÓNÉNT
Reg. No. 12311
OF SWORN TO BEFORE ME
15 JAN 2024 MOHAN KUMAR.N., B.A.,LL.B.,

ADVOCATE & NOTARY PUBLIC
GOVT. OF INDIA
Rag. No. 12311
My Term Expires on No. 8, 6t!i Cross, jst Main Road,
23-12-2026 S.R. Naqe:. BANGALCRE - S6) ).27
No.of CORRECTIONS.ALm)
ANNEXURE A-1 20
CRIMINAL ORIGINAL JURISDICTION
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL)
(Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India)
1514 OF 2018
W.P.(C) No. ________
[PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION]
M.G. DEVASAHAYAM & ORS. …PETITIONERS
Versus
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA …RESPONDENTS
PAPER BOOK
(FOR INDEX PLEASE SEE INSIDE)
WITH
I.A. No. ___________ of 2018
(Application for Exemption from filing O.T.)
ADVOCATE FOR THE PETITIONERS:
Mr. Goutham Shivshankar

21
INDEX
S.No. Particulars PAGE No. Remarks
Part I Part II
(Contents of
(Contents
the Paper
of file
book)
alone)
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)
1. Court-fee A A
2. Listing Proforma A1-A2 A1-A2
3. Cover page of Paper Book A3
4. Index of Record of A4
Proceedings
6. Defect List A5
7. Note Sheet NS1 to

___
8. Synopsis & List of Dates B –J B- J
9. Writ Petition along with 1 – 35

Affidavits.
10. ANNEXURE-P-1 36 – 38
A true copy of a profile of
Petitioner No.1, dt. NIL,
along with his identity proof.
11. ANNEXURE-P-2 39 – 40
12. ANNEXURE-P-3 41 – 44
13. ANNEXURE-P-4 45 – 118
A true translated copy of the
judgment dt 09.03.2009 of
22
the Federal Constitutional

Court of Germany
14. ANNEXURE-P-5 119 – 127

A true copy of the judgment
of this Hon’ble Court dt.
08.10.2013 in Subramanian
Swamy v. Election
Commission of India
5. ANNEXURE-P-6 128 – 133
A true copy of the Order of
this Hon’ble Court dt.
09.08.2017 in SLP (C)
No.13598/2017
6. ANNEXURE-P-7 134 -138
A true copy of the Circular
issued by the Respondent dt.
13.02.2018
17. ANNEXURE-P-8 139 – 175
A true copy of the detailed
note dt NIL prepared by the
Petitioners as to all the
possible technological
compromises of the sanctity
of the EVMs
18. ANNEXURE-P-9 176 – 177
A true copy of a news report
in Money Control, as
accessed in April, 2018
relying on an RTI response
of the Respondent relating to
theft of seventy EVMs.
19. ANNEXURE-P-10 178 – 180
A true copy of the news
report in Business Standard
dt. 10.04.2018 relying on the
RTI response from the
Respondent indiciating the
difference in figures of
23
EVMs supplied by the

manufacturers as against the
number of EVMs received
by the Respondent.
20. ANNEXURE-P-11 181 – 189
A true copy of the letter dt.
10.04.2018 from titled
“MEASURES TO ENSURE
INTEGRITY & FAIRNESS
IN THE FORTHCOMING
PARLIAMENTARY
ELECTION-2019 –
REPRESENTATION
THEREOF”
21. ANNEXURE-P-12 190 - 204
A true copy of the letter dt.
04.07.2018 by a group of
retired civil servants and
Armed Forces veterans titled
“ELECTORAL
INTEGRITY – ENSURING
RELIABILITY OF EVMS
AND VVPAT AND HAND
COUNTING OF LARGE
PERCENTAGE OF PAPER
SLIPS -
REPRESENTATION
THEREOF”
22. ANNEXURE-P-13 205 – 227
A true copy of a presentation
by Dr. Bhat and Dr.
Kharandikar dt. 24-08-2018
23. ANNEXURE-P-14 228 – 231
A true copy of the note
prepared by Dr. S.K. Nath,
former Director-General,
Central Statistical
Organisation, Government
of India, dt. NIL, pointing
out several pitfalls in the
presentation given by Dr.
24
Bhat and Dr. Kharandikar

dt: 25-08-2018
24. ANNEXURE-P-15 232 – 239

A true copy of the Paper dt.
NIL presented by Dr. Nath
titled “Sampling Design and
Test of Hypothesis for
VVPAT based Auditing of
EVM” dt: 26-08-2018
25. I.A. No. ________ of 2018 240 – 241
Application for Exemption
from Filing Official
Translation
26. Filing Memo 242
27. Vakalatnamas & Memos of 243 - 245

Appearance.
25
B
SYNOPSIS & LIST OF DATES
This Writ Petition is filed in public interest praying inter alia for
directions from this Hon’ble Court to the Respondent Election
Commission of India to count and cross-verify the Voter Verifiable Paper
Audit Trails (“VVPATs”) in atleast 30% (randomly chosen) of all polling
stations within each Assembly Segment/Constituency. This Petition
contends that such cross-verification and counting of VVPAT slips is
essential in the interests of ‘Democracy Principles’ that elections shoud
adhere to the following requirements:
(i) Transparency of the process – i.e. in a manner that the general
public can be satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded and
counted;
(ii) All essential steps in the elections ought to be subject to public
scrutiny/examinability;
(iii) Ordinary citizens ought to be able to check the essential steps in
the election process without special expert knowledge and
(iv) There ought to be verifiability in the counting of votes and
ascertainment of the results reliably without any special technical
knowledge.
It is submitted that the process of election also ought to comply with
the principle that elections must not only be free and fair, but also be
seen to be free and fair. This Petition also challenges as manifestly
arbitrary, irrational, unreasonable and, inter alia, in violation of Article
14 of the Constitution of India, the Respondent’s decision to confine

26
C
such a cross-verification exercise to a statistically insignificant number
of approximately only one polling station in each constituency,
regardless of the number of polling stations in such a constituency.
Petitioners are citizens of India who are public spirited persons as is
demonstrated from the body of work that they have undertaken over the
years.
Petitioner No.1 is a former Officer of the Indian Army and Indian
Administrative Service. He has undertaken official duties as a returning
officer, district electoral officer and as an observer in connection with
assembly and parliamentary elections while he was in service in the 1970s
and 1980s. More recently, he has organised and campaigned under the
name of Forum for Electoral Integrity, which deals with various issues
relating to tackling and containing factors that undermine or tend to
undermine the fairness and integrity of Indian elections. Some former
election commissioners are also associated with the Forum. He has written
several articles and spoken at several fora on the need for electoral integrity
and free and fair elections to sustain India’s democracy.
Petitioner No.2 is a former Indian Foreign Service officer who retired
as India’s ambassador to Italy and Permanent Representative to UN in
Rome. He has written and spoken about a number of governance issues,
including issues relating to elections, since his retirement.He is currently
Professor at Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi.
Petitioner No.3 is a retired Banker, noted trade unionist and was until
recently the General Secretary of All India Bank Officers Confederation,
a trade union of more than 3 lakh Bank Officers across the country.
27
D
India is the largest electoral democracy in the world with more than
nine hundred million registered voters. The constitutional mandate of
superintendence direction and control of elections to parliament and state
legislative assemblies is vested under Article 324 of the Constitution with
the sole Respondent herein, the Election Commission of India.
Elections to Loksabha and Assemblies have been conducted by the
Respondent through the use of Electronic Voting Machines (“EVMs”) in
the last two decades. This Hon’ble Court and other Hon’ble High Courts
in the country have examined the constitutionality of the use of EVMs and
the issues arising therefrom in several cases.
In 2013, In Subramanian Swamy v. ECI [(2013) 10 SCC 500],
hereinafter (“Swamy”), this Hon’ble Court held that in the interests of
transparency and voter satisfaction, it is imperative that the Election
Commission of India, whenever it conducts elections through the use of
EVMs, ought to implement a mechanism of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit
Trails (“VVPATs”), in order that the voter can satisfy himself that his vote
has been accurately recorded and in the interest that should there be any
question as to the accuracy of the electronic count, the paper count would
be available for the same.
After some delay in complying with directions in Swamy, the
Respondent has been conducting some of the recent state elections using
VVPAT EVMs and also undertaken to conduct the 2019 General Elections
and all future General and State Assembly elections by means of the
VVPAT EVMs.
The Petitioners submit that the implementation of this Hon’ble Court’s
directions in Swamy and the larger principles of structural due process,

28
E
transparency, examinability, voter confidence, voter satisfaction require
the Election Commission to conduct random cross-verification of EVM
counts with VVPAT counts in order to not only detect any technological
mischief or malprogramming of EVMs, but also deter such mischief. The
Election Commission of India recognises the same and has been
implementing such a random cross-verification in the recent state
elections.
However, the fraction of polling stations chosen for such random cross-
verification by the Election Commission has been inexplicably miniscule
(less than 1% of polling stations in each constituency) and the Petitioners
contend that a decision to limit the cross-verification to such a miniscule
share is manifestly arbitrary, irrational, unreasonable and in violation of
Article 14 of the Constitution and also an effective violation of democracy
principles and the principle of elections not only needing to be free and
fair, but also seen to be free and fair. The Petitioners submit that in order
to detect and deter any such mischief or bias in the EVM process, atleast
30% of all polling stations in a constituency must be chosen randomly for
EVM counts to be cross-verified with VVPAT counts.
Hence this Writ Petition.
2000 The Respondent began widely using electronic voting
machines (hereinafter, ‘EVMs’) for recording storing
and counting of votes in the General elections and state
assembly elections since the year 2000.

29
F
09.03.2009 In a landmark decision of the Federal Constitutional
Court of Germany pronounced on 09.03.2009, it was
held that the manner in which the machines deployed
were being used violated the public nature of elections
as envisaged in the German Constitution which
prescribed that all essential steps and procedures of an
election are subject to the possibility of public
scrutiny/examinibility unless other constitutional
interests justify otherwise. It was further held that
when EVMs are deployed, it must be possible for the
citizen to check the essential steps in the election act
and in ascertainment of the results reliably without
special expert knowledge.
08.10.2013 Some of the issues relating to the constitutionality,
legality and suitability of EVMs for the conduct of
elections in India was examined by this Hon’ble Court
in Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of
India [ (2013) 10 SCC 500 ] and directions passed by
this Hon’ble Court vide judgment dt. 08.10.2013.
In Swamy, inter alia, this Hon’ble Court held that
“From the materials placed by both the sides, we
are satisfied that the “paper trail” is an

30
G
indispensable requirement of free and fair
elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs
can be achieved only with the introduction of the
“paper trail”. EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the
accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to
have fullest transparency in the system and to
restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary
to set up EVMs with Vvpat system because vote is
nothing but an act of expression which has immense
importance in a democratic system.”
09.08.2017 This Hon’ble Court, in Swamy, had stopped short of
specifying a timeline for the implementation of the
VVPAT enabled EVMs and that resulted in nearly a
four-year delay for the widespread implementation of
VVPATs by the Respondent. It was only after another
Petition came before this Hon’ble Court in SLP (C)
No.13598/2017 that the Respondent committed to
conducting all future elections using VVPATs in
compliance with the directions of this Hon’ble Court
in Swamy.
December In the Assembly Elections for the States of Gujarat and
2017 Himachal Pradesh, the Respondent had mandated the
counting of VVPAT slips for only one polling station
per Assembly Constituency. This worked out to just

31
H
182 out of 44,597 polling stations (or 0.4% of the
EVMs) in Gujarat and to just 68 out of 7516 polling
stations (or 0.9% of the EVMs) in Himachal Pradesh.
13.02.2018 The Respondent followed a similarly sparse and weak
sampling method in cross-verifying mandatory
samples of VVPATs vide a circular in February 2018
for the elections of the state assemblies of Meghalaya,
Nagaland and Tripura.
A circular dt. 13.02.2018 was issued by the
Respondent containing instructions to all Returning
Officers to that effect.
10.04.2018 Letter dt. 10.04.2018 from titled “MEASURES TO
ENSURE INTEGRITY & FAIRNESS IN THE
FORTHCOMING PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION-
2019 – REPRESENTATION THEREOF” to the
Respondent from Petitioners and groups affiliated to
the Petitioners.
04.07.2018 Letter dt. 04.07.2018 by a group of retired civil
servants and Armed Forces veterans titled
“ELECTORAL INTEGRITY – ENSURING
RELIABILITY OF EVMS AND VVPAT AND
HAND COUNTING OF LARGE PERCENTAGE OF
PAPER SLIPS - REPRESENTATION THEREOF” to
the Respondents, inter alia, raising similar issues and

32
I
requesting the Respondent to decide and plan to choose
a statistically significant % of polling stations for
VVPAT cross verification.
24.08.2018 On 24.08.2018, representatives of the Petitioner met
with the Chief Election Commissioner and was also
furnished a copy of the presentation by Dr. Ajay G
Bhat and Dr. Rajeeva Karandikar, justifying the
Election Commission’s decision to confine its random
cross-verification to merely 479 of all the polling
stations across all constituencies in the country.
August 2018 Following the said meeting, Dr. S.K. Nath, former
Director General of the Central Statistical
Organisation, Government of India prepared a note
questioning and rebutting several of the assumptions in
the work of Dr. Bhat and Karandikar. Dr. S. K. Nath
also wrote a paper/note on the sample size necessary
for ECI to satisfy itself with 95 – 99% confidence level,
the integrity and flawlessness of the elections, as a
country-wide process and a constituency-wide process.
Accordingly, it is clear that atleast 30% of polling
stations must be chosen by the Respondent for cross-
verification of EVM counts with VVPAT slips.
04.10.2018 Another meeting of the representatives of the
Petitioners and affiliated persons with the Election

33
J
Commission for India wherein it became clear to the
Petitioners that the Election Commission was planning
proceed on the advice as presented by the <1%
VVPAT cross-verification as propounded by Dr. Bhat
and Dr. Karandikar.
Hence this Writ Petition.

34
1

WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. ______ OF 2016
[Public Interest Litigation]
BETWEEN
1. Mr. M.G. Devasahayam

s/o Maria Gnanaprahasam,
r/o House No: 21,
Adhimoolam Street,
Ponnappanadar Nagar,
Nagercoil,
Tamil Nadu - 629 004.
2. Mr. Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian

s/o Kalarickal Joseph Francis,
r/o C 45 IFS Apartments
Mayur Vihar Phase 1,
Delhi - 110092
3. Mr. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev

s/o M.Devasahayam,
C 15/2, SAF Games Village,
Koyambedu,
Chennai,
Tamil Nadu - 600 017
…Petitioners
Versus

Through
Sr. Principal Secretary
NirvachanSadan, Ashoka Road,
New Delhi -110001
…Respondent
35
2
WRIT PETITION UNDER ARTICLE 32 OF

THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA
TO
THE HON’BLE THE CHIEF

JUSTICE OF INDIA AND HIS
OTHER COMPANION JUSTICES
OF THE HON’BLE THE
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA.
THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE

PETITIONERS ABOVENAMED
MOST RESPECTFULLY SHOWETH:
A. Parties
1. The Petitioners are citizens of India who have preferred this Article 32
Petition, in the nature of public interest litigation. The Petitioners state that
they have filed this instant petition with no personal interest and/or oblique
motive whatsoever and seek to draw no benefit or advantage, whether
direct or indirect, whatsoever by preferring the instant case, other than as
a member of the general public.
i. A true copy of a profile of Petitioner No.1, dt. NIL, along with his
identity proof is annexed herewith as ANNEXURE-P-1 (from Pg
36 to 38). It is pertinent to mention here that the Petitioner No.1 is
a formal civil servant who while in service had, at several times,
performed functions and duties and officiated in connection with
elections including – as Assistant Returning Officer for
Parliamentary Constituency of Hissar in 1971; Returning Officer for
the Assembly Constituency of Jagadhri in 1972; Returning Officer

36
3
for the Parliamentary Constituency of Chandigarh in 1977; District
Electoral Officer in the Districts of Bhiwani (Haryana) and
Chandigarh from 1972 to 1977; Observer to Parliamentary and
Assembly Elections from 1978-85. He has also been convenor of
the ‘Forum for Electoral Integrity’ since 2010 – a voluntary
organization and a campaign in which some former election
commissioners are also associated. He is also the author of Books:
“JP in Jail-An Uncensored Account”; “JP Movement, Emergency
and India’s Second Freedom”; “A Drop of Love-Memoir of Saint
Teresa.”
ii. A true copy of a profile of Petitioner No.2, , dt. NIL, along with his
identity proof is annexed herewith as ANNEXURE-P-2 (from Pg
39 to 40). It is pertinent to mention here that Petitioner No.2 is a
former Indian Foreign Service officer who retired as India’s
ambassador to Italy and Permanent Representative to UN in Rome.
He has written and spoken about a number of governance issues,
including issues relating to elections, since his retirement.He is
currently Professor at Indian Society of International Law, New
Delhi.
iii. A true copy of a profile of Petitioner No.3, along with his identity
proof is annexed herewith as ANNEXURE-P-3 (from Pg 41 to 44).
It is pertinent to Petitioner No.3 is a retired Bank Officer, who until
recently served as the General Secretary of the All India Bank

37
4
Officers’ Association, a registered Trade Union with membership of
more than 300,000 officers of public sector banks across India and
also as President of the All India State Bank Officers’ Association.
1A. The Petitioners have preferred this Petition after their approach to and the
representations, as detailed hereinbelow, to the Respondent with the issues
and grounds raised herein and after it became clear to them that the said issues
have received no rational consideration by the Respondent.
2. The sole Respondent herein is the Election Commission of India
(hereinafter, ECI), a body tasked with, under Article 324 of the
Constitution of India, inter alia, the conduct and management of Elections
to the Loksabha, Rajyasabha, Legislative Assemblies and for the election
for the post of President and Vice-President.
B. BACKGROUND & FACTS IN BRIEF
3. India is the largest electoral democracy in the world with more than Nine
hundred million registered voters. The constitutional mandate of
legislative assemblies is vested with the Respondent.
4. The Respondent has used electronic voting machines (hereinafter,
‘EVMs’) for recording storing and counting of votes in the General
elections and state assembly elections since the year 2000.

38
5
5. The use of electronic voting machine for the purpose of elections has been
challenged before constitutional courts inter alia, on the following
grounds:-
i. That the security of the election process is compromised because
EVMs are not tamper proof.
ii. That electronic voting is inherently opaque and lacks transparency.
6. The Respondent No. 2 on the other hand has defended EVMs, inter alia,
on the following grounds.
a. That EVMs are stand-alone, non networked machines.
b. That EVMs are manufactured in two public sector units namely
ECIL and BEL, unlike in other countries where such
manufacturing is by private companies and that there is no
question of any vested interest at play and that therefore their
security is unassailable.
c. That EVMs have been time and again successfully verified and
certified after end-to-end testing by a committee of independent
technical experts and the STQC.
d. That in EVMs, data is stored internally and not transferable by
any device.
e. That the ECI has evolved full end to end security protocol and
administrative safeguards for the use, storage, transportation and
tracking of EVMs.
39
6
f. EVMs are subjected to first level checks and mock drills
involving candidates/representatives at several stages.
g. That every EVMs has a unique number attached to it, which is
recorded in the election commission’s database through EVMs
tracking software and that the number of the EVMs can always
be cross checked with the database.
h. That the software used in the CDM is one time Programmable
(OTP), which can’t be re-written after manufacture.
i. That the ECI-EVMs are always under strict, uniform, high
profile administrative and physical security as per legal
framework across the country.
j. That Section 61 A of the Representation of the Peoples Act 1951
allows the use of EVMs by ECI. The different High Courts across
the country have also upheld the use of EVMs time and again in
various judgments and the Karnataka High Court in 2004
declared ECI-EVMs as “national pride” because of its
7. The use of EVMs is of recent vintage, only brought about by the
technological advance in the last two or three decades. While India has
embraced it, there are several countries which have considered the use of
EVMs and rejected the same for good reason. For instance, in a landmark
decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany pronounced on
09.03.2009, it was held that the manner in which the machines deployed
were being used violated the public nature of elections as envisaged in the
German Constitution which prescribed that all essential steps and

40
7
procedures of an election are subject to the possibility of public
scrutiny/examinibility unless other constitutional interests justify
otherwise. It was further held that when EVMs are deployed, it must be
possible for the citizen to check the essential steps in the election act and
in ascertainment of the results reliably without special expert knowledge.
A true translated copy of the judgment dt 09.03.2009 of the Federal
Constitutional Court of Germany is annexed herewith and marked as
ANNEXURE-P-4 (from Pg 45 to 118 ).
8. It is submitted that the stand taken by the Respondent is almost entirely
technology oriented which are understood by experts. However, elections
are an exercise in democracy in which common people participate. Even if
one were to assume that the electoral process with the use of EVMs that
are being presently used to conduct elections may be devices of technology
excellence, there is still significant scope for better adherence to
‘Democracy Principles’ of examinability, transparency, knowledge and
satisfaction of the voter – which is of essence in a process that is in effect
transfer of sovereignty from the citizens to their elected representatives.
9. Some of the issues relating to the constitutionality, legality and suitability
of EVMs for the conduct of elections in India was examined by this
Hon’ble Court in Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India [
(2013) 10 SCC 500 ] (hereinafter “Swamy”)
A true copy of the judgment of this Hon’ble Court dt. 08.10.2013 in
Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India is annexed herewith
and marked as ANNEXURE-P-5 (From pg 119 to 127).

41
8
10.In Swamy, a direction was sought to the ECI to implement paper trails,
called the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (hereainfter VVPATs), inter
alia, in order for the voter to satisfy himself that what was recorded as her
vote was indeed her vote and for the sanctity of the elections in general,
given that the presence of audit trail is necessary for detection of EVM
fraud if any.
11.In Swamy, inter alia, this Hon’ble Court held that
“From the materials placed by both the sides, we are satisfied that the
“paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections.
The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be achieved only with the
introduction of the “paper trail”. EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the
accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to have fullest transparency
in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to
set up EVMs with Vvpat system because vote is nothing but an act of
expression which has immense importance in a democratic system.”
12.It is submitted that the main purpose behind the introduction of VVPATs
is to bring in accuracy, verifiability and transparency in the casting and
counting of votes. With VVPATs, voters can verify and satisfy themselves
that their vote has been accurately recorded against the candidate they
voted for. It is submitted that it automatically follows that it is only when
the paper slips as verified by the voters are counted that the true purpose
behind introduction of VVPATs is served. Without counting of VVPAT
paper slips in a significant percentage of polling stations in each

42
9
constituency, the objectives of verifiability and transparency in the
democratic process would remain unrealized.
13.The Petitioners in the instant Petition seek to not only effectively enforce
the directions of this Hon’ble Court in Swamy, but also seek to apprise this
Hon’ble Court of the relevant developments in the last five years since the
decision in Swamy was rendered and to seek appropriate directions for
processual changes that strengthen the spirit of the directions of this
Hon’ble Court in Swamy in furtherance of the principles of democracy that
elections must not only be free and fair but also be seen to be free and fair.
14.This Hon’ble Court stopped short of specifying a timeline for the
implementation of the VVPAT enabled EVMs and that resulted in nearly
a four-year delay for the widespread implementation of VVPATs by the
Respondent. It was only after another Petition came before this Hon’ble
Court in SLP (C) No.13598/2017 that the Respondent committed to
conducting all future elections using VVPATs in compliance with the
directions of this Hon’ble Court in Swamy.
A true copy of the Order of this Hon’ble Court dt. 09.08.2017 in SLP (C)
No.13598/2017 is annexed herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-P-
6(From pg 128 to 133)
15.Accordingly, EVMs with VVPATs were used in all polling stations in
select State Assembly Elections only from 2017 onwards, and the Election
43
10
Commission has planned to conduct all future Assembly Elections and the
2019 Parliamentary Elections only with VVPAT EVMs.
16.The exercise of cross-verification and counting of VVPAT slips for
tallying the EVM counts is governed by the following.
i. Rule 56D of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 titled “Scrutiny of
Paper Trail”.
Sub-Rule 56D (1) confers the right on a candidate or his election
agent or counting agents to apply in writing to the Returning Officer
to count the VVPAT paper slips. Sub-Rule 56D(2) confers
discretion on the Returning Officer to allow or reject such request in
accordance with guidelines issued by the ECI.
ii. In addition to Rule 56D, the Election Commission also issues
circulars and/or instructions to the Returning Officers to do a
mandatory cross-verification of VVPAT counts for a certain
randomly chosen number of EVMs per every constituency.
17.It is the contention of the Petitioners that in an electronic process, while a
right-to-request based verification of VVPATs under Rule 56D is
necessary, it is not sufficient, given the assymetries of information and the
general opacity of the electronic voting process. It is submitted that the
candidate is unlikely to be aware of any malprogramming or technological
mischief that has been perpetrated by any other candidate, party of any
other candidate or any other foreign national. It is submitted by the
Petitioners that a mandatory cross verification of a reasonable sample of

44
11
VVPATs is necessary to restore voter confidence and from the stand point
of the electoral process also needing to be seen to be free and fair.
18.In the Assembly Elections for the States of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh,
the Respondent had mandated the counting of VVPAT slips for only one
polling station per Assembly Constituency. This worked out to just 182 out
of 44,597 polling stations (or 0.4% of the EVMs) in Gujarat and to just 68
out of 7516 polling stations (or 0.9% of the EVMs) in Himachal Pradesh.
Petitioners crave liberty to file additional documents and a detailed report
in relation to the use of VVPATs in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat
elections at a later stage.
19.The Respondent followed a similarly sparse and weak sampling method in
cross-verifying mandatory samples of VVPATs vide a circular in February
2018 for the elections of the state assemblies of Meghalaya, Nagaland and
Tripura.
A true copy of the Circular issued by the Respondent dt. 13.02.2018 is
annexed herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-P-7 (from Pg 134 to 138).
20.It is the case of the Petitioners that, in implementing VVPAT and cross
verification of VVPATs, the Respondent has effectively paid mere lip
service to the directions of this Hon’ble Court and has implemented the
same effectively only as a measure of tokenism.
21.It is submitted that the use of VVPATS was necessitated on two grounds
45
12
i. That it is necessary for the voter, after having voted, to satisfy
herself that what was recorded as her vote was indeed her vote, the
candidate against whom the vote was registered was her choice of
candidate and that the paper trail, acknowledging her vote, would
impart that satisfaction.
ii. That it is necessary as a structural, processual feature, independent
of the technology used for EVMs that if VVPATs are tallied to test
the EVM counts and the same match, the sanctity of the voting
process is maintained. Further, it would also act to defeat and deter
against any mischief such as mal-programming or tampering or
manipulation of EVM counts, given that on a good chance of the
EVM totals being tallied with VVPATs, which have been verified
by the voters themselves,the chances of such mischief ending up in
futility is high.
iii. It is submitted that the Petitioners’ are aware of the Respondents’
repeated assurance of the impossibility of the mal-programming or
any technological mischief possible as against EVMs. However, it
is to be pointed out to this Hon’ble Court that that is only a
reasonable expectation and the possibility, even a very remote one,
cannot be and is not ruled out by any cybersecurity expert. Further,
with every new method of hack that is being discovered, it would be
imprudent to ever say ‘never.’

46
13
iv. Further, insofar as the two bodies entrusted with the programming
and manufacture of the EVMs are public sector entities not directly
under the supervision and control of the Respondent, there is a clear
violation of structural due process. The violation of structural due
process is aggravated by the two PSUs being in direct control of the
Union Government – in view of the fact that the Union Government,
although a responsible entity under the Constitution, is a partisan
organism, and certainly seen as a partisan organism, insofar as the
process of elections is concerned. After all, the very need for an
Election Commission, independent of the central government, is
premised on that.
22.It is submitted that a reasonable sampling size for cross-verifying EVM
counts with VVPATs is crucial to give effect to the directions in Swamy
and to protect the sanctity of the process of elections, which not only need
to be free and fair but also need to be seen to be free and fair.
23. There are several reasons why a EVM-based voting process has serious
concerns and flaws and requires additional processual and structural
safeguards, as had been noted by this Hon’ble Court in Swamy. Some of
the concerns are briefly summarised as follows. It is submitted that these
concerns are to be seen cumulatively and not on a balance of probability
against each item, as the Respondent has thus far sought to advance– in
view of the requirement that the elections must not only be, but be seen to
be beyond any reasonable blemish.

47
14
a. Despite the Respondent’s claims in several of its press releases
and as affidavits before this Court and the Constitutional Courts,
the possibilities such as a cable-fraud, hacking or mal-
programming of the firmware/software in the EVMs to
manipulate the counts and to introduce a trojan to it and other
technological compromises are still open, even if the Respondent
considers them to be too remote. A lack of structural and
processual safeguard, independent of the technological safeguard
is crucial – given that newer and more innovative methods of
tampering and technological mischief get invented everyday.
b. A true copy of the detailed note dt NIL prepared by the
Petitioners as to all the possible technological compromises of
the sanctity of the EVMs is annexed herewith and marked as
ANNEXURE-P-8 (From Pg 139 to 175). It is submitted that
the contents of this note may be read to be part of the averments
in the instant Petition.
c. Further, the Respondent has entrusted several important and
essential functions such as manufacturing, testing and
maintenance of EVMs to agencies that the ECI has no
administrative control over. Admittedly, most of the agencies are
public sector agencies. However, it is pertinent to point out that
in the interest of structural and procedural due process, the
Respondent ought to be in independent and effective control over

48
15
the said entities, which are owned and/or controlled by the Union
of India. It is clarified again by the Petitioners that there is no
imputation of any sort against the said entities or against the
Union of India that there is any attempt to tamper with or create
any mischief, but only to point out that such an arrangement is
structurally flawed and therefore fails to inspire confidence.
d. Such a structural flaw leaves open atleast three kinds of insider
frauds and therefore a suspicion as to the exploitation of such a
flaw and a perpetration of fraud or mischief will always remain
irrespective of the integrity and the independence of the Election
Commission. – namely (a) mal-programming, hacking and other
mischief by the EVM chip and machine manufacturers; (b) At
the district level, during the non-election period, when the EVMs
are stored in godowns in multiple locations with inadequate
security systems and (c) At the stage of ‘first level checks’ prior
to an election when the EVMs are serviced by ‘authorised
technicians’ from entities such as BEL and ECIL (the public
sector undertakings entrusted with the function of manufacture
of EVMs). The above detailed note also includes a section on
the insider frauds that are possible and the contents of the same
may be read in as averments herein.
e. Several reports of late have pointed to malfunctioning and/or
mismanagement of the EVM maintenance and/or storage.

49
16
Several other reports also of suspicions of bias in the EVMs have
also emerged.
f. A true copy of a news report in Money Control dt. 16.08.2017
relyong on an RTI response of the Respondent relating to theft
of seventy EVMs is annexed herewith and marked as
ANNEXURE-P-9 (from pg 176 to 177).
g. A true copy of the news report in Business Standard dt.
10.04.2018 relying on the RTI response from the Respondent
indiciating the difference in figures of EVMs supplied by the
manufacturers as against the number of EVMs received by the
Respondent is annexed herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-
P-10(from pg 178 to 180).
h. A collection of News articles of various dates pointing at
suspicion of EVMs particularly towards one party are several and
the Petitioners crave liberty to catalogue and file them as
additional documents at a later stage.
i. The petitioners state that several countries including Germany,
Canada, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Kazakhsthan and
Romania have trialled the electronic voting system and have
rejected the same with good reason. The Petitioners also crave
liberty to catalogue and file reports on the experience of EVMs

50
17
in other countries as required as additional documents at a later
stage.
24.It is reiterated that the Petitioners are not challenging or delegitimising any
election so far held in the country, nor are they delegitimsing or
questioning the integrity and independence of the constitutional authority
such as the Respondent. However, it is necessary for an advanced
democracy such as India to adopt a process that has integrity and inspires
confidence, independent of the technological safeguards : and a process
that acknowledges, accounts for assymetries in information and the opacity
of the electronic voting and makes meaningful use of the VVPATs.
25.It is submitted that the sampling size of anything less than 30% for the
selection of verifying VVPATs is wholly unreasonable, manifestly
arbitrary, irrational and unconstitutional for being ultra vires of Article 14
of the Constitution of India. Furthermore, the various polling stations in
the constituency are not similar and the sample drawn may not be truly
representative of the constituency as a whole. Therefore it is also desirable
that a stratified sampling be performed with a random sample of one or
more polling stations drawn from each of the following ‘strata’: urban
(middle/upper class); urban (poor/slums); semi-urban; rural;
Dalits/minorities; remote hilly/desert/forest areas; those with very heavy
voter turnout (> 80%); with moderate voter turnout (50% to 80%); with
low voter turnout (<50%); those about which a large number of complaints
received etc.
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26. It is submitted that the Election Commission should make it mandatory
for the Returning Officer to order the hand-counting of all the VVPAT
slips of all the polling stations in the Constituency in either of the following
2 scenarios:
Scenario1: Where the margin of victory is very narrow and is less than,
say, 3%.
Scenario 2: Irrespective of the margin of victory, where the discrepancy
between the machine-counting total and the hand-counting total in respect
of the sample EVM/VVPATs taken together is greater than, say, 1%. A
‘margin of error’ of more than 1% requires great caution and use of all
means and methods available to ascertain the accuracy of the counts.
27.It is submitted that the Petitioners are aware of the orders of this Hon’ble
Court in ManubhaiChavada v. ECI, Writ Petition (Civil) No 1012 of 2017
and in Kamal Nath v. ECI, Writ Petition (Civil) No 935 OF 2018
respectively dismissing the prayers for declaring as unconstitutional Rule
56D of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 which conferred unguided
discretion on the election officials to allow or refuse a request to tally
VVPAT slips with EVM counts in any given constituency, and a random
verification VVPATs of 10% of all EVMs to be used in the Madhya
Pradesh assembly polls respectively. However, it is submitted that the
said orders as to those respective prayers have dismissed those prayers in
limine and as such create no binding law nor do they operate as res judicata
(constructive or otherwise) and do not foreclose the possibility of the
consideration of the question by this Hon’ble Court.

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28.A list of correspondences, contents of which may be read in as averments
herein, from persons affiliated with the Petitioners with the Respondent on
the issue of the sample size and the method of selection of the samples of
EVMs for VVPAT count verification is given hereinbelow.
i. A true copy of the letter dt. 10.04.2018 from ----- titled
“MEASURES TO ENSURE INTEGRITY & FAIRNESS IN THE
FORTHCOMING PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION-2019 –
REPRESENTATION THEREOF” is annexed herewith and marked
as ANNEXURE-P-11 (from Pg 181 to 189).
ii. A true copy of the letter dt. 04.07.2018 by a group of retired civil
servants and Armed Forces veterans titled “ELECTORAL
INTEGRITY – ENSURING RELIABILITY OF EVMS AND
VVPAT AND HAND COUNTING OF LARGE PERCENTAGE
OF PAPER SLIPS - REPRESENTATION THEREOF” is annexed
herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-P-12 (from Pg 190 to 204).
iii. The representatives of the Petitioners and the representatives of the
Respondent met the Chief Election Commissioner on 24-08-2018
and again on 04.10.2018. During the said meetings, the Respondent
Commission seemed to justify its decision to only randomly cross-
verify one polling booth per constituency based on a paper by
learned statisticians Dr. Ajay G. Bhat and Dr. Rajeeva Karandikar.
A true copy of the said presentation dt. 24-08-2018 is annexed
herewith as ANNEXURE-P-13 (from Pg 205 to 227).

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iv. However, it is submitted that the said analysis by Bhat &
Karandikar has several false assumptions and pitfalls. The same
have been summarised in a note prepared by Dr.SK Nath,former
Director-General, Central Statistical Organisation, Government of
India. A true copy of the note prepared by Dr. S.K. Nath dt.
25.08.2018 is annexed herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-P-14
(from Pg 228 to 231). The contentions in the said note may be read
as part and parcel of the averments constitution this Petition.
29. The summary of the correspondences as is relevant for this Petition is
centered around the sampling for the counting and tallying of VVPATs
with EVMs i.e. the the number of selected sample polling stations chosen
for VVPAT cross-verification from each constituency and the method of
selection of those samples.
30. The Petitioners are given to understand that the Respondent is satisfied by
merely cross-verifying one randomly chosen polling station per assembly
segment/constituency, similar to the circular dt 13.02.2018 as referenced
above.
31.The Petitioners submit that the said sampling is wholly unreasonable and
irrational. The Petitioners rely on an analysis by Dr.SK Nath, former
Director-General, Central Statistical Organisation, Government of India
who has examined the issue and come to the completely doubtless
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conclusion that the the sampling size of 1 booth per constituency only
gives a 60% confidence of a mischief-less and/or a flaw-less, unbiased
election and that to achieve a 95% to 99% confidence level, as is necessary
for the functional integrity of electoral process, atleast 10 – 30% of all the
EVMs/polling stations must be selected randomly for cross-verification
and tallying EVM counts.
32.A true copy of the Paper dt. 26-08-2018 presented by Dr. Nath titled
“Sampling Design and Test of Hypothesis for VVPAT based Auditing of
EVM” is annexed herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-P-15 (From Pg
232 to 239).
33.Petitioners state that there could be other statistical experts that have come
to the conclusion identical to, or broadly similar to Dr. Nath’s as detailed
in the Paper mentioned above and crave the liberty to file those as
additional documents and the contents therein consistent with the
submission herein may be read in as averments constituting this Petition.
34.Even assuming that Dr. Nath’s analysis is not wholly accurate in some
respect, it points out as to how one may reasonably harbour belief that the
sampling size and method chosen by the Respondent does not inspire
sufficient confidence to meet the standard of elections being not only free
and fair but also needing to be seen to be free and fair and as such sufficient
to maintain this Petition.
C.GROUNDS
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35.The Petitioners submit that the Respondent’s decision to confine the cross-
verification and tallying of VVPAT Slips to a mere one EVM per
constituency across the length and breadth of the country is
unconstitutional and the grounds set out below also support the
declarations, directions and orders sought for by the Petitioners and each
of them, as well, may be treated in the alternative and without prejudice to
one another: -
A. BECAUSE the free and fair elections to offices and positions of political
power are a sine qua non of a modern democracy and the preambular
promise of democracy in India’s Constitution is one of its basic features,
which cannot be derogated or suspended even by a Constitutional
Amendment, let alone a law, or let alone, as in this case, a simple circular
by the Respondent or a Rule in the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.
B. BECAUSE free and fair elections in India are realised in India through
the right to vote and universal adult suffrage, which is a composite right
including within it the fundamental right to freedom of speech under
Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, constitutional right under Article 326
of the Constitution read with Articles 14, 15 and 325 of the Constitution
and also statutory rights under Sections 16 – 19 of the RP Act 1950 and
Section 62 of the Representation of Peoples Act 1951.
C. BECAUSE the violation of the right to free and fair elections is a violation
of fundamental rights in Article 19(1)(a) read with Article 14 and 21 of
the Constitution of India.

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D. BECAUSE confidence of the voters in the integrity of the election process
and the duty of the body tasked with conducting elections to conduct
elections that are seen to be free and fair is an insegragable part and aspect
of the right to free and fair elections.
E. BECAUSE fundamental rights jurisprudence in India has progressed from
a culture of authority to a culture of justification and it is no longer
sufficient for the Respondent to take shelter under the formal
independence of the constitution of the Commission, but to justify to the
people of this Republic and this Hon’ble Court as to why the harms or the
costs of the additional layer of confidence building measure, viz. more
VVPATs being selected for mandatory cross-verificartion,
disproportionately outweigh the clear benefit of added confidence in the
integrity of the process of the election and its results.
F. BECAUSE a selection of sample size of a mere one polling station from
every Assembly segments/constituency where each constituency can have
an average of 200-375 polling stations in major states is wholly
unreasonable, manifestly arbitrary, irrational and unconstitutional for
being in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution. Similarly, a sample
size of one polling station per constituency is also statistically minsicule

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and such a sampling and sample testing exercise is similarly wholly
unreasonable, manifestly arbitrary, irrational and unconstitutional.
G. BECAUSE a rational verification exercise that has in mind the should
strive to achieve a 95 to 99% statistical confidence level in the sanctity of
the electoral results in each and every electoral constituency and that can
be achieved, by all indications, only by a mandatory VVPAT cross-
verification and tallying of the counts in atleast 30% of all the EVMs used
in each and every constituency.
H. BECAUSE an accurate recording and counting of the democratic will of
the electorate, to the satisfaction of the electorate, is indispensable to the
democratic process. The exercise of the right to vote must take place in a
manner that is in consonance with the highest principles of integrity and
fairness as enshrined in the Constitution of India.
I. BECAUSE the Respondent is bound to act in aid of the Hon’ble Supreme
Court under Article 144 of the Constitution and that the mandatory
verification of the VVPAT of a miniscule sample that achieves only 60%
statistical confidence level is clearly contrary to the spirit of the Hon’ble
Supreme Court’s orders in Swamy and is therefore a violation of the
mandate of Article 144.

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36. The Petitioners crave liberty to add other grounds at a later stage in the
proceedings and further state that they have not preferred any similar
petition or for similar reliefs before any other court, tribunal or judicial
forum.
D. PRAYERS
In the premises, this Hon'ble Court may be pleased to issue appropriate
declarations, writs, orders and directions as set out below:
a) A Writ of Mandamus directing the Respondent to issue appropriate
instructions to the Returning Officers to mandatorily count/scrutinise the
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails of at least 30% of all Electronic Voting
Machines used in the Constituency in every election conducted using
Electronic Voting Machines by the Respondent henceforth starting from
the General Elections of 2019; and
b) A Writ of Mandmus directing the Election Commission to make it
mandatory for the Returning Officer to order the hand-counting of all the
VVPAT slips of all the polling stations where the margin of victory is very
narrow and is less than 3%; and
c) A Writ of Mandmus directing the Election Commission to make it
mandatory for the Returning Officer to order the hand-counting of all the
VVPAT slips of all the polling stations where the discrepancy between the
machine-counting total and the hand-counting total in respect of the 5%
sample EVMs taken together is greater than a maximum threshold of 1%;
and/or
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d) Pass any other order or direction that this Hon’ble Court may deem just
and proper in the facts and circumstances of this case.
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KINDNESS , THE PETITIONERS SHALL, AS
IN DUTY BOUND , EVER PRAY
DRAWN BY:
MR. PRASANNA S, ADVOCATE
FILED BY:
________________
MR. GOUTHAM SHIVSHANKAR
ADVOCATE-ON-RECORD (CODE:2698)
FOR THE PETITIONERS
Drawn on: 14.11.2018

Filed on: 30.11.2018
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THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
WRIT PETITION (C) NO. OF 2018
IN THE MATTER OF:
M.G. Devasahayam & Ors. ...Petitioners
Versus
Election Commission of India. ...Respondent
AFFIDAVIT
I, M.G. Devasahayam, S/o Maria Gnanaprahasam , aged about 76
years, R/o House No: 21, Adhimoolam Street, Ponnappanadar Nagar,
Nagercoil – 629004, presently in New Delhi, do hereby solemnly affirm and
state as under:
1. I am the Petitioner No.1 herein, I am fully conversant with the facts
and circumstances of the Present case and am as such competent to
swear the present affidavit on behalf of the Petitioners.
2. I say that I have no personal interest, motive, gain or oblique reasons
in the filing of the accompanying Petition and the same is being filed
purely in general public interest.
DEPONENT
VERIFICATION:
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Verified at ____________ on this the ___________ day of November, 2018
that the contents of paragraphs 1 to 2 of my above affidavit are true and correct
to my knowledge, information and belief, that no part of it is false and nothing
material has been concealed there from.
DEPONENT
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IN THE MATTER OF:
Versus
Union of India & Ors. ...Respondents
AFFIDAVIT
I, M.G. Devasahayam, S/o Maria Gnanaprahasam , aged about 76
years, R/o House No: 21, Adhimoolam Street, Ponnappanadar Nagar,
Nagercoil – 629004, presently in New Delhi, do hereby solemnly affirm and
state as under:
1. I am the Petitioner No.1 herein, I am fully conversant with the facts and
circumstances of the Present case and am as such competent to swear
the present affidavit on behalf of the Petitioners.
2. I have read and understood the contents of the accompanying writ
petition from pages through and annexures thereto
namely through and also the accompanying applications
and say that the facts set out therein are true to my knowledge and
submissions made therein are on legal advice received from my
Advocates and believed to be true and correct.

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DEPONENT
VERIFICATION:
Verified at ______________ on this ______ day of November, 2018 that the
contents of paragraphs 1 to 2 of my above affidavit are true and correct to my
knowledge, information and belief, that no part of it is false and nothing
DEPONENT
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31
IN THE MATTER OF:
Versus
AFFIDAVIT
I, Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian, S/o Kalarickal Joseph Francis, aged about
78 years, R/o C 45 IFS Apartments, Mayur Vihar Ph I , New Delhi do hereby
solemnly affirm and state as under:
1. I am the Petitioner No.1 herein, I am fully conversant with the facts
and circumstances of the Present case and am as such competent to
swear the present affidavit on behalf of the Petitioners.
2. I say that I have no personal interest, motive, gain or oblique reasons
in the filing of the accompanying Petition and the same is being filed
DEPONENT
VERIFICATION:
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DEPONENT
66
33
IN THE MATTER OF:
Versus
AFFIDAVIT
I, Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian, S/o Kalarickal Joseph Francis, aged about
78 years, R/o C 45 IFS Apartments, Mayur Vihar Ph I , New Delhi do hereby
solemnly affirm and state as under:

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34
DEPONENT
VERIFICATION:
DEPONENT
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35

IN THE MATTER OF:
Versus
AFFIDAVIT
I, D. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev, S/o Late Dr. M. Devasahayam, aged
about 59 years, R/o C 15/2 SAF Games Village, Koyambedu, Chennai –
600107, do hereby solemnly affirm and state as under:
2. I say that I have no personal interest, motive, gain or oblique reasons in
the filing of the accompanying Petition and the same is being filed
DEPONENT
VERIFICATION:
DEPONENT
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36
IN THE MATTER OF:
Versus
AFFIDAVIT
I, D. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev, S/o Late Dr. M. Devasahayam,
aged about 59 years, R/o C 15/2 SAF Games Village, Koyambedu, Chennai
– 600107, do hereby solemnly affirm and state as under:
DEPONENT
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37
VERIFICATION:
DEPONENT
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36
ANNEXURE-P-1
A Brief Profile of Mr. M.G. Devasahayam, Petitioner No.1
M.G. Devasahayam is an Economist cum Administrator with a
distinguished career spanning over several decades, with direct and first-hand
experience in the working and ethos of Indian Army, Indian Administrative
Service (IAS), Public & Private Sector, Political system as well as Non
Government Organisations.
Mr. Devasahayam, while in service had, at several times, performed
functions and duties and officiated in connection with elections including – as
Assistant Returning Officer for Parliamentary Constituency of Hissar in 1971;
Returning Officer for the Assembly Constituency of Jagadri in 1971;
Returning Officer for the Parliamentary Constituency of Chandigarh for the
General Elections in 1977; District Electoral Officer in the Assembly
Elections of Bhiwani constituency in the State of Haryana in 1972-74; District
Electoral Officer in the Assembly Elections of Chandigarh constituency in
1974-77; Observer to Parliamentary and Assembly Elections from 1978-85.
He has also been a convenor of the ‘Forum for Electoral Integrity’ since 2010
– a voluntary organization and a campaign with with several former election
commissioners are also associated.
Mr. Devasahayam has a Masters in Economics from Loyola College,
University of Madras where he taught the subject for one year. Post Indo-
China War commissioned in the Indian Army as Second Lieutenant in 1964.
Participated in aid to civil authority in Assam and Tamil Nadu, Indo-Pak War
// TRUE TYPED COPY//

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1965 and Counter-Insurgency operations in Nagaland. Received General
Service Medals and Samar Seva Star.
Leaving the Army as Major in 1968, Devasahayam moved to IAS and
worked in several senior positions in Haryana state and Union Territory of
Chandigarh.
During the Emergency [1975-77], when Jayaprakash Narayan (JP),
popularly called India’s Second Mahatma, was jailed at Chandigarh,
Devasahayam, as District Magistrate of the Union Territory was his custodian.
During this period Devasahayam developed a humane and warm relationship
with JP which sustained after the Emergency and lasted till JP, the architect
of ‘India’s Second Freedom’, passed away in October 1979. Narrating this
first-hand experience Devasahayam has written Books that give the inside
story of Emergency and subsequent developments of nineteen seventies - "JP
in Jail-An Uncensored Account" and "JP Movement, Emergency and India's
Second Freedom".
Devasahayam also had the occasion to move and work with Mother
(Saint) Teresa for several years and was instrumental in setting up of 'Shanti-
Dan' - a Home for the dying and the sick destitute, the abandoned, unwed
mothers, and the handicapped orphans- in Chandigarh and a Leper sanctuary
outside. Narrating these rare experiences he has written a Book titled "A Drop
of Love - Memoir of St. Teresa".
Devasahayam is a prolific writer and has contributed articles and
columns to several newspapers, magazines and journals. He is the recipient of
Loyola College, Madras World Alumni Lifetime Achiever Award.

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PAN CARD NO:
AADPO4110B
ID PROOF:

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39
ANNEXURE-P-2
A Brief Profile of Mr. K.P Fabian, Petitioner No.2
K P Fabian joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1964 and retired in
2000 as Ambassador of India to Italy and concurrently as Permanent
Representative to UN in Rome. He played a crucial role as Joint Secretary
(Gulf) in the 1990 evacuation of over 176,000 Indians from Kuwait and Iraq
following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.
After his retirement, Fabian took to academia, development, and
corporate sector. He served as Visiting Professor in Jawaharlal Nehru
University, Delhi , and Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala.
Currently, he is Professor at Indian Society of International Law, New Delhi.
Fabian served as President of Indo-Global Social Service Society and
of AFPRO (Action for Food Production), both headquartered in Delhi.
Currently, he is on the board of The Hope Project, Nizzamuddin Basti,
Delhi. Fabian served on the board of RCF (Rashtreeya Chemicals
&Fertilizers) and the Syndicate Bank for three years.
Fabian has published two books:
1. Commonsense on War on Iraq, Somaiya Publications Pvt. Ltd.;
FIRST edition (2003)
2. Diplomacy:Indian Style, Haranand Publications Pvt Ltd (2012) and he
is currently engaged in writing a book titled, ‘THE ARAB SPRING
THAT WAS AND WASN’T.’
Fabian has been writing and speaking on governance issues.

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PAN CARD NO:
AACPK6916H
ID PROOF:

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ANNEXURE-P-3
A Brief Profile of Dr. Thomas Franco, Petitioner No.3
• Dr.D.Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev is a retired bank officer and was
until recently the General Secretary of All India Bank Officer’s
Confederation, President of All India State Bank Officers’ Federation,
Secretary General of All India Public Sector and Central Government
Officers Confederation and General Secretary of State Bank of India
Officer’s Association, Chennai Circle, which runs many labour
institutions and schools. He is at present also a Steering Committee
Member of Global Labour University; Non academic member, Board
of Studies for PG Economics, Madras University and General
Secretary, SBI Pensioners Association, Chennai. He was until recently
the Secretary & Correspondent of SBOA Schools.
• He has participated in innumerable seminars and forums and presented
papers on a range of issues, the chief being his defence in favour of the
public sector units at the Jawaharlal Nehru University titled ‘Legal
Regulation Amendments’, ‘Gyan Sangam- A Step Towards New
Banking Paradigm????’.
• He participated in the colloquium ‘Globalisation’ in Germany, in 1998
and attended ‘The International Construction of Health For All,’ in
Dhaka in 2000.
• He was also a member of the Plan Sub- Committee on Co-operatives,
Kerala State Planning Board.

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• A staunch social activist , he was the General Secretary of the
Tamilnadu Science Forum, District Central Programme Co-ordinator
of Arivoli Iyakkam (Total Literacy Campaign) in Kanyakumari
District of Tamilnadu , Joint Secretary of All India Peoples Science
Network, and Treasurer, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi .
• He was instrumental in the formation of MALAR (Mahalir Association
for Literacy, Awareness and Rights), a federation of SHGs which gives
a platform for 35,000 women to empower themselves economically
and socially , in Kanyakumari District.
• An ardent environmentalist, Dr.Thomas Franco taught students to love
nature by raising gardens, planting trees and nurturing them through
eco awareness campaigns, rallies, projects, mega expos and
conferences. One of his initiatives to enhance the green cover is the
introduction of the roof garden in all the schools run by the Trust.
• He initiated students into journalism thus encouraging them to launch
their in-house magazines and newsletters.
• As a writer , he has authored many books including,
o ‘Together we sit - A Guide book for Self Help Groups.’
o ‘Let us March forward SHG Guide Book’,
o ‘Citizens Report on the Environment’ and ‘Development of
Kanyakumari District’
o ‘Glimpses of Historic Indefinite strike 1969’
o ‘Real Story of Indian banks’
o ‘Demonetisation and black money’
o ‘Laudable performance of Public Sector Banks’

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• Dr.Thomas has presented papers and addressed innumerable forums in
defence of the Public Sector.
• He is absolutely committed and service oriented and his
accomplishments speak louder than his words.
• He is the proud recipient of ‘The Media Guild Award’ presented to
him by His Excellency Masanori Nakano, Consul General of
Japan, for his contribution to preserve ecology and also for
encouraging students into journalism, in 2012.
• Dr.D.Thomas Franco was conferred with a Doctorate Degree by
World Classical Tamil University, London on 28th March 2016 in
recognition of his contribution to the field of education and social
service.
• Dr.Thomas Franco was also conferred the Social Action Award on 3rd
August ’16 by the Indian Development Foundation for his
contribution to social service.

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PAN Number:
AGOPT4941R
ID PROOF:

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ANNEXURE-P-4
HEADNOTES:
1. The principle of the public nature of elections emerging from Article
38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law (Grundge
setz – GG) requires that all essential steps in the elections are subject
to public examinability unless other constitutional interests justify an
exception.
2. When electronic voting machines are deployed, it must be possible for
the citizen to check the essential steps in the election act and in the
ascertainment of the results reliably and without special expert
knowledge.

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Judgment of the Second Senate of 3 March 2009
on the basis of the oral hearing of 28 October 2008
– 2 BvC 3/07, 2 BvC 4/07 –
in the proceedings regarding the complaints requesting the scrutiny of an
election
I. of Dr. W…

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authorised representative: 1. Prof. Dr. …,
2. lawyers …
– against the resolution of the German Bundestag of 14 December 2006
– WP 145/05 – (Bundestag document (Bundestagsdrucksache –
BTDrucks) 16/3600) – 2 BvC 3/07 –,
II. of Prof. Dr. W…
- authorised representative: Prof. Dr. …
– against the resolution of the German Bundestag of 14 December 2006
– WP 108/05 – (Bundestag document 16/3600) – 2 BvC 4/07 –.
RULING:
1. The Ordinance on the Deployment of Voting Machines in Elections to
the German Bundestag and of the Members of the European
Parliament from the Federal Republic of Germany (Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance (Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung – BWahlGV)) of 3
September 1975 (Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt – BGBl) I p.
2459) in the version of the Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance and the European Election Code (Verordnung zur
Änderung der Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung und der
Europawahlordnung) of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749)
is not compatible with Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and
20.2 of the Basic Law insofar as it does not ensure monitoring that

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complies with the constitutional principle of the public nature of
elections.
2. The use of the electronic voting machines of N.V. Nederlandsche
Apparatenfabriek (Nedap) of type ESD1, hardware versions 01.02,
01.03 and 01.04, as well as of type ESD2, hardware version 01.01, in
the elections to the 16th German Bundestag was not compatible with
Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law.
3. The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election are rejected in
other respects.
4. The Federal Republic of Germany is ordered to reimburse to the
complainant re 1. the full amount of the necessary expenses from
these proceedings and to reimburse to the complainant re 2. three-
quarters of his necessary expenses.
GROUNDS:
A.
The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election relate to the
permissibility of the deployment of computer-controlled voting
machines, which are also referred to as electronic voting machines or
“election computers”, in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag.
I.
1. Roughly two million persons eligible to vote in Brandenburg,
Hesse, North RhineWestphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-
Anhalt cast their votes in the elections to the 16th German

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Bundestag via computer-controlled voting machines which are
manufactured by the Dutch company Nedap and have been sold in
Germany since 1999 as a central component of the “Integral
Election System” (IWS) of H. GmbH. The type designations of these
voting machines are composed of a name for the device generation
(ESD1 or ESD2), as well as in each case of a version number for the
hardware (HW) and for the software (SW). The types ESD1 (HW
1.02; SW 2.02), ESD1 (HW 1.02; SW 2.07), ESD1 (HW 1.03; SW
3.08), ESD1 (HW 1.04; SW 3.08) and ESD2 (HW 1.01; SW 3.08) have
so far been used in elections to the German Bundestag.
These voting machines are controlled via a microprocessor
and a software program. The votes cast are exclusively stored on
an electronic storage medium and are counted electronically by the
voting machine at the end of the election day. After the electronic
ascertainment of the results, the voting machine shows the total
votes cast for the respective electoral proposals; the results can be
printed out via a printer that is integrated into the voting machine.
The software program which controls the registration of the ballot
and the ascertainment of the results is to be found on two
electronic storage modules (so-called EPROMs; EPROM = Erasable
Programmable ReadOnly-Memory) which are installed in the
device under a screwed-on cover and are secured by two seals
applied by the manufacturer. The votes cast at the voting machine
– including the linkages (first vote and connected second vote) –
are stored on a removable cassette-like storage medium – the so-

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called vote storage module, also referred to as “electronic ballot
box” (see Schönau, Elektronische Demokratie, 2007, p. 53). The
data of the voting slips, the attribution of the individual keys to the
electoral proposals, as well as the date of the election and the
polling station, are also stored on the vote storage module.
The voting machines have a keypad (“the voter tableau”)
over which an insertion sheet is placed portraying a voting slip
imitating the official voting slip. Above the key field one finds a
display (LCD display) which guides the voter through the election
procedure and enables him or her to examine her or her entries.
The keypad and the LCD display are flanked by two vision-
shielding panels on either side. On the reverse of the voting
machine are the abovementioned printer and a slot for the vote
storage module. The voting machines are linked with a control unit
on the returning committee’s table. The control unit shows the
returning committee the casting of the votes by the respective
voter such that the display of the number of voters increases by
one. After the voter has cast his or her votes, the voting machine is
blocked for further balloting until the returning committee
releases it for the next voter. An element of the “Integral Election
System” sold by H. is a programming and reading out device which
enables the local authority to prepare the vote storage modules in
conjunction with a personal computer prior to the elections and to
read out the ballot information from the storage module after the
election and to make it available for further data processing. The

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storage modules can be read out once more after the election day
with the aid of a voting machine. The software of the “Integral
Election System“ also makes it possible to print the stored votes at
a computer as voting slips with the corresponding crosses. An
individual identification number of the individual voting machine,
as well as the version numbers of the hardware and the software,
and two checksums which are constituted by a checksum algorithm
contained in the voting machine software, can be shown and
printed on the voting machine. These data can be compared with
the information on the nameplate of the voting machine and in the
declaration of identity.
2. An attempt was already made in Germany in the nineteen-sixties to
replace the manual counting of the voting slips linked to the
traditional election event using more rational methods and by
deploying voting machines. According to § 35.3 of the Federal
Electoral Act (Bundeswahlgesetz – BWG) of 7 May 1956 (Federal
Law Gazette I p. 383 – Federal Electoral Act), the Federal Minister
of the Interior was able to permit officially authorised vote
counting devices to be used instead of voting slips. The Ordinance
on the Use of Vote Counting Devices in Elections to the German
Bundestag (Verordnung über die Verwendung von
Stimmenzählgeräten bei Wahlen zum Deutschen Bundestag) of 24
August 1961 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1618) was handed down on
this basis. § 35.3 of the Federal Electoral Act was rescinded by
means of the Act Amending the Federal Electoral Act (Gesetz zur

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Änderung des Bundeswahlgesetzes) of 24 June 1975 (Federal Law
Gazette I p. 1593), and replaced by a more detailed provision on
“balloting with voting machines”, which since the promulgation of
the new version of the Federal Electoral Act of 1 September 1975
(Federal Law Gazette I p. 2325) can be found in § 35 of the Federal
Electoral Act. The Ordinance on the Deployment of Voting
Machines in Elections to the German Bundestag (Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance) (Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung – BWahlGV)
of 3 September 1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459) provided in §
1 that mechanically or electrically driven voting machines may be
used in elections to the German Bundestag if their type is
authorised and their use was approved.
On the basis of the Ordinance on the Use of Vote Counting
Devices of 24 August 1961 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1618) and of
the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance of 3 September 1975
(Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459), voting machines were initially
authorised and used in Germany which worked on the basis of
(electro)mechanical counting devices (see Schreiber, Handbuch
des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag, 7th ed. 2002, § 35,
marginal no. 5). These voting machines worked mechanically; a
count was mechanically increased by activating a button or by
placing an election token in an opening allotted to the respective
electoral proposal. They did not catch on since the cost of
procuring, transporting, storing and maintaining the devices was
compared to a relatively minor gain in time, and the devices could

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frequently only be deployed in elections with a small number of
electoral proposals (see Bundestag document 8/94, p. 2).
These disadvantages were to be avoided by the deployment
of electronic voting machines. In 1997, Nedap applied to the
Federal Ministry of the Interior for a type approval for an electronic
voting machine which it manufactured. The Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance of 3 September 1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p.
2459), at that time most recently amended by Ordinance of 15
November 1989 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1981) was not amenable
to examine and approve such a device type. After the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt, referring to this circumstance in an
examination report of 8 September 1998, had made a positive
evaluation of the Nedap voting machine in technical terms and a
test of the voting machine in Cologne had been assessed as
satisfactory, the Federal Ministry of the Interior decided to make it
possible to deploy computer-controlled voting machines in the
European elections in June 1999. For this reason, amendments
were also prepared to § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act and the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance for the deployment of
computer-controlled voting machines in future Bundestag
elections.
§ 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act in the version promulgated
on 23 July 1993 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1288, 1594), most
recently amended by Act of 1 July 1998 (Federal Law Gazette I p.
1698, 3431), applicable at that time was worded as follows:

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Voting machines with separate counting devices may be used in
place of voting slips, election envelopes and ballot boxes to make
the casting and counting of the votes easier.
The words “with separate counting devices” were deleted
with the Act on General and Representative Election Statistics in
Elections to the German Bundestag and in the Election of Members
of the European Parliament from the Federal Republic of Germany
(Gesetz über die allgemeine und die repräsentative Wahlstatistik
bei der Wahl zum Deutschen Bundestag und bei der Wahl der
Abgeordneten des Europäischen Parlaments aus der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland) of 21 May 1999 (Federal Law
Gazette I p. 1023). The amendment to § 35 of the Federal Electoral
Act was regarded as being necessary in order to be able to adjust
the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance to technical developments
in voting machines (see Bundestag document 14/ 401, p. 5).
The Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance and the European Election Code of 20 April 1999
(Federal Law Gazette I p. 749) already entered into force on 24
April 1999 and amended a large number of provisions of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance in order to create the
preconditions for the deployment of computer-controlled voting
machines. The words “including computer-controlled” were added
in § 1 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance after the words
“electrically driven”. Further amendments were effected where the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance had previously used the term

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“counting devices”. § 2.6 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance
was added, obliging the manufacturer to enclose a declaration of
identity.
3. § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act applied to the elections to the 16th
German Bundestag, in the version of the Federal Electoral Act
promulgated on 23 July 1993 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 1288,
corrected p. 1594), most recently amended by the Eighth
Competence Adjustment Ordinance (Achte
Zuständigkeitsanpassungsverordnung) of 25 November 2003
(Federal Law Gazette I p. 2304).
The provision read as follows:
§ 35
Voting with voting machines
(1) Voting machines may be used in place of voting slips and ballot
boxes to make it easier to cast and count the votes.
(2) Voting machines within the meaning of subsection 1 must
guarantee that the ballot remains secret. Their type must be
authorised for use in elections to the German Bundestag officially
for individual elections or generally. The Federal Ministry of the
Interior shall decide on authorisation on request by the
manufacturer of the voting machine. The use of an officially
authorised voting machine shall require approval by the Federal
Ministry of the Interior. Approval may be issued for individual
elections or in general terms.

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(3) The Federal Ministry of the Interior is herewith empowered to
hand down by means of a legal ordinance which shall not require
the consent of the Bundesrat more detailed provisions regarding
1. the preconditions for the official approval of the type of voting
machine, as well as for the withdrawal and revocation of approval,
2. the procedure for the official approval of the type,
3. the procedure for the examination of a voting machine for
construction corresponding to the officially approved type,
4. the public testing of a voting machine prior to its use,
5. the procedure for the official authorisation of the use, as well as for
the withdrawal and revocation of the authorisation,
6. the particularities related to the elections caused by the use of
voting machines.
7. The legal ordinance shall be handed down in agreement with the
Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour in cases falling under
nos. 1 and 3.
(4) § 33.1 sentence 1 and§ 33.2 shall apply mutatis mutandis to the
operation of a voting machine.
The provisions of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance of 3 September
1975 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2459), which were most recently
amended by ordinance of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749),
relevant to the proceedings at hand, relate to the approval of voting
machines and their deployment in elections. The voting machines require

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a type approval and a use authorisation (see § 1 of the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance). According to § 2.2 sentence 1 of the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance, the type approval may be granted if the voting
machine corresponds to the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting
Machines (Richtlinien für die Bauart von Wahlgeräten) according to
Annex 1 to the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance. These guidelines
regulate in particular the technical requirements to be made on the
voting machines, and contain detailed stipulations for the identification,
technical structure and functioning of the voting machines. Statements
are made in this context on the portrayal of the electoral proposals, on
operation and operability, on the ballot, on the storage of votes and on
the creation of backups. The examination of the compliance of the voting
machine with the above guidelines is a matter for the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt.
The use of approved-type voting machines requires authorisation
prior to each election (§ 4.1 sentence 1 of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance). Only those voting machines may be used which, once the
election date has been set, have been examined by the manufacturer or
the local authority using the operating manuals and maintenance
regulations and with regard to which it has been ascertained that they
are functional (§ 7.1 sentence 1 of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance). In the constituencies in which voting machines are used, the
local authority is to familiarise the head of the returning committee and
his or her deputies with the voting machines prior to the elections and to
familiarise them with their operation (§ 7.3 of the Federal Voting Machine

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Ordinance). Prior to the commencement of the election act, the local
authority assigns the devices to the head of the returning committee with
the necessary operating manuals and the declaration of the manufacturer
according to § 2.6 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance that the
device is constructed identically to the tested, approved type sample (see
§ 8 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). Prior to the
commencement of the ballot, the returning committee must ascertain
amongst other things that the counting and storage devices are set to zero
or have been erased (§ 10.1 no. 3 of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance) and must close the voting machine needed (§ 10.2 of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). Prior to reading the displays of the
votes counted by a voting machine, the number of the ballot records in
the voter list is to be added to the number of election slips taken in and
compared with the number of votes displayed (§ 13 of the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance). Deviations are to be noted and explained in the
election record (§ 13 sentence 3 of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance). If the total of the counter results displayed does not tally with
the number of the total votes cast as displayed, the returning committee
must show the difference and note it in the election record (§ 14.5 of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). The head of the returning
committee, the local authority and the district returning officer must
ensure on completing the tasks of the returning committee and returning
the voting machines that the voting machines used or the vote storage
devices removed from them and the election record with the Annexes are
not made available to unauthorised parties until the Land (state)

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returning officer has revoked the blocking and sealing of the voting
machines and of the vote storage devices (see § 16.2 and § 17.3 of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance).
4. The Federal Ministry of the Interior issued type approvals for the
voting machines used in the elections to the 16th German
Bundestag. On 15 August 2005, it announced the authorisation of
the use of computer-controlled voting machines made by Nedap in
the elections to the 16th German Bundestag with details on
hardware versions, storage module types and software versions
(Federal Gazette (Bundesanzeiger) no. 158 of 23 August 2005, pp.
12747-12748). Invoking company secrets of Nedap, the Ministry
however refused to make available to the interested public
documents which Nedap had provided to the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt for the examination of the samples, or
test reports of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt.
5. The decision as to whether voting machines are acquired, and in
which constituencies they are used, is a matter for the towns and
local authorities. As a reason for the acquisition and the
deployment of voting machines, in addition to the more rapid
calculation of the election result and to the anticipated cost savings,
it is stated that it is virtually impossible to inadvertently cast
invalid votes; cases of doubt as to the validity of individual votes
because of ambiguous markings on the voting slip and unintended
errors in counting the votes are said to be virtually ruled out (see
Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag,

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7th ed. 2002, § 35, marginal no. 2). The recruitment of voluntary
election assistants is also said to be made much easier because less
time is needed to ascertain the election result (see Schönau,
Elektronische Demokratie, 2007, p. 50). These advantages are said
to be evident in particular in local elections, which in many Länder
(states) were said to have been made more complex because of
possibilities of cumulative voting and voting for candidates from
different party lists.
II.
1. With their complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election, both
complainants target the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance insofar as they facilitate the deployment of
computer-controlled voting machines. They complain of the
authorisation of the use and deployment of the voting machines;
furthermore, the type approvals which were issued for the Nedap
voting machines used in the Bundestag election are said to be
unlawful. The complainant re 2. complains over and above this that
the proceedings of the German Bundestag suffered from a number of
faults.
a) aa) The complainant re 1. objected to the result of the elections to
the 16th German Bundestag in 30 constituencies in Brandenburg,
Hesse, North RhineWestphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-
Anhalt referred to in greater detail. He moved to ascertain the
constituencies in which computer-controlled voting machines had

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been used, and the number of the votes cast with these voting
machines, and to repeat the elections in the constituencies
concerned. The deployment of computercontrolled voting
machines was said to have violated the principle of the public
nature of elections and the principle of the official nature of
elections. Over and above this, the voting machines were said not
to be compatible with the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting
Machines.
The principle of the public nature of elections was said to
guarantee the proper implementation of the elections and the
correct constitution of Parliament. The monitoring of the election
act was said to have to encompass above all ensuring that the
marking of the vote took place secretly and that the votes cast by
the voters were inserted into the ballot box without a change, that
the votes were not subsequently altered and that only the votes
from the ballot box were counted at the end of the election. In the
deployment of the voting machines complained of, effective
monitoring by the public and by the returning committee were said
to be prevented since a major part of the election act and the
investigation and ascertainment of the election result were said to
take place inside the voting machine.
If voting machines were deployed, it was said to only replace
the public nature of elections possible in an election with voting
slips if equivalent and publicly verifiable control mechanisms
existed, such as a paper record of the votes cast printed by the

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voting machine which the voter could inspect. Corresponding
control possibilities were however said not to be available to the
public in deployment of the Nedap voting machines.
It was said not to be possible for the public to check the
trustworthiness of the software installed in the voting machines.
The examination by the PhysikalischTechnische Bundesanstalt and
the type approval were said not to have taken place publicly; also,
the voting machines were said not to be made available to the
interested public for independent examination. The source code
software of the voting machines was said not to be open.
Ultimately, it was said also not to be possible to examine whether
the copies of the software used in the polling stations were
identical to the sample examined by the Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt and whether they were free of manipulations. It was
said to be possible to effect authentication by a chain of characters
(“hash value”) being calculated for each original program and the
copy and then compared, so that agreement between the two
values was said to document the authenticity of the software. This
was however said not to be reliably guaranteed in the voting
machines which were the subject of the complaint since the
checksums displayed and printed when the device was launched
were calculated by the software installed in the voting machine
itself, so that it was alleged not to be ruled out that the calculation
of the checksums provided the expected chain of characters
because of a prior deliberate manipulation of the software.

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The particular danger in computer-controlled voting
machines was said to lie in the fact that elections could be much
more effectively influenced via manipulation of the software by the
device manufacturer than in ballot box elections. For instance, it
was said to be possible for faulty software to allot a certain share
of the votes cast to a certain party regardless of the election
decision by the respective voter or for the total votes cast to be
divided among the parties standing for election according to a set
proportion. Manipulations were said to be possible both by
politically or financially motivated “insiders”, in particular
employees of the manufacturer, and by external third parties who
gained access to the computers used by the manufacturer (for
instance via viruses or trojans); they were said with regard to the
complexity of the software used not always to be discovered even
in careful quality control effected by the manufacturer. Although it
was said to be necessary to prevent unauthorised access to the
devices between the elections through suitable security measures,
no such monitoring was said to take place in Germany; there were
also said to be no suitable regulations in force that were able to
guarantee protected storage of the voting machines.
It was said that the proceedings for the examination of the
type sample by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and the
approval of the type by the Federal Ministry of the Interior should
be public as a part of the preparations for the elections. Any
interests of the manufacturer in protecting its business secrets

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should be subordinate to the principle of democracy. For a lack of
a possibility to check the device independently, the publication of
the control documents and reports of the Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt and of the source code of the voting machine
software was said to be the only possibility in order to be able to
judge the integrity of the elections. The non-publication of the
control reports and documents and of the source code was hence
said to constitute an electoral error.
It was said not to be compatible with the “principle of the
official nature of the elections” that the functionality of the voting
machines could only be examined by the manufacturer (§ 7.1 of the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance), and that there was no official
control of freedom from manipulation of the voting machines. Over
and above the declaration of identity, there was said to be no
authentication of the software implemented on the individual
voting machines, so that the election bodies had to rely on effective
quality assurance by the manufacturer and on there being no
manipulation after the examination had been carried out by the
manufacturer. The tests carried out by the district returning officer
in the context of preparation for the election and by the returning
committee in the polling station were said not to be suited to
recognise any manipulations.
The voting machines were said not to be compatible with the
“Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines” (Annex 1 to §
2 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance). They neither complied

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with the general state-of-the-art, nor were they constructed in
compliance with the rules of technology for systems with grievous
consequences in case of misconduct (letter B no. 2.1subsection 1 of
the Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines). In
contravention of to letter B no. 1 item 2 of the Guidelines for the
Construction of Voting Machines, the software used was said not to
be clearly identifiable.
It is also said to be objectionable that § 35 of the Federal
Electoral Act only calls for the ballot to be held in secret, but not for
adherence to the other electoral principles. The examinability of
the election result provided for in Article 41 of the Basic Law was
said to be undermined if as a result of the type it were no longer to
be possible to establish whether the outcome of the election had
been reached lawfully.
bb) The complainant re 2. also submitted an objection to the
elections to the 16th German Bundestag.
He takes the view that the deployment of the computer-
controlled voting machines in at least 1,921 polling districts and 39
constituencies in five Länder had violated the principle of
democracy, the principle of the rule of law and the principles of the
public and official nature of elections. The deployment of the voting
machines was said to violate the Federal Electoral Act and the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance from multiple points of view.
Neither § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act, nor the Federal Voting

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Machine Ordinance, were said to comply with the constitutional
principles of the law on elections of the public and official nature of
elections.
The complainant re 2. moved inter alia for a finding that the
election results in the constituencies designated by the
complainant re 1., in the constituencies that were manifest from a
“Customer overview [of Nedap] on the 2005 Bundestag election”
provided by the Federal Statistical Office and in all other
constituencies in which voting machines of the impugned nature
might have been deployed, had come about unlawfully and were
hence allegedly invalid. It was said that the elections needed to be
repeated in these constituencies. Furthermore, the complainant re
2. applied for the publication of the examination documents of the
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt regarding the voting
machines to which the complaint referred, as well as for the
holding of an oral hearing as soon as possible and the summons of
specific witnesses and experts.
The more detailed statements of the complainant re 2.
correspond to the objection submitted by the complainant re 1.
cc) The Federal Ministry of the Interior moved to reject the
objections.
The public nature of the ballot was said to have been guaranteed in
the deployment of the voting machines. The public was said to be able to
check that only entitled voters were granted access to the voting booth.

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The returning committee was able to check by reading the control unit
that each voter had in fact voted and had only done so once. Moreover,
it was said that the principle of the public nature of elections was not
guaranteed without restriction. It was said to be in conflict with the goal
of forming a viable people’s representation in a short time. The Federal
Electoral Act was said to attach greater significance to the goal of
elections being held in good time and to ascertaining the outcome of the
election within a reasonable time than to detailed monitoring by the
public.
The public nature of the vote counting was said to have been guaranteed.
The public was said to be able to check how the result of the constituency
ascertained by the voting machine on conclusion of the election act was
printed by the returning committee and included in the election record.
The returning committee and each election observer were said to be able
to compare the ballot records in the voter register and the valid and
invalid first and second votes registered by the voting machine, and
hence to ascertain whether the device had covered and added all the
votes cast. It was said to be not possible to physically cover the individual
votes; a totaling procedure which was verifiable for the public was
however said not to be necessary since protection against falsification of
the election result was said to be ensured by a number of other measures
guaranteeing the reliability of the result as with ballot box elections. For
instance, the voting machine was examined thoroughly prior to being
approved by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt. Comprehensive
monitoring by local authorities and returning committees also took place

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in the run-up to the elections. The local ascertainment of the results was
said to guarantee that manipulations on the part of individuals could at
most impact the outcome of the election in the respective constituency.
Public monitoring was said to be only one factor among many in order
to prevent irregularities in the elections, albeit an important one. No
measure was said to be able to prevent manipulations or unintentional
falsification of the election result by itself. All measures together were
however said to guarantee very broad protection of the elections against
election falsifications.
Since the principle of the public nature of elections had not been
violated, it was said not to be necessary to bring forward the public
nature of elections by publishing the control results of the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt and the source code for the voting machine
software. The fundamentally public nature of the preparations for the
election and of the election itself could be restricted for reasons of the
protection of private data or of operational and business secrets. The type
approval, the examinations of the voting machines by the Physikalisch-
Technische Bundesanstalt, as well as the conclusive examination by the
local authorities, were said to replace monitoring by the public in this
respect.
The paper record called for by the complainants for subsequent
checking of the storage of the votes was said to be by no means non-
contentious in expert circles because of its disadvantages. It was said that
such a record could be manipulated just like any paper product. Further,

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it was impossible for a paper record to eliminate a lack of trust in the
viability of the voting machine since it was created by the voting machine.
Since the preparation and implementation of the elections were said to
be public tasks, it was said to be irrelevant whether this was actually
expressed in a “principle of the official nature of the elections”. It was only
required that the state bodies provided the facilities and resources and
took responsibility for organising the elections. It was said to be
unobjectionable that private individuals effected individual actions; in
this respect, the state bodies only had to carry out the monitoring
required. For instance, the official voting slips were printed by private
printers and the election notifications and postal voting documents were
sent via private postal companies. It was said to always have been
sufficient that the election authority classed the enterprises
commissioned as trustworthy in each case. The same was said to apply to
the manufacture and supply of voting machines with a declaration of
identity of the manufacturer.
The voting machines were said to be compatible with the Guidelines for
the Construction of Voting Machines. The voting machine software was
said to be identifiable at any time by virtue of a comparison of the version
number and the checksums with the information contained in the
declaration of identity. Also the authenticity of the software was said to
be guaranteed by a combination of protective measures.
Certainly, any electoral errors were said not to be relevant to mandates.
Not concrete information had been put forward indicating that different

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election results had been achieved in specific polling stations because of
the deployment of voting machines than would have been the case with
a ballot box election.
dd) The German Bundestag rejected the election objections by
resolution of 14 December 2006. The resolution recommendation of the
Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections of 30 November 2006 (Bundestag
document 16/3600, Annexes 1 and 2) considered the objections of both
complainants to be manifestly unfounded. The constitutionality of
individual provisions of electoral law was said not to be amenable to a
review by the German Bundestag since the German Bundestag and the
Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections were not called on to find
provisions of electoral law unconstitutional.
The deployment of the voting machines was said to have violated neither
the concrete form given to the principle of the public nature of elections
in non-constitutional law (§§ 10 and 31 of the Federal Electoral Act; § 54
of the Federal Electoral Code (Bundeswahlordnung – BWO), nor a
principle of the public nature of elections going beyond this. The principle
of the public nature of elections was said certainly not to entail each
individual act being subject to an individual check. The public nature of
the ballot was also said to be heavily restricted in postal voting. The
election was said to be operated in the voting machines which were the
subject of the complaint in principle in the same manner as in the ballot
box election. Although marking of the voting slip and the ballot were
carried out on one single device in the voting booth, the act of balloting
was said to be transparent for the returning committee and the public

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since only the voter who had submitted his or her election notification
card was able to vote using the voting machine.
In legal reality, when it came to the deployment of voting machines the
concrete election act of voting was said to be in a conflict of interests
between the principle of secret elections and that of the public nature of
elections. It was said to be acceptable against this background that in the
deployment of computer-controlled voting machines each sub-act of vote
registration was not transparent to all. It was said to be one of the
particularities of the advance in technology that one could presume that
the systems deployed were viable if they had been examined in a special
procedure prior to their deployment. This was said to be all the more
valid given that the necessary monitoring took place in all other
procedural steps, and hence the results that were obtained could be
examined to determine their plausibility. The only decisive aspect was
said to be whether the public had the fundamental possibility to become
convinced of the viability of the election procedure. This was said to be
accounted for by voting with voting machines: In particular, the public
was able to check the printout of the result of the constituency
ascertained by the voting machine and the transfer of the result into the
election record, and hence the counting as a whole. By means of the
comparison of the ballot records in the register of voters with the valid
and invalid first and second votes registered by the device, as prescribed
by § 14 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance, it was said also to be
possible to check whether the voting machine had recorded all the votes
and added them correctly. All the stored votes could be printed out as

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voting slips with the corresponding crosses and subsequently counted by
hand.
The proceedings for type approval were said not to give rise to an
election error. There was also said not to be a right to inspect the source
code of the voting machine software with regard to the principle of the
public nature of elections since the protection of the operational secrets
of the manufacturer of the voting machines was said to outweigh the
interest of the public in revealing the source code.
According to the convincing descriptions contained in the statement
made by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the voting machines which
were the subject of the complaint were said to have complied with the
provisions of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance and with the
Guidelines for the Construction of Voting Machines. According to the
statements of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, manipulations were
said to be theoretically possible, but hardly conceivable in practice. There
were said to be no indications of deliberate manipulations or accidental
alterations to the voting machines used in the Bundestag election forming
the subject of the complaint. Even if none of the security measures
mentioned were able by themselves to prevent manipulations, all the
measures together were said to guarantee a very high degree of security
against manipulation of the voting machines.
Where the complainant was complaining about a shift of state tasks
towards private parties, this was said not to constitute an electoral error,
even if the submission was assumed to be correct. In particular, the fact

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that the preparation and implementation of elections was a public task
did not force the conclusion to be drawn that all necessary acts may only
be carried out by officials. The necessary state control was said to be
ensured.
Since no electoral error was therefore ascertainable, it was said not to
be necessary to investigate any impact on the result of the ballot and on
the distribution of seats in the German Bundestag. No oral hearing was
set regarding the objection of the complainant re 2. according to § 6.1a
no. 3 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections (Wahlprüfungsgesetz –
WahlPrüfG), old version.
b) Both complainants have submitted a complaint requesting the
scrutiny of an election to the Federal Constitutional Court
(Bundesverfassungsgericht).
aa) The complainant re 1. moves to rescind the resolution of the German
Bundestag of 14 December 2006 and to declare the elections to the 16th
German Bundestag invalid in the constituencies referred to in the
objection procedure insofar as computercontrolled voting machines
were used there, and to order a repeat of the elections with voting slips
and ballot boxes. Alternatively, he moves for a finding that the use of
software-controlled voting machines in elections to the German
Bundestag is not compatible with the Basic Law, furthermore as an
alternative that the deployment of voting machines is not compatible
with the Basic Law unless the transparency of the elections for the public,
the examinability of the correctness of the election result and security

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against manipulation is guaranteed in a manner corresponding to
elections with voting slips and ballot boxes.
The complainant re 1. repeats and expands his submission from the
objection procedure, and submits the following as a supplement:
The deployment of the electronic voting machines, because of their
technical and constructional security faults, was said to have violated the
principles of electoral law set out in Article 38 of the Basic Law, the
unwritten constitutional principles within electoral law of the public and
official nature of elections, as well as the nonconstitutional provisions of
electoral law.
The public nature of the elections was also said to have been violated by
virtue of the fact that the monitoring had been shifted to a non-public
approval procedure and the publication of the examination results,
examination documents, construction characteristics and of the source
code of the devices had been refused. An evaluation of the votes cast that
was verifiable by the public was said not to be possible because the
individual votes could not be physically recorded.
The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance was said to contain serious
faults insofar as it built on the principle of the declaration of identity; for
there was said to be no monitoring as to whether the devices actually
used corresponded to the software and hardware checked by the
It was said not to be compatible with the principle of official nature of
the implementation of the election for the state election authorities to

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relinquish control over the entire course of events, including the
technical details. Democracy and the rule of law were said rather to
demand that the entire election events, ranging into the ramifications of
the technical details, could be traced both by state bodies and by the
people. The design of the election procedure, the monitoring and the
parliamentary and judicial examinability of the election results, were said
to be subject to the state’s reserve as core state tasks.
The technical and constructional security faults in the voting machines
were said to violate the principles of electoral law as to the freedom,
equality and secrecy of the elections. If votes were diverted, electronically
“caught” and “spied on”, the freedom of the elections was said to be
placed at risk. Equality was also said to be affected if it was not sure
whether the vote that had been cast had been counted at all, and if so
whether it was counted correctly. What is more, it was said that the
secrecy of elections could suffer damage were manipulations to occur. It
was said to be sufficient for a violation of the principles of electoral law
that a situation had been created by the deployment of electronic voting
machines in which the errors described were possible.
The restrictions of the principles of electoral law were said not to be
justified by contrary constitutional provisions. Nedap’s company secrecy
interests that are protected by fundamental rights had to be
subordinated to the interest of the public in information and to the public
monitoring which was fundamental to democracy. The gain in democracy
(rapidity of ascertaining the election results and increased level of
security of the election procedure), linked with the deployment of

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computer-controlled voting machines, was also said to be unable to
justify the impairment of public elections.
The election errors were said to be relevant to mandates. Major
alterations were said to be possible in the mandate structure because of
the major part of the votes affected by the election errors. The
complainant re 1. was said not to bear the burden of proof for the
elections having led to a different result without voting machines than
had in fact been the case in the constituencies in which voting machines
had been deployed. For the election errors which had been complained
of, in particular the violation of the principle of the public nature of
elections, were said to have eliminated the actual possibility to
demonstrate a manipulation in concrete terms.
bb) The complainant re 2. is essentially moving to rescind the rejection
of his objection by the German Bundestag and to repeat the elections in
the constituencies designated in the written objection of 15 October
2005, as well as basically to establish the unconstitutionality of § 35 of
the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance.
The complainant re 2. challenges both the constitutionality of the legal
basis for the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines (§ 35
of the Federal Electoral Act and the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance),
and the concrete deployment of the Nedap voting machines in the
elections to the 16th German Bundestag. The electronic voting machines
used were said to violate as to their construction and functioning the
principles of electoral law of the public and official nature of elections and

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Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Basic Law, as well as the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance. The procedures for the approval of the voting
machines by the PhysikalischTechnische Bundesanstalt and the Federal
Ministry of the Interior which were the subject of complaint were also
said not to comply with the principles of democracy and the rule of law,
as well as with the principles of electoral law of the public nature of
elections and the sovereign implementation of elections.
As grounds, the complainant re 2. repeats the arguments that he already
submitted in the objection procedure before the German Bundestag. He
additionally alleges that the equality of elections had been violated by
differing treatment of voting slip voters and voting machine voters since
the principles of democracy and the rule of law, as well as of the public
and official nature of the elections, were said to apply to the same degree
to voting slip voters and to voting machine voters, and that the legislature
had not provided legal provisions for the deployment of the electronic
voting machines which were identical and equivalent to those in the
Federal Electoral Code for voting slip elections. Insofar as it was not
possible to rule out that because of the technical shortcomings of the
voting machines there might be discrepancies between the ballot
intended by voters and the ballot registered by the voting machine, the
principle of equality between “successful” and “unsuccessful” voters was
said to have been violated.
He also objects to the proceedings before the German Bundestag. The
length of the proceedings was said not to be acceptable. The German
Bundestag was said to have taken its decision on the basis of an

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insufficiently verified set of facts. The impugned resolution of the German
Bundestag was said to have not come into being effectively for a lack of a
quorum since 40 Members at most had attended the ballot. The
deliberations of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections were said to
have taken place in camera. The Rules of Procedure of the German
Bundestag (Geschäftsordnung des Deutschen Bundestages – GO-BT)
were said to be unconstitutional because they had not provided for the
hearings, deliberations and rulings of the committee in the election
scrutiny procedure to be held in public. Despite an explicit motion, no
date had been set for an oral hearing.
2. The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election were served on
the German Bundestag, the Bundesrat, the Federal Government, all
Länder Governments, the federal associations of the parties represented
in the German Bundestag (CDU, SPD, The Greens, FDP, Linkspartei, CSU)
and the federal returning officer. The Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt and the Federal Office for Information Security were
afforded the opportunity according to § 27a of the Federal Constitutional
Court Act (Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgesetz – BVerfGG) to make a
statement on the technical questions that had been put forward.
a) The federal returning officer considers the deployment of the
electronic voting machines to be lawful.
b) The Federal Ministry of the Interior has extended and supplemented
its statements from the objection procedure before the German

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Bundestag on the use of the voting machines allegedly having been
constitutional and lawful.
The public nature of elections was said to be overstretched if it
were to be demanded that anyone should be able to verify the entire
election events, including the preparations for the election, right down
into the ramifications of the technical details and the entire state activity
in an election, including the type approval of the voting machines, and
that the other preparatory work of the election bodies and other
institutions were subject to public monitoring.
The local organisation was said to be one of the most important
means to prevent manipulations in the use of voting machines. Since the
local authorities decided on their own responsibility on the acquisition of
the voting machines and were said to be responsible for the proper
storage of the voting machines, and for their examination prior to
deployment, manipulation of the voting machines was said to require, in
addition to the appropriate technical skills, a knowledge of the manner in
which each individual local authority stored the voting machines and
how the security measures could be overcome. The local organisation
was said to also include the ascertainment of the results in the respective
polling station. This meant that it was not possible to manipulate the
voting machine during transportation. Impacts of any irregularities were
hence restricted to the election result in the respective constituency.
c) The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt explained the
examination concept on which the type sample check was based, and

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stated that the security requirements should be judged in the context of
the implantation of the voting machines into the proven processes in
traditional elections. The arguments of the complainant were said not to
take this into account.
3. a) The Chaos Computer Club e.V. refers in its statement to an
examination of the security and manipulability of Nedap election
computers which was implemented in 2006 in cooperation with the
Dutch initiative “We do not trust voting computers” (“Wij vertrouwen
stemcomputers niet”). The software and the hardware of the Dutch ES3B
type, which in the view of the study’s authors differed only slightly from
the ESD 1 and ESD 2 types used in Germany, was said to have been
susceptible to manipulation with relatively little effort. The test indicates
that the processes and programming methods analysed by
reconstructing the source code of the voting machine were trivial and
only constituted the state-of-the-art of the early nineteen-nineties.
The voting machines could be manipulated by the votes cast for an
electoral proposal being altered prior to their storage, so that they would
be stored on the vote storage module as votes cast for another party. This
was said not to require any knowledge of the list place of the party or of
the candidate. A further manipulation variant was said to consist in
already providing for a preset percentage final result for a specific
electoral proposal prior to commencement of the elections without this
coming to light in a test election. It was said to be possible in practice to
exchange the software without encountering difficulties. The storage
media could be removed from the voting machine, read out, deleted and

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re-programmed using widely available tools. A person with a modicum
of technical knowledge could exchange a storage medium within less
than five minutes after brief training; someone with experience could
have effected a swap in about one minute. Manipulations to the hardware
were also simple without this being identifiable by any testing procedure
used or proposed by Nedap or by the Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt.
All in all, the tests had shown that the Nedap voting machines did
not meet the requirements of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance. The
dynamics of the development in the potential for attack and manipulation
were said to constitute one of the main risk factors of computer-aided
election procedures. In contradistinction to established procedures, it
was possible at any time for attack methods to be developed which were
as yet unknown and the consequences of which were not foreseeable
which remained unrecognised and made it possible to falsify an election.
None of the fundamental difficulties in the use of computer-controlled
voting machines was said to be solvable by technical means with
sufficient reliability since greater technical security measures would of
necessity lead to more complex systems which could be examined by
even fewer people.
b) The Federal Ministry of the Interior takes the view that the
statement of the Chaos Computer Club showed all in all an over-
evaluation of technical security requirements as to the voting machines.
There was said to be no way to guarantee absolute security against
falsification in elections. Ballot box election and postal voting was said to

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be theoretically susceptible to manipulation in a similar way to elections
with voting machines. Any technical security measure could be
circumvented with the corresponding effort.
The criticised manipulation possibilities still in existence despite a
protected environment were said not to differ from the risks also existing
in classical elections. The existing regulations were said to be adequate.
4. In the oral hearing, the Senate furthermore heard Dr. Jörn
Müller-Quade, European Institute for Systems Security (Europäisches
Institut für Systemsicherheit) in Karlsruhe, and Melanie Volkamer,
Institute of IT-Security and Security Law (Institut für IT-Sicherheit und
Sicherheitsrecht) of the University of Passau, as experts. Dr. Müller-
Quade particularly made a statement on the question of whether and to
what degree manipulation to the hardware or software could be
discovered by subsequent examinations of the voting machines. Ms
Volkamer explained how the concurrence of the software with the
samples installed in the individual voting machines could be examined
prior to the elections.
B.
Insofar as the complainant re 2. objects to the proceedings before
the German Bundestag, his complaint requesting the scrutiny of an
election is unsuccessful.
The complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election are well-
founded insofar as they complain about the Federal Voting Machines
Ordinance permitting the use of computer-controlled voting machines

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without ensuring effective monitoring of the election act and effective
subsequent monitoring of the ascertainment of the result. In this respect,
there is a violation of the principle of the public nature of elections under
Article 38 of the Basic Law in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of
the Basic Law. The use of Nedap’s computer-controlled voting machines
was also not compatible with the principle of the public nature of
elections. Both election errors however do not lead to the elections being
declared invalid in the constituencies designated by the complainant.
It can remain open whether the constructive characteristics of the
voting machines, and hence also the type approvals and the use
authorisation, were compatible with the requirements contained in the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance, and in particular in the Guidelines for
the Construction of Voting Machines, and with the principles of electoral
law under Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Basic Law. The same applies as
to the complaints that the voting machines used had not been subject to
adequate official monitoring, that the examination of the samples by the
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt and that the type approval
procedure had not taken place in public, as well as that the examination
reports and documents of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt,
and the source code of the voting machine software, had not been made
available to the public.
I.
The complaint requesting the scrutiny of an election of the
complainant re 2. is unsuccessful insofar as the complainant complains of

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the length of the proceedings before the German Bundestag and that the
Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections had not deliberated in public and
wrongly had not set an oral hearing. The complaint that the German
Bundestag had not been quorate on accepting the resolution
recommendation of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections is also
not well-founded.
In the context of the complaint proceedings, the Federal
Constitutional Court reviews the impugned resolution of the German
Bundestag in formal and substantive terms. Faults in the proceedings of
the German Bundestag, as they are claimed by the complainant, can only
be relevant to the complaint if they are material and deprive it of the basis
for its decision (see Decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court
(Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts – BVerfGE 89, 243
(249); 89, 291 (299)). No such procedural violations are recognisable
here.
1. Even if the proceedings took more than one year between the
submission of the objection to the election and the decision of the German
Bundestag, this does not yet constitute a grievous procedural error. The
length of the proceedings by itself does not remove the basis for the
decision (see Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht –
BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/ 07, 7/07
–, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht – NVwZ 2008, p. 991 (992)).
2. The fact that the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections
refrained from holding an oral hearing on the complainant’s objection to

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the election, and also deliberated in camera in other respects, also does
not constitute a grievous error removing the basis for the decision of the
German Bundestag.
a) According to § 6.1a no. 3 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections
in the version of 24 August 1965 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 977 (Law on
the Scrutiny of Elections, Wahlprüfungsgesetz – WahlPrG, old version)),
which applied at the time of the decision on the complainant’s objection,
the committee was able to refrain from holding an oral hearing if the
preliminary review revealed that the objection was manifestly
unfounded. Since the amendment of § 6.1 of the Law on the Scrutiny of
Elections by the Act Amending the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections of 6
June 2008 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 994), a date for an oral hearing is only
to be set if the preliminary examination reveals that this can be expected
to further promote the proceedings.
An objection is manifestly unfounded if no aspect is recognisable at
the time of the decision which may help it to succeed (see BVerfGE 89,
243 (250); 89, 291 (300)). The evaluation is not conditional on the
unfoundedness of the appeal being evident; it may also be the result of a
prior thorough examination (see BVerfGE 82, 316 (319-320) on the
regulation of § 24 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act with identical
content).
Even if there may be reasons according to the submission of the
complaint suggesting that the objection was not manifestly unfounded, in
particular with regard to compliance with the Guidelines for the

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Construction of Voting Machines, refraining from holding an oral hearing
is certainly not so grievous that the decision of the German Bundestag
would be deprived of its basis by these means. It based its decision
primarily on the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines not
violating the principle of the public nature of elections and the concrete
non-constitutional provisions contained in electoral law. In this respect,
the German Bundestag has addressed the complainants’ arguments in
detail and made a detailed statement on the questions raised. Where it
deals with the question of the approval of the Nedap voting machines
used in the Bundestag election, it takes as a basis the statement of the
Federal Ministry of the Interior, according to which manipulations are
theoretically possible but, because of the bundle of technical and
organisational security measures, are ruled out to the same degree as in
classical voting slip elections.
b) In contradistinction to the view taken by the complainant re 2.,
the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections was not obliged to deliberate
in an open hearing.
The Law on the Scrutiny of Elections regulates in the provisions on
oral hearings (§§ 6 et seq. of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections) the
preconditions under which the proceedings of the Committee for the
Scrutiny of Elections are held in public. If an oral hearing is not waived,
the hearing takes place in public. According to § 10.1 of the Law on the
Scrutiny of Elections, the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections
deliberates in secret on the result of the oral hearing. According to the
system of the Act, this applies in the same way if an oral hearing is waived.

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No constitutional aspects are evident which might oblige the legislature
to enact any different regulation when legislating on the scrutiny of
elections (Article 41.3 of the Basic Law).
3. The complaint of the complainant re 2. that the resolution of the
German Bundestag of 14 December 2006 had allegedly not effectively
come into being for a lack of a quorum is also unsuccessful. The
German Bundestag decides with a simple majority on the
recommendation for a resolution of the Committee for the Scrutiny of
Elections (§ 13.1 sentence 1 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections).
According to § 45.1 of the Rules of Procedure of the German
Bundestag, the Bundestag is quorate if more than half of its members
are present in the plenary. The Bundestag is regarded as being quorate
regardless of the number of its members present until it is found to
not be quorate in the proceedings prescribed in § 45.2 of the Rules of
Procedure of the German Bundestag. This provision does not come up
against any constitutional reservations (see BVerfGE 44, 308 (314 et
seq.) on the provisions of § 49.2 of the Rules of Procedure of the
German Bundestag, old version, the content of which is largely
identical). As is shown by the record of the session, the German
Bundestag unanimously accepted the resolution recommendation of
the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections on 14 December 2006 (see
Minutes of plenary proceedings 16/73, Stenographic Record p. 7259
B). It cannot be derived from the minutes how many delegates were
present in the house when the ballot was held. There is no record that
it had been doubted, or indeed ascertained, whether the German

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Bundestag was quorate. There is hence no indication that the
Bundestag was not quorate.
II.
1. In the context of a complaint requesting the scrutiny of an election
according to § 13 no. 3 and § 48 of the Federal Constitutional Court
Act, the Federal Constitutional Court has not only to guarantee
compliance by the competent election bodies and the German
Bundestag with the provisions of federal election law, but also to
review whether the provisions of the Federal Electoral Act comply
with the requirements of the constitution (see BVerfGE 16, 130
(135-136); BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 –
2 BvC 1/07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p.
991 (992)). This examination also covers the validity of legal
ordinances.
2. The deployment of computer-controlled voting machines is in
particular to be reviewed against the standard of the public nature
of elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of
the Basic Law). The public nature of elections is a fundamental
precondition for democratic political will-formation. It ensures the
correctness and verifiability of the election events, and hence
creates a major precondition for the well-founded trust of the
citizen in the correct operation of the elections. The state form of
parliamentary democracy, in which the rule of the people is
mediated by elections, in other words is not directly exercised,

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demands that the act of transferring state responsibility to
parliamentarians is subject to special public monitoring. The
fundamentally required public nature of the election procedure
covers the electoral proposal procedure, the election act (broken
regarding the ballot by the secret nature of elections) and the
ascertainment of the election result (see BVerfG, judgment of the
Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/ 07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift
für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (992) with further references).
a) The basis for public elections is formed by the
fundamental constitutional options for democracy, the republic
and the rule of law (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and
20.2 of the Basic Law).
aa) In a representative democracy, the elections of the
people’s representation constitute the fundamental act of
legitimisation. The ballot in the elections to the German Bundestag
forms the major element of the process of will-forming from the
people to the state bodies, and hence at the same time constitutes
the basis for political integration. Compliance with the election
principles applicable to this, and confidence in compliance with
them, hence constitute preconditions for a viable democracy. Only
by the possibility of monitoring whether the elections comply with
the constitutional election principles is it possible to ensure that
the delegation of state power to the people’s representation, which
forms the first and most important part of the uninterrupted
legitimisation chain of the people to the bodies and office-holders

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entrusted with state tasks, does not suffer from a shortcoming. The
democratic legitimacy of the elections demands that the election
events be controllable so that manipulation can be ruled out or
corrected and unjustified suspicion can be refuted. This is the only
way to facilitate the well-founded trust of the sovereign in the
correct formation of the representative body. The obligation
incumbent on the legislature and on the executive to ensure that
the election procedure is designed constitutionally and is
implemented properly is not sufficient by itself to impart the
necessary legitimacy. Only if the electorate can reliably convince
itself of the lawfulness of the transfer act, if the elections are
therefore implemented “before the eyes of the public” (see
Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum Deutschen Bundestag,
7th ed. 2002, § 31 marginal no. 2) is it possible to guarantee the
trust of the sovereign in Parliament being composed in a manner
corresponding to the will of the voters that is necessary for the
functioning of democracy and the democratic legitimacy of state
decisions (see North Rhine/Westphalia Constitutional Court
(Verfassungsgerichtshof Nordrhein-Westfalen – NRW VerfGH),
judgment of 19 March 1991 – VerfGH 10/90 –, Neue Zeitschrift für
Verwaltungsrecht 1991, p. 1175 (1179); Hanßmann,
Möglichkeiten und Grenzen von Internetwahlen, 2004, p. 184).
bb) In a republic, elections are a matter for the entire people
and a joint concern of all citizens. Consequently, the monitoring of
the election procedure must also be a matter for and a task of the

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citizen. Each citizen must be able to comprehend and verify the
central steps in the elections reliably and without any special prior
technical knowledge.
cc) The public nature of the elections is also anchored in the
principle of the rule of law. The public nature of the state’s exercise
of power, which is based on the rule of law, serves its transparency
and controllability. It is contingent on the citizen being able to
perceive acts of the state bodies. This also applies as to the
activities of the election bodies.
b) The principle of the public nature of elections requires that all
essential steps in the elections are subject to public examinability
unless other constitutional interests justify an exception. Particular
significance attaches here to the monitoring of the election act and
to the ascertainment of the election result.
An election procedure in which the voter cannot reliably
comprehend whether his or her vote is unfalsifiably recorded and
included in the ascertainment of the election result, and how the
total votes cast are assigned and counted, excludes central
elements of the election procedure from public monitoring, and
hence does not comply with the constitutional requirements.
c) Despite the considerable value attaching to the constitutional
principle of the public nature of elections, it does not ensue from
this principle that all acts in connection with the ascertainment of
the election result must take place with the involvement of the

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public so that a well-founded trust in the correctness of the
elections can be created. For instance, activities of the district
returning officer with which according to § 76.1 of the Federal
Electoral Code the – public – ascertainment of the election result is
prepared by the district election committee are not constitutionally
obliged to be subject to the principle of the direct public nature of
elections (see BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008
– 2 BvC 1/07, 7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008,
p. 991 (992)).
d) The requirements as to the examinability of the election events
apply to the implementation of parliamentary elections regardless
of the responsibility of the state bodies which have a constitutional
structure (see BVerfGE 20, 56 (113); 41, 399 (414); Seifert,
Bundeswahlrecht, 3rd ed. 1976, p. 130).
It is primarily a matter for the legislature to regulate how the
retraceability of the essential steps in the election procedure is
ensured. Article 38.3 of the Basic Law empowers and obliges the
legislature to determine the details of the structure of electoral law
(in particular the election system and the election procedure) and
compliance with the principles of electoral law (see Magiera, in:
Sachs, GG, 5th ed. 2009, Art. 38, marginal nos. 106 et seq. and 113
et seq.). The design of the technical aspects of the election events
also falls within the regulatory mandate under Article 38.3 of the
Basic Law (see Morlok, in: Dreier, GG, Vol. 2, 2nd ed. 2006, Art. 38,
marginal no. 127), and hence the decision on deployment of voting

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machines and the determination of the more detailed
preconditions for their deployment. Details may be regulated by
means of a legal ordinance on the basis of a statutory authorisation
(see Magiera, in: Sachs, GG, 5th ed. 2009, Art. 38, marginal no. 114).
The legislature is entitled to broad latitude when lending
concrete shape to the principles of electoral law within which it
must decide whether and to what degree deviations from
individual principles of electoral law are justified in the interest of
the uniformity of the entire election system and to ensure the state
policy goals which they pursue (see BVerfGE 3, 19 (24-25); 59, 119
(124); 95, 335 (349)). The Federal Constitutional Court only
reviews whether the legislature has remained within the
boundaries of the latitude granted to it by the Basic Law, or
whether it has violated a valid constitutional election principle by
overstepping these boundaries. It is not a matter for the Court to
find whether the legislature has found solutions which are
expedient or desired in terms of legal policy within the latitude to
which it is entitled (see BVerfGE 59, 119 (125)).
3. The deployment of voting machines which record the
voters’ votes in electronic form and ascertain the result of the
election electronically is hence only compatible with the Basic Law
subject to strict preconditions.
a) When electronic voting machines are deployed, it must be
possible to check the essential steps in the election act and in the

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ascertainment of the results reliably and without special expert
knowledge.
The necessity of such monitoring emerges not lastly from the
susceptibility to manipulation of electronic voting machines and
their amenability to error. In these, the acceptance of the voters’
votes and the calculation of the election result is based on a
calculation act which cannot be examined from outside or by
persons without special computer knowledge. Errors in the voting
machine software are hence difficult to recognise. Over and above
this, such errors can affect not only one individual election
computer, but all the devices used. Whilst manipulations or
election falsifications are virtually impossible in classical elections
with voting slips under the conditions of the valid provisions,
including the provisions on the public nature of elections – or at
least are only possible with considerable effort and with a very high
risk of discovery which has a preventive impact – a major impact
may in principle be achieved with relatively little effort by
encroachments on electronically controlled voting machines.
Manipulations of individual voting machines can already influence
not only individual voters’ votes, but all votes cast with the aid of
this device. The scope of the election errors which are caused by
alterations and malfunctions of a single software program affecting
multiple devices is even wider. The major scope of the effect of
possible errors in the voting machines or targeted election

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falsifications requires special precautions to be taken in order to
comply with the principle of the public nature of elections.
aa) The voter himself or herself must be able to verify – also
without a more detailed knowledge of computers – whether his or
her vote as cast is recorded truthfully as a basis for counting or – if
the votes are initially counted with technical support – at least as a
basis for a subsequent re-count. It is not sufficient if he or she must
rely on the functionality of the system without the possibility of
personal inspection. It is hence inadequate if he or she is
exclusively informed by an electronic display that his or her ballot
has been registered. This does not facilitate sufficient monitoring
by the voter. Equal viability must also apply to the election bodies
and to interested citizens.
The consequence of this is that the votes may not be stored
exclusively on an electronic storage medium after the ballot. The
voter may not be required to trust solely in the technical integrity
of the system after the electronic ballot. If the election result is
ascertained by computer-controlled processing of the votes stored
in an electronic storage medium, it is not sufficient if only the result
of the calculation process as implemented in the voting machine
can be taken note of using a summary paper printout or an
electronic display. By these means, voters and election bodies can
only examine whether the voting machine has processed as many
votes as voters have been admitted to operate the voting machine
in the elections. It is not easily recognisable in such cases whether

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there have been programming errors in the software or targeted
election falsifications through manipulation of the software or of
the voting machines.
bb) The legislature is not prevented from using electronic
voting machines in the elections if the constitutionally required
possibility of a reliable correctness check is ensured. In particular,
voting machines are conceivable in which the votes are recorded
elsewhere in addition to electronic storage. This is for instance
possible with electronic voting machines which print out a visible
paper report of the vote cast for the respective voter, in addition to
electronic recording of the vote, which can be checked prior to the
final ballot and is then collected to facilitate subsequent checking.
Monitoring that is independent of the electronic vote record also
remains possible when systems are deployed in which the voter
marks a voting slip and the election decision is recorded
simultaneously (for instance with a “digital election pen”, see on
this Schiedermair, Juristenzeitung 2007, p. 162 (170)), or
subsequently (e.g. by a voting slip scanner; see on this Schönau,
Elektronische Demokratie, 2007, pp. 51-52; Khorrami,
Bundestagswahlen per Internet, 2006, p. 30) by electronic means
in order to evaluate these by electronic means at the end of the
election day.
It is certainly ensured in these cases that the voters are in
charge of their ballot and that the result of the election can be
reliably checked by the election authorities or by interested

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citizens without any special prior technical knowledge. Whether
there are still other technical possibilities which create trust on the
part of the electorate in the correctness of the proceedings in
ascertaining the election result based on verifiability, and which
hence comply with the principle of the public nature of elections,
need not be decided here.
b) Restrictions on possibilities for citizens to monitor the
election events cannot be compensated for by sample devices in the
context of the type approval procedure or in the selection of the
voting machines specifically used in the elections prior to their
deployment being subjected to verification by an official institution
as to their compliance with certain security requirements and their
proper technical performance. The monitoring of the essential
steps in the election promotes well-founded trust in the
correctness of the election certainly in the necessary manner that
the citizen himself or herself can reliably verify the election event.
For this reason, a comprehensive bundle of other technical
and organisational security measures (e.g. monitoring and
safekeeping of the voting machines, comparability of the devices
used with an officially checked sample at any time, criminal liability
in respect of election falsifications and local organisation of the
elections) is also not suited by itself to compensate for a lack of
controllability of the essential steps in the election procedure by
the citizen.

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Accordingly, neither participation by the interested public in
procedures of the examination or approval of voting machines, nor
a publication of examination reports or construction
characteristics (including the source code of the software with
computercontrolled voting machines) makes a major contribution
towards ensuring the constitutionally required level of
controllability and verifiability of the election events. Technical
examinations and official approval procedures, which in any case
can only be expertly evaluated by interested specialists, relate to a
stage in the proceedings which is far in advance of the ballot. The
participation of the public in order to achieve the required reliable
monitoring of the election events is hence likely to require other
additional precautions.
c) The legislature can permit exceptions to the principle of
the public nature of elections to a restricted degree in order to
bring other constitutional interests to fruition, in particular the
written principles of electoral law from Article 38.1 sentence 1 of
the Basic Law. For instance, restrictions of public monitoring of the
ballot with postal voting (§ 36 of the Federal Electoral Act) can be
justified with the aim of achieving as comprehensive participation
in the elections as possible, thereby complying with the principle
of generality of elections (see BVerfGE 21, 200 (205); 59, 119
(125)). When deploying computer-controlled voting machines,
however, no contrary constitutional principles are recognisable
which are able to justify a broad restriction of the public nature of

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elections and hence the controllability of the election act and the
ascertainment of the results.
aa) Where the deployment of computer-controlled voting
machines aims to rule out inadvertent incorrect markings on
voting slips, unwanted invalid ballots, unintentional counting
errors or incorrect interpretations of the voters’ intention when
votes are counted (see Schreiber, Handbuch des Wahlrechts zum
Deutschen Bundestag, 7th ed. 2002, § 35, marginal no. 2) which
repeatedly occur in classical elections with voting slips, this serves
the interest of the implementation of the equality of elections
under Article 38.1 sentence 1 of the Basic Law. What weight
attaches to this purpose can however be left open. It certainly does
not justify by itself forgoing any type of verifiability of the election
act. Unintentional counting errors or incorrect interpretations of
the voters’ intention can also be ruled out by voting machines if
supplementary monitoring by the voter, the election bodies or the
public is made possible in addition to electronic recording and
counting of the votes. Corresponding monitoring is for instance
possible with electronic voting machines which record the votes
not only in electronic form in the voting machine, but at the same
time in a form which is independent of this (see II. 3. a) bb above).
Apart from this, user errors – such as pushing the “invalid” key
presuming that this made it possible to correct an erroneous entry
– cannot be ruled out in the voting machines approved for the
elections to the 16th German Bundestag.

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bb) The principle of the secrecy of elections certainly does
not constitute a counter constitutional principle which can be used
as a basis for a broad restriction of the controllability of the election
act and of the ascertainment of the results. There is no “conflict of
interest” between the principle of secret elections and the principle
of the public nature of elections which might justify such
restrictions (Bundestag document 16/ 3600, Annex 1, p. 20).
The principle of secret elections guarantees that the voter
alone is aware of the content of his or her election decision, and
obliges the legislature to take the necessary steps to protect the
election secret (see H.H. Klein, in: Maunz/Dürig, GG, Art. 38,
marginal no. 110 [March 2007]; Pieroth, Juristische Schulung – JuS
1991, p. 89 (91)). The secrecy of elections constitutes the most
important institutional protection of the freedom of elections (see
BVerfGE 99, 1 (13)). In historic terms, secret elections may have
been a caesura in the public nature of the election procedure
because they renounced the open ballot in order to protect the
freedom of election (see Breidenbach/ Blankenagel, Rechtliche
Probleme von Internetwahlen, Berlin 2000, pp. 34-35). Under the
regime of the Basic Law, which explicitly prescribes elections as
secret in order to protect their freedom, however, the principle of
the public nature of elections from the outset does not apply to the
act of the ballot. If the public nature of the elections is not ruled out
in order to enable the ballot to be cast unobserved, the election
procedure is subject to the principle of the public nature of

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elections (see H.H. Klein, in: Maunz/Dürig, GG, Art. 38, marginal no.
113 [March 2007]; Seifert, Bundeswahlrecht, 3rd ed. 1976, Art. 38,
marginal no. 35). Accordingly, the impact of the principle of secrecy
of elections is not to restrict the principle of the public nature of
elections for the ballot act. It also does not justify a restriction of
public monitoring in the casting of the – previously secretly marked
– vote carrier or in the ascertainment of the results. This already
follows from the fact that it does not oppose additional precautions
enabling the voter to monitor whether his or her vote is recorded
in an unfalsified manner as a basis for a subsequent re-count.
cc) Finally, the goal of being able to form a viable people’s
representation in a short period does not constitute a restriction of
the principle of the public nature of elections in the deployment of
computer-controlled voting machines. The clarification of the
correct composition of the people’s representation within a
suitable period is one aspect which can be taken into account when
shaping the election procedure and the election scrutiny procedure
(see BVerfGE 85, 148 (159)). The matter of the assembly of a new
Bundestag in good time (see Article 39.2 of the Basic Law) is
however not endangered by sufficient precautions being taken to
ensure public elections. There is no constitutional requirement for
the election result to be available shortly after closing the polling
stations. What is more, the past Bundestag elections have shown
that the preliminary official final result of the elections can as a rule
be submitted in a matter of hours, even without the deployment of

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voting machines. The interest in rapidly clarifying the composition
of the German Bundestag is therefore not a constitutional interest
that is suited to impose restrictions on the public nature of the
election event.
4. The normative level on which the questions related to the
deployment of voting machines are to be regulated is determined
in line with the requirements of the parliamentary reservation and
the requirements which are placed on the authorisation to issue
legal ordinances (Article 80.1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law).
a) The parliamentary reservation rooted in the principle of
the rule of law and in the principle of democracy requires that the
major decisions are to be taken by the legislature in fundamental
normative areas, especially in the area of the exercise of
fundamental rights, insofar as this is amenable to state regulation
(see BVerfGE 49, 89 (126-127); 61, 260 (275); 80, 124 (132); 101,
1 (34)). The obligation to legislate relates here not only to the
question of whether a certain article must be regulated by law at
all, but also to how far these individual regulations have to go (see
BVerfGE 101, 1 (34)).
According to Article 80.1 sentence 2 of the Basic Law, the
content, purpose and scope of the authorisation to issue legal
ordinances must be laid down in the statute concerned. The
legislature itself must decide which questions are to be regulated
by the legal ordinance, within what limits and with what goal (see

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BVerfGE 2, 307 (334); 5, 71 (76-77); 23, 62 (72)). The wording of
the authorisation need not be formulated as precisely as possible;
it must constitutionally only be sufficiently determined (see
BVerfGE 55, 207 (226); 58, 257 (277); 62, 203 (209-210). It is
sufficient if the limits of the authorisation are determinable by
interpretation using the interpretation principles that are
generally recognised; the goals of the statute, the context together
with other provisions and the genesis of the statute are significant
here (see BVerfGE 8, 274 (307); 23, 62 (73); 55, 207 (226-227); 80,
1 (20-21)). In detail, the requirements as to the level of
determinedness depend on the particularities of the respective
object of regulation and on the intensity of the measure (see
BVerfGE 58, 257 (277-278); 62, 203 (210); 76, 130 (143)). Whilst
less stringent requirements are to be made with circumstances that
are highly varied and subject to rapid change, more stringent
requirements apply to the degree of determinedness of the
authorisation with those regulations which are linked to more
intensive encroachments on legal positions which are protected by
fundamental rights (see BVerfGE 58, 257 (278); 62, 203 (210)).
b) Because of their particularities, regulations relating to the
deployment of voting machines are reserved for parliamentary
decision insofar as they relate to the major requirements for the
deployment of such devices. This includes the decisions on the
permissibility of the deployment of voting machines and the

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fundamental prerequisites for their deployment. These decisions
cannot be left to the institution adopting the ordinance.
The more detailed preconditions for the approval of voting
machines and the procedures to be complied with here, the details
of the use of the voting machines in the elections and the guarantee
of the principles of electoral law in the concrete deployment of
voting machines, by contrast, do not require any detailed
parliamentary regulation, but can be regulated by the institution
adopting the ordinance. The respective requirements of the voting
machines depend heavily on the nature of the respective voting
machine, and hence do not already have to be legislated in detail at
the level of the parliamentary statute. Thus, for instance, the
requirements for the deployment of electronically operated voting
machines differ from those for the deployment of exclusively
mechanical voting machines. Because voting machines are subject
to ongoing technical development, a rapid adjustment of the law is
better guaranteed if the detailed regulations are transferred to the
institution adopting the ordinance.
III.
According to these standards, the authorisation to hand
down ordinances contained in § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act
does not give rise to any profound constitutional objections.
1. The parliamentary legislature was not obliged over and
above the regulation contained in § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act

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to regulate the deployment of computercontrolled voting machines
since the major questions in connection with the deployment of
computer-controlled voting machines are determined in § 35 of the
Federal Electoral Act. Where § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act
authorises the adoption of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance,
the content, purpose and scope of the authorisation that has been
issued is adequately regulated (Article 80.1 sentence 2 of the Basic
Law).
The parliamentary legislature made the fundamental
decision in § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act for the deployment of
voting machines. By restricting the deployment of the voting
machines to facilitating the casting and counting of votes, the
legislature clearly determined the goal of the authorisation to issue
ordinances. It made it clear by deleting the words “with separate
counting devices” in 1999 that § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act also
covers the deployment of computer-controlled voting machines.
The fundamental prerequisites for the deployment of the
voting machines are named in § 35.2 sentences 2 to 5 and 35.3 of
the Federal Electoral Act, in particular the official type approval
and the official authorisation of the use of the voting machines. Of
the constitutionally guaranteed election principles, only the
secrecy of the ballot and the keeping of the secrecy of elections are
explicitly spoken of in § 35.2 sentence 1 of the Federal Electoral Act.
The other principles of electoral law are regulated in § 1.1 sentence
2 of the Federal Electoral Act. They therefore certainly also apply

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to the deployment of voting machines in the elections to the
German Bundestag. Finally, the legislature provided in § 35.3
sentence 1 no. 6 of the Federal Electoral Act that the Federal
Ministry of the Interior may regulate the particularities in
connection with the elections brought about by the use of voting
machines. This provision forms not only a sufficient normative
basis in order to account for the constitutional particularities of the
deployment of computer-controlled voting machines. It also makes
it recognisable for citizens that an election with voting machines
may entail modifications in comparison with the classical ballot
box election. It is not constitutionally required that all details of the
content of a legal ordinance can be derived from the respective
basis for the authorisation. The latitude which can be granted to the
institution adopting the ordinance in this respect is also to be
measured accounting for the complexity of the material and the
dynamics of development processes in voting machines. The
parliamentary legislature is hence certainly not constitutionally
obliged to make detailed regulations for the deployment of
electronic voting machines.
2. § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act is compatible with the
principle of the public nature of elections.
a) It is not constitutionally objectionable that § 35.1 of the
Federal Electoral Act permits voting machines “in place of voting
slips and ballot boxes”. For § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act does
not rule out with this wording the approval and use of voting

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machines with control devices which record the votes in addition
to (electronic) recording in the voting machine in a manner
controlled by the voter. According to the systematic status of § 35.1
of the Federal Electoral Act, the words “in place of voting slips and
ballot boxes” refer to the classical election procedure set out in §
34 of the Federal Electoral Act in which exclusively official voting
slips and ballot boxes are used. § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act,
by contrast, does not rule out the adoption of provisions which
provide for devices for a verifiability of the election result that is
independent of the electronic recording and evaluation of votes.
b) It is unobjectionable for the principle of the public nature
of elections contained in § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act to not be
explicitly listed once more as a precondition for the authorisation
and use of computer-controlled voting machines. These
requirements emerge directly from the constitution, and hence are
also binding on the institution adopting the ordinance in lending
concrete form to § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act. Independently of
this, it also emerges from other provisions of the Federal Electoral
Act that the use of voting machines is only permissible if the
principle of the public nature of elections is adhered to. § 31 of the
Federal Electoral Act determines that the election act is public. §
35.3 sentence 1 no. 4 of the Federal Electoral Act permits
regulations to be made on the open testing of a voting machine
prior to its use.
IV.

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The Federal Voting Device Ordinance is unconstitutional on
grounds of a violation of the principle of the public nature of
elections from Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2
of the Basic Law. It does not already encounter legal reservations
because the expansion of the area of application of the Federal
Voting Device Ordinance to cover computer-controlled voting
machines effected by the Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting
Device Ordinance of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749)
had exceeded the framework of the provision on authorisation of §
35 of the Federal Electoral Act. The Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance does not however contain any provisions ensuring that
only those voting machines are approved and used which comply
with the constitutional preconditions of the principle of the public
nature of elections.
1. Insofar as the Ordinance Amending the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance of 20 April 1999 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 749)
with effect from 24 April 1999 regulates the preconditions for the
deployment of computer-controlled voting machines, it remains
within the authorisation contained in the version of § 35 of the
Federal Electoral Act still applicable on 24 April 1999. The latter
permitted the use of voting machines “with separate counting
devices” (§ 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act). The subsequent
deletion of the words “with separate counting devices” was
considered necessary “in order to adjust the Federal Voting Device
Ordinance to technical developments in voting machines”

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(Bundestag document 14/401, p. 5). This exception from the
legislative procedure to amend § 35.1 of the Federal Electoral Act
cannot however exert a decisive influence on the interpretation of
the provision in the version which it had prior to the amendment.
The expansion of the area of application of the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance to cover computer-aided voting machines was
compatible with the wording of this earlier version. The term
“counting device” only requires that item numbers, flow volumes
or other values are calculated and shown automatically (see Duden,
Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 3rd ed. 1999).
According to the wording, this therefore also covers electronic or
softwarecontrolled counting devices in computer-controlled
voting machines. The characteristic “separate counting devices” is
intended in the view of the institution adopting the ordinance to
refer merely to the requirement of “independent counting of first
and second votes”; such independent counting of first and second
votes is also possible with computer-controlled voting machines
using an electronic counting device. Even if the legislature was not
yet able to consider deployment of microprocessor-controlled
voting machines in the original version of § 35.1 of the Federal
Electoral Act (see Breidenbach/Blankenagel, Rechtliche Probleme
von Internetwahlen, Berlin 2000, p. 7), neither the wording nor the
purpose of § 35 of the Federal Electoral Act in the version
applicable on entry into force of the Ordinance Amending the
Federal Voting Machine Ordinance on 24 April 1999 suggest that

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these voting machines were intended to be ruled out from the
legislative authorisation of the institution adopting the ordinance.
2. The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance violates the
principle of the public nature of elections under Article 38 in
conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic Law because in
the use of computer-controlled voting machines it guarantees
neither effective monitoring of the election act nor the reliable
verifiability of the election result. This shortcoming cannot be
remedied by means of an interpretation in conformity with the
constitution.
a) The public nature of elections requires in the deployment
of computer-controlled voting machines that the essential steps in
the election act and the ascertainment of the results can be
reviewed reliably and without special expert knowledge. Such
provisions are not contained in the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance.
It particularly does not emerge from the Federal Voting
Machine Ordinance that only voting machines may be deployed
which enable the voter in casting his or her vote to ensure reliable
monitoring of whether his or her vote is recorded in an unfalsified
manner.
The ordinance also does not make any concrete content and
procedural requirements as to reliable subsequent monitoring of
the ascertainment of the results. The obligation to seal computer-

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controlled voting machines and the containers in which the vote
storage media are located after ascertaining the election result (§
15.3 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance), as well as to ensure
that the vote storage media are not accessible to unauthorised
parties (§ 16.2 of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance), is not
sufficient in this respect. Even if the vote storage media can be read
out once again at any time after the election day with the aid of a
voting machine, the object of such a re-count is only the
electronically stored votes, with regard to which neither voters nor
the returning committee can examine whether they were recorded
without falsification. The citizen cannot examine the essential steps
in the ascertainment of the results if the re-count again takes place
inside a voting machine.
In addition, the counting of the ballot records entered in the
list of voters and of the election slips which have been accepted, as
well as the comparison with the numbers for the total first and
second votes at the voting machine shown (see § 13 of the Federal
Voting Machine Ordinance) only facilitates monitoring as to
whether the voting machine has processed as many votes as voters
have been admitted for the operation of the voting machine. This
does not guarantee the public monitoring of the essential steps in
the election act and the ascertainment of the results.
b) The Federal Voting Machine Ordinance cannot be
interpreted in conformity with the constitution such that only

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voting machines may be deployed which comply with the principle
of the public nature of elections.
An application of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance in
conformity with the constitution such that type approval and use
authorisation may only be issued by the Federal Ministry of the
Interior if effective monitoring of election acts and ascertainment
of the results is guaranteed (see Schiedermair, Juristenzeitung – JZ
2007, p. 162 (170)) would overstep the boundaries of an
interpretation in conformity with the constitution. In principle, the
institution handing down the ordinance has various possibilities at
its disposal to ensure that the central steps in ballot and vote
counting can be checked. Since the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance in its current version does not make it possible to
recognise what such monitoring should look like, there is no
constitutionally required provision, and hence there are no
adequate indications which an interpretation in conformity with
the constitution could take as its starting point.
It must also be taken into consideration here that the Federal
Ministry of the Interior, as the institution handing down the
ordinance, as it has also clearly confirmed in its statements in the
proceedings at hand, considers the possibilities for monitoring
which are constitutionally necessary for effective monitoring of
election acts and ascertainment of the results to be neither legally
required nor expedient.

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V.
The computer-controlled voting machines used in the
elections to the 16th German Bundestag also did not meet the
requirements made by the constitution as to the use of electronic
voting machines.
The use of the Nedap electronic voting machines of Type
ESD1 hardware versions 01.02, 01.03 and 01.04, as well as of Type
ESD2 hardware version 01.01, violates the principle of the public
nature of elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and
20.2 of the Basic Law) because these voting machines did not
facilitate effective monitoring of the election act or the reliable
verifiability of the election result.
The votes were exclusively recorded on an electronic storage
medium after the ballot. Neither the voter nor the returning
committees, nor the citizens present in the polling station, were
able to check whether the votes cast were recorded by the voting
machines without falsification. Using the display on the control
unit, the returning committees could only recognise whether the
voting machines registered a ballot, but not whether the votes were
recorded by the voting machines without changing the content in
any way. The voting machines did not provide a possibility to
record the votes independently of the electronic record on the vote
storage module enabling the respective voter to check his or her
ballot.

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The essential steps in the ascertainment of the results by the
voting machines also could not be verified by the public. Since the
ascertainment of the results exclusively formed the object of a data
processing procedure running inside the voting machines, it was
possible for neither the election bodies nor the citizens
participating in the ascertainment of the results to verify whether
the valid votes cast were correctly allotted to the electoral
proposals and the votes accounted for by the individual electoral
proposals in total were correctly ascertained. It was not sufficient
that the result of the computing process implemented in the voting
machine could be taken note of using a summary paper printout or
an electronic display. A public examination by means of which the
citizen could have reliably verified the ascertainment of the
election result himself or herself without prior special technical
knowledge was hence ruled out
VI.
It may remain open whether the further complaints are well-
founded. The complainants complain amongst other things that the
characteristics of the voting machines and of the software used do
not meet the requirements of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance, in particular the Guidelines for the Construction of
Voting Machines (Annex 1 to § 2 of the Federal Voting Machine
Ordinance). The voting machines used were also said not to have
been subject to sufficient official monitoring and examination of
the samples by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, and

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that the type approval procedure should have been designed
differently. The complainants hence ultimately object to the
deployment of the computer-controlled voting machines used in
the elections to the 16th German Bundestag. Even if these
complaints were well-founded, in addition to the finding of the
violation of the principle of the public nature of elections from
Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic
Law, these election errors would not take on any particular weight.
VII.
The election errors that were ascertained do not lead to the
complaints requesting the scrutiny of an election being permitted
or to the repetition of the elections in the constituencies
designated.
1. The election error emerging from the fact that the type
approvals for Nedap computer-controlled voting machines were
granted, that the use of these voting machines in the elections to
the 16th German Bundestag was approved and that the voting
machines were indeed deployed in the elections without an
effective legal basis, has no relevance to mandates. Approval and
use of voting machines despite inadequate design of the legal basis
do not lead as such to an influence on the election result.
2. The election error emerging from the fact that computer-
controlled voting machines were approved and deployed the
characteristics of which were not compatible with the

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requirements of effective verifiability of the election events, even if
its relevance to mandates were to be assumed, does not lead to a
partial declaration of invalidity of the elections to the 16th German
Bundestag.
a) In the cases in which an election error may have had an
impact on the distribution of mandates in the Bundestag, the
election scrutiny decision of the Federal Constitutional Court is
subject to the principle of the least incisive encroachment. The
decision may only go so far as is demanded by the election error
that has been ascertained. In principle, the requirement of the
protection of the status quo of an elected people’s representation
(see BVerfGE 89, 243 (253)), which finds its legal basis in the
principle of democracy, must be weighed up with the impact of the
election error that has been ascertained. Simple influences on the
election carrying no weight whatever do not therefore lead to the
invalidity of an election. The encroachment on the composition of
an elected people’s representation by a decision under the law that
regulates the scrutiny of elections must be justified in light of the
interest in conserving the elected people’s representation (see
BVerfG, judgment of the Second Senate of 3 July 2008 – 2 BvC 1/07,
7/07 –, Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht 2008, p. 991 (997)
with further references). Even where an election error that is
relevant to mandates can be restricted to certain mandates, in
other words where the whole election did not have to be declared

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invalid, a weighing up is to be undertaken which may come out in
favour of the interest in protecting the status quo.
b) The interest in the protection of the status quo of the
people’s representation composed in trust in the constitutionality
of the Federal Voting Machine Ordinance outweighs the election
errors that have been ascertained. Given that there are no
indications that voting machines worked incorrectly or might have
been manipulated, and hence that the election result would have
been different in the constituencies concerned without the
deployment of the computer-controlled voting machines, its
possible impact on the composition of the 16th German Bundestag
can be regarded as marginal at most. Such uncertain impacts do not
justify the partial declaration of the invalidity of the elections to the
16th German Bundestag applied for. It should also be taken into
account here that the violation of the constitution that was
ascertained did not take place with intent, but when the legal
situation was still unclear. Under these circumstances, after the
above there is no election error making the continuation of the
elected people’s representation appear untenable.
B.
With regard to the fact that the complainants rightly
complain of the unconstitutionality of the use of computer-
controlled voting machines, the necessary expenses which they
have incurred are to be refunded to them according to §§ 18 and

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19 of the Law on the Scrutiny of Elections in conjunction with §
34a.3 of the Federal Constitutional Court Act in this respect.
Accordingly, the complainant re 1. is to be refunded the necessary
expenses in full, and the complainant re 2., whose complaints are
partly unfounded, is to be refunded three-quarters of the necessary
expenditure.
Judges: Voßkuhle, Broß, Osterloh, Di Fabio, Mellinghoff,
LübbeWolff, Gerhardt, Landau
Bundesverfassungsgericht, Urteil des Zweiten Senats vom 3.
März 2009 - 2 BvC 3/07
Zitiervorschlag BVerfG, Urteil des Zweiten Senats vom 3. März 2009 - 2
BvC 3/07 –
Rn. (1 - 166),
http://www.bverfg.de/e/cs20090303_2bvc000307en.html
ECLI ECLI:DE:BVerfG:2009:cs20090303.2bvc000307

SCC Online Web Edition, Copyright © 2018
154
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Printed For: Mr Prasanna S
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ANNEXURE-P-6

CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION
SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION (C)NO.13598 OF 2017
M/S. RESHMA VITHALBHAI PATEL ... PETITIONER(S)

VS.
AND
WRIT PETITION (CRL.) NO.41 OF 2017
MANOHAR LAL SHARMA ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
WITH
ATATUR REHMAN ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
WITH
BAHUJAN SAMAJ PARTY NATIONAL TREASURER ... PETITIONER(S)
VS.
ORDER
1. In the counter affidavit filed on behalf of the Election Commission of
India, it is sought to be asserted as under :
“4.10. Thereafter, pursuant to release of the requisite

funds by the Government of India on 19.04.2017,
the Election Commission of India published a
Status Paper on EVMs and VVPATs on its website
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dated 09.05.2017, wherein inter-alia, the

commitment to 100% coverage of VVPATs in all
future elections was reiterated.
Thereafter, an all Political Parties meet

was conducted by the Election Commission of
India on 12.05.2017, which was attended by 07
National Parties and 35 State Parties, wherein
the Election Commission of India informed the
political parties present that it would ensure
100% coverage of VVPATs in all future elections
to the Parliament and State Assembly Elections,
and that VVPATs slips of a percentage of EVMs
(to be determined by the Election Commission of
India) would be counted.
Thereafter, after the conclusion of the EVM

challenge on 03.06.2017, the Election Commission of
India issued a Press Note on 03.06.2017 itself, wherein
it reiterated its commitment to hold all future elections
mandatorily with VVPATs.”
2. The above statement of the Election Commission of India contained in

the counter affidavit acknowledges, that all prayers made in the group of
petitions, stand fulfilled and satisfied. It is also apparent, that the
Government of India has sanctioned funds for the purchase of the VVPAT
Units, needed during the course of the elections, which are to take place
in the immediate future. The position expressed leaves no room for any
doubt, that all future 2 elections will be held by using VVPAT. The above
stance is reiterated during the course of hearing by the learned counsel
representing the Election commission of India.
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3. In view of the above, we are of the considered view, that the present
bunch of matters does not require any further adjudication at our hands.
All the cases clubbed together, are accordingly disposed of in terms of the
counter affidavit filed by the Election Commission of
India, duly supported by the Government of India.
......................CJI.
[JAGDISH SINGH KHEHAR]
........................J.
[ADARSH KUMAR GOEL]
........................J.
[D.Y. CHANDRACHUD]
New Delhi;
9th August, 2017.
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ITEM NO.1 & 4 COURT NO.1 SECTION III

SUPREMECOURTOFINDIA
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (C) No(s).13598/2017
(Arising out of impugned final judgment and order dated 12-04-2017 in

WPPIL No.72/2017 passed by the High Court Of Gujarat At Ahmedabad)
MS. RESHMA VITHALBHAI PATEL Petitioner(s)

VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA THROUGH THE JT. SECRETARY & ORS. Respondent(s)
WITH
W.P.(CRL.) NO.41/2017(PIL-W)
W.P.(C) NO.209/2017 (PIL-W)
W.P.(C) NO.225/2017 (X)
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ADARSH KUMAR GOEL
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Nizam M. Pasha,Adv.
In SLP 13598/2017 Mr. Dilip Patel,Adv.
Mr. Rafik Lokhandwala,Adv.
Ms. Pragya Baghel,AOR
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Manohar Lal Sharma, In-person(Not present)

in WR 41/2017
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132
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Asad Alvi,Adv.

In WC 209/2017 Mrs. Saba Asad,Adv.
Mr. Faiz Rizvi,Adv.
for Mr. Satya Mitra,AOR
For Petitioner(s) Mr. Shail Kr. Dwivedi,Adv.

In WC 225/2017 Mr. Siddharth Krishna Dwivedi,Adv.
Ms. Vibha Dwivedi,Adv.
Ms. Nidhi Dwivedi,Adv.
for Mr. G.V. Rao,AOR
For Respondent(s) Mr. K.K.Venugopal,Attorney General for India

(UOI) Mr. Abhinav Mukherji,Adv.
Ms. Rukhmini Bobde,Adv.
Mr. Anish Kumar Gupta,Adv.
Mr. S.S. Shamshery,Adv.
Mr. Chandra Shekhar Suman,Adv.

Mr. R.K. Rajwanshi,Adv.
for Mr. Mukesh Kumar Maroria,AOR
for Election Mr. Amit Sharma,Adv.
Commission of India Mr. Dipesh Sinha,Adv.
Ms. Ayiala Imti,Adv.
Mr. Annam D.N. Rao,AOR

Mr. A. Venkatesh,Adv.
Mr. Rahul Mishra,Adv.
Mr. Sudipto Sircar,Adv.
Mr. Sanjay Kapur,Adv.

Ms. Harleen Bains,Adv.
Ms. Shubhra Kapur,Adv.
//TRUE TYPED COPY//

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133
No.3 Mr. Adarsh Upadhyay,Adv.

Mr. Amit Kumar Singh,Adv.
Mrs. Hemantika Wahi,AOR

Ms. Jesal Wahi,Adv.
Ms. Puja Singh,Adv.
Ms. Shodhika Sharma,Adv.
Mr. Sunil Fernandes,AOR

Ms. Astha Sharma,Adv.
Ms. Anju Thomas,Adv.
Mr. Adit S. Pujari,Adv.
ORDER
The special leave petition and writ petitions are disposed of in terms of
the signed order.
(Sarita Purohit) (Renuka Sadana)

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ANNEXURE-P-7
ELECTION COMMISSIONOF INDIA
NO. 51/8/VVPAT-INST/2018-EMS Dated 13TH February, 2018
To
All States and Union Territories
Subject: Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips- Pilot Testing-

regarding.
Sir,
I am directed to state that the Commission has already mandated

that VVPATs will be used with EVMs at all polling stations in all future
General/Bye Elections to the Parliament and the state Legislative
Assemblies. The Commission conducted mandatory verification of
VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling station per
Assembly Constituency on a pilot basis in the recently concluded General
Elections to State Legislative Assemblies of Gujarat and Himachal
Pradesh, in addition to the provision of Rule 56D of the Conduct of
Elections Rules, 1961, and the same has been extended to the ongoing
General Elections to the State Legislative Assemblies of Meghalaya,
Nagaland and Tripura, on ‘pilot’ basis.
The Commission has further directed that henceforth mandatory

verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling
station shall be conducted in all future General and Bye Elections to the
House of the people and State Legislative Assemblies, in addition to the
provisions of Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, after the
completion of the last round of counting of votes recorded in the EVMs as
under:
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a) In case of general and Bye election to State Legislative Assemblies.

Verification of VVPAT slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling
b) In case of general and Bye elections to the House of the people

verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01 (one)
polling station of each Assembly Segment of the parliamentary
constituency concerned.
For this mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips, the following

procedure shall be followed:
1. The verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected 01

(one) polling station for each Assembly Constituency/Segment
shall be taken up after the completion of the last round of counting
of voted recorded in the EVMs.
2. The random selection of 01 (one) polling station per Assembly

Constituency/Segment shall be done by Draw of lots, by the
Returning Officer Concerned, in the presence of candidates/their
agents and the General Observer appointed by the Commission for
the Constituency.
3. The draw of lots must be conducted immediately after the

completetion of the last round of counting of votes recorded in the
EVMs (Control Units) in the designated counting Hall for the
particular Assembly Constituency/Assembly Segment.
4. A written intimation regarding the conduct of draw of lots for the

random selection of 01 (one) polling station of verification of
VVPAT slips shall be given by the Returning Officer to the
Candidates/their election agents well in advance.
5. The following procedure shall be followed shall be followed for the

conduct of draw of lots:
a. White colour paper eards of postcard size be used for

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b. Total number of such paper cards should be equal to total

number of polling stations in the Assembly Constituency.
c. The paper cards shall have pre-printed Assembly

Constituency/Assembly Segment number, AC/AS name and
date of polling on the top, and the polling station number in the
center. Each digit of the polling station number shall be at least
1X1 (1 inch by 1 inch) size and printed in black ink.
d. The Paper cards to be used for draw of lots should be four folded
in such a way that polling station number is not visible.
e. Each paper card shall be shown to the candidates/their agents

before folding and dropping in the container.
f. The paper cards shall be kept in the big container and must be
shaken before picking up 01 (one) slip by the Returning Officer.
6. The verification of VVPAT paper slips shall be done in a ‘VVPAT

Counting Booth’ (VCB), specially prepared for this purpose inside
the Counting Hall. The booth shall be enclosed in a wire mesh just
like a bank cashier’s cabin so that no VVPAT paper slip can be
accessed by any unauthorized person. One of the Counting tables
in the Counting Hall can be converted into the VCB and can be used
for normal counting of round-wise EVM votes before the count of
VVPAT slips as per random selection after the completion of round-
wise EVM counting.
7. The Verification count of the VVPAT paper slips of the randomly

selected 01 (one) polling station shall be conducted strictly in
accordance with the instructions of the Commission on counting of
8. The Returning Officer and Assistant Returning Officer as the case

may be shall personally supervise the counting of VVPAT paper
slips at this booth. The general observer concerned shall ensure
close and careful observation of the entire exercise and ensure
strict compliance of the Commission’s instructions.
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9. The above process shall be fully videographed.
10. After completion of the above process, the Returning Officer

shall give a certificate in the annexed format.
The above direction of the Commission shall be brought to the notice

of all concerned.
Yours faithfully
(Madhusudan Gupta)
Under Secretary
CC: Standard Distribution
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Annexure
Pilot Testing of verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 01 randomly

selected polling station
Name of State;…………………………………………………………………
No. and Name of Assembly/Parliamentary Constituency………………………
No. and Name of Assembly Segment (in case of PC)……………………………..
SI. No. and name of Polling station……………………………………………………
Unique ID of Control Unit…………………………………………………………………
Unique ID of VVPAT…………………………………………………………………………
It is certify that pilot testing of counting of paper slips of VVPAT of 01

randomly selected polling station has been conducted as per the
instructions of the Commission.
Name of No of votes cast Discrepancy if

candidate any
1
2
3
Nota
TOTAL VOTES
1………………………..
2………………………..
3……………………….
Signature of general Observer
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ANNEXURE-P-8
A Research Paper on EVMs and VVPAT
1. In his book “Shadows of the Mind” (1994), the globally renowned

British scientist, physicist, mathematician and authority on Artificial
Intelligence, Roger Penrose, visualised the hi-tech rigging of an
election in Chapter 8, sub-chapter 8.5 titled “The Puzzling Election”:
“The date of a long-awaited election approaches. Numerous

opinion polls show the ruling party trailing by a significant margin.
Indeed, the margin of error for each of these opinion polls is
around 3% or 4%, so none of them can really be trusted. Polling
day arrives and passes. The votes are counted, and the result is
a complete surprise. The ruling party is back with a comfortable
majority, having achieved their target of 8% over their nearest
rivals. How did this happen? The answer: Virus which does more
than just destroy data. The viruses self-destruct, leaving no record
whatsoever, bar the evil deed itself, to indicate their previous
existence. The viruses have been cleverly concocted according to
some precise formula, depending to some extent on the actual
votes cast — to give the ruling party precisely the majority they
need.”
In the 24 years since Roger Penrose wrote the above, the

developments in Information & Communication Technology (ICT)
and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been so rapid and so dramatic
that such a scenario has already become a reality.
2. There are broadly 5 types of voting systems in use around the world.
They are indicated below in the descending order of transparency,
verifiability, accountability and robustness:
(i) Paper Ballots that are hand counted.
(ii) Machine-readable Paper Ballots that are scanned and

electronically counted using Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
technology. A certain percentage of the Paper Ballots are also
hand counted.
(iii) Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machines with what is

called Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (DRE-VVPAT). The EVM
does the machine counting and a certain percentage of the
‘paper slips’ are also hand counted.
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(iv) Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machines (DRE) that also do

the counting electronically. Recounting is not possible because
it will yield the same total.
(v) Internet-based Voting or Online Voting. This is most

vulnerable to cyber-attacks and not suited for elections to
Legislatures.
India has so far tried out voting systems (i), (iv) and (iii) - in that
order.
3. The Election Commission of India (ECI), in its “Status Paper on

Electronic Voting Machines” available at its website, has claimed that
Indian EVMs are truly unique compared to the e-voting machines used
in other parts of the world for the following reasons:
• ECI-EVMs are stand-alone, non-networked machines.

• The ECI-EVMs are manufactured in two PSUs namely ECIL and
BEL, unlike machines used in other countries, which were
manufactured entirely by private entities. Hence there is no
chance of involvement of vested interest of private players or
technology vendors in decision making or production of the
ECI-EVMs.
• ECI-EVMs have been time and again successfully verified and
certified by an independent Technical Experts Committee after
an end-to-end testing process. STQC under Ministry of
Information and Technology, an accredited third-party entity,
conducts standardization and certification of ECI EVMs
produced by manufacturers, unlike the machines used in
Netherlands,
• In ECI EVMs, data is stored internally and not transferrable by
any device, unlike other countries where voting data recorded
in the DRM is transferred by means of CD, etc.
• Commission has evolved full end-to-end security protocol and
administrative safeguards for the use, storage, transportation
and tracking of ECI EVMs, unlike in other countries where
NEDAP machines were used.
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• Unlike MOIKR of Netherlands, the Commission is fully backed

by a Technical Expert Committee comprising of eminent
professors.
• Every EVM has a unique number attached to it, which is
recorded in the Election Commission’s database through EVM
Tracking Software. This number of the EVM can always be
cross-checked against the database.
• The software used in these EVMs is One Time Programmable
(OTP), which can’t be re-written after manufacture.
• The ECI-EVMs are always under strict, uniform, high profile
administrative and physical security as per legal framework
across the country.
• Section 61 A of the Representation of the Peoples Act 1951
allows the use of EVMs by ECI. The different High Courts across
the country have also upheld the use of EVMs time and again
in various judgments and the Karnataka High Court in 2004
declared ECI-EVMs as “national pride” because of its
• Following the direction of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, the ECI
has introduced the technology of VVPAT in order to ensure
public examinability. The Commission is committed to
implement VVPATs nation-wide by 2019. Thus, there will be
100% voter verifiability and auditability of every vote cast as
opposed to lack of such facility in the NEDAP machines which
was struck down by the German Supreme Court as un-
Constitutional. Whereas Indian Supreme Court has upheld the
validity of use of EVM for conducting elections in the country.
• Thus any comparison of ECI-EVMs with machines used
elsewhere is misplaced.
The Election Commission’s Press Release titled “FAQs ON SECURITY

FEATURES OF THE ECI-EVMs” available at
http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=160754 is also
worth reading. As we shall see later, not all the replies are convincing.
In short, the distinctive features of the Indian EVMs are that their
hardware is of simple design; their software (‘trusted computer base’)
is minimal; they are battery operated; and they are easy to use. The
Election Commission’s strategy to prevent fraud relies entirely on the
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physical security of the machines, the secrecy of the software

(‘security through obscurity’), various administrative safeguards and
the integrity of election insiders.
4. But BJP ideologue, and now Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)

GVL Narasimha Rao in his book “Democracy At Risk – Can We Trust
Our Electronic Voting Machines?” (2010) [available
at http://www.indianevm.com/book_democracy_at_risk_2010.pdf],
made out a persuasive case that the Election Commission’s tall claims
do not hold water. One of the defining features of the Direct
Recording EVMs (DREs) of the kind used in India is that the votes are
recorded on the memory unit of the machine rather than on paper.
This makes it impossible for voters to directly verify that their vote
has been cast in the way that they wish and makes it theoretically
possible to alter vote totals within the machine in ways that would be
difficult to detect. Thus, EVMs have glaring defects in the form of lack
of transparency, verifiability and accountability. In general,
computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming
error, equipment malfunction and malicious tampering, and so there
is no basis for public trust in such electronic voting equipment. The
most commonly recommended solution to this problem is a voter-
verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). EVMs with VVPAT differ from
regular EVMs in that the voter gets to view for a few seconds a paper
receipt for his vote before it drops into a box, and these paper slips
can then be compared to the machine-reported totals in a post-
election audit. According to Rao, the Election Commission was
secretive about the hardware design and the software used in its
EVMs and would not allow outsiders to examine the same for security
weaknesses if any; it was clueless about the security risks associated
with EVM technology and mistakenly believed its EVMs to be “tamper
proof” when, in reality, they were susceptible to a range of attacks;
and it was status quoist and unreceptive to new ideas. Despite the
near universal consensus that a voter verified paper audit trail
(VVPAT) is essential to ensure the integrity of the electoral process,
and despite the fact that Germany, Netherlands, Ireland and several
States in USA had banned paperless Direct Recording EVMs (or DREs)
and advanced countries like Japan, Singapore and Canada still used
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paper ballot (which is considered the ‘gold standard’), the Election

Commission was reluctant to implement VVPAT.
5. In 2010, a team led by J. Alex Halderman, Professor of Computer

Science, University of Michigan, managed to get hold of an Indian
EVM unofficially and published a paper titled “Security Analysis of
India’s Electronic Voting Machines” [available at
https://indiaevm.org/evm_tr2010.pdf ]. This was the first,
independent, rigorous assessment of the security risks associated
with Indian EVMs, and it pointed out many vulnerabilities that the
Election Commission’s ‘Expert Committee’ had failed to do. According
to Prof. Halderman et al, while the simple hardware design and the
minimal software of Indian EVMs made certain software-based
attacks less likely than in their counterpart Direct Recording EVMs in
the West, they made a different set of highly dangerous attacks far
easier. Such attacks which can steal votes and violate the secrecy of
the ballot can be carried out by dishonest election insiders or other
criminals with only brief physical access to the machines. The
researchers also discussed how the Election Commission’s security
protocol-cum-administrative safeguards designed to prevent fraud
were not sufficient to prevent the kind of attacks that are possible.
The authors observed:
“Using EVMs in India may have seemed like a good idea when the
machines were introduced in the 1980s, but science's
understanding of electronic voting security and of attacks against it
has progressed dramatically since then, and other technologically
advanced countries have adopted and then abandoned EVM-style
voting. Now that we better understand what technology can and
cannot do, any new solutions to the very real problems election
officials face must address the problems, not merely hide them
from sight.”
The Election Commission and the two manufacturers of EVMs (BEL

and ECIL) could not give satisfactory technical replies to the EVM
manipulation possibilities pointed out in the paper. Prof. Halderman
et al’s paper (together with a YouTube video) was made open to the
public, and this created widespread awareness about electronic voting
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security. The Election Commission could no longer ignore the criticism

and was impelled to act.
6. The replacement of paperless EVMs with VVPAT EVMs is imperative

for the following four reasons:
a) To increase citizens' confidence that their vote will be counted

accurately.
b) To allow for a recount.
c) To provide a backup in cases of loss of votes due to malfunction.
d) To test – through a random selection of machines – whether the
paper result is the same as the electronic result.
The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in a landmark judgment

in March, 2009 held the use of EVMs in Germany unconstitutional. The
Court ruled that in view of the “public rationale of elections”, the
process should be transparent in a manner that the general public can
be satisfied that their vote is correctly recorded. The standard the
Court set for this purpose was that there should be a provision
whereby 'the votes are recorded in another way besides electronic
storage' and there is 'retraceability' of the election result
independently of the electronic count.
In other words, the Court ruled that EVMs are unconstitutional so long
as there was no provision for an additional verifiable physical record
of every vote cast.
In 2013, in a PIL filed by BJP leader Dr.Subramanian Swamy, the

Supreme Court passed an order mandating the use of voter verified
paper audit trail along with EVMs, and directed the Election
Commission to implement the VVPAT system in a phased manner. The
Supreme Court observed:
“From the materials placed by both the sides, we are satisfied that
the “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and fair
elections. The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be achieved
only with the introduction of the “paper trail”. EVMs with VVPAT
system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With an intent to
have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the
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immense importance in democratic system”.
The Supreme Court stopped short of setting a time table for the
Election Commission to fully implement its ruling. This allowed the
Government of India to drag its feet in the release of funds to the
Election Commission for the procurement of the VVPAT systems,
thereby causing a delay of nearly 4 years. EVMs with VVPATs were
used in all polling stations in select State Assembly Elections only from
2017 onwards, and the Election Commission has planned to conduct
all future Assembly Elections and the 2019 Parliamentary Elections
only with VVPAT EVMs. But in the recently concluded Assembly
Elections for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the Election Commission
passed a controversial order mandating the counting of VVPAT slips
only for one polling station per Assembly Constituency. This worked
out to just 182 out of 44,597 polling stations (or 0.4% of the EVMs)
in Gujarat and to just 68 out of 7516 polling stations (or 0.9% of the
EVMs) in Himachal Pradesh. This is nothing but tokenism, and the
Election Commission’s action of ordering the counting of VVPAT slips
in such a minuscule sample of EVMs is as bad as not implementing
VVPAT at all.
7. In this paper, we recapitulate the various security issues with non-

VVPAT or paperless EVMs in the light of the Election Commission’s
claims thereof. Next, we discuss what needs to be done for the proper
implementation of VVPAT systems. The reason why we are dwelling
at great length on non-VVPAT EVMs is that we wish to emphasise the
security risks involved in the perfunctory implementation of VVPAT
systems as done in the recent Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh
Assembly Elections. We go on to discuss if there are any further
measures that the Election Commission needs to undertake in order
to enhance the integrity of the electoral process in India. This is not
meant to be an exercise in fault-finding nor are we ‘conspiracy
theorists’. Our interest in this matter is strictly apolitical and non-
partisan and nothing more than preserving the integrity of India’s
electoral process which is the bedrock of our democracy.
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8. The Election Commission is fond of saying that “Indian EVMs are not
comparable with EVMs abroad” because ours are “stand-alone, non-
networked machines that cannot be hacked”. This statement is
misleading because the Direct Recording EVMs (or DREs) used all over
the world are also "stand-alone" machines like Indian EVMs. They are
not part of any network. As German software expert Dr.Ulrich
Weisner, who won the case against EVMs in Germany leading to their
ban, has observed:
"(EVMs)…banned in the Netherlands, Ireland and Germany are not

networked…they were similar to the Indian EVMs and worked
stand-alone with no connection to Internet or other networks
during the election and counting phase. The lack of the network
connection was one of the (invalid) reasons given by the vendor
and by authorities in the three countries why the machines could
not be hacked. The vendor also claimed that his devices were not
real computers but ‘special purpose devices’ which were designed
to only count votes and could not be used for any other purpose….It
is common sense that someone who has sufficient access to open
the Indian EVMs and replace the software or hardware can
implement virtually any functionality, including vote stealing
functionality, that is only activated under certain circumstances and
would not be spotted in tests.”
9. A key component of the Election Commission’s strategy to prevent

fraud is physical security of EVMs so that they do not fall into wrong
hands. But the fact that Prof. Halderman was able to get hold of an
EVM unofficially proves that the strong security for the storage of
EVMs can be breached. Moreover, RTI replies given by the
Commission reveal that its EVM inventory management leaves much
to be desired. According to an article dated 6.12.2017 in The Wire
and titled “RTI Response raises serious questions about Security,
Handling of EVMs”, the Election Commission has admitted to at least
70 cases of theft of EVMs across three states – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat
and Madhya Pradesh – over successive elections. Till date, no one has
been convicted for theft of EVMs. The petition also revealed that
there was a big discrepancy between the number of EVMs that were
manufactured by ECIL and BEL and those actually procured by the
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Election Commission with no satisfactory explanation as to what

happened to the ‘missing’ EVMs. For example, the discrepancy in
the case of ECIL was 1,97,368 units of Control Units and 3,55,747
units of Ballot Units! It shows that there is no system in place for
periodic reconciliation. There was also no satisfactory reply to the
question as to how the old EVMs were disposed of. Clearly, there
are large numbers of EVMs out there in the wrong hands. Once an
EVM is stolen, reverse engineering of the EVM is easy and it is possible
to manufacture as many dishonest look-alikes as needed (with
suitable modifications to the hardware and software to facilitate
manipulation, steal votes and change election outcomes), and
substitute them for the real EVMs. More about this later.
10. The Election Commission is correct when it claims that the software
(‘firmware’) of its EVMs is One Time Programmable (OTP) that is
‘burned’ into the EVM’s CPU and can’t be re-written after manufacture
or hacked in any manner. It is also true that the data are stored
internally and not transferrable by any device. But these advantages
are easily negated by the simple act of replacing the non-hackable
CPU with a hackable one! As Prof. Halderman et al and GVLN Rao
have shown, if dishonest insiders and criminals can get physical
access to the EVMs even for a short while, they can easily replace the
EVM’s CPU with another look-alike CPU that can be programmed to
count votes dishonestly and to be remote controlled. Since Indian
EVMs use cheap generic chips rather than the more secure ASGA or
FPGA chips, such replacement of CPU is rendered easier. The
substitute, look-alike CPU could have a malicious software (‘Trojan’)
embedded inside it. This Trojan can remain dormant till the elections,
be activated during the elections to steal votes, and be made to
‘disappear’ after elections. This would result in the ‘perfect election
fraud’ that Roger Penrose had envisaged, one that can neither be
detected before the elections nor proved after the elections. Further,
by embedding a Bluetooth device or a micro-transmitter in the
substitute, look-alike CPU, it will be possible for an attacker to
manipulate the EVM through remote devices. Prof. Halderman et al
have stated that not just the CPU, but the Motherboard (card which
contains the CPU) can also be replaced with a look-alike but dishonest
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Motherboard. What is more, attackers can also build identical looking

but dishonest Ballot Units and Control Units and substitute them for
the Commission’s EVMs. Even if the CPU is genuine, the attackers
can build a dishonest Display Board replacing the real Display Board
in the Control Unit by adding a hidden microcontroller (chip) that can
intercept vote totals and substitute fraudulent results. The
researchers demonstrated physically how the dishonest display
attack can be done. Neither the Election Commission nor the election
officials have any practical means of verifying whether the EVMs in
use are authentic or not. To detect such fraud, the post-2006 2nd
generation (M2) EVMs have a provision to interface with an
‘Authentication Unit’. Although the EVM manufacturers had
developed and tested such an ‘Authentication Unit’ in 2006, the
Election Commission mysteriously shelved the project.
11. The software (‘firmware’) used in the EVMs is ‘burnt’ into the CPU by
two foreign chipmakers (Microchip, U.S.A and Renesas, Japan), after
which they are shipped to India for assembly into the EVMs. The EVM
manufacturers (BEL & ECIL) cannot ‘read back’ their contents to verify
the integrity of the ‘firmware’. They can only carry out ‘functionality
tests’ on the EVMs to check whether they are working properly. This
is called ‘black box testing’. According to Arnold B. Urken, who
founded the first voting-machine testing lab called Election
Technology Laboratories, ‘white-box testing’ - eyes-on examination
of the firmware of the EVMs - should be mandatory if certification is
to mean anything. Indian EVMs do not fulfil this condition. Again, if
the chips supplied to BEL and ECIL have a vote-stealing Trojan
embedded inside them – this mischief could have been done by rogue
employees either at the EVM manufacturers’ end or at the foreign
chipmakers’ end – BEL and ECIL are not in a position to detect the
same.
12. According to Prof. Halderman et al, attackers can also manipulate the
EVM by directly accessing and manipulating the internal state of the
machine in ways not contemplated by its designers or understood by
the Election Commission. For example, inside each Control Unit, there
are 2 EEPROMs in which the voting data are stored. Manipulating the
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voting data in the EEPROMs is easy because the simple software

design of the EVMs does not attempt to cryptographically protect or
authenticate the data stored there. By attaching additional hardware
to the Control Unit's circuit board, an attacker can directly manipulate
the unsecured voting data in the EEPROMs. Unlike the dishonest
display attack, which involved replacing hardware components with
dishonest look-alikes, this mode of attack involves only the temporary
application of malicious hardware – a small device that clips directly
to the EEPROM memory chips. The researchers also demonstrated
physically how this clip-on device can manipulate the EEPROM
memory, steal votes and violate ballot secrecy.
13. Thus, the Election Commission’s claims about Indian EVMs being
‘different’ and ‘tamper proof’ do not seem to withstand rigorous
scrutiny. There are a startlingly large number of security issues that
render its EVMs susceptible to fraud and which can alter election
results without the Election Commission being any the wiser. Three
other possibilities of fraud can also be envisaged:
(i) Replacing the cable (connecting the Ballot Unit and the Control
Unit) with a dishonest look-alike cable carrying a tiny embedded
chip with a Bluetooth device that can be programmed with vote
stealing software and operated remotely. While fiddling with the
CPU, Motherboard or Display Board in the Control Unit may attract
some suspicion, replacing the cable connector can be a simple and
smooth affair for those who want to subvert elections. It can be
done relatively easily by couching it as routine maintenance and
it will not excite the suspicion of potential whistle-blowers.
Furthermore, cables are not considered high security items and
therefore can be manufactured locally, through outsourced private
suppliers, who could be more easily compromised.
(ii) Hacking of the EVM’s original firmware stored in the servers of BEL
and ECIL and introducing a Trojan into it.
(iii) Hacking the databases of voters in States (which typically have

few I.T support staff and little, if any, cybersecurity expertise) so
as to modify the printed voter lists that are prepared from these
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databases. Selectively omitting the names of small groups of

voters – by community, caste or locality, for example – can play
havoc on polling day. This is alleged to have been the modus
operandi of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S Presidential
Election.
Many computer scientists could list dozens of other plausible ways to

compromise EVMs. The Election Commission would be making a
serious mistake if it underestimates the kind of ingenious electronic
security breaches that are possible (or) if it thinks that Indian
politicians are not ‘hi-tech’ enough to resort to such manipulations.
Given the high stakes involved, the possibility of our political parties
engaging the best brains in India and abroad to perpetrate such ‘hi-
tech’ frauds cannot be ruled out! The recent controversy over the
manipulation of personal data from Facebook by the UK-based firm
Cambridge Analytica for election campaigning, and reports that
Cambridge Analytica may have worked with political parties in India
have triggered a massive political row, with both the Congress and
the BJP accusing the other of having used its services. [Source:
“Whistleblower Reveals Cambridge Analytica’s India Link”, NDTV, 22nd
March 2018].
US computer scientist Barbara Simmons, who has been a tireless

campaigner against paperless EVMs and who runs the non-profit
‘Verified Voting’, believes that ‘democracy is in peril’ and that EVM
fraud is ‘not a theoretical vulnerability’. According to her:
“Many of the leading opponents of paperless voting machines were,

and still are, computer scientists, because we understand the
vulnerability of voting equipment in a way most election officials
don’t. The problem with cybersecurity is that you have to protect
against everything, but your opponent only has to find only one
vulnerability.”
[Source: “The Computer Scientist Who prefers Paper” by Jill Leovy,

December 2017 issue of “The Atlantic”].
14. Next, let us examine the Election Commission’s claim that it is not
just the EVM machine but “the overall administrative safeguards
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which it uses that make it absolutely impossible for anybody to

tamper with the EVMs”. While these administrative safeguards do
look impressive on paper, closer examination reveals that they are
not really so. The RTI reply showing the theft of 70 EVMs and the big
mismatch between the figures of EVMs supplied (given by the
Commission and the two manufacturers) is a case in point.
The Election Commission appears to ignore or underestimate the

danger that these administrative safeguards can be easily negated
by ‘insider fraud’. As in currency printing presses, banking,
insurance, gambling, university examinations, etc., ‘insider fraud’ is
an insidious and ever-present danger with EVMs, and the best laid
plans of the Election Commission can go awry! There is no
justification to trust ‘insiders’ in the election ecosystem any more
than trusting the insiders in currency printing presses, banking,
insurance, gambling and examinations ecosystems where
sophisticated frauds continue to occur despite equally good
safeguards as the Election Commission’s being in place, if not better.
The recent Punjab National Bank-Nirav Modi scam (involving issue of
thousands of fraudulent Letters of Undertakings causing a loss of
about Rs.13, 000 crores) is a good example. Notwithstanding the
many ‘safeguards’ theoretically in place – periodic reconciliations,
internal audit, statutory audit, RBI inspections, Ministry
representatives and independent Directors on PNB’s Board etc - a
massive scam went on for nearly 7 years before coming to light. This
scam was rendered possible by the collusion between bank insiders
and Nirav Modi, with the former even sharing the top secret SWIFT
password with the latter and not making the relevant entries in the
Core Banking System!
The Election Commission has delegated a number of crucial functions

regarding the conduct of elections – like manufacturing, checking and
maintenance of EVMs – to the EVM manufacturers and other agencies
over which it has little or no administrative control. The Commission
lacks the technical capability necessary for exercising effective
technical control. It seems to have reposed blind trust in these
myriad players and has no means of verifying if they are playing foul.
These personnel have also become ‘insiders’ along with the various
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election officials, and the Election Commission’s lax control over them
makes ‘insider frauds’ easier to commit and difficult to detect. The
Election Commission must assume greater administrative and
technical control over the 2 EVMS manufacturers and related
agencies in so far as the manufacturing, checking and maintenance
of EVMs are concerned.
In our opinion, there is scope for ‘insider frauds’ at three stages:
(i) At the EVMs manufacturing stage.
(ii) At the district level, during the non-election period, when the
EVMs are stored in archaic godowns in multiple locations with
inadequate security systems.
(iii) At the stage of ‘first level checks’ prior to an election when the
EVMs are serviced by ‘authorised technicians’ from BEL and
ECIL.
Each of these security loopholes will be discussed in greater detail

below.
15. The first security loophole is at the EVM manufacturing stage. The
Election Commission’s argument that unlike other countries where
EVMs are manufactured in the private sector, Indian EVMs are
manufactured by the reliable public sector undertakings (BEL and
ECIL) is not fully correct. First, the key process of ‘burning’ of the
EVM firmware has been outsourced to two private, that too foreign,
chip-making companies (Microchip, U.S.A and Renesas, Japan).
Second, it is naïve to believe that with public sector undertakings
(PSUs), secrecy will be maintained and insider frauds cannot happen!
(Let us not forget that PNB is a public sector bank)! Knowing how
PSUs work in India and the huge day-to-day interference in their
functioning by the concerned Ministries of the Government of India,
we are inclined to believe that they are as vulnerable as, if not more
than, a private manufacturer. We believe that there is a non-zero
probability of occurrence of the following scenarios without the
Election Commission’s knowledge:
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• Scenario 1: Enormous political pressure is brought to bear upon

the top management of these PSUs by the ruling party of the day
to secretly tamper with a certain percentage of EVMs
manufactured by them replacing the regular non-hackable CPU
with a hackable CPU that can be programmed with vote stealing
software and operated remotely. If only a few key employees
collude, such a fraud would be difficult to detect. Going by the
general administrative culture prevailing in the government or
PSUs in India, it would take a rare CEO indeed to withstand that
kind of political pressure.
• Scenario 2: A few key employees of the 2 EVM manufacturers,

driven by the same ideology as the ruling party of the day or any
other political party, may resort to this kind of tampering without
the knowledge of the top management. These ‘key employees’
could be those engaged in the development of the EVMs’ firmware
or in the assembly of the EVMs.
• Scenario 3: A few rogue employees of the 2 PSUs may do it for

the sake of money, again without the knowledge of the top
management. GVL Narasimha Rao cites instances of politicians
being approached by technocrats from the 2 PSEs promising to rig
the EVMs for a fee. While we don’t know if there is any truth in
these allegations, they are not impossible to envisage.
• Scenario 4: A few former employees of the 2 PSUs engaged in

development of firmware or the assembly of EVMs try to encash
their skills after retirement or change of jobs.
• Scenario 5: The vendors (many of them with political affiliations)

supplying key components – Display Board, Cable connector, etc
- to BEL and ECIL are compromised. This includes the two foreign
private chip makers who have been assigned the security-
sensitive job of fusing the firmware onto the CPUs that go into the
EVMs. This can also happen without the knowledge of the top
management.
16. The second security loophole is at the district level when EVMs are
stored during the long non-election period in large numbers in archaic
godowns in several locations in the district. This decentralised way of
storing EVMs and the long periods of non-use increase the risk of
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theft and tampering and reduce the chance of detection. Finding

suitable storage places is very difficult in some districts and the
quality of the rented warehouses is highly variable. Notwithstanding
the ‘strong room’ and the ‘double lock system’ and the ‘annual
physical verification of the EVMs’, it is not unreasonable to presume
that some election officials in the district – from the security staff
upwards - can collude with political parties in allowing access,
stealing a few EVMs, and skilfully replacing the seals on the locks of
the godown without the knowledge of the District Magistrate-cum-
District Election Officer (DM-DEO). As already indicated in para 9
above, the Election Commission has admitted to at least 70 cases of
theft of EVMs across three states – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Madhya
Pradesh – over successive elections. The actual numbers are likely to
be much greater if a thorough stock taking is done.
In a country like India renowned for its ‘jugaad’ where duplicates of

anything and everything are made, it would be naïve on anybody’s
part to think that ‘counterfeit EVMs’ can never be made by reverse
engineering the stolen EVMs. Reverse engineering of the EVM
hardware as a whole or any individual component thereof is rather
easy. But what about the secret firmware of the EVMs? According to
Prof. J. Alex Halderman et al (whose security analysis of Indian EVMs
was cited in para 5 above), reverse engineering of the secret
firmware of the EVMs can also be done. To quote: “While more
involved than modifying source code, reverse engineering firmware
of such low complexity is not difficult and has been done (sometimes
within a few weeks) with other voting systems in the context of
academic research”. Thus, the existence of dishonest look-alike
EVMs that may have been tampered with in the manner discussed
in paras 10 and 12 above cannot be ruled out. It should then be
quite easy to substitute a certain number of these reverse
engineered-cum-tampered EVMs (i.e. the counterfeit EVMs) for the
regular EVMs in the warehouse during the non-election period, with
insider collusion, and without the District Election Officer or the
Election Commission suspecting that anything is amiss.
We can also visualise an alternative scenario where a skilled

technician gains access to the warehouse for several days or nights
in a row, with insider collusion, and working on-site, he replaces the
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regular CPU with the dishonest look-alike CPU (programmed with a

vote-stealing Trojan and with an embedded Bluetooth device) in
respect of a certain percentage of EVMs.
17. The third loophole available to tamper with EVMs is when - prior to
elections - all the machines are subject to 'first level checks' in the
field by ‘authorised technicians’ deputed by BEL and ECIL in order to
detect and remedy hardware problems. These authorized technicians
are also sometimes involved at various later stages of the election,
such as preparing EVMs for polling and assisting officials during the
count. This means a group of technically skilled insiders has full
access to the machines and they could open and manipulate
hardware during these checks (in ways discussed in paras 10 and 12
above) without the knowledge of the EVM manufacturers or the
Election Commission or the election officials. Even more alarming is
the fact that there is no proper vetting of these technicians by the
Election Commission. The Wire article cited in para 9 above, based
on RTI responses received from the Election Commission and the 2
EVM manufacturers, contains the alarming finding that ECIL had not
deputed its own technical personnel but had deputed technical
personnel from (outsourced) private entities and had also deputed
several unauthorised non-technical persons for the ‘first level checks’
of EVMs - in brazen violation of the administrative and security
protocol mandated by the Election Commission.
18. Most people think that the tampering of the EVMs takes place just
before or during polling and just before or during counting. Since the
supervision gets tighter once the election schedule is announced, it
makes far more sense for an attacker to do the tampering of EVMs
well before the elections, as described in paras 16, 17 and 18 above,
when the supervision is lax or non-existent. Hence, tightening the
supervision only after the election schedule is announced may well
be like the proverbial closing of the stable doors after the horse has
bolted. But the actual perpetration of the vote stealing fraud - with
the help of the tampered EVMs - may take place unnoticed on the
polling day or anytime before the counting begins.
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19. We can anticipate the Election Commission’s likely comments (in

italics) on the 3 types of security loopholes narrated in paras 16, 17
and 18. Our responses are also given below.
(i) Administration operates on ‘trust’ and the Election Commission

has to have faith in the integrity of the election insiders unless
something adverse comes to its notice.
The problem could be that EVM fraud may come to the Election
Commission’s notice rather late - by which time enormous
damage could have been done. The Russians have a saying:
“Trust but verify”. The Election Commission seems to have
reposed blind trust in myriad players over whom it has minimal
administrative control and technical control and has no means
of verifying if they are playing foul.
(ii) There are far too many persons involved and any one of them
can become a whistleblower and make information public on
any such misadventures.
The scam may be known to only a few members of a tightly knit

group and may not come out. The recent PNB scam shows how
several insiders can collude for a long time without anyone
blowing the whistle. Moreover, the experience of whistleblowers
worldwide has been that they run a very high risk of being
victimised and of their mission not succeeding, and so many a
potential whistleblower may choose to simply keep quiet.
(iii) The various scenarios of ‘insider frauds’ cited are far-fetched

with very low probability of their occurring.
The probability may be low but it is non-zero. In other words,

these insider frauds with EVMs are not impossible. There is a
famous saying of Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated
the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must
be the truth”. We may modify this to come up with the following
maxim: “Since EVM tampering is not physically impossible,
someone, somewhere, at some time, will find a security
loophole and exploit it however improbable the tampering
scenario may seem at first sight.” And, once the security is
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breached, the probability of EVM fraud recurring will increase

greatly with time.
In short, the Election Commission would be committing a grave

mistake if its strategy to prevent fraud relies too much on the integrity
of the election insiders. We think that despite its public
pronouncements, the Election Commission suspects, and it is
probably worried, that a significant percentage of the EVMs in
circulation could be ‘counterfeit EVMs’. Can there be any other
explanation for its ban on voters carrying mobile phones and other
electronic devices (which can be used to activate the Trojans within
the tampered EVMs at a particular time) to the polling stations and
the counting stations?!
The Election Commission claims that the post-2013 third generation

(M3) EVMs have certain new features for (i) Mutual authentication
among all components of EVMs such as Ballot Unit, Control Unit and
VVPAT and (ii) Automated self-diagnostics. These new features are
obviously worthless if some of the tampered EVMs were supplied by
the EVM manufacturers themselves! Even when the tampering is done
at the district level, if the machines were to do any such
authentication themselves, a Trojan can be easily designed to clear
this self-test. So, these new features in the M3 machines may not be
of much avail to prevent fraud.
20. The Election Commission has strangely been dragging its feet (since
2006) in such an important matter as the procurement of
‘Authentication Units’ which can help verify whether the EVMs being
used in their districts are genuine EVMs supplied by BEL/ECIL or
‘counterfeit EVMs’. Just as counterfeit detector machines are
imperative for verifying bank notes, the ‘Authentication Units’ are the
only way to detect and weed out the counterfeit EVMs, if any, in
circulation. They will also act as a deterrent because the knowledge
of the existence of such ‘Authentication Units’ will scare off potential
fraudsters.
These ‘Authentication Units’ should not be manufactured by the EVM

manufacturers (BEL & ECIL) but by an independent third-party
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manufacturer. This is because some of the tampered EVMs could have

been supplied by the EVM manufacturers themselves and some of the
EVMs could have been tampered with by the “authorised technicians”
of the EVM manufacturers during the course of the ‘first level checks’
of EVMs just before a poll.
These ‘authentication verifications’ should be arranged by the DM-

DEO in the presence of the contesting candidates after the ‘first level
checks’ are over and before the date of polling. If it turns out that all
the EVMs are genuine, then it will reinforce the confidence of the
voters in the electoral process and will effectively silence the critics of
the Election Commission. So, the procurement and supply of one or
more ‘Authentication Units’ to each district is an absolute imperative
that brooks no further delay.
21. The Election Commission believes that the randomisation of

allotments of EVMs at the national level from the EVM manufacturers
to various States, and the randomisation of allotments within a district
to various Polling Stations are sufficient safeguards against misuse.
But they are not. If, say, X% of the EVMs have been tampered with –
in the manner discussed in paras 16, 17 and 18 above - then
randomisation will actually ensure that, on an average, X% of the
EVMs in each and every constituency are counterfeit and this
knowledge can be to the attacker’s benefit. With the assistance of
insiders in BEL/ECIL and in the district administration, and since each
EVM has a unique identifying number, the attacker can know precisely
which tampered EVM has been allotted to which State and district,
and within a district to which Polling Station. (If the attacker is also
the ruling party of the day, this task is much easier).
While the EVMs tampered during storage and ‘first level checks’ are
likely to largely remain within the same district, it may be argued that
due to randomization, some of the EVMs tampered at the
manufacturers’ level may get allotted to States which the attacker did
not intend. Assume that a certain percentage, say, Y% of the EVMs
have been tampered with the assistance of insiders in BEL and ECIL.
Since the two major National Parties – BJP and Congress – have a
strong presence in at least 70% of the States & Union Territories, then
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notwithstanding the randomisation, about 70% of the tampered EVMs

will have been allocated to these States which is a good enough
‘success ratio’ for these parties. Since the two parties may have
moderate presence in the remaining 30% of the States & UTs, they
may be in a position to utilise the tampered EVMs even there. It is
only the regional parties which have a presence in only one or two
States/UTs that may suffer due to randomization of the allotments at
the national level from the EVM manufacturers to various States/UTs.
Of late, the Election Commission has been diverting the EVMs used in
one State Election – wholly or partly - to another State to prevent
mischief. But if the EVMs have already been tampered with and if
national parties like BJP and Congress have with them the unique
identifying numbers of the tampered EVMs that have been diverted,
they can track them and use them in the receiving State also. So, this
system is not really a protection against a smart and determined
attacker aided by insiders.
22. The names of the contesting candidates are arranged in alphabetical

order in the Ballot Unit of an EVM – first, candidates of recognised
National and State political parties, then, candidates of registered but
unrecognised political parties, and finally independent candidates.
The Election Commission believes that this is adequate protection
against mischief because the malicious software in the EVMs would
have no means of knowing in advance the sequence of any party’s
candidate on the Ballot Unit. This safeguard may work when the
integrity of the EVM has not been compromised. It will obviously fail
when the original CPU has been replaced by a dishonest look-alike
CPU with an embedded Trojan and Bluetooth device.
The Election Commission seems to have assumed a particular mode

of attack for which the attacker triggering the Trojan to steal the votes
has to know the precise sequence of the candidates on the Ballot Unit.
But it is possible to steal votes even if the attacker doesn’t know this
information because in most constituencies, the fight is between two
major parties only and the rest don’t really matter. Let us suppose
that Party A and Party B are the only 2 serious contestants in a
constituency and that Party A has tampered with some of the EVMs.
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Party A knows precisely which polling stations have the tampered

EVMs, and among these polling stations, it knows fairly accurately in
which polling stations it is likely to come a clear first, in which polling
stations it is likely to come a clear second, and in which polling
stations it may be too close to call. An agent of Party A can trigger
off the Trojan in the tampered EVM in a polling station through a
remote device to become active around, say, 4.30 pm on the polling
day. Depending on which button is pressed on the remote device to
activate it, this Trojan could have been programmed to transfer
certain percentage of votes from the party that has polled the highest
number of votes to the party that has polled the second highest
number of votes, or the reverse [i.e. transfer from the party that has
polled the second highest number of votes to the party that has polled
the highest number of votes]. In polling stations where Party A is
likely to come second, the attacker will press the button that will make
the Trojan transfer the votes from the party coming first (‘B’) to the
party coming second (‘A’) and make the gap narrower or even make
‘A’ come first. In polling stations where Party A is likely to come first,
the attacker will press the other button that will make the Trojan
transfer the votes from the party coming second (‘B’) to the party
coming first (‘A’) and make A’s lead even greater. When things can
be done this way, it is not necessary to know the precise sequence of
the party’s candidate on the Ballot Unit. It is necessary to know only
whether the party is likely to come first or second in the area covered
by the particular polling station which field functionaries of political
parties would normally know with a high degree of precision. While
such vote stealing can also be done anytime during the period when
the ballot boxes are stored after polling is over and counting is yet to
start, we believe that it can be done easiest towards the fag end of
the polling day.
The precise mode of vote stealing depends upon how the Trojan has
been programmed and various other ingenious ways of programming
are possible. It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the
technical prowess of the attackers. The Trojan can also be
programmed to self-destruct after doing its mischief.
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23. The Election Commission believes that the small ‘mock polls’ that are
done at various stages in front of all party representatives before
each election are the best proof of validation of fairness of the EVMs
and of the data stored inside. Such pre-election mock polls might
protect against non-malicious malfunction of EVMs. But they afford
very little protection against sophisticated attacks where the
dishonest look-alike CPU has been programmed to cheat only after
several hours have passed or after the EVM has recorded hundreds
of votes, or if it carries a Trojan that is activated at a particular stage
of the polling/counting process as discussed in this paper.
24. Thus, all the administrative safeguards that the Election Commission
relies on can be easily circumvented by any determined attacker with
assistance from an insider. It must be noted that the threats to the
integrity of our electoral process need not come from domestic
attackers only; they could come from foreign attackers also. The
allegation of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential
elections on behalf of President Donald Trump which is under
investigation by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
shows that this danger is real, and that elections are now on the
front lines of cybersecurity. The testimony of security expert Prof. J.
Alex Halderman (the same person who wrote the 2010 paper
analysing the security flaws of Indian EVMs) before the Senate
Committee may be seen at
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/o
s-ahalderman-062117.pdf
25. We believe that the storage of EVMs during the non-election

period in multiple locations in each district in archaic warehouses with
poor security systems in place is a weak link that increases the risk
of EVM tampering. We believe that the Election Commission should
move towards a kind of “2-bin storage system” – the long-term
storage in between the elections in regional warehouses and the
short-term storage immediately before or during an election in the
present district warehouses. It is obviously much easier to monitor
long-term 3 large warehouses than 100-and-odd smaller warehouses
scattered across a State. These regional warehouses must be modern
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buildings with CCTVs and sophisticated electronic locking systems for

the strong rooms where EVMs are stored, and they should be
provided with 365x24x7 police security of the kind given to bank
vaults or mints. The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of each State must
be made responsible for the overall custody of the regional
warehouses. He can be assisted in this important function by a full-
time Joint CEO drawn from the IAS or IPS. The ‘codes’ for these
sophisticated electronic locks should remain with the Election
Commission or the State CEO. There should be mechanisms for
alerting the (local) DM-DEO, the CEO as well as the Election
Commission through SMS and email whenever the locks are opened,
closed or tampered with and for maintaining an electronic log of all
activities. Necessary precautions against hacking of these electronic
locking systems should be taken by engaging the best experts in the
field.
The Election Commission can construct 2 to 5 very large warehouses

in different regions of each State depending on the size of the State.
The cost of constructing such modern regional warehouses in each
State is not much, and in any case, cost should not be a consideration
in ensuring the integrity of our electoral process.
The ‘first level checks’ of the EVMs and VVPATs that are carried out
by the ‘authorised technicians’ of BEL and EVM before an election
must be done only in these regional warehouses under CCTV. Written
declarations of the changes, if any, carried out must be obtained from
each authorised technician before his exit and counter-checked by
another authorised technician so as to fix responsibility. If there are
serious discrepancies between machine- counting and hand-counting
in respect of a polling station, and if the forensic examination of the
EVM shows that it has been tampered with, then the concerned
‘authorised technicians’ and their supervisors in BEL and ECIL must
be taken to task. At present, control mechanisms are extremely lax.
Recently, the Election Commission has introduced the practice of

diverting EVMs from one State to another before an election so that
the same set of EVMs are not used in a given State more than once.
The proposed system of 2 to 5 regional warehouses in a State will
make the logistics of such diversions easier. Thorough shuffling of
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the EVMs can be ensured by diverting EVMs from 2 or more States

to the regional warehouses of the State where an election is due. As
stated in para 22 above, such randomisation of EVMs is not fool proof
against national parties like BJP or Congress. Nevertheless, it needs
to be done.
The EVMs should be transferred from the regional warehouses in a

State to all the district warehouses not earlier than 7 days before the
date of polling. As discussed in para 21 above, the DM-DEO should
arrange for the conduct of the ‘authentication tests’ of 100% of the
EVMs in the presence of the representatives of all political parties
using the ‘Authentication Units’.
26. Despite the Supreme Court directive in 2013, the Election

Commission has been slow to implement VVPAT systems in 100% of
the constituencies in various Assembly Elections, and began doing so
only from 2017 onwards. And, after some initial press reports stating
that VVPAT slips may be counted in respect of 10% or 5% of the
EVMs, the Election Commission threw a bombshell by ordering the
counting of VVPAT slips only for one randomly chosen polling station
per Assembly Constituency in the recently concluded Gujarat and
Himachal Pradesh Assembly Elections. This worked out to just 182
out of 44,597 polling stations (or 0.4% of the EVMs) in Gujarat and
to just 68 out of 7516 polling stations (or 0.9% of the EVMs) in
Himachal Pradesh. Such a low percentage defeats the very purpose
of introducing VVPAT and is fraught with all the risks of conducting
elections with paperless EVMs.
27. Moreover, the sample size of ‘one polling station per Assembly
Constituency’ is statistically unsound not only in terms of its size (for
a ‘confidence level’ of 99% or even 95% and a ‘margin of error’ of
1% as per standard statistical sampling theory), but also because the
various polling stations in the constituency are not similar and the
sample drawn may not be truly representative of the constituency as
a whole. A typical Assembly Constituency may have several different
groups (or ‘strata’) of polling stations: urban; semi-urban; rural;
those in remote hilly/desert/forest areas; those with very heavy
voter turnout (> 80%); those with moderate voter turnout (50% to
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80%); those with low voter turnout (<50%); those about which a
large number of complaints were received, and so on – each with
different characteristics both in terms of voter characteristics and
behaviour and the rigour of election process. [There could be some
overlapping]. Hence there is an imperative need for stratified
sampling with a random sample of one or more polling stations drawn
from each of the above strata.
28. There are several important related issues and we venture to make
some suggestions for the kind consideration of the Election
Commission:
• When will the EVM samples be drawn?
In our opinion, the samples should be drawn as close to the

counting day as possible, preferably on the morning of the
counting day. It is a no-brainer that they should NOT be drawn
before the polling day.
• Who will draw the samples?
The criteria for deciding the various ‘strata’ (for stratified

sampling of polling stations) should be drawn up by the Election
Commission. But in order to ensure greater transparency and
allay fears of insider collusion, the random sample(s) in each
strata should not be drawn by the DM-DEO or by randomisation
software, but should be drawn by the various candidates in turn.
If the number of candidates is greater than the number of
samples to be picked, the ‘lucky’ ones who will get to draw the
samples can be decided by lots.
• When will the hand counting of VVPAT slips of the sample of

polling stations be done?
We recommend that this should be commenced at the same time

as the electronic counting and run parallel to it.
• Under what circumstances should the Election Commission order

the counting of all the VVPAT slips of all the polling stations?
We can envisage 2 scenarios:
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Scenario1: Where the margin of victory is very narrow.

The Election Manual permits the losing candidate to apply to the
Returning Officer (R.O) for a recount with the VVPATs, but it is
not mandatory for the Returning Officer to accept. The R.O may
reject the request in writing whereupon the losing candidate has
to follow the usual appeal procedure which is time consuming
and unproductive. We suggest that if the margin of victory is less
than, say, 3%, it must be made mandatory for the R.O to order
a hand recount with VVPAT slips of all the polling stations.
Scenario 2: Where the discrepancy between the machine-

counting total and the hand-counting total in respect of the
sample EVMs taken together is greater than a certain percentage.
Irrespective of the margin of victory, if the discrepancy between

the machine-counting total and the hand-counting total in
respect of the sample EVMs taken together is greater than, say,
1%, then the Election Commission should order the hand-
counting of VVPAT slips in all the polling stations. The margin of
error of 1% is reasonable even if a purist would say that it is on
the lower side. This again underscores the dangers of taking
decisions on a small sample of just one polling station per
29. What could be the reasons for the Election Commission’s reluctance
to order the counting of VVPAT slips for a larger sample of EVMs?
We have guessed a few possible justifications (in italics) and offered
our responses to the same:
• The EVMs used in India are reliable and tamper-proof and

counting VVPAT slips of more than one polling station per
Assembly Constituency is a waste of time and effort.
First, any electronic equipment is inherently subject to

equipment malfunction and too much trust in the EVM’s reliability
would be misplaced. Hand-counting of an adequate sample of
VVPAT slips offers protection not just against the possibility of
EVM tampering but also against the possibility of EVM
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malfunction which can result in wrong totalling and change of

election outcomes just as EVM tampering can.
Second, though, in the beginning, the Election Commission had

significantly underestimated the seriousness of the security risks
associated with its EVMs or had dismissed the critics as
‘conspiracy theorists’, it is now fully aware that paperless EVMs
are not reliable. With its inadequate administrative and technical
controls over some key election insiders; with lax inventory
control at least in the past; with the knowledge of the various
security loopholes as outlined in the paper by Prof. J. Alex
Halderman et al; and with the knowledge of international
experiences in the vulnerability of DRE systems of the kind used
in India, the Election Commission should suspect that a certain
percentage of the EVMs in circulation may be reverse
engineered-cum-tampered EVMs though it may not know the
magnitude of the problem. Perhaps the Election Commission is
afraid that too much transparency and pro-active counting of
VVPAT slips for a larger percentage of polling stations may
expose the full magnitude of the scam and do great harm to the
prestige of the Commission and raise a question mark about the
sanctity of past elections! Perhaps the Election Commission is
now in a ‘damage control mode’ and its action of ordering the
counting of VVPAT slips for less than 1% of the EVMs for the
Gujarat and H.P Assembly elections must be seen in this light.
• The hand counting of a larger sample of VVPAT slips can lead to

delays of several hours or even a couple of days in the
announcement of results.
Surely, in something as important as ensuring the integrity of

the election process, a delay of a few hours or even a couple of
days shouldn’t matter at all. When the entire Election process,
from the date of announcement to the date of counting, lasts for
2-3 months, there is no reason why unseemly hurry should be
shown only in the case of counting. As an American activist Bev
Harris has remarked: “Everybody watches polling closely.
Nobody watches counting as closely.” In the rush to declare
results and the winners, the Election Commission cannot turn a
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blind eye to the possibilities of wrong totalling due to EVM

malfunction or EVM tampering nor can it gloss over the
discrepancies commonly found in several constituencies between
the votes polled (as per Form 17C filled by polling staff) and the
votes counted (as per the EVM). In our opinion, tighter controls
at the counting end of the election process – by hand counting
VVPAT slips of the EVMs selected through stratified sampling –
can make up for slippages, if any, in the earlier stages of the
election process.
• Why count a larger sample of VVPAT slips when the voters have
already verified their VVPAT slips at the time of polling?
Videos of voter behaviour during actual elections in India and

elsewhere have revealed that most voters do not verify their
choices by reading the VVPAT slip after casting their vote. There
are many illiterate voters, and even among the literate voters,
many are not techno-savvy, and may not verify the VVPAT slip
within the window of 7 seconds available. It will require plenty of
voter training to make the voters verify the VVPAT slip
immediately after casting their vote. So, the absence of
complaints from voters must not be treated as evidence that the
EVMs are functioning properly.
30. When only one EVM per Assembly constituency is chosen for the
counting of VVPAT slips, the Election Commission is sending the
wrong signal to the Election personnel from the DM-DEO downwards
that it is not serious about VVPAT and regards it as an unwanted
appurtenance thrust upon it by the Supreme Court at the behest of
certain conspiracy theorists. The Presiding Officers and the Polling
Officers in several polling stations are likely to be negligent in
repairing/replacing the VVPAT machines then and there and may try
to chance their luck by hoping that their particular polling station will
not get picked for counting of the VVPAT slips. The danger is greater
in villages and in remote areas. Our enquiries with DM-DEOs and
Election Observers have revealed that in the past, on an average,
about 15% of the VVPAT systems did not function properly on the
polling day, and that the Election Commission had orally instructed to
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carry on with the polling without VVPAT in case of shortage of

replacements. In course of time, the VVPAT systems will function
properly in fewer and fewer polling stations, and a case may be made
out for giving them up altogether as waste of money, time and effort!
Attackers who tampered with certain EVMs will be pleased with such
a state of affairs, and may aim at rendering the VVPATs in those
polling stations non-functional in collusion with the polling staff and
by bribing the polling agents of rival parties. But when the Election
Commission orders that VVPAT slips of a larger percentage of the
EVMs shall be counted, and when it directs DM-DEOs to strictly ensure
that all the VVPAT systems in every polling station function properly,
then it sends the right signals to the DM-DEOs and the subordinate
election staff; the Presiding Officers and Polling Officers of all the
Polling Stations will then be on their toes and the machinations of the
attackers will fail.
31. Summary of Recommendations
A. The Election Commission has reposed excessive trust in the 2 EVM

manufacturers (BEL and ECIL) and related agencies whose
personnel have also become ‘insiders’ along with the various
election officials, and it has no means of verifying if they are playing
foul. Its lax control over them makes ‘insider frauds’ easier to
commit and difficult to detect. ‘Trust but verify’ should be the
Election Commission’s motto. To do this, the Election Commission
must equip itself to exercise greater administrative and technical
control over these ‘new insiders’ in so far as the manufacture,
checking and servicing of EVMs are concerned.
This suggestion can be implemented within a year.
B. The Election Commission would be making a serious mistake if it

underestimates the kind of ingenious electronic security breaches
that are possible today or if it thinks that Indian politicians are not
‘hi-tech’ enough to resort to such manipulations (e.g. the
Facebook-Cambridge Analytica controversy). Moreover, as the USA
example shows, threats to the integrity of our electoral process
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need not come from domestic attackers only; they could come from
foreign attackers also. The present system of ‘Technical Experts
Committee’ consisting of a few Professors will not suffice. The
Election Commission must consider engaging the services of a top
electronic security firm of international standing (bound by a
confidentiality agreement) to conduct periodic ‘ethical hacking and
other modes of attack’ on its electoral systems and processes,
identify loopholes if any, and certify their robustness.
C. Procurement and Supply of ‘Authentication Units’ to Detect

Counterfeit EVMs:
The Election Commission’s claims about Indian EVMs being

‘different’ and ‘tamper proof’ do not withstand rigorous scrutiny.
‘Insider frauds’ can negate all the security protocol-cum-
administrative safeguards that the Commission relies on. If
attackers can get physical access to the EVMs even for a short
while, they can tamper with EVMs by replacing the CPU,
Motherboard, Display Board or Cable Connector with dishonest
look-alikes that can be programmed with vote stealing software and
operated remotely. It is possible to substitute large numbers of
such tampered/counterfeit EVMs for genuine EVMs without the
knowledge of the Election Commission at 3 stages: (i) at the EVMs
manufacturing stage; (ii) at the district level, during the non-
election period when the EVMs are stored in archaic warehouses in
multiple locations with inadequate security systems; and (iii) at the
stage of ‘first level checks’ prior to an election when the EVMs are
serviced by ‘authorised technicians’ from BEL and ECIL.
At present, the Election Commission and the election officials have

no means of sifting the genuine EVMs from the counterfeit ones.
The so-called ‘new features’ in the post-2013 third generation (M3)
EVMs for (i) Mutual authentication among all components of EVMs
such as Ballot Unit, Control Unit and VVPAT and (ii) Automated self-
diagnostics are obviously worthless if some of the tampered EVMs
were supplied by the EVM manufacturers themselves! Even when
the tampering is done at the district level, if the machines were to
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do any such authentication themselves, a Trojan can be easily

designed to clear this self-test.
Just as counterfeit detector machines are imperative for verifying

the genuineness of currency notes, the Election Commission must
procure and supply one or more ‘Authentication Units’ to each
district to help election officials verify whether the EVMs being used
in their districts are genuine EVMs supplied by BEL/ECIL or
counterfeit EVMs. ‘Authentication Units’ cannot only detect and
weed out the counterfeit EVMs, if any, in circulation, but they will
also act as a deterrent because the knowledge of their existence
will scare off potential fraudsters. These ‘Authentication Units’
should not be manufactured by the EVM manufacturers (BEL &
ECIL) but by an independent third-party manufacturer. These
‘authentication verifications’ should be arranged by the District
Magistrate-cum-District Election Officer (DM-DEO) in the presence
of the contesting candidates after the ‘first level checks’ are over
and before the date of polling.
D. Increasing the sample size for hand-counting of VVPAT slips and

adoption of stratified sampling:
The Election Commission’s action of ordering the hand-counting of

VVPAT slips for just ‘one polling station per Assembly Constituency’
(which works out to 0.4% of EVMs in Gujarat and 0.9% of EVMs in
Himachal Pradesh) is an exercise in tokenism. Such a low
percentage defeats the very purpose of introducing VVPAT and is
fraught with all the risks of conducting elections with paperless
EVMs. In the rush to declare results and the winners, the Election
Commission cannot turn a blind eye to the possibilities of wrong
totalling due to EVM malfunction or EVM tampering. Surely, in
something as important as ensuring the integrity of the election
process, a delay of a few hours or even a couple of days shouldn’t
matter at all, more so when the entire election process, from the
date of announcement to the date of counting, lasts for 2-3 months.
Moreover, the sample size of ‘one polling station per Assembly

Constituency’ is statistically unsound not only in terms of its size
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(for a ‘confidence level’ of 99% or even 95% and a ‘margin of error’

of 1% as per standard statistical sampling theory), but also because
the various polling stations in the constituency are not similar and
the sample drawn may not be truly representative of the
constituency as a whole. There is an imperative need for stratified
sampling with a random sample of one or more polling stations
drawn from each of the following ‘strata’: urban; semi-urban; rural;
those in remote hilly/desert/forest areas; those with very heavy
voter turnout (> 80%); those with moderate voter turnout (50%
to 80%); those with low voter turnout (<50%); those about which
a large number of complaints were received, and so on.
We wish to make a few more related suggestions:
• The sample polling stations for the hand-counting of VVPAT slips

should be drawn as close to the counting day as possible,
preferably on the morning of the counting day.
• The criteria for deciding the various ‘strata’ (for stratified

sampling of polling stations) should be laid down by the Election
Commission.
• In order to ensure greater transparency and allay fears of insider

collusion, the random sample(s) in each strata should not be
picked by the DM-DEO or by randomisation software, but should
be drawn by the various candidates in turn. If the number of
candidates is greater than the number of samples to be picked,
the ‘lucky’ ones who will get to draw the samples can be decided
by lots.
• The hand-counting of VVPAT slips of the sample of polling

stations should be commenced at the same time as the electronic
counting and run parallel to it.
• The Election Commission may make it mandatory for the

Returning Officer to order the hand-counting of all the VVPAT
slips of all the polling stations in either of the following 2
scenarios:
Scenario1: Where the margin of victory is very narrow and is

less than, say, 3%.
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Scenario 2: Irrespective of the margin of victory, where the

discrepancy between the machine-counting total and the hand-
counting total in respect of the sample EVMs taken together is
greater than, say, 1%. A ‘margin of error’ of more than 1%
cannot be acceptable.
• When only one EVM per Assembly constituency is chosen for the
counting of VVPAT slips, the election officials in several polling
stations (especially in villages and in remote areas) are likely to
be negligent in repairing/replacing the VVPAT machines then and
there and may try to chance their luck by hoping that their
particular polling station will not get picked for counting of the
VVPAT slips. The Election Commission must direct DM-DEOs to
strictly ensure that all the VVPAT systems in every polling station
function properly, failing which there shall be repolling.
These suggestions can be implemented within six months.
E. Plugging a glaring loophole in EVM security by completely

overhauling the present method of storing EVMs during the non-
election period.
• The Election Commission should move towards a kind of “2-bin

storage system” wherein the long-term storage of the EVMs in
between two elections shall be in a few large, high-security,
regional warehouses and the short-term storage immediately
before or during an election in the current district warehouses.
It is obviously much easier to monitor on a long-term basis 3
large warehouses than 100-and-odd smaller warehouses
scattered across a State. The fewer regional warehouses also
make it much easier for the Commission to manage the
logistics of randomization/shuffling of EVMs from one State to
another.
• The Commission must invest in building 2 to 5 regional

warehouses in each State depending on its size. These regional
warehouses must be modern buildings with CCTVs and
sophisticated electronic locking systems for the strong rooms
where EVMs are stored, and they should be provided with
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365x24x7 police security of the kind given to bank vaults or

mints. The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of each State must be
made responsible for the overall custody of the regional
warehouses. The ‘codes’ for these sophisticated electronic locks
should remain with the Election Commission or the CEO. There
should be mechanisms for alerting the (local) DM-DEO, the
CEO as well as the Election Commission through SMS and email
whenever the locks are opened, closed or tampered with and
for maintaining an electronic log of all activities.
• The ‘first level checks’ of the EVMs and VVPATs that are carried
out by the ‘authorised technicians’ of BEL and EVM before an
election must be done only in these regional warehouses under
CCTV and appropriate administrative safeguards against
tampering.
• The EVMs should be transferred from the regional warehouses

to the district warehouses not earlier than 7 days before the
date of polling.
It should be possible to implement these suggestions over a period

of 3 years.
F. Switching over, in the long term, to Machine-readable Paper Ballots

with OMR counting-cum-Hand counting
When India has already invested so much in EVMs with VVPAT, the
wisdom of switching over to the Machine-readable Paper Ballots
with OMR counting-cum-Hand counting of a certain percentage of
Ballot Boxes may be open to question. In our opinion, the Election
Commission should have adopted this ‘best practice’ from various
countries around the world; instead it chose to switch over from
paperless EVMs to EVMs with VVPAT. We make our suggestion for
two valid reasons:
• The principle of secrecy of ballot is a sacred one and it must not

be compromised, even slightly. In the old system, paper ballots
from different ballot boxes were mixed together, thoroughly
shuffled and packed into bundles of 50 ballots each, and then
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counted. This succeeded in masking booth-wise voting trends

which would otherwise be relied upon by political parties to (i)
check the effectiveness of their campaign strategies (both legal
and illegal), and (ii) target collective reprisals against voters
from those booths where the party fared badly. But with EVMs,
the information is freely available on the Election
Commission’s website as “Booth Level Data”! It is gold dust for
political parties because it enables them to know exactly how
many supporters and opponents they have in each booth and
incentivises illegal activities such as bribing of voters or
targeting of opponents. What is even worse is that the EVM
machine records in its memory the time at which each vote is
cast. This time-series data can become available to political
parties due to insider collusion. A polling booth agent can note
down the precise time at which each voter has cast his or her
vote and later compare this with the time-series data from the
EVM to find out who had cast votes for whom. This can
completely destroy the anonymity of the vote and can be used
to target reprisals against individual voters. But in the case of
Machine-readable Paper Ballots, it is possible to mix them and
shuffle them and pack them into bundles of 50 before counting
them so that booth-wise voting trends are masked. And, since
paper ballots are used, no digital time-series data are available
for anybody to find out who voted for whom. Compromising the
secrecy of the ballot should itself be a sufficient reason for EVMs
to go notwithstanding VVPAT.
• Many advanced countries (Japan, Canada, Singapore) have

stuck to paper ballots while others (Germany, Netherlands,
Ireland) have reverted to paper ballots after experimenting with
EVMs for some time. This is because paper ballots are
considered the ‘gold standard’ of voting. They are the simplest
to understand; they are immune to all kinds of cyberattacks;
there is no malware that can steal paper votes; and they can
preserve the anonymity of the voter. The risk of booth capture
and stuffing of ballot papers has been drastically reduced thanks
to advanced communication technology and also with enhanced
police security for polling stations; nor is this risk completely
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eliminated in EVMs where ‘vote stuffing’ can still be done to the

extent of 12 votes per minute. Machine-readable Paper Ballots
have all the advantages of the paper ballot system minus the
delays associated with hand counting thanks to OMR
technology. In order to guard against possible hacking of the
OMR counting machine, the totals can be verified by running the
ballots through a second OMR counting machine
simultaneously, and their accuracy further confirmed by hand-
counting 5% of the ballots. Here, the primary ballots are in
paper form and the secondary ballots are in electronic form
whereas in EVMs with VVPAT, the primary ballots are in
electronic form and the secondary ballots are in paper form.
Clearly, the Machine-readable Paper Ballots with OMR counting
is a superior system when compared to EVMs with VVPAT, and
India needs to switch over to it. Better late than never.
This suggestion can be implemented before the 2024 Parliamentary

Elections.
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ANNEXURE-P-9
moneycontrol.com
Doubts over EVM security again as

RTI reveals theft of 70 voting
machines
13.08.2017
Question marks have once again been raised over Electronic Voting
Machines (EVMs) after a Right to Information (RTI) response revealed 70
instances of voting machines being stolen in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh
and Chhattisgarh across multiple elections, according to The Economic
Times.
The information provided under RTI states that during a training

programme in Gujarat, a trainer handed over the EVMs to another person
and went for lunch. “When he returned, the machine was found missing,”
reads the RTI response.
Investigations are still ongoing in the matter and lie detector tests
have been conducted.
Activist Tehseen Poonawalla, who has made complaints in different

states over EVM malfunctioning, said the RTI proves that EVMs have been
regularly stolen – which means the source code can be gained through
reverse engineering and results manipulated.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has repeatedly claimed that EVMs
are unhackable and tamper-proof. The Commission says it follows strict
protocols to protect EVMs which stipulates that stolen machines are
censured and do not make it back into the system.
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Earlier this year, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi demonstrated in
the Assembly how EVMs can allegedly be hacked. In response, the
Election Commission conducted a hackathon in June. However, AAP was
not among the two participating parties, who did not attempt to hack the
machines but only watched a demonstration and declared they were
satisfied with the security.
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ANNEXURE-P-10
business-standard.com
EVM discrepancies: Year-wise RTI

details reveal further mismatches
(IIIrd and last part)
IANS
4-5 minutes___________________________________________________________________
IANS | Mumbai Last Updated at April 10, 2018 13:41 IST
The contradictions between the buyer and suppliers of electronic

voting machines (EVMs) in India have been laid bare in replies to
right to information queries.
But even in year-wise details, replies given by the Election Commission

of India (ECI) and the two public sector suppliers --
Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) Hyderabad and Bharat
Electronics Ltd (BEL), Bengaluru -- have thrown up inexplicable
discrepancies.
According to Mumbai-based activist Manoranjan S. Roy, whose efforts

through RTI queries have shown the serious mismatches, this points to a
rot which may run deeper than expected.
On the overall figures from 1989-1990 till 2014-2015, the ECI says it had
received 1,005,662 EVMs from BEL, but BEL said it has supplied
1,969,932 -- a difference of 964,270 machines. In the year-wise
breakdown of figures, the ECI and BEL end up contradicting each other,
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says Roy, who has now moved the Bombay High Court seeking a probe
into the whole affair.
"For instance, in 2003-2004, BEL said it supplied 193,475 EVMs to EC,
which said it received only 167,850 -- a shortfall of 25,625. The following
year, the ECI said it received 36,395 EVMs, but BEL supplied only 2070,"
Roy said.
Just in one year -- in 2008-2009 -- the shortfall in supply to ECI from BEL
was a 962,000 EVMs. In 2010-2011 the variation was 13,490 EVMs but
in 2013-2014, ECI received an excess of 51,713 EVMs against the BEL's
supply of 139,725. One of the worst years of mismatch was 2014-2015,
when BEL supplied 62,183 EVMs but ECI received none.
Ditto is the scenario with ECIL, which supplied 1,944,593 EVMs to ECI
between 1989-1990 to 2016-2017 but ECI said it received 1,014,644 -- a
gaping shortfall of 929,949. A similar mismatch rules the year-wise
numbers with ECIL.
"In 2003-2004, ECIL said it supplied 303,878 EVMs to EC, which said it
received only 168,195. In 2008-2009, the ECI said it received 78,000
EVMs, but ECIL figures say it supplied 816,000 EVMs," Roy said.
In 2013-2014, the ECI received 191,438 EVMs, but ECIL had supplied
none. The situation, however, reversed in the next three years -- 2014-
2015 to 2016-2017 -- when ECI said it received zero machines, but ECIL
figures stated 173,962, 120,103 and 272 EVMs were supplied,
respectively.
As mentioned in earlier reports, the ECI said it had incurred a total

expenditure of Rs 536.02 crore on acquiring EVMs from BEL which says
it received Rs 652.56 crore. The ECI expenditure on acquiring EVMs from
ECIL are not available.
Curiously, ECIL said it had not supplied a single EVM to any state between
2006-2007 till 2013-2014.
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Nevertheless, ECIL -- through ECI -- recovered an amount of Rs 50.64

crore from Maharashtra government between March- October 2012.
"The question is why such huge discrepancies in the EVMs figures

received by ECI from the two companies? Where have the excess
machines supplied by BEL and ECIL actually gone?"
Roy asked. Same goes for the discrepancy in the money spent.
Even on the question of destroying old EVMs, there is lack of clarity. On

July 21, 2017, the ECI said that it had not sold any EVMs as scrap. The
EVMs procured in 1989-1990 were said to have been destroyed by the
manufacturers themselves.
The ECI said that the process of destroying (old/outdated /irreparable)

EVMs received by ECI between 2000-2005, "is still under consideration",
thus implying that all machines are still under its possession.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)

--IANS
Qn/hs
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is
auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Published: Tue, April 10 2018. 13:34 IST
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ANNEXURE-P-11
To
Mr. O.P. Rawat, Chief Election Commissioner,
Mr. Sunil Arora, Election Commissioner
Mr. Ashok Lavasa, Election Commissioner
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road,
New Delhi - 110001
Dear Sirs,
Dated: 10 April, 2018
Subject: measures to ensure integrity & fairness in the forthcoming

parliamentary election-2019 – representation thereof
This communication is being addressed on behalf of the Forum for

Electoral Integrity, a non-political, not-for-profit, civil society coalition,
having its office at # 21, Adhimoolam Street, Ponnappanadar Nagar,
Nagercoil-629004, Tamil Nadu, of which I am the Convener.
1. As is universally known, democracy is founded on the dignity of the

human being. Election and its integrity are the essence of democracy.
Integrity is described as “uncompromising adherence to moral and
ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty”. If there is
one area where this is badly absent in India, it is the electoral process
through which political leaders are elected to govern the country.
2. The core of electoral process is the voting system. There are broadly 5
types of voting systems in use around the world. They are indicated
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below in the descending order of transparency, examinability,

verifiability, accountability and robustness: (i) Paper Ballots that are
hand counted. (ii) Machine-readable Paper Ballots that are scanned
and electronically counted using Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
technology. A certain percentage of the Paper Ballots are also hand
counted. (iii) Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs)
with what is called Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). The EVM
does the machine counting and a certain percentage of the ‘paper slips’
are also hand counted. (iv) Direct Recording Electronic Voting
Machines (DRE) that also do the counting electronically. Recounting is
not possible because it will yield the same total. (v) Internet-based
Voting or Online Voting. This is most vulnerable to cyber-attacks and
not suited for elections.
India has so far tried out voting systems (i), (iv) and (iii) in that order.
3. In a democracy, elections have to necessarily adhere to certain

democratic principles. These are: (1) All essential steps in the elections
should be subject to public examinability; (2) Ordinary citizens should be
able to check the essential steps in the election process without special
expert knowledge and (3) There should be transparency in the counting
of votes and ascertainment of the results reliably. Of the voting systems
listed above only paper ballot satisfy these principles and EVMs do not.
4. Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in a landmark judgment
in March, 2009 held the use of EVMs in Germany unconstitutional. The
Court ruled that in view of the “public rationale of elections”, the process
should be transparent in a manner that the general public can be satisfied
that their vote is correctly recorded. The standard the Court set for this
purpose was that there should be a provision whereby 'the votes are
recorded in another way besides electronic storage' and there is
'retraceability' of the election result independently of the electronic
count. In effect, the Court ruled that EVMs are unconstitutional so
long as there was no provision for an additional verifiable physical
record of every vote cast. In the event all advanced democracies have
abandoned EVMs and have returned to paper ballot.
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5. In Civil Appeal No. 9093 of 2013 and WP (C) No. 406 of 2012 on
8.10.2013 Supreme Court of India passed an order mandating the use of
voter verified paper audit trail along with EVMs and directed the Election
Commission of India (ECI) to implement the VVPAT system in a phased
manner. The Supreme Court observed: “From the materials placed by
both the sides, we are satisfied that the ‘paper trail’ is an indispensable
requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the
EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the “paper trail”.
EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With
an intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore
the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with
VVPAT system because vote is nothing but an act of expression
which has immense importance in democratic system”.
6. Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed that principles of
democracy are a part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India.
To this end, elections and the various different processes and
mechanisms that undergird the universal adult franchise constitute a
beacon of light. It is imperative, therefore, that every step be taken to
preserve the integrity of the electoral process. Not only must elections be
conducted fairly, but they must also be shown to be conducted fairly. In a
republican democracy, such as ours, the rules that go towards the
selection of the people’s representatives must partake the highest
standards of fairness.
7. Replacement of paperless EVMs with VVPAT EVMs is
imperative for the following reasons:
a) To impart confidence in citizens that their vote will be

recorded and counted accurately. b) To allow for a recount. c) To
provide a backup in cases of loss of votes due to malfunction. d)
To test – through a sizable random selection of machines –
whether the paper result is the same as the electronic result.
8. It is our studied belief that the legitimacy of the electoral process in

India, and, as a consequence, of democracy itself, today faces a grave
threat. This is because the system of using EVMs has not only been
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repeatedly shown to be riddled with glitches, but also because

insufficient steps have been taken thus far to allay these concerns.
9. In fact, ECI has delegated a number of crucial functions regarding
the conduct of elections – like manufacturing, checking and maintenance
of EVMs – to the EVM manufacturers and other agencies over which it has
little or no administrative control. The Commission lacks the technical
capability necessary for exercising effective technical control. It seems to
have reposed blind trust in these myriad players and has no means of
verifying if they are playing foul. These personnel have also become
‘insiders’ along with the various election officials, and ECI’s lax control
over them makes ‘insider frauds’ easier to commit and difficult to detect.
ECI must assume greater administrative and technical control over the 2
EVMs manufacturers and related agencies in so far as the manufacturing,
checking and maintenance of EVMs are concerned.
10. In our opinion, there is scope for ‘insider frauds’ at three
stages: (i) At the EVMs manufacturing stage. (ii) At the district level,
during the non-election period, when the EVMs are stored in archaic
godowns in multiple locations with inadequate security systems.
(iii) At the stage of ‘first level checks’ prior to an election when the
EVMs are serviced by ‘authorised technicians’ from BEL and ECIL.
11. Our apprehension has been confirmed in a RTI response received
recently wherein against the figures provided by the ECI on the number
of EVMs received, BEL and ECIL have submitted data with huge
differences in the numbers they have supplied, at times ranging from
several thousands to lakhs of EVMs, raising questions on "where the
excess number of EVMs are going, what is being done with them". This
indicates that something very suspicious is going on between these
organisations. It also reveals that EVM’s design and content are also being
tampered with at will. The numbers revealed are stunning and shocking
questioning the very integrity and credibility of the EVM based
election. [See the Report at Link: https://www.firstpost.com/india/rti-
reveals-contradictory-numbers-of-evms-from-election-commission-
suppliers-raise-question-mark-on-polls-4422967.html]
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12. Although, pursuant to the 8.10.2013 order of the Supreme Court,

your office has confirmed that all EVMs will be accompanied with VVPAT
for the upcoming 2019 general elections, it is seen, as explained in your
letter 13.2.2018 (published in ECI website) the chief electoral officers in
all States and Union Territories have been directed to mandatorily verify
VVPAT paper slips in only one randomly selected polling station in
each assembly constituency. This defeats the very object of
installing VVPATs in all EVMs which would be rendered nugatory
tantamounting to non-implementation of Supreme Court Order.
13. The main purpose behind the introduction of VVPATs is to bring in
accuracy, verifiability and transparency in the casting and counting of
votes. With the presence of VVPATs, voters can verify if their vote has
been cast to the right candidate. Needless to say, it is only when the paper
slips as verified by the voters are counted that the true purpose behind
introduction of VVPATs is served. Without counting of VVPAT paper slips
in a significant percentage of polling stations in each assembly
14. The direction to hand-count VVPAT slips in just ‘one polling station
per Assembly Constituency’ worked out to 0.4% of EVMs in Gujarat and
0.9% of EVMs in Himachal Pradesh. Same was done in the North East and
is now being repeated in the forthcoming Karnataka election. This is
nothing but an exercise in tokenism. This would defeat the very
purpose of introducing VVPAT and, what’s more, would also be fraught
with all the risks of conducting elections with paperless EVMs. In the rush
to declare results and the winners, the Election Commission cannot turn
a blind eye to the possibilities of wrong totalling due to EVM malfunction
or EVM tampering. Surely, in something as important as ensuring the
integrity of the election process, a delay of a few hours or even a couple
of days shouldn’t matter at all, more so when the entire election process,
from the date of announcement to the date of counting, lasts for 2-3
months. Cost and time, we submit, cannot be considerations when the
integrity of the entire electoral process is at stake.
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15. Moreover, the sample size of ‘one polling station per Assembly
Constituency’ is statistically unsound not only in terms of its size but also
because the various polling stations in the constituency are not similar
and the sample drawn may not be truly representative of the
constituency as a whole. There is an imperative need for stratified
sampling with a random sample of one or more polling stations drawn
from each of the following ‘strata’: urban; semi-urban; rural; those in
remote hilly/desert/forest areas; those with very heavy voter turnout (>
80%); those with moderate voter turnout (50% to 80%); those with low
voter turnout (<50%); those about which a large number of complaints
were received, and so on.
16. We, therefore, suggest that VVPAT slips must be
simultaneously counted for a sample size of at least 25% of the
polling stations in an Assembly Constituency with the samples
drawn randomly from the different strata and verified with the
electronic count. If any variation is found then the entire VVPAT
slips in the constituency should be counted and tallied with the
electronic count before declaring the result. We believe this is a
direction that can be issued by your office for the upcoming 2019
general elections, in order to a greater standard of fairness and
transparency in the electoral process.
17. Apart from this fundamental suggestion, which we think is
imperative to implement we would add some more that would
strengthen electoral integrity and facilitate free and fair election leading
to enhancement of voter’s confidence in the electoral process.
a. ‘Trust but verify’ should be the Election Commission’s motto. It is
our submission that the Election Commission must equip itself to
exercise greater administrative and technical control over the two
manufacturers and related agencies in whom trust has been reposed
manufacture, check and service the EVMs. This oversight should be
immediately put in place.
b. ECI must consider engaging the services of a top electronic security
firm of international standing (bound by a confidentiality agreement) to
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conduct periodic ‘ethical hacking and other modes of attack’ on its

electoral systems and, in the processes, identify loopholes if any, and
certify the robustness of the EVMs and the manner of their use.
c. Just as counterfeit detector machines are imperative for verifying
the genuineness of currency notes, the Election Commission must
procure and supply one or more ‘Authentication Units’ to each district to
help election officials verify whether the EVMs being used in their
districts are genuine EVMs supplied by BEL/ECIL or counterfeit
EVMs. ‘Authentication Units’ can not only detect and weed out the
counterfeit EVMs, if any, in circulation, but they will also act as a
deterrent because the knowledge of their existence ought to serve in
driving away potential fraudsters. These ‘Authentication Units’ should
not be manufactured by the present EVM manufacturers (BEL & ECIL)
but by an independent third-party manufacturer. These ‘authentication
verifications’ should be arranged by the District Magistrate-cum-District
Election Officer (DM-DEO) in the presence of the contesting candidates
after the ‘first level checks’ are over and before the date of polling. This is
a change that can be put in place forthwith.
d. Election Commission must completely overhaul the present
method of storing EVMs during the non-election period. Election
Commission should move towards a kind of “2-bin storage system”
wherein the long-term storage of the EVMs in between two elections shall
be in a few large, high-security, regional warehouses and the short-term
storage immediately before or during an election in the current district
warehouses; the Commission must invest in building two to five regional
warehouses in each State depending on its size, which can serve as high
security regional warehouses; The ‘first level checks’ of the EVMs and
VVPATs that are carried out by the ‘authorised technicians’ of BEL and
EVM before an election must be done only in these regional warehouses
under CCTV and appropriate administrative safeguards against
tampering; and the EVMs should be transferred from the regional
warehouses to the district warehouses not earlier than 7 days before the
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date of polling. It is our considered belief that these suggestions can be

implemented before the 2019 election.
e. In the medium term, it is imperative that the EC switch over to
Machine-readable Paper Ballots with OMR counting-cum-Hand counting
of certain percentage of Ballot Boxes in place of the existing EVMs. We
make this suggestion for two reasons: one, this will ensure that the
abiding principle of the secrecy of the ballot is not compromised. And
two, international practice shows a movement towards paper ballots
because they are the simplest to understand; they are immune to all kinds
of cyberattacks; there is no malware that can steal paper votes; and they
can preserve the anonymity of the voter.
18. An accurate recording of the democratic will of the electorate, to
the satisfaction of the electorate, is indispensable to the democratic
process. The exercise of the right to vote must take place in a manner that
is in consonance with the highest principles of integrity and fairness as
enshrined in the Constitution of India. Our suggestions, if implemented,
will help instil in the electoral process greater transparency and fairness.
We believe it is imperative that the EC implements our suggestions in
order to ensure the sustenance of the principles of republican democracy
that stand at the bedrock of the Constitution of India.
Constitution of India (Article 324) mandates the ECI with the

superintendence, direction, control and the conduct of all elections.
What we are seeking is well within the powers of ECI and therefore
immediately doable. In the event, we urge the Commission to issue
the directions requested for expeditiously in the interest of
Electoral Integrity which is the bulwark of Democracy. Though at
Para (16) the 25% counting of VVPAT slips has been sought for the
2019 Parliament elections, ECI would be well advised to direct this
for the impending Karnataka state assembly election if they are
really serious about abiding by its constitutional mandate.
Thanking you,
Yours Truly,
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Sd/-
MG Devasahayam
IAS (Retd)
Convenor, Forum for Electoral Integrity.
Mobile: 9940174446 ; Email: deva1940@gmail.com
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ANNEXURE-P-12
Mr. O.P. Rawat, Chief Election Commissioner,
Mr. Sunil Arora, Election Commissioner
Mr. Ashok Lavasa, Election Commissioner
Nirvachan Sadan, Ashoka Road,
New Delhi - 110001
Dear Sirs, Dated: 04 July, 2018
Subject: ELECTORAL INTEGRITY – ENSURING RELIABILITY OF EVMS
AND VVPAT AND HAND COUNTING OF LARGE PERCENTAGE OF PAPER
SLIPS - REPRESENTATION THEREOF
We are a group of retired civil servants and Armed Forces veterans who
interact, discuss and deliberate on important issues of public concern and
as found necessary take it up with concerned authorities. We found it
necessary to take up this important issue of electoral integrity with the
Election Commission. Hence this Memorandum.
You, Sirs, more than anyone else in our polity, would know that elections
are synonymous with democracy and are meant to translate the consent
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of the citizens into governmental authority. To achieve this, elections
should be held in strict conformity with democracy principles. These
principles as we understand are:
a. In view of the “public rationale of elections”, the process should be
transparent in a manner that the general public can be satisfied that their
vote is correctly recorded and counted.
b. All essential steps in the elections should be subject to public
scrutiny/examinability;
c. Ordinary citizens should be able to check the essential steps in the
election process without special expert knowledge and
d. There should be verifiability in the counting of votes and
ascertainment of the results reliably without special knowledge.
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) that are being presently used to
conduct elections may be devices of technology excellence. But the
question is - do they comply with the above ‘Democracy Principles’?
There are broadly 5 types of voting systems in use around the world:
i.Paper Ballots. Vote recorded on paper and counted by hand.
ii.Direct Recording EVM. Vote recorded in memory. Counted electronically.
iii.Direct Recording EVMs with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
Vote recorded in memory and printed on paper. Counting done
electronically and by hand facilitating verification/auditing BEFORE
declaring result.
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iv.Machine-readable Paper Ballots that are scanned and electronically
counted using Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) technology.
v.Internet-based Voting or Online Voting. Most vulnerable, not suited.
India abandoned (i) and adopted (ii) and now in the process of
implementing (iii). Of these only ballot papers fully conform to
democracy principles.
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in a landmark judgment in
March, 2009 held the use of EVMs unconstitutional if they do not comply
with ‘Democracy Principles’. The Court ruled that in view of the “public
rationale of elections”, the process should be transparent in a manner
that the general public can be satisfied that their vote is correctly
recorded and counted. The standard the Court set for this purpose was
that there should be a provision whereby 'the votes are recorded and
counted in another way besides electronic storage' and there is
'retraceability' of the election result independently of the electronic
count.
In Civil Appeal No. 9093 of 2013 and WP (C) No. 406 of 2012 on 8.10.2013
Supreme Court of India passed an order mandating the use of voter
verified paper audit trail along with EVMs and directed the Election
Commission of India (ECI) to implement the VVPAT system in a phased
manner. The Supreme Court observed: “From the materials placed by
both the sides, we are satisfied that the ‘paper trail’ is an indispensable
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193
requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in the
EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the “paper trail”.
EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With
an intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the
immense importance in democratic system”.
Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed that principles of democracy are
a part of the basic structure of the Constitution of India. Replacement of
paperless EVMs with VVPAT EVMs is imperative for the following
reasons:
a. To impart confidence in citizens that their vote will be recorded
and counted accurately.
b. To allow for a recount.
c. To provide a backup in cases of loss of votes due to malfunction.
d. To test – through a sizable random selection of machines – whether
the paper result is the same as the electronic result.
It is our studied belief that the legitimacy of the electoral process in India,
and, as a consequence, of democracy itself, today faces a grave threat.
This is because the system of using EVMs has not only been repeatedly
shown to be riddled with glitches, but also because insufficient steps have
been taken thus far to allay these concerns. We also note with concern
the spate of VVPAT malfunction in the recent byelections - as high as
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20.82% in Kairana, 19.22% in Bhandara-Gondia and 13.16% in Palghar
byelections against EC norm of 5% which itself is too high.
In fact, ECI has delegated a number of crucial functions regarding the
conduct of elections – like manufacturing, checking and maintenance of
EVMs – to the EVM manufacturers and other agencies over which it has
little or no administrative control. Even the most critical manufacturing
of semiconductor chips and embedding them is outsourced to foreign
companies. Election Commission lacks the technical capability necessary
for exercising effective technical control on these activities and
operations. In order to ensure the integrity of the electronic voting
system, ECI must take immediate steps to assume greater administrative
and technical control over the 2 EVMs manufacturers and related
agencies in so far as the manufacturing, checking and maintenance of
EVMs are concerned.
In our considered opinion, there is scope for ‘insider frauds’ at three
stages:
(i) At the EVMs manufacturing stage.
(ii) At the district level, during the non-election period, when the EVMs are
stored in archaic godowns in multiple locations with inadequate security
systems.
(iii) At the stage of ‘first level checks’ prior to an election when the EVMs are
serviced by ‘authorised technicians’ from BEL and ECIL.
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Although, pursuant to the 8.10.2013 order of the Supreme Court, EC has
confirmed that all EVMs will be accompanied with VVPAT for the
upcoming 2019 general elections, it is seen, as explained in your letter
13.2.2018 the chief electoral officers in all States and Union Territories
have been directed to mandatorily verify VVPAT paper slips in only one
randomly selected polling station in each assembly constituency. This
defeats the very object of installing VVPATs in all EVMs which would be
rendered nugatory tan amounting to non-implementation of Supreme
Court Order.
The main purpose behind the introduction of VVPATs is to bring in
accuracy, verifiability and transparency in the casting and counting of
votes. With the presence of VVPATs, voters can verify if their vote has
been cast to the right candidate. Needless to say, it is only when the paper
slips as verified by the voters are counted that the true purpose behind
introduction of VVPATs is served. Without counting of VVPAT paper slips
in a significant percentage of polling stations in each assembly
The direction to hand-count VVPAT slips in just ‘one polling station per
Assembly Constituency’ works out to 0.4% of EVMs on an average. This
is nothing but an exercise in tokenism. This would defeat the very
purpose of introducing VVPAT and, what’s more, would also be fraught
with all the risks of conducting elections with paperless EVMs. In the rush
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to declare results and the winners, the Election Commission cannot turn
a blind eye to the possibilities of wrong totaling due to EVM malfunction
or EVM tampering. Surely, in something as important as ensuring the
integrity of the election process, a delay of a few hours or even a couple
of days shouldn’t matter at all, more so when the entire election process,
from the date of announcement to the date of counting, lasts for 2-3
months. Cost and time, we submit, cannot be considerations when the
integrity of the entire electoral process is at stake.
Sample of ‘one polling station per Assembly Constituency’ is statistically
unsound in terms of size. Also, because the various polling stations in the
constituency are not similar the sample drawn may not be truly
representative of the constituency as a whole. There is an imperative
need for stratified sampling with a random sample of one or more polling
stations drawn from each of the following ‘strata’: urban (middle/upper
class); urban (poor/slums); semi-urban; rural; Dalits/minorities; remote
hilly/desert/forest areas; those with very heavy voter turnout (> 80%);
with moderate voter turnout (50% to 80%); with low voter turnout
(<50%); those about which a large number of complaints received etc.
We, therefore, suggest that VVPAT slips must be simultaneously
counted for a sample size of at least 25% of the polling stations in an
Assembly Constituency with the samples drawn randomly from the
different strata and verified with the electronic count. This random
selection of booths should be done in consultation with the
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candidates or their authorised representatives. If any variation is
found then the entire VVPAT slips in the constituency should be
counted and tallied with the electronic count before declaring the
result. We believe this is a direction that can be issued by the
Commission immediately for the 2018 State Assembly elections for
testing and refining so that it can be fully implemented in the
forthcoming 2019 general elections to Parliament? This alone
would ensure greater standard of verifiability and integrity in the
electoral process.
An accurate recording of the democratic will of the electorate, to the
satisfaction of the electorate, is indispensable to the democratic process.
The exercise of the right to vote must take place in a manner that is in
consonance with the highest principles of integrity and fairness as
enshrined in the Constitution of India. Our suggestions, if implemented,
will help instil in the electoral process greater transparency and fairness.
We believe it is imperative that the EC implements our suggestions in
order to ensure the sustenance of the principles of republican democracy
that stand at the bedrock of the Constitution of India.
As it is, not everyone is convinced of the fairness of EVMs. This has caused
deep doubts and apprehensions among the political parties and voting
public about the reliability and integrity of electronic voting and
therefore its compliance with democracy principles. ECI introduced
VVPAT mandated by SC could bring about some compliance of these
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principles. And this is possible only if total (100%) reliability of EVMs and
VVPATs is ensured and large percentage of paper slips hand-counted and
cross-verified before declaring results. Former CECs have also suggested
this course of action.
Constitution of India (Article 324) mandates the ECI with the
superintendence, direction, control and the conduct of all elections. What
we are seeking is well within the powers of ECI and therefore
immediately doable. In the event, we urge the Commission to
expeditiously issue the directions requested for in the interest of
Electoral Integrity which is the bulwark of Democracy.
Yours faithfully,
Retired civil servants
Sl.No. Name Service Last post/designation
before retirement
1. Salahuddin IAS (Retd.) Former Chief Secretary,
Ahmad Rajasthan
2. V.S. Ailawadi IAS (Retd.) Former Chairman,
Electricity Regulatory
Commission
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3. S.P. Ambrose IAS (Retd.) Former Additional
Secretary, Ministry of
Shipping & Transport, GoI
4. Ishrat Aziz IFS (Retd.) Former Ambassador to
Brazil & Saudi Arabia
5. Vappala IPS (Retd.) Former Special Secretary,
Balachandran Cabinet Secretariat, GoI
6. Gopalan IAS (Retd.) Former Special Secretary,
Balagopal Govt. of West Bengal
7. Chandrashekhar IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Coal, GoI
Balakrishnan
8. Sundar Burra IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Govt. of
Maharashtra
9. R. Chandramohan IAS (Retd.) Former Principal
Secretary, Urban
Development & Transport,
Govt. of NCT of Delhi
10. Kalyani IAS (Retd.) Former Additional Chief
Chaudhuri Secretary, Govt. of West
Bengal
11. Anna Dani IAS (Retd.) Former Additional Chief
Secretary, Govt. of
Maharashtra
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12. Surjit K. Das IAS (Retd.) Former Chief Secretary,
Govt. of Uttarakhand
13. Vibha Puri Das IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Ministry
of Tribal Affairs, GoI
14. Keshav Desiraju IAS (Retd.) Former Health Secretary,
GoI
15. M.G. IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Govt. of
Devasahayam Haryana
16. K.P. Fabian IFS (Retd.) Former Ambassador to
Italy
17. Meena Gupta IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Ministry
of Environment & Forests,
GoI
18. Wajahat IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, GoI and
Habibullah Chief Information
Commissioner
19. Dr. M.A. Ibrahimi IAS (Retd.) Former Chief Secretary
(rank), Govt. of Bihar
20. Kamal Jaswal IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary,
Department of Information
Technology, GoI
21. Vinod C. Khanna IFS (Retd.) Former Additional
Secretary, MEA
//TRUE TYPED COPY//

236
201
22. K. John Koshy IAS (Retd.) Former State Chief
Information
Commissioner, West
Bengal
23. Ajai Kumar Indian Forest Former Director, Ministry
Service of Agriculture, GoI
(Retd.)
24. Brijesh Kumar IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary,
Department of Information
Technology, GoI
25. Harsh Mander IAS (Retd.) Govt. of Madhya Pradesh
26. Lalit Mathur IAS (Retd.) Former Director General,
National Institute of Rural
Development, GoI
27. Aditi Mehta IAS (Retd.) Former Additional Chief
Secretary, Govt. of
Rajasthan
28. Ruchira Mukerjee IP&TFAS Former Adviser, Telecom
(Retd.) Commission, GoI
29. Deb Mukharji IFS (Retd.) Former High
Commissioner to
Bangladesh and
Ambassador to Nepal
//TRUE TYPED COPY//

237
202
30. Pranab S. IAS (Retd.) Former Director, Institute
Mukhopadhyay of Port Management, GoI
31. Sobha Nambisan IAS (Retd.) Former Principal Secretary
(Planning), Govt. of
Karnataka
32. Amitabha Pande IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Inter-
State Council, GoI
33. Alok Perti IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Ministry
of Coal, GoI
34. T.R. Raghunandan IAS (Retd.) Former Joint Secretary,
Ministry of Panchayati Raj,
GoI
35. N.K. Raghupathy IAS (Retd.) Former Chairman, Staff
Selection Commission, GoI
36. K. Sujatha Rao IAS (Retd.) Former Health Secretary,
GoI
37. M.Y. Rao IAS (Retd.)
38. Julio Ribeiro IPS (Retd.) Former Adviser to
Governor of Punjab &
Ambassador to Romania
39. Aruna Roy IAS
(Resigned)
40. Umrao Salodia IAS (Retd.) Former Chairman,
Rajasthan Road Transport
//TRUE TYPED COPY//

238
203
Corporation, Govt. of
Rajasthan
41. Deepak Sanan IAS (Retd.) Former Principal Adviser
(AR) to Chief Minister,
Govt. of Himachal Pradesh
42. Ardhendu Sen IAS (Retd.) Former Chief Secretary,
Govt. of West Bengal
43. Abhijit Sengupta IAS (Retd.) Former Secretary, Ministry
of Culture, GoI
44. Aftab Seth IFS (Retd.) Former Ambassador to
Japan
45. Raju Sharma IAS (Retd.) Former Member, Board of
Revenue, Govt. of Uttar
Pradesh
46. Ramani IAS (Retd.) Former Director-General,
Venkatesan YASHADA, Govt. of
Maharashtra
Armed Forces veterans
Sl. No. Name Service
1. Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat IN (Retd)
//TRUE TYPED COPY//

239
204
2. Vice Admiral D.B. Kapila IN (Retd)
3. Captain S. Prabhala IN (Retd)
4. Col M.S. Rai Army (Retd),
5. Admiral L. Ramdas IN (Retd)
6. Col C.R.S. Reddy Army (Retd)
7. Hav V.S. Tewatia, Army (Retd)
8. Col J.P. Narain Army (Retd)
9. Air Marshal Vir Narain IAF (Retd)
10. Maj Gen S.G. Vombatkere Army (Retd)
//TRUE TYPED COPY//

Introduction Sampling Fraction Standard Theory Improved bounds Determination of n
240
Testing of EVMs via VVPAT Slip
verification: Sampling Issues
Abhay G. Bhatt & Rajeeva L. Karandikar
Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi Centre

&
Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai
4 October 2018
Abhay G. Bhatt ISI, Delhi

Random Sampling 1/23
Outline 241
1 Introduction
2 Sampling Fraction
3 Standard Theory
4 Improved bounds
5 Determination of n

EVM and VVPAT 242
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are used in all

elections
For additional verifiability and transparency
Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines
To further enhance credibility, A Random Sample of
EVMs to be chosen for VVPAT slip verification
Verify Slip Count with Electronic Count

Random Sampling - Questions 243
Q1 Should the sample size depend on the population size?

i.e. “Absolute Number of Units Sampled” versus
“Proportion of Units Sampled”
Q2 What is a reasonable sample size?

Population 244
Population – All EVMs used in an election

Population 245

Population 246
All the EVMs/VVPATs are similar - having come up
through the same process
No systematic bias in assigning them to particular
States/Constituencies/Booths
Even if done separately at each constituency level –
EVMs deployed in all polling booths in a SINGLE
constituency are coming from the same system
Hence a random sample works
– even though each EVM is not being tested.

Notations 247
N – the size of the population

Defective EVM – mismatch between the electronic count
and the count through the VVPAT slip
P – The actual, but unknown, proportion of of defective
EVMs
n – size of Random Sample
p̂ – The proportion of defective EVMs in the sample

Standard Error 248
Standard Error of the estimate (s.e.) – indicates the

extent to which p̂ and P di↵er.
Use of s.e.
To estimate the precision actually attained in a survey
that has been completed
To estimate the size of the sample needed in a survey
that is being planned

Standard Error - Formula 249
For sampling with replacement,

r
P (1 P)
s.e. = (1)
n
For sampling without replacement
r r
P (1 P) N n
s.e. = (2)
n N 1

Finite Population Correction (fpc) 250

The Population Size N appears only in the fpc
r r
N n n 1
= 1
N 1 N 1
It has minimal e↵ect on the s.e. – precision of the sample
estimate.

Finite Population Correction (fpc) 251

The Population Size N appears only in the fpc
r r
N n n 1
= 1
N 1 N 1
It has minimal e↵ect on the s.e. – precision of the sample
estimate. For n = 500
N fpc P = 0.01 P = 0.02 P = 0.05
– – 0.00444 0.00626 0.00974
10000 0.9747 0.00434 0.00610 0.00950
200000 0.9987 0.00444 0.00625 0.00973

Implications 252
Q1 Should the sample size depend on the population size?

NO
“Absolute Number of Units Sampled” are important

P, s.e. and n 253
We will use (1) r

P (1 P)
s.e. =
n
Does not depend on N

Is an upper bound for the actual error

P, s.e. and n 254
We will use (1) r

P (1 P)
s.e. =
n

Depends on the unknown quantity P

P, s.e. and n 255
We will use (1) r

P (1 P)
s.e. =
n

Depends on the unknown quantity P
P, s.e. & n are related

Normal Approximation 256
The basic formula:
Prob (|p̂ P| d) = ↵
Confidence level: = 100(1 ↵)%

margin of error: d

Normal Approximation 257

The basic formula:
Prob (|p̂ P| d) = ↵
p̂ is assumed to be normally distributed
For a Standard Normal random variable T ,
Prob (|T | z) = ↵
For ↵ = 0.05, z = 1.96,

For ↵ = 0.01, z = 2.58
For ↵ = 0.003, z = 3,
For ↵ = 0.00006, z = 4
Normal Approximation Formula 258
Without ‘finite population correction’
n = z 2 P(1 P)/d 2
with fpc for population size N

n
n0 =
1 + (n 1)/N

Unknown P 259
The product P (1 P) is maximised for P = 0.5
P (1 P) (0.5)(1 0.5) = 0.25
– Use this upper bound in calculation of n

– Conservative estimate of n
For d = 0.02, ↵ = 0.05 (or z = 1.96)
n = z 2 P(1 P)/d 2 = (1.96)2 (0.25)/(0.02)2 = 2401
For d = 0.02, ↵ = 0.01 (or z = 2.58)
n = (2.58)2 (0.25)/(0.02)2 = 4160.25

Choice of ↵ 260
↵ = 0.00006, z = 4
This is high enough so that if we have 15000 such
di↵erent random samples (of size n each), then only
about 1 of these 15000 samples are likely to give a result
which is quite di↵erent from the true situation.

Choice of ↵ 261
↵ = 0.00006, z = 4
This is high enough so that if we have 15000 such
di↵erent random samples (of size n each), then only
about 1 of these 15000 samples are likely to give a result
which is quite di↵erent from the true situation.
At the ‘4 ’ tail, the normal approximation does not work
as well as it does ‘closer to mean’.
We use a better approximation - Binomial Distribution

Apriori bounds of P 262
The product P (1 P) steadily decreases as the value of

P moves away from 0.5.
Prudent to use any information about P

Past Data 263

Past Elections across various States/UTs
VVPAT slip verification in respect of 843 randomly
Number of mismatches between the slip count and
electronic count = 0 i.e.
p̂ = 0

Past Data 264

Past Elections across various States/UTs
VVPAT slip verification in respect of 843 randomly
Number of mismatches between the slip count and
electronic count = 0 i.e.
p̂ = 0
P is close to zero

Past Data 265

P is close to zero
How close? How does one check?

Past Data 266

P is close to zero
Check for di↵erent values of P
Is P = 0.01?
If the actual proportion of defectives P is = 0.01, what is
the chance of observing zero defectives in a sample of size
843?
Prob p̂ = 0 P = 0.01

Past Data 267

P is close to zero
Check for di↵erent values of P
Is P = 0.01?
If the actual proportion of defectives P is = 0.01, what is
the chance of observing zero defectives in a sample of size
843?
Prob p̂ = 0 P = 0.01 ⇡ (1 0.01)843 = 0.00021

P Probability
268
0.001 0.430235828951264
0.005 0.014616960341607
0.01 0.000209155382665
0.02 0.000000040140411
0.03 0.000000000007057
0.04 0.000000000000002
0.05 0.000000000000001
The Probability corresponding to P = 0.02 is less than

that of observing a deviation greater than 4 from a
standard normal distribution.
99.999996% confidence that the P  0.02
Using ‘Normal’ Formula 269
For P  0.02
P (1 P) (0.02)(1 0.02) = 0.0.0196
For d = 0.02, z = 4 (or ↵ = 0.00006)
n = z 2 P(1 P)/d 2 = 42 (0.0196)/(0.02)2 = 784

4 bounds 270
Specify error bound ↵ or confidence level 100(1 ↵)%
When sampling from a Normal Population with mean 0,
standard deviation
Prob ( deviation 4 ) = 0.00006334248
Commonly accepted as being extremely small

Thus we take ↵ = 0.00006334248.

4 bounds 271
Specify error bound ↵ or confidence level 100(1 ↵)%
When sampling from a Normal Population with mean 0,
standard deviation
Prob ( deviation 4 ) = 0.00006334248
Commonly accepted as being extremely small

Thus we take ↵ = 0.00006334248.
Choose n such that
Prob (zero defectives in a sample of size n)
 ↵ = 0.00006334248

Sample Size n for P = 0.02 272
We have
↵ = (1 P)n

We have
↵ = (1 P)n
log(↵)
n=
log(1 P)

We have
↵ = (1 P)n
log(↵)
n=
log(1 P)
Choosing P = 0.02, ↵ = 0.00006334248 we get
n = 478.497


We have
↵ = (1 P)n
log(↵)
n=
log(1 P)
Choosing P = 0.02, ↵ = 0.00006334248 we get
n = 479

Conclusion 276
If a random sample of size 479 has 0 defectives,

then with 99.994% confidence we can conclude
that P < 0.02

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ANNEXURE-P-14
Comments on the presentation “on Testing of EVM via VVPAT Slip-

verification: Sample Issue “made before the Election Commissioner of
India on 24th August 2018 by Abhay G. Bhatt and Rajeeva L. Karandikar
[Dr. SK Nath – 25 August, 2018]
The MAIN issue before the public was whether selection of ONE (1) EVM
machine per Constituency was enough to prove that there is no difference
between EVM count vis a vis VVPAT slip count within a constituency. In
other words, whether there is scope of suspicion about the trustworthiness
of EVM machine. But instead of formulating issue in its right perspective,
the presenters set up the issue as below (Please refer to the slide on
Notation):
N – the size of the population – Total number of polling stations.
Comment: There is confusion about the definition used. The presenters

may please define what is the POPULATION – no of EVM machines
deployed or total number of polling booths. Two are not the same. In the
first line the presenters have defined the Population as “All EVMs used in
an election” whereas “N” has been defined as total number polling booth.
Secondly, THIS ISSUE IS ABOUT SELECTION OF POLLING BOOTH PER
CONSTITUENCY WHY THEY HAVE STUDIED all polling stations for any
election.
In subsequent slides the presenters set up two questions namely,
1) Should the sample size depend on the population size?

2) What is a reasonable sample size or sampling fraction?
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231
Let us look at the basic formulation of determination of Sample size as per

any standard literature on Sample Survey is as follows assuming the
Population size infinite.
𝑝𝑞
𝑛 = 𝑍2 × ……………………………………………………………(i)
𝑒2
Where n = sample size (no. of polling booths to be determined), p = the

proportion of polling booths where total EVM counts do not match with
that of VVPAT slip counts and e = the margin of error – generally it is taken
as 5% or less. Z = the level of confidence. For Gaussian distribution it is 1.96
at 95% level of confidence.
Obviously, this formulation is not dependent on N which is the total

number polling booths in a constituency (or, election as defined by the
presenters). BUT WHEN THE “N” IS finite, IT IS NECESSARY TO APPLY FOR
“fpc” – finite population correction which is a function of N.
IN PRACTICAL TERMS IF WE USE ABOVE FORMULATION WHERE

“POPULATION” IS THE TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOTHS WITHIN A
CONSTITUENCY, THE SAMPLE SIZE(n) WILL BE DEPENDENT ON
“POPULATION SIZE(N)”. BUT WHERE ANY STUDY IS MADE TAKING ALL
CONSTITUENCIES TOGETHER WITHIN A STATE OR COUNTRY OR TOTAL EVM
MACHINES DEPLOYED IN AN ELECTION, THE SAMPLE SIZE WILL NOT BE
DEPENDENT ON THE SIZE OF POPULATION as done by the presenters
Let us now go to the second question, namely, what is a reasonable sample

size or sampling fraction.
The pertinent question is whether the sample is to determined according to

constituencies or all constituencies together for an election. The election
commission of India in their circular number 51/8/VVPAT-INST/2018-EMS
dated 13th February 2018, it has been clearly mentioned that one (1) polling
booth (station) per Assembly constituency will be selected for verification
of EVM counts with VVPAT counts. THIS IS UNDERSTANDABLE SINCE THE
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232
PUBLIC DEMAND IS KNOW THE TRUST WORTHINESS OF EVM DEPLOYED IN

EACH CONSTITUENCY.
Thus, the issue is whether selection of one (1) polling booth is sufficient or
not. And if not, what should be the estimated value of “n” – the number of
sample polling booths to be selected. THUS, THE FORMULATION OF THE
ISSUE AS PRESENTED BY THE PRESENTERS IS NOT APPLICABLE.
Here it is observed that the presenters instead of using the formulation for
determining the sample size as per (i) above, they preferred to compute
probabilities based some past data where 843 EVM machines were chosen
and found ZERO mismatch with VVPAT count. IT IS NOT CLEAR WHAT MADE
THE PRESENTERS TO CHOOSE 843 EVMS TO PROVE THEIR HYPOTHESIS.
In the last two slides, they have computed the estimated number of EVM
machines to be selected in an election (although this is the subject of
discussion) using past data with some formulation without any reference
and using value of parameters.
The presenters have computed n = 479 Polling booths for an election. The
presenters in their concluding lecture wanted to justify that had this 479
been allocated over all constituencies within a state and then the effective
sample size per constituency will be much lower than 1. In other words of
the presenters, the sample size of one (1) per constituency as decided by
the office of Election Commission vide their letter under reference is more
than justified.
Now let us calculate the “margin of error” or risk we may find with sample
size =1 within a constituency with p=.02 (that means when the defective
EVM is just 2%)
(margin of error)2 = Z2 x pq /n = (1.96)2 x (.02) x (.98) /1 = .0747936 using

the formula at (i)
Means the “Margin of Error” is 27.35% . This will increase with higher value
of “p”. Will anyone in the world accept such high level of error?
Let us now come out with the fallacy in the presentation.

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233
The analysis made by the presenters is too simplistic and according to their
formulation, even for the country as a whole the value of n= will be 479
AND it is done for a single Constituency the value of n will again be 479.
AN IMPORTANT ISSUE WHICH WAS NOT CONSIDERED:
Whatever be the size of “n”, the outcome of counts between EVMs and
VVPAT may vary from polling booth to polling booth in respect of each
party if party was analysis is done. THIS IS NATURAL AND NO CONCLUSION
CANNOT BE DONE ABOUT TRUSTWORTHYNESS OF ELECTION PROCESS.
Mind that if a fresh sample of “n” polling booths are chosen one may get
opposite result. In other words, if all (or majority) EVM machines show
higher figure as compared to VVPAT count in respect of a political Party
(say X) it does not necessarily prove any biasness of EVMs. In such situation,
it is necessary to conduct “Statistical Test of Significance” to prove
whether the EVMs are biased in favour of a political party. The method of
Testing has already been circulated.
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ANNEXURE-P-15
Sampling Design and Test of Hypothesis for VVPAT based Auditing of EVM
By
Dr. S.K.Nath
(Fmr. Director-General, Central Statistical Organisation- 26 August, 2018]
1.Introduction:
The Election Commission of India has recently decided to use
VVPAT machines with each EVM machine during election of all Parliament
and State Legislative Assemblies. According to modus operandi for auditing EC
has decided that after declaration of results of an election, one VVPAT
machine will be randomly selected in each constituency and the VVPAT paper
slips will be counted and to be compared with the count of EVM machine with
which it was interfaced during polling in a polling booth.
Many has raised about the efficacy of the sampling design as

suggested by EC. It may be noted that whenever any decision is taken based on
sampling, it is necessary to observe two important issues namely, size of sample
(here VVPAT machine per Constituency minus defective machines) and the
sampling design. Unless these are as per proper Statistical theory, there will be
enough room for a wrong decision / wrong suspicion about EVMs. And this
can safe guarded using the Statistical theory of “Testing of Hypothesis”.
Before we took up this exercise, it was felt necessary to have

certain back ground information from experienced Bureaucrats who actually
conducted Elections and have the knowledge of the status of VVPAT based
auditing tried by the Election Commission in recently concluded election of
State Assemblies in Karnataka, Tripura and Gujarat. It is also felt necessary to
know the experience of those Senior Engineers who were deployed to various
Constituencies to provide technical support in case of any machine fault be it
EVM machine or VVPAT machine.
From my discussions with stakeholders, we could gather extremely

important information. Some of these are enumerated below:
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235
i) 15 to 20% of VVPAT machines became “out of order” during the polling

at the polling station itself or subsequently. On enquiry, it is also noted
that these machines malfunctioned due to much heat generated inside
the machines resulting damaging the “Thermal paper” used as “VVPAT
paper slips. Secondly, the reflection of light above VVPAT machines
made VVPAT “sensor” malfunctioning in some cases.
ii) About 5% EVM machines found to have certain technical problem
mostly during the poll.
Besides, machine fault, following are other reasons which may cause
mismatch of EVM counts with VVPAT paper trails as per onsite
observation of a Senior Engineer from ECIL who was on duty during
polling of last election of Tripura etc.
It is also learnt that before commencement of actual polling, the

Presiding officer concerned is supposed to give a Demo of functioning
of EVM before all political party representatives by physically pressing
each BUTTON for a fixed number of times and placing before them
the result of “counts” of VVPAT paper trails and that of EVM. After the
Demo, the paper slips are to be destroyed and both the EVM and
VVPAT machined are to be “initialized” and sealed by the presiding
officer. In case the EVM machine is sealed without “initializing”, the
memory of the EVM will keep the “demo-counts” stored. This can the
source of mismatching of “counts” during auditing.
Based on above inputs, the following Sampling design has been

formulated
2. Sampling Design:
Suppose there are “N” number of polling booths in a
constituency and each polling has one or more than one EVM (since it is learnt
if any EVM malfunctions the machine is sealed and a new EVM is used for rest
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236
of polling process). And in a particular constituency the total number of EVMs

deployed will be higher than “N” - the no. of polling booths.
Notations used: Let N = be the size of population which is the total number of
Polling stations(booths) within a constituency.
Let n = be the sample size for the purpose of auditing.
As per the ORDER of EC dated 13th February 2018 on “mandatory verification

of VVPAT paper slips”, only one Polling Station will be selected per
constituency namely, n=1
The question is whether the sample size “n”=1 is statistically valid sample size.
In the following paragraph, we will explain the basic methodology followed for
sample selection.
3.Methodology:
Suppose:
There are k candidates contesting in a constituency
A polling booth in the constituency has P voters
i-th candidate got x1i votes as per EVM count and x2i votes as per VVPAT paper
slips
O1 is the total no. of NOTA votes, absentees and cancelled votes as per EVM
counting
O2 is the total no. of NOTA votes, absentees and cancelled votes as per VVPAT
print-outs
Then ideally,
∑𝑘𝑖=1 𝑥1𝑖 + 𝑂1 = ∑𝑘𝑖=1 𝑥2𝑖 + 𝑂2
This may not happen due to various reasons as stated above and but it is
necessary to verify whether the difference between two sets of “counts” are due
to RANDOM effect or due to faulty EVM . Random effect may include non-
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237
initialization of EVMs before commencement of polling at a polling booth

during an election, as mentioned at 1(ii) above or other formalities.
Suppose:
α = proportion of EVMs is presumed to be defective (as found during auditing)
β = 1 – α = proportion of EVM machines having no problem.
Since Statistics deals with chance variable there may be some error in making
decision based on “sample” even under “Random Sampling”. Thus, we attach
a level of “CONFIDENCE” linked to our decision (it may be 95% or 99%, say)
so that one can say the statistical result is at least 95% (or 99%) correct. These
figures are called “confidence level”. For the purpose of auditing it is better to
take higher confidence level namely, 99%
Now in order to find out the sample size (n out of N as defined above)
n= minimum sample of polling booths required for auditing for decision
making substantiated by Statistical theory;
According to Statistical methodology (can be found in any book on Sample

survey or UN publication), the minimum sample size (n) is given below
presuming “N” is quite large:
𝛼𝛽
𝑛 = 𝑍2 ×
𝑒2
where Z = standard normal deviate and

e = degree of accuracy required often known as “margin of error”
[design effect = 1 since the sample design uni-stage Simple Random
Sampling without replacement (SRSWOR)]
In case, where the value of “N” is small or finite, finite population correction
will be used namely,
The finite population corrected sample size (n’) is given by 𝑛′ = 𝑛 𝑋 𝐹𝑃𝐶 ;
where FPC= {(N-n)/(N-1)}1/2
Hereafter we shall call fpc corrected n’ as “n” for the sake of simplicity.
Table: Finite population corrected Sample size with 99% confidence level
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Probable Margin Estimate of Margin Estimate of

number of of Sample size of Sample size
Polling Booths error = with e=2% error with e=5%
within a 2% =5%
constituency
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
200 2% 69 5% 24
220 2% 82 5% 24
240 2% 92 5% 24
260 2% 99 5% 25
280 2% 105 5% 25
300 2% 110 5% 25
320 2% 114 5% 25
340 2% 118 5% 25
350 2% 121 5% 25
( Note: Minimum value of α has been used for above calculation. With
Higher value of α, the estimates of sample size “n” will go up.)
Conclusion: It is a matter of decision of EC to choose the “margin of error” as

2% or 5% accordingly, the sample size will depend.
4.Statistical Testing of Hypothesis
Since share of votes in respect of political party “Y” as per two machines ( EVM
and VVPAT) may ( or may not also) vary in both directions, it is not
DESIRABLE to come out with a final conclusion on the basis of outcome of
verification based on sample size proposed. As mentioned in the beginning, the
mismatch between EVM counts with VVPAT counts could be due to several
reasons other than faulty EVMs.
It may be noted that if a fresh sample of “n” polling booths are chosen one may
get even opposite result. In other words, if all (or majority) EVM machines show
higher figure as compared to VVPAT count in respect of a political Party (say
X) it does not necessarily prove any biasness of EVMs. In such situation, it is
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239
necessary to conduct “Statistical Test of Significance” to prove whether the

EVMs are biased in favour of a political party. The method of Testing of
Hypothesis is an instrument for finding out the truth.
Let us now work on proportion of votes recorded in favour of a candidate “Y”

by two different machines
Let p1 = is the proportion of VOTES received as per EVM counts in respect of
“Y” candidate as compared total vote cast in EVM
and p2 = is the proportion of VOTES received as per VVPAT counts in respect
of “Y” candidate as compared total paper slips found in VVPAT.
We may now come across following situation:

i) EVM proportion of Votes are more: p1 > p2
ii) TTVAT proportion of Votes are more: p1 < p2
iii) EVM and VVPAT proportions are equal: p1 = p2
Where p1 =x1/n1
where x1 = Total votes received by “Y” candidate as per count of all
EVMs
and n1 = Total number of votes cast in favour of all candidates as per
EVMs
Where p2 = x2/n2
x2= Total votes received by “Y” candidate as per count of paper slips
of VVPAT
n2 = Total number of votes cast in favour of all candidates as per
VVPAT slips
( Please note that n1 and n2 above are different from sample size (n) we
have talked earlier)
Now in order to derive at a conclusion that both EVMs and VVPATs

machines are reliable, we will use the following Statistical Test for which our
NULL Hypothesis will be H0(P1 = P2) which we will test against the alternative
Hypothesis H1(P1 ≠ P2), where P1 and P2 are the TRUE values of p1 and p2.
which are UNKNOWN
287
240
To Test we will calculate a test-statistic (not statistics) as below for testing of

sample proportions:
Now accept the null Hypothesis H0(P1 = P2 ) if the value of Z < 1.96. That
means the count of EVM machines for the is NOT BIASED towards the
candidate “Y”. Otherwise, there is every reason to suspect the EVMs
concerned.
Such test can be done for other parties and also for other constituencies
wherever there is question of doubt expressed by any political parties.
6. Is there any need for stratification?

The way the sampling design has been explained above there is no need for
any stratification.
_____________________________________________________________
____________________________
Brief-Bio of Expert - Dr. Swaraj Kumar Nath
Dr. Nath is MSc in Statistics (Gold Medalist) from Calcutta University. He did
his PhD in development of innovative models for measurement of “Export
Swing” technology.
Joined Indian Statistical Service in 1971. Former Director-General, Central

Statistical Organisation and Chief Economic Census Commissioner of India.
Did pioneering work in Computerisation of Foreign Trade Statistics. Worked
with National Sample Survey of India.
288
241
Active member of many Expert groups of United Nations, World Bank,

SIAP, Japan. After his superannuation he has been working as International
Consultant to UNFAO, UNIDO, WTO, UNSIAP, UNDP, World Bank,
ILO, ESCAP, GIZ, ADB, SAARC, PARIS21(OECD).
Important assignments/contributions: “Sampling Advisor” to UNDP

(Georgia) and ILO and assisted Russia in conducting multiple surveys in an
integrated form. Pioneering work on developing model for “Global Value
Chain” for FAO/UNIDO/WTO and creation of SAARCSTAT under
SAARC. Setting up Ghana Statistical Training Centre. Developing blue print
for “Implementation of Human Rights in Turkmenistan” for UNDP and
online Gender database “G-datashop” for SAARC’
Recently he developed “costing model” for development of Integrated Land

ports on India-Bangladesh and India-Nepal borders as ADB Consultant.
ANNEXURE
1 A-2 289
WRIT PETITION (C) NO. 273 OF 2019
N CHANDRABABU NAIDU & ORS. PETITIONER(S)
VERSUS
WITH

WRIT PETITION (C) No. 215 OF 2019 AND
O R D E R
following reliefs:
"A. Issue a writ of mandamus or any

Machine and VVPAT as framed and
issued by the Election Commission
of India; and

minimum of 50% randomized VVPAT
paper slip verification of EVM
each Assembly Constituency, in case
2 290
C. Pass such other order or direction
justice.”
Voting Machine and VVPAT in respect of which the first
Guideline No. 16.6, which reads as follows:
“16.6. Mandatory Verification of VVPAT

Paper Slips:
Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper

future General and Bye Elections to the
of Rule 56D of the Conduct of Elections
in the EVMs, as under:


concerned.

VVPAT paper slips, the following
procedure shall be followed.
16.6.1.The verification of VVPAT paper

3 291
Assembly Constituency/Segment
EVMs.

polling station per Assembly
Constituency/Segment shall be
the presence of candidates/their
that Constituency.

Counting Hall for the particular
Assembly Constituency/Assembly
Segment.

polling station for verification
of VVPAT Slips shall be given by
the Returning Officer to the
Candidates/their election agents
well in advance.

of lots:


c) The paper cards shall have pre-

printed Assembly Constituency/
Assembly Segment number, AC/AS
4 292
shall be atleast 1" x 1"(1 inch
black ink.
d) The paper cards to be used for

visible.

the container.
f) The paper cards shall be kept in

Officer.
16.6.6. The verification of VVPAT paper

slips shall be done in a 'VVPAT
the Counting Hall. The booth shall
like a bank cashier’s cabin so
that no VVPAT paper slip can be
in the Counting Hall can be
VVPAT slips as per random
VVPAT paper slips of the randomly
accordance with the instructions
5 293
of the Commission on counting of
16.6.8. The Returning Officer and
Assistant Returning Officer, as
supervise the counting of VVPAT
paper slips at this booth. The
General Observer concerned shall
and ensure strict compliance of
the Commission's instructions.
16.6.9. The above process shall be fully
videographed.
annexed format (Annexure-30).”
The petitioners, who are 21 in number, are
represent about 70-75% of the total population of the
voters in the forthcoming General Elections of the Lok
Sabha as well as to some Assembly seats in different
verification of VVPAT paper trails to atleast 50% of the

6 294
responded very favourably to the prayers made in the
writ petition, as noticed above.
Very broadly, the Election Commission of India
Indian Statistical Institute ("ISI"), namely, "what
would be the reasonable sample size of Polling
Stations where VVPAT slips verification is required
to be carried out to achieve the object of
establishing the credibility and integrity of the
electoral process".
to an Expert Body, namely, ISI. In response, the ISI had
submitted an elaborate report, the crux of which is that
verification of VVPAT paper trail of 479 (randomly
generate over 99% accuracy in the election results. It
verification of VVPAT paper trails of one Assembly
Constituency or Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary
Constituency would involve verification of VVPAT paper
trail of 4125 EVMs instead of 479 EVMs which is eight
times more than what has been reported by the ISI.
Additionally, the ECI has pointed out infrastructure

7 295
point of time, in increasing the number of EVMs for
verification. According to the Election Commission of
India, the sample verification of the VVPAT paper trail
verification of VVPAT paper trail of 50% of the EVMs,
the declaration of result of election could be delayed
by 5-6 days.
body, is satisfied on the integrity of the EVMs and
VVPAT paper trail of one EVM per Assembly Constituency
or Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency, the
exercise sought for by the petitioner would be a futile
contended.
We have heard learned counsel for the parties
Election Commissioner, who is personally present in
Court.
observe that neither the satisfaction of the Election

8 296
results. But that is not all. If the number of machines
be increased to a reasonable number, it would lead to
greater satisfaction amongst not only the political
that should be subjected to the verification of VVPAT
Commissioner. In this regard, the proximity to the
mind.
that if the number of EVMs in respect of which VVPAT
by the same team of Polling Staff and

9 297
supervisors/officials. It is, therefore, our considered
view that having regard to the totality of the facts of
satisfaction in all with regard to the full accuracy of
be subjected to verification so far as VVPAT paper trail
is concerned would be 5 per Assembly Constituency or
Assembly Segments in a Parliamentary Constituency
instead of what is provided by Guideline No. 16.6,
Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency. We
that would be subjected to the process of VVPAT paper
Deputy Commissioner of the Election Commission, in terms
of the guidelines in force, shall apply to the VVPAT
paper trail verification of the 5 EVMs covered by the
present order.
With the aforesaid directions, the Writ Petition
shall stand closed.
regarding the integrity of the EVMs which have been
raised at a belated stage. The petition was filed in the
month of December, 2018 raising various technical issues

10 298
With the aforesaid observations, the writ
We are of the view that the present practice of
recounting of votes in terms of Rule 56-C of the Conduct
Writ Petition (C) No. 1514/2018 and Writ Petition (C)

No. 215/2019:
of the observations made in the connected writ petitions
i.e. Writ Petition (C) No.273/2019 etc.
..…...............CJI.
(RANJAN GOGOI)
…...…................J
(DEEPAK GUPTA)
...…................J.
(SANJIV KHANNA)
NEW DELHI,
APRIL 8, 2019.
ANNEXURE A- 299
CRIMINAL ORIGINAL JURISDICTION

REVIEW PETITION (CIVIL) No.1116 OF 2019
IN
W.P.(C) No. 1514 OF 2018
Under Article 137 of the Constitution r/w
Order XL\{I of the Supreme Court Rules,2013
IAGATNST THE IMPUGNED ORDERDT.08.04.2019IN W.p(C) NO.

1514 OF 2018 & CONNECTED CASESI
M.G. DEVASAII{YA]VÍ & ORS. ...PETITIONERS
Versus
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA ..RESPONDENTS
PAPERBOOK
(FOR INDEX PLEASE SEE INSIDE)
WITH
I.A. No. of 2019
(Application for filing Additional Documents)
WITH
I.A. No. of 2019
(Appiication seeking Permission to have the present Review Petition heard
in Open Court)
ADVOCATE FOR THE PETITIONERS :
Mr. Goutham Shivshankar

300
TNDEX
S.l'{o. Particulars PAGE No. Remarks
Part I Part II
(Contents of (Contents
the Paper
of fiie
book)
aione)
(i) (ii) (iii) (i") (u)
1. Court-fee A A
2. ; Listing Proforma AI-1.2

^1-A2
J, 1 Impugned Order dated
l
ì 08.04.2019 passed by
I this Hon'ble Court in Writ

r- \3
j
; Petition (C) 1514 of 2018
4. i Review Petition along with

;Affidavit
lq-3s
I 5, i
i_-
Application for permission to
Irle Addltlonal Documents )1-q5
6. ANNEXURE-P-1
t-
r A true copy ofRTI response
I dr. 03.04.2019
l65o
7. ÌANNEXURE-P-2
A true typed copy of a note
I prepared by Dr. S.K.Nath dt.
5)-
1 r7.04.20t9
8. ANNEXURE-P-3
A true typed copy ofthe
article that appeared in 'The
52- 55.
wire'dt. 18.04.20t9
ô ANNEXURE-P-4
t-A
I true typed copy ofthe news
i report in "Guwahati Plus" dt.
5b:57
23.04.2019.
l
301
----f- -- -
iANNEXURE-P-s ll
A true typed copy of the news
report in "The Quint" dt.
23.04.2019
58-Øl
ANNEXURE-P-6
I
A true typed copy of the news 6u- e5

report in "Business Today" dt.
23.04.2019
Ar\NEXIIRE-P-7
i
L
i A true typed copy of the news

Ireport in "Weblndia123" dt.
66-6+
123.04.2019
l
ANNEXURE.P-8
report in "The Hindu" dt. 68
23.04.2019
ANNEXURE-P-9
A true typed copy ofthe news
reporl in "Odisha TV" dt.
23.04.2019
ANNBXURE-P-I0
report in "Indian Express" dt. 1\-il1
23.04.2019
i \6. ANNEXURE-P-TI
report in "Times of India" dt. 7s-17
24.04.2019
17 ANNEXURE-P-12
A true typed copy olthe news
report in "The New Indian 7y-81
Express" dt. 24.0 4.20 1 9
18. ANNEXURE-P-13
report in "Herald Goa" dt.
8t:35
24.04.2019
302
ANNEXURE-P-14
report in "Ummid.com " dt.
24.04.2019
86- 81
ANNEXURE-P-I5
report in "NewslS.com " dt. Io-
2s.04.2019
ANNEXURE-P-I6
report in "Uniindia" dt. 1g- 9Y
25.04.2019
ANNEXURE-P-17
report in "The Deccan 15'q.
Chronicle " df. 25.04.2019
-.t - ANNEXURE-P-T8
r A true typed copy ofthe news

repoft in "News18.com " dt. 9+-1oo
25.04.2019
24. ANNEXTJRE-P-I9
lot - þ:
report in "New Indian Express
" dt.26.04.2019

report in "First Post " dt. \o\ - lo5
26.04.2019
26. Application for Listing

Review Petition in Open
Court
27. Filing Memo

303
PROFORMA FOR FIRST LISTING A\
SECTION XI
The case pertains to (Please tick/check the correct box|:
i Central Act (Tit1e) (Ð _ Constitution of india
i Section Articles 137,14, 19,

2r,32,324
Central Ruie (Title) N/A
Rule No(s) N/A
State Act ( Title) N/A
Section N/A
State Ruie (Title) N/A
- Rule No(s) N/A
Impugned Interim Order N/A
(Date)
impugned Final O8.O4.2O19 by Hon'ble
Order/Decree (Date) Supreme Court, in WP(C)
1514 of 2018.
i., High Court (Name) N/A (Honble Supreme Court)
I Names of Judges N/A (Hon'ble Chief Justice
Ranjan Gogoi with Hon'ble
Justice Deepak Gupta and
Hon'ble Justice Sanjeev
Khanna)
- Tribunal/Authority (Name) N/A
1. Nature of matter Review Petition (Civii)
2.(a\ Petitioner/Appellant No. 1 M.G. DEVASAHAYAM

(b) e-mail ID deva194O@gmail.com
(c) Mobile phone number +9t 9940174446
3.(a) Respondent No.1 ELECTION COMMISSION

OF INDIA through its Sr.
Principal Secretary
(b) e-maii ID N/A
(c) Mobile phone number N/A
304
4.(a) Main category classification 08 'Þø
(b) Sub classification 0810 (Letter Petition & PILs)
(Election Commission
Matters)
5. Not to be iisted before Hon'ble Mr. Justice
Nageswar Rao (AOR is on the
list of advocates not abie to
act before that Hon'b1e
Judge)
(") Similar Disposed of Writ Petition (Ciuil) 15H of

Matter with Citation if Any 218, wP (C) 27s of 2019, WP
and Case Details (C) 21s of 2019.
(b) Slmilar Pending Matter N/A

with Citation if Any and Case
Details
7. Criminal Matters:
(a) Whether accused/convict N/A
has surrendered
(b) FIR No. Date N/A
(.) Police Station N/A
(d) Sentence Awarded N/A
(e) Sentence Undergone N/A
8. Land Acquisition Matters:

(a) Date of Section 4 Notification N/A
(b) Date of Section 6 Notification N/A
(c) Date of Sectíon 17 N/A
Notification
Tax Matters:
State the tax effect N/A
305
A3
10. Special Category (first I Senior Citizen > 65 Years
Petitioner /Appellant only) ! sc/sT
! Woman/Child
t Disabled N/A
¡ Legal Aid Case
I In custody
11 Vehicle Number (in case of N/A
Motor Accident Claim
matters)
AOR FOR PETTTTONER(S)

(GOUTHAM SHTVSHANKARI
REGISTRATION NO. 2694
Mob (+911 70,42616008
contact@gouthams.com
DATE:3O.O4.2OL9
306
IN THÊ SUPREI4E COURT OF INDIA

\
N CHANDRABABU NAIDU & ORS. PETTTToNER(S)
VERSUS
ll'rITH
WRIT PETITION (C) No. 1'514 OF 2018

rrlRIT PETITION (C) No. 23 OF 2019
WRIT PETTTIoN (c) No. 215 0F 2019 AND
h,RIT PETITIoN (c) No. 385 oF 2019
l¡rrit Petition fCl No. 273/20agi

following reliefs:
"4. Issue a writ of mandamus or any
other appropriate v',rit, order or
Machine and WPAT as f ramed and
issued by the Election commission
of India; and
other appropriate writ,' order or
minimum of 50% randomized WPAT
paper slip verification of EvM
each Assembly constituency, in case
307
2L
c. Fass such other order or direction
j ustice . "

Voting Machine and WPAT in respect of which the first
GuideLine No. 16.6, which reads as follows:
"16.6. Mandatory Verification of WPAT

Paper Slips:
Mandatory verification of WPAT paper
future ceneral and Bye Elections to the
of RuIe 560 of the conduct of Elections
in the EVMS, as under:
verification of WPAT paper slips of
station per Assembly Constituency,
verification of WPAT paper slips of
concerned.

WPAT paper slips, the followS.ng
shall be followed.
procedure
16.6.1.The verificatj-on of WPAT paper
308

v
Assembly Con st it uency,/Segment
EVMS.

pollÍng station per Assembly
Constituency,/Segment shall be
the presence of candidates,/their
that Constituency.
Counting HaIl for the particular
Assembly Constituency,/Assembly
Segment.

polling station for verÍfication
of WPAT Slips shall be given by
the ReturnÍng Officer to the
Candidates,/their election agents
well in advance.
of lots:
c) The paper cards sha1l have pre-
printed Assembly Constj.tuency./
Assembly Segment number, AC,/AS
309
4
q
shall be atleast 1" x 1"(1 ínch
black ink.
d) to be used for
The paper cards
visible.
the container.
f) shall be kept in
The paper cards
Officer.
16.6.6. The verification of WPAT paper
slips shall be done in a'WPAT
the Counting HaII. The booth shall
like a bank cashier's cabin so
that no WPAT paper slip can be
in the CountÍng HaIl can be
WPAT slips as per random
WPAT paper slips of the randomly
accordance urith the instructions
310
of the Commission on counting irf

printed paper slips
..
16. 6.8. The Returning Officer in¿

Assistant Returning OffÍcer, as
supervise the counting of WÉAT
paper slips at this booth. fhe
General 0bserver concerned shali
and ensure strict compliance cf
the Commission ' s instructions.
16. 6.9. The above process shall be full:¡
videographed.
annexed format ( Annexu re - 30 ) .
,,
The petitioners, who are 2l in number, are

represent about 70-75% of the totaL population of the
voters in the forthcoming ceneral Elections of the Lok
Sabha as weII as to some Assembly seats in different

verification of WPAT paper trails to atleast 50% of the

311
6 b
responded very favourably to the prayers made ín the
writ petition, as noticed above,
Very broadly, the Election Commission of IndÍa

Indian Statistical Institute ("ISI"), namely, "hrhat
would be the reasonable sample size of pollinq
Stations where WPAT slips verification is required
to be carried out to achieve the ohiect of
el-ectoral Drocess"

to an Expert Body, namely, ISI . In response, the ISI had
submitted an elaborate report, the crux of whÍch is that
verification of WPAT paper trail of 429 (randomly
generate over gg% accuracy in the electj.on results. It
verification of WPAT paper trails of one Assembly
Constituency or Assembly Segment in a parliamentary
constituency would involve verification of WPAT paper
trail- of 4125 EVMs instead of 479 EVMs which is eight
times more than what has been reported by the ISI .
Addj-tionally, the ECI has pointed out infrastructure

312
point of time, in increasing the number of EVMS for

verification. According to the Election Gommission of
India, the sample verification of the WPAT paper trail
verif,ication of WPAT paper trail of SO% of the EVMS,
the decl-aration of result of election could be delayed
by 5-6 days.

body, is satisfied on the integrity of the EVMS and
WPAT paper trail of one EVM per Assembly Constituency
or Assembly Segment in a parliamentary Constituency, the
exercise sought for by the petitioner wouLd be a futile
contended.
Vrle for the parties

have heard learned counsel
Election Commissioner, hrho is personally present Ín
Court.

observe that neither the satisfaction of the Etection
313

results. But that is not all . If the number of machines
be increased to a reasonable number, ít would lead to
greater satisfaction amongst not only the potitical
that should be subjected to the verification of WPAT
CommissÍoner. In this regard, the proximity to the

mind.

that if the number of EVMS in respect of which WpAT
by the same team of potling Staff and
314
/-1
supervisors,/officials . It is, therefore, our considered

view that having regard to the totatity of the facts of
satisfaction in a1l with regard to the full accuracy of
be subjected to verification so far as WPAT paper trail
is concerned would be S per Assembly Constituency or
Assembly Segments Ín a parliamentary constituency
instead of v,,hat is provided by Guideline No. 16.6,
Assembly Segment in a parlianentary Constituency. Vtle
that would be subjected to the process of WPAT paper
Deputy Commissioner of the Election Gommission, in terms
of the guidelines in force, shall apply to the WPAT
paper traiL verification of the 5 EVMs covered by the
present order.
With the aforesaid directions, the Writ petition
shal1 stand closed.
ldrit Petitinn fCì Nn t?/2It1o'

regarding the integrity of the EVMS which have been
raised at a belated stage. The petition bras filed in the

month of December, 2018 raj_sing various technical issues
315
l0 \o
\
With the aforesaid observatÍons, the writ

petition sha1l stand closed.
V'lrit Petition lC) No. 385/2019:

We are of the view that the present practj.ce of
recounting of votes in terms of RuLe S6-C of the Conduct
Writ Petition (C) No. 1514,/2018 and l.lrit petÍtion lC)

No. 215/2Ùtgi

of the observations made in the connected b/rit petitions
i.e. Writ Petition (C) No.ZZZ/2OI!9 etc.
(RANJAN GOGOr)
(DEEPAK GUPTA)
........J.
(SANJrV KHANNA)
NEW DELHI,
APRIL 8, 2019.
316
ITEM NO.48 + t4 COURT NO.l SECTION PTL.UJ

vìlrit Petition(s) (civil) No{s) . 273/zoag

N CHANDRABABU NAIDU & ORS, Petitioner(s)
VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA & ANR. Respondent(s)

(FOR ADMTSSToN )
hIITH
h,.P. (c) No. a57-4/2o18 (PIL-ur)
P. (c) No. 23/2oas (prL-þ,t)
vJ.
(FOR PERMISSIoN T0 APPEAR AND ARGUE IN PERSON ON IA 3923,/2019 and
FOR APPROPRIATE ORDERS,/DIRECTIONS ON IA 46959 /2OL9)
W.P.(c) No. 2a5/2ot9 (PIL-W)

(FoR ADMTSSToN)
hI.P.(c) No. 385,/2019 (PIL-!.J)

(FOR ADMISSIoN and IA No. 461,a2/Zots-EXEMpTTON FROM FTLING o.T.)
CORAM :
HON'BLE MR, JUSTTCE SANJIV KHANNA
For Petitioner (s )
WP 273/2OI9 Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Sr. Adv.
Mr. saif Mahmood, Adv.
Mr. Varun K. Chopra, Adv.
Mr. Amit Bhandari, Adv.
Mr. Avishkar sÍnghvi, Adv.
Ms. Madhavi Khanna, Adv.
Mr. Anish Dayal, Adv,
Mr. Sumant De, Adv.
Mr. Mayank Mikhail Mukherjee, Adv.
Mr. Vivek Agarwal, Adv.
Mr. Arjun Singh Bhati, AOR
Mr. L. Nidhiram Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Azeem Samuel, Adv.
Mr, Chandy Oomen, Adv.
Mr. Zulfikar Menon, Adv.
317
12 V/
wP a5t4/20!8 Mr. Kapil Sibal, Sr. Adv.
Mr, Sanjay Hegde, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Prasanna S., Adv.
Mr. j-zam Pasha, Adv.
N
Mr. Pranjal KÍshore, Adv,

Mr. Shantanu singh, Adv.
Mr. Goutham Shivshankar, AOR
wP 23/20a9 Mr. Sunil Ahya, In-person
wP 2L5/201,9 Mr. Sanjay Hegde, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Aakarsh Kamra, AOR
t¡'JP 385,/2019 Mr. Rana Mukherjee, Sr, Adv.
Mr. Runamoni Bhuyan/ AOR
Mr. S. Chatterjee, Adv.
Mr. Piyush Sachdev, Adv,
Mr, Rajkumar Thorat, Adv.
For Respondent (s) Mr. C.A. Sundaram, Sr. Adv.
E.C_r. Mr. Arvind P. Datar, Sr. Adv.
Mr. Amit Sharma, AOR
Ms. Ayia1a Imti, Adv.
Mr. Prateek Kumar, Adv.
Mr. Neelesh Singh Rao, Adv.
Mr. Sudeep Jain, Dy. Election Commj.ssioner

Mr. K,K. Venugopal, A.G.
Mr. Tushar Mehta, S.G.
Mr. Rajat Nair, Adv.
Mr. Sachin Sharma, Adv.
Mr. Ankur Ta1war, Adv.
Mr. A.K. Sharma, AOR
UPoN hearing the counsel the Court made the following

ORDER
V,lr+tPetition (c) No. 27312019, tJrit petition lc) No. 2312019 and
hlrit Petition lC) No. 385,/2019:
The writ petitions stand closed in terms of the signed order.
318
\3
V'rrit Petition lC) No. 1514,/2018 and Writ petition (Cl No. 21512019:
The writ petitions shall stand disposed of in terms of the

observations made in the connected writ petitions i. e. Writ
Petition (C) No.273/2Oa9 el.c.
(SUSHIL KUMAR RAKHEJA) (ANAND PRAKASH)

AR CUM PS BRANCH OFFICER
(Signed order j.s placed on the file.)
319
IN TI{E SLIPREME COURT OF INDIA \\

REVIEW PETITION (CIVIL) No._ OF 2019
IN
wRrT PETITION (CrV[) NO. ls14 OF 2018
(Under Article 137 of the Constitution r/w

Order XLVII of Supreme Court Rules, 2013)
BETWEEN
Mr. M.G. Devasahayam

s/o Maria Gnanaprahasam,
r/o House No: 21,
Adhimoolam Street,
Ponnappanadar Nagar,
Nagercoil,
Tamil Nadu - 629 004.
2 Mr. Kalarickal Pranchu Fabian

s/o Kalarickal Joseph Francis.
rlo C 45 IFS Apartments
Mayur Vihar Phase 1,
Delhi - 110092
Mr. Thomas Franco Raj endra Dev

s/o M.Devasahayam,
C I512- SAI Games Village,
Koyambedu,
Chennai,
Tamil Nadu - 600 017
...Petitioners
Versus

Through
Sr. Principal Secretary
NirvachanSadan, Ashoka Road,
New Delhi -110001
...Respondent
320
\9
'r/
Review Petition Under Article 137 of the Constitution
R/w Order XLVII of the Supreme Court Rules 2013
TO
THE HON'BLE TFIE CHIEF

JUSTICE OF INDIA AND HIS
OTFIER COMPANION JUSTICES
OF THE HON'BLE TT{E
SITPREME COI'RT OF INDIA.
TI{E HUMBLE PETITION OF

THE PETITIONERS
ABOVENAMED
MOST RESPECTFULLY SHOWETH:
1. This Review Petition is filed against the Common Order dt. 08.04.2019
passed by this Hon'ble Coufi in W.P.(Civil) 1514 of 2018 ("captioned
Writ Petition") and connected cases led by W.P.(C) 273 of 2019 titled
N.Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India &. Anr (hereinaÍïer,
"Chandababu Naidu"), disposing ofall the connected cases including the
Captioned Writ Petition.
2. The Captioned Writ Petition was hled in public interest praying inter alía
for directions from this Hon'ble Court to the Respondent Election
Commission of India to count and cross-verifu the Voter Verihable paper
Audit Trails ("VVPATs") atleast in randomly chosen 30%o of ait polling
stations within each constituency. The captioned Writ Petition contended
that such cross-verification and counting of VVPAT slips is essential in
the interests of 'Democracy Principles' and the principle that elections
must not only be free and fair, but also be seen to be free and fair. The
Captioned Writ Petition also challenged as manifestly arbitrary,

irational, un¡easonable and, inter alia, in violation of Article 14 of the
Constitution of India, the Respondent's decision to confine such a cross-
verification exercise approxìmately to to a statistically insignifrcant

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number of only one polling station in each constituency, independent of
the number of polling stations in such a constituency. The captioned writ
Petition, in support of the grounds and reliefs claimed therein, relied on
the opinion of Dr. S.K. Nath, who inter alia is a former Director General
of the central statistics organisation, as to the statisticaily significant
percentage of polling stations in each assembly segment to be randomly
selected for WPAT-cross verification of the EVM counts.
3. Petitioners are citizens of India who are public spirited persons as is
demonstrated fiom the body of work that they have undertaken over the
years. Petitioner No.l is a former civil servant and an Armed Forces
personnel. He has also undertaken officiating duties as a retuming

ofhcer, district electoral officer and as an observer in connection with
assembly and parliamentary elections while he was in service in the
1970s and 1980s. More recently, he has organised and campaigned
under the name of Forum for Electoral Integrity, which deals with
various issues relating to tackling and containing factors that undermine
or tend to undermine the faimess and integrity of Indian elections.
Several former election commissioners are also associated with the
Forum. Petitioner No.2 is a former Indian Foreign Service offrcer who
retired as India's ambassador to Italy and Permanent Representative to
tIN in Rome. He has written and spoken about a number of governance
issues, including issues relating to elections, since his retirement.He is
currently Professor at Indian Society of Intemational Law, New Delhi.
Petitioner No.3 is a retired Banker, noted trade unionist and was until
recently the General Secretary of All India Bank Offìcers Confederation,
a trade union of more than 3 lakh Bank Officers across the countrv.
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4. This Hon'ble Court vide the Impugned Order disposed of the captioned
Writ Petition inter alia directing the Respondent Eiection Commission to
merely increase the number of polling stations from one (1) to hve (5)
per assembly segment without considering the pleadings, averments and
the supporting material in the captioned Writ Petition, and the rejoinder
filed by the Petitioners to the two separate Counter-Affidavits filed by the
Election Commission on 26.02.2019 and 29.03.2019. Such failure to
consider the relevant pleadings, averments and the very basis of the
captioned Writ Petition constitutes gross miscarriage of justice which
ought to be corrected and a grave effor on the face of the record and this
Review Petition is preferred inter alia on that ground.
5. Further, there have been several repoús of EVM malfunctions and
several instances of mismatch between EVM and WPAT counts in the
frrst three phases of the General Elections currently underway,
completely altering the basis of the Impugned Order. This Review

Petition is also preferred on that ground of discovery of new material
evidence and relevant facts which were not available at the time with the
Petitioners on or before the date ofthe Impugned Order.
BACKGROT]ND & FACTS INBRIEF
6. The Petitioners are citizens of India who had preferred the captioned
Article 32 Petition, in the nature of public interest iitigation.
7. India is the largest electoral democracy in the world with more than Nine
hundred million registered voters. The constitutional mandate of

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legislative assemblies is vested with the sole Respondent, the Election
Commission of India, under Article 324 of the Constitution of India.
8. The Respondent has used electronic voting machines (hereinafter,
'EVMs') for recording storing and counting of votes in the General
elections and state assembly elections since the year 2000.
9. The use of EVMs is of recent vintage, only brought about by the
technological advance in the last two or three decades. While India has
embraced it, there are several countries which have considered the use of
EVMs and rejected the same for good reason. For instance, in a
landmark decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
pronounced on 09.03.2009, which was annexed 'ANNEXURE-p-4' at pg
45 in the captioned Writ Petition it was held that the manner in which the
machines deployed were being used violated the public nature of
elections as envisaged in the German Constitution which prescribed that
all essential steps and procedures of an election are subj ect to the
possibility of public scrutiny/examinibility uniess other constitutional
interests justify otherwise. It was further held that when EVMs are
deployed, it must be possible for the citizen to check the essential steps in
the election act and in ascertainment of the results reliably without
special expert knowledge.
10.Some of the issues relating ro the constitutionality, legality and suitability
of EVMs for the conduct of elections in India was examined by this
Hon'ble Court in Subramanian Swamy v- Election Commission of India I
(2013) 10 SCC 500 I (hereinafter "Swamy"). A true copy of the said
judgement was annexed as Annexed-P-5 in the captioned Writ petition,
atPg. 119.
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11.In Swamy, a direction was sought to the ECI to implement paper trails,
called the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (hereainfter VVPATs),
inter ali.a, in order for the voter to satisft himself that what was recorded
as her vote was indeed her vote and for the sanctity of the elections in
general, given that the presence of audit trail is necessary for detection of
EVM fraud if any.
I2.In Swamy, inter alia, this Hon'ble Court held that
"From the materials placed by both the sides, we are satisfied that the
"paper trail " is an indispensable requirement offree and fair electíons.
The confidence of the voters in the EVMs can be achíeved only wíth the
introduction of the "paper trail". EVMs with WPAT system ensure the
accuracy of the votíng system. With an intent to have fullest transparency
in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to
set up EVMs wíth Vvpat system because vote is nothing but an act of
expression which has immense ímportance in a democratic system. "
13.in the captioned Writ Petition, it was submitted that the main purpose
behind the introduction of WPATs is to bring in accuracy, verifiability
and transparency in the casting and counting of votes. With WPATs,
voters can verify and satisfu themselves that their vote has been
accurately recorded against the candidate they voted for; and that it
automatically follows that it is only when the paper slips as verified by
the voters are counted that the true purpose behind introduction of
VVPATs is served. Without counting of WPAT paper slips in a
significant percentage of polling stations in each constituency, the
objectives of verifiability and transparency in the democratic process
would remain unrealized.

325
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14.The Petitioners ìn the captioned writ petition sought to not only
effectively enforce the directions of this Hon'ble court in swamy, b't

also to apprise this Hon'ble court of the relevant developments in the last
five years since the decision in Swamy was render¡;,1 and sought
appropriate directions for processual changes that strengthen the spirit of

the directions of this Hon'ble court in swamy in rir*rtherance of the
principles of democracy that elections must not ont, L" free and fair but
also be seen to be free and fair.
l5.Accordingly, EVMs with V\?ATs were used in all poliing stations in
select State Assembly Elections only from 2017 onwartls, and the
Election Commission has planned to conduct all future Assembly

Elections and the 2019 Parliamentary Elecrions only with VVpAT
EVMs.
l6.In the Assembly Elections for the States of Gujarat and Himachal
Pradesh, the Respondent had mandated the counting of WpAT slips for
oniy one polling station per Assembiy Constituency. This worked out to
just 182 out of 44,597 polling stations (or 0.4%o of the EVMs) in Gujarar
and to just 68 out of 7516 polling srations (or 0.9%o of the EVMs) in
Himachal Pradesh. Petitioners crave liberty to file additional documents
and a detailed report in relation to the use of WPATs in Himachal
Pradesh and Guj arat elections at alater stage. The Respondent followed a
similarly sparse and weak sampling method in cross-verifiiing mandatory
samples of WPATs vide a circular in February 2018 for the elections of
the state assemblies of Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura. A copy of the

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said circular was also annexed to the captioned writ petirion (Annexure-
P-7. Pg. 134).
17.The Petitioners and their representatives had a history of engagement and
communications with the Respondent commission on rire issue of how
reasonable sampling size for cross-verifuing EVM counts wi,h VVpATs

l
is crucial to give effect to the directions in swamy and to brotect the
sanctíty of the process of elections, which not only n".rt tc be free and
fair but also need to be seen to be free and fair.
18.In their communications to the Respondent commission as well as in the
captioned Writ Petition, the Petitioners had relied on notes and opinions
given by Dr. S.K. Nath, inter alia a former Director-Gener ai of the
Central Statistics Organisation on why the Election Comnlission's
decision to cross-veri$ only one (1) randomly chosen polling station
from all polling stations in an assembly constituency was woefully
inadequate and statisticially insignificant and that Tor a 9B%o confidence
level of less than 2%o margin of error, the percentage ol randomly chosen
polling stations for cross verification must atleast by 30% in an assembly
segment with 200 polling srarions.
l9.Dr. S.K. Nath's opinion (Annexure P-14 and P-15 in the captioned Vy'rit
Petition, Pgs 228 - 239)had been obtained after perusing the presentatìon
of Dr. Abhay Bhat and Dr. Rajeeva Karandikar (Annexure P-13 in the
Writ Petition, Pg 205) who had been engaged by the Respondent
Commission to opinion on the issue olthe reasonable sample size. In the
said presentation Dr. Bhat and Dr. Karandikar had opined, based on
several flawed and fallacious assumptions, that choosing a mere 479
WPATs across the length and breadth of the country was sufficient as a
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/,.
reasonable sample size. Dr. Nath's opinions had also pointed out the
llawed assumptions in that opinion.
20.It is after such communication received no favourable consideration by
the Respondent Commission did the Petitioners file the captioned Writ
Petition on which this Hon'ble Court was pleased to issue notice on
07.01.2019. The Sole Respondent filed its counter-affidavit on
26.02.2019 without responding specifically to any averments and

contentions in the Writ Petition but only citing the previously decided
cases relating to the subject matter of EVMs and WPATs. The
Petitioners thereafter filed a rejoinder to the Counter-Affidavit on
26.03.2019 distinguishing the captioned Writ Petition from all the other
caes which had been decided, inter alia, pointing out that
a) the captioned Writ Petition emphasised the principles of democracy,
voter verifiability, structural due process and the principle of elections
must not only be fair but also be seen to be fair and not on the
tamperability of EVMs per se;
b) the captioned \Mrit Petition was filed after a history of engâgement
with the ECI on the issue, unlike previous Petitioners;
c) the captioned Writ Petition had supporting material and expert
opinion that formed the basis of its prayers, unlike the earlier cases;
and that
d) the captioned Writ Petition had been filed after the Election
Commission had taken a dehnitive view on the issue of the sample
size for WPAT cross verification, unlike several of the other cases
decided by this Hon'b1e Court.

328
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//
21 Thereafter, W.P.(Civil) 273 of 2019 Q,{.Chandrababu Naidu & Ors. V.
Union of India & Anr) was filed by 21 political parties seeking 50%
random selection of polling stations for WpAT counting. This petition

was made a lead petition in the batch of matters and vide Order passed on
25.03.2019, it was observed as under:
Pursuant to the aforesaid order, Sh¡i Sudeep Jain, Deputy Election Commissioner
is personally present. on being asked,shri Jain has submitted that the Election
Commission is of the view that to maintain purity of the process of election, it is
not necessary to extend the present arrangement of physical verification of
WPAT in more than one Polling Station per Assembly Constituency or
Assembly Segment in a Pa"rliamentary Constituency.
Shri Jain has further submitted that the Election Commission is fully satisfred
with the purity of the election process that can be maintained with the aforesaid
arrangement.
The Election Commission shall indicate the above in the form of an affidavit of
the Deputy Election Commissioner, who ís personally present in Court today.
indicating the basis of its satisfaction. In the said affrdavit, the Election
Commission shall also indicate whether any insurmountable diffrculty will be
caused if the sample survey of WPAT is to be extended under Court's orders tÕ
higher level and the time that may be taken in making such arrangements if the
Court is to pass such orders. The aforesaid affidavit will be filed on or before
28.03.2019by 4:00 P.M. The matter be raken up on 01.04.2019 at 10:30 A.M.
22 Pursuant to the same, the Respondent Commission filed a Counter-
Affidavit dt. 29.03.2019 including as annexure a report prepared by the
Head of the Delhi Centre of Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Dr. Abhay
Bhat, which repeated the opinion that recommended choosing a mere 479
EVMs across the length and breadth of the country for VVPAT tallying.
The Petitioners thereaÍÌer also filed a Rejoinder also to that Counter-
Affidavit, the relevant portions are extracted hereinbelow and may be
treated as the averments in this Petition.
"NON COMPLIANCE WITH THE ORDER OF TIIIS HON'BLE COURT

DT.25.03.2019
8. This Hon'ble Court, after a brief interaction with Mr. Sudeep Jain, the
Dy Election Commissioner, directed the Election Commission to file
an affrdavit detailing the basis for its satisfaction that cross-verifying
EVM counts with VVPAT slips in only one randomly chosen polling
329
2-q
station in each assembly segment is a sufficient safeguard for a free
and fair election.
9. However, the Counter-Affidavit filed on 29.03 .2019 does not
indicate any meetings of the Election Commission or the
minutes thereof in which material in relation to cross-
verification sample sizes have been conside¡ed and approved
by the Commission and as such does not indicate ør:ry basis of
the satisfaction of the commission and therefore not in
adherence to the Order of this Hon'ble Court dt. 25.03.2019.
FACTS SUPPR-ESSED IN THE COUNTER.AFFIDAVIT ÐT. 22.02.2019

FILED ON 26.02.2019IN THE CAPTIONED WRIT PETITION
10. It is pertinent to point out that in the earlier Counter-Affidavit

filed on behalf of the ECI in the captioned writ petition, the
communication dt. 10.08.2018 seeking the opinion and
expertise of the Indian Statistical Institute in relation to the
sample size required to do the VVPAT- cross-verification of
the EVM counts has been suppressed. The said communication
was in the exclusive knowledge of theRespondent Commission
and the suppression of that material fact in the proceedings of
the Writ Petition that squarely deals with that subject matter,
without any explanation manifestly demonsfiates suppressio
v¿rl on the part of the Respondent Commission. The said
communication is noted in the list of dates filed in the later
Counter-Affrdavit filed on 25.03.2019.
11. Hoi¡'ever. even in the later Counter-Affidavìt hled on
25.03.20\9, the communication of the Commission to the
India¡ Statistical Institute has not been affrexed. However, the
reporr dt. 22.03.2019 (hereinafter, "Bhat Report". amexed as
ANNEXURI,-CI33 in the Counrer-Affidavit dt. 25.03.2019) of
the Head of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Centre
prepared along with Prof. Rajeeva Khara¡dikar of the Chen¡ai
Mathematical Institute (CMI) and Dr. Ghosh, the Deputy
Director General of the Central Statistics Organisation (Social
Statistics Division) is an¡rexed and that Report in the appendix
refers to the letter dt. 10.08.2018 written by a Director in the
Respondent Commission to the ISI. It is not clear if the said
communication is pursuant to any resolution or a studied
decision taken bv the Commission.
FAILACIES& INCORRXCT ASSUMPTIONS IN THE BHAT REPORT
12. The Bhat Report has inter alia concluded that randomly
choosing 479 polling stations for the VVPAT cross verification
across the length and breadth of the country is sufficient to say
wtth 99.99996% confidence that not more than 2% of all
EVMs used in the General Election are faulty/defective. This
ex facie irralional conclusion is based on a series of fallacies
and incorrect assumptions that have punctuated the Bhat
Report.
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13. lt is pertinent to point out that the methodology and the
conclusions of the Report were already k¡own to the
Petitioners because of the presentation that was done by Dr.
Bhat and others (in their personal capacity, to the best of the
Petitioners' knowledge), that had been annexed to the
captioned Writ Petition. The said presentation also included the
very same conclusions altd the magic number of 479. Several
of the inconect assumptions and fallacies were noticed and
responded to in the reports of Dr. S.K. Nath, the expert opinion
a¡nexed as ANNEXURE-P-I4 and ANNEXUR_E-P- 15 in rhe
captioned Writ Petition. Neither of the two Counter-Affidavits
of the ECI assail the credentials or the contents ofthe said the
reports of Dr. S. K. Nath, who is a former Director General of
the Central Statistics Organisation. More importantly, neither
of the two Counter-Affidavits assail the contentions in the Nath
Report as to the completely incorrect assumptions behind the
Bhat Committee conclusions.
14. The principal fallacy in the Bhat Report is that it considers the
entire general election as one homogenous event.
15. This assumption can be seen ìn Page 314 and 315 of the said
Report where it says "Since the Stdtistical Unit of Study is the
EVM, the population will consist of all EVMs being used in a
particular sei of elections for which the counting is done at the
same time."
16. However, an "election" in the case of general elections is an
election to each of the 543 parliamentary constituencies and ìn
the case of assembly elections, each assembly constituency. In
the forthcoming general elections for example, there are 543
events spread over a six week period.
17. The reason for not taking the election in each constituency as a
separate event is ostensibly sought to be explained in the Pg
333 ofthe said Report, wherein it enlists the assumptions of the
exercise:
"There is no difference between the EVMs used in one

constituency to another. Further,
AII EVMS have similar design.
They all go through the same tests before they are despatched as
well as in the field.
The order in which candidates appear is based on their names,

alphabetically arranged and not on their party, resulting in
dÌffërent buttons on the EVM being assigned to a political party in
difJère nt cons tituencies.
There îs no systematic bias in allotting pdrticular EVM machines

toparticular states, constituencies or booths. Infact allotment to a
constiluency and then to a booth is done through a two stage
randomisation."
18. It is clear that theBhat Committee has put the cart before the
proverbial horse. The BhatCommittee and the Report, in
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/.,.
designing the process, makes the very same assumptions that it
ought to build safeguards against i.e. bias and tampering. It
is not u¡like trying to build an earth-quake resistanr building
assuming that earthquakes do not occur.
19. Further the assumption that all the EVMs a¡e fully similar to
each other at all times is
completely irrational and
un¡easonable. The EVMs in different constituencies have
different functional number of buttons for example, because
the numbe¡ of candidates could vary from constituency to
constituency. The symbols a¡d candidate names fed in also
vary. EVM in each constituency follows a diffe¡ent data entry
path dìstinct from EVMs in other constituencies. If at all there
is any homogeneity, it can only be between EVMs in the same
constituency.
20. Further, the thrust of this batch of petitions is not about
auditing the defect-free-ness of EVMs, but the integrity of the
Electoral Process - in each constituency. Election to each
constituency is a separate event and the election in each
constituency has to been seen to be free and fair.
21. As an analogy, it is well known that when ballot papers were in
use electoral irregularities occurred in some states and not in all
states. The hypothetical argument that all ballot papers are
identical and hence the risk of irregularities is uniformly spread
would be a patently unconvincing a¡d therefore it is submitted
that a simila¡ argument advanced in the case of EVMs ought to
be outrightly rejected.
22. The entire exercise undertaken by the Bhat committee is
therefore vitiated.
23. Further. the table used in Page 324 used by the Bhat
Committee is revealing. The assumption is that because the
entire election is one event, 479 randomly selected sample
VVPATs are sufficient to declare the enti¡e election as a whole
to be defect-free and bias-free with > 99.99% confidence level.
As one can see however, if the population is brought to a
constituency or assembly segment level consisting of 500 -
1000 polling stations, the requisite selection of sample still
hovers around the 300 - 400 mark, which is actually the sample
range being sought by the Petitioners in this batch of Writ
Petitions.
24. Further, the Bhat Report recommendation of 479 randomly
chosen polling stations for VVPAT cross verification does not
have give any actionable insights in the case of mismatches.
For example, it is not clear the course of action would be if
there are four or five polling stations in which the counts of
EVM and WPAT do not match. Because the sample is drawn
at random f¡om across the country, such an outcome would call
into question the election to all 543 constituencies as a whole.
On the other hand, if sampling is done constituenoy or
assembly segment-wise, any mismatches th¡own are actionable
for such localized treatment of the constituency or the
assembly segment as the case may be.
332
25. As mentioned earlier, this basic assumption was questioned by

Dr. S.K Nath, whose engagement has been acknowledged in
the Bhat Report. Dr. S.K. Nath's report (as against Dr. Bhat
and Dr. Kharandikar's findings) had been annexed to the W.P.
In WP(C) 1514 of 2018 (MG Devasahayam & Ors. V. Union of
India) as ANNEXURE-P-1a @g. 228 of the petition). This
report has not been replied to by the Election Commission in
either of the Counter-Affidavits.
ASSERTIONS AS TO THE INCREASE IN TIME TAKEN FOR

COUNTING THE PAPER SLIPS
26. The contentions in the Counter-Affidavit in Pa¡a 5.19 that it

would take 6 additional days to count if VVPAT cross
verification is ordered in randomly chosen 50% of the polling
stations is totally fallacious.
27. It is common knowledge that the counting happens in uptol4
tables in parallel, a¡d even by the ECI's o\4'n conservative
estimates, the additional time would be much less. This is
because the ECI says at Pg 34 of the Counter-Affidavit dt
25.03.2019 that it would take about t hour for slips related to
one VVPAT to be counted.
28. Taking the average number of polling stations in an assembly
segment to be 250 (as assumed by ECI in its counter-
Affidavit), 100% counting at the rate of t hour per polling
station and 14 polling stations in parallel, the time taken would
be 250114 = 17.85 hours per assembly segment. With 30%
sampling as is the relief claimed in the captined writ petition,
the additional time incurred in countins VVPATs would be
less than 6 hours.
29. The Respondent Commission has effectively based its
calculations on the mistaken assumption that counting of
WPATs in an assembly segment has to necessarily happen
one after another. No reason has been advanced for that
assumption. It is further well known that even in the case of
ballot papers in the years pdor to EVM introduction, the time
taken to count rarely exceeded 16 hours from the opening of
the postal ballots at 8 AM.
30. With sufficient parallelism, the time taken to cross-verify
EVMs and VVPAT can further come down and in several
small constituencies & with less tha¡ 250 segments, it would
take even less time. And in any case, the urgency to declare
results cannot prevail over the overarching principle that the
elections should be both free and fair and seen to be free and
fair.
INCORRECT ASSERTION IN RELATION TO PREVIOUS

EXPERIENCE OF EVM & WPAT MATCH
31. The assertions in the Counter-Affidavit dt. 25.03.2019 in

relation to the previous experience of EVM-WpAT tallying
and the exact matches are incorrect. There a¡e several cases
where there has been a mismatch the WPAT tallv has been
333
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taken as the final tally of votes. A selection of media reports
that show such cases of mismatch are as follows.
a. A true copy of the news report titled "100% Match
Between EVMs and Paper Trail Slips on Random
Vote Count, Says EC Official" dT. 19.12.2017 as it
appeared on the website http://www.ne_Ws 18.co!01
(last accessed on 03.04.2019) is a¡nexed herewith
and marked as ANNEXURE-R-3.
b. A fue copy of the Press-Release by the Election
Commission of India dt. 15.05.2018 as reported by
the news agency, ANI in relation to the election in
Hubli Dharward Assembly constituency in the state
of Kamataka(last accessed on 03.04.2019) is
an¡exed herewith and marked as ANNEXURE-R-4.
c. A true copy of the news report titled
"#MadhyaPradeshElections20l 8: \&hat explains the
delay in counting?" df. 12.12.2018 as it appeared on
the news website newslaundry.com (last accessed
on 03.04.2019) is amexed herewith and marked as
ANNEXURE-R-5.
24. Thereafter, this Hon'ble Court was pleased to pass the Impugned Order
in the batch of Writ Petitions incÌuding the captioned Writ Petition. Gross
miscarriage of justice has been occasioned owing to the Impugned Order
which has been passed with error apparent on the face of the record
inasmuch as several of the contentions, averments, pleadings and the
relevant material in support thereof has not been considered by this
Hon'ble Court in arriving at the said Order.
25. Further, the Impugned Order has been passed after the Respondent
Commission made a manifestly and patently incorrect statement that the
Reporl had been annexed is an "ISI Report" suggesting as ifthat the due
process had been followed in engaging the Indian Statistical Institute and
that the Institute has submitted the report after duly considering it in their
respective goveming council or sub-committee as the case may be.
However, material available with the Petitioners, which was obtained
only on the moming of 07.04.2019, i.e. one day before the day of the
334
Impugned Order clearly indicates that there was no institutional

^
engagement ofthe ISI but at best only engagement ofDr. Abhay Bhat in
his private capacity. The said document is amexed herewith vide a
separate Application for placing Additional Documents accompanying
this Review Petition.
26. This Hon'ble Court's Order passed on the basis of satisfaction of the due
diligence having been undertaken by the Respondent Commission, on
the claim of having engaged a responsible institution, is clearly
erromeous and has been obtained on the basis of error apparent on the
face of the record which ought to be remedied in the present Review
proceedings.
27, Further, a fiesh opinion has also been obtained from Dr. S. K. Nath on
the efficacy of the sampling as suggested in the Impugned Order. i.e, an
increase from One (1) polling station per assembiy segment to 5, whìch
reinforces that even the increase is too marginal for a reasonable
confidence level and margin of error in satisfuing oneself of a clean

election and counting process in any given constituency. The same is
annexed herewith vide a separate Application for placing Additional
Documents accompanying this Review Petition.
28. Further, several news reports and new material that has emerged
following the date of the Impugned Order as the country went for the first
three of the six phases of elections in the General Elections that belie
several of the assumptions and assertions of the Respondent

Commission. The same is annexed herewith vide a separate Application
for piacing Additional Documents accompanying this Review petition.
29. These reports ínter alia indicate

335
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a) That the assumption of all EVMs being uniform and where there are
no constituency-wise differences in malfunctioning but totally
random, has been clearty belied by reports of malfunctions having
being linked to the whether and heat, which clearly changes from one
constituency to another.
b) That the assertion that the EVM and WPAT counts have always
matched everytime they have been tallied has been clearly belied
based on reports where they have not tallied with each other and
necessitating a more rigorous tallying percentage.
c) That this Hon'ble Court's mandate of 5 per assembly segment is also
woefully statistically insignificant has been noted in detail in the
afiicle titled "A Hitchhiker's Guide to Electronic Voting Machines
and WPATs" in The Wire, an online news joumal, on 18th April,
2019 by "Antar Bandyopadhyay, K¡ishanu Maulik and Rahul Roy"
all of whom work at the work at the Theoretical Statistics and
Mathematics Division of the Indian Statistical Institute. The
Petitioners agree with the assertions and the contentions in the said
article may be considered to be averments in this instant Review
Petition.
C.GROUNDS
3O.This Review Petition is filed on the following grounds which are taken
both altematively and cumulatively.
A. BECAUSE gross miscarriage of justice has been occasioned and an
error apparent on the face of the record committted inasmuch as the
impugned Order has been passed without considering that the selection
336
3\
of sample size of a mere five (5) polling stations from every assembly
segment, where each assembly segment can have an average of 200 -
250 polling stations is wholly unreasonable, manifestly arbitrary,
irrational and unconstiûrtional for being in violation of Article 14 of the
Constitution. Similarly, a sample size of one polling station per
constituency is also statistically minsicule and such a sampling and

sampie testing exercise is similarly wholly unreasonable, manifestly
arbitrary, irrational and unconstitutional.
B. BECAUSE gross miscarriage of justice has been occasioned and eror
apparent on the face of the record committed inasmuch as the Impugned
Order does not consider any of the relevant averments, pleadings and
contentions, including Dr. Nath's opìnion as to the percentage of polling
stations that ought to be selected for random sampling for VVPAT cross
verification to achieve a reasonable statistical significance.
C. BECAUSE error apparent on the face ofthe record has been occasioned
because the Impugned Order has been passed owing to the patently
incorrect portrayal of the Respondent Commission that the Report

annexed in the Counter-Affidavit dt 29.03.2019 was one of "Indian
Statistical Institute," even as in reality, it was prepared and signed by the
head of the Delhi Centre of the Indian Statistical Institute in his
personal/private capacity, along with others who he had engaged
therefor.
D. BECAUSE error apparent on the face ofthe record has been occasioned
because the Impugned Order has been passed having on account of the
manifestly and patently incorrect claims of the Respondent Commission

337
that every time that the WPAT tally of EVMs had been done, there
v has
been a 100% match. It is submitted that the material filed along with the
Rejoinder to Íhe 29.03.2019 counter-Affidavit clearly indicated several
reports that contradicted that claim. It is submitted that the error ought to
be reviewed in the present proceedings inasmuch as the Commission's
claims on the same have been taken on face value despite a
contradictory pleading being on record and without a finding of fact on
the said issue.
E. BECAUSE error apparent on the face of the record has been committted
inasmuch as the Impugned Order has been passed without considering
that the free and fair elections to offices and positions of political power
are a sine qua non of a modem democracy and the preambular promise
of democracy in India's Constitution is one of its basic features, which
cannot be derogated or suspended even by a Constitutional Amendment,
let alone a law, or let alone, as in this case, a simple circular by the
Respondent or a Rule in the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961; and
therefore constitutues sufficient reason to ailow the instant Petition.
F. BECAUSE error apparent on the face of the record has been committted
that free and fair elections in India are realised in India through the right
to vote and universal adult suffrage, which is a composite right including
within it the fundamental right to freedom of speech under Article

19(1)(a) ofthe Constitution, constitutional right under Article 326 ofthe
Constitution read with Articles i4, 15 and 325 of the Constitution and
338
39
also statutory rights under Sections 16 - 19 of the Rp Act 1950 and
Section 62 of the Representation of Peopies Act 195 1.
G. BECAUSE the Impugned Order has been passed without considering
that the violation of the right to ffee and fair elections is a violation of
fundamental rights in Article 19(1Xa) read with Article 14 and 21 of the
Constitution of India and the same constitutes suff,rcient cause to aliow
this Review Petition.
H. BECAUSE the Impugned Order has been passed without considering
that the confidence of the voters in the integrity of the election process
and the duty of the body tasked with conducting eiections to conduct
elections that are seen to be free and fair is an insegragable part and
aspect of the right to free and fair elections and that the same constitutes
sufficient reason to maintain this Review Petition.
I. BECAUSE error apparent on the face of the record has been committted
that fundamental rights jurisprudence in India has progressed from a
culture of authority to a culture of justifìcation and it is no longer

sufhcient for the Respondent to take umbrage under the formal
independence of the constitution of the commission, but to justify to the
people of this Republic and this Hon'ble Court as to why the harms o¡
the costs of the additionai layer of confidence building measure, viz.
more VVPATs being selected for mandatory cross-verificartion,
disproportionately outweigh the clear benefit ofadded confidence in the
integrity of the process of the election and its results.

339
J. BECAUSE the Impugned Order has been passed without considering
that a rational verification exercise that has in mind the should strive to
achieve a 95 to 99% statistical confidence level in the sanctity of the
electoral results in each and every electoral constituency and that can be
achieved, by all indications, only by a mandatory VVPAT cross
verification and tallying of the counts in atleast 30% of all the EVMs
used in each and every constituency.
K. BECAUSE the Impugned Order has been passed without considering the
submission an accurate recording and counting of the democratic will of
the electorate, to the satisfaction of the electorate, is indispensable to the
democratic process. The exercise of the right to vote must take place in a
manner that is in consonance with the highest principles of integrity and
fairness as enshrined in the Constitution of India.
L. BECAUSE the Impugned Order has been passed without considering the
submission that the Respondent is bound to act in aid of the Hon'ble
Supreme Court under Article 144 of the Constitution and that the
mandatory verification of the VVPAT of a miniscule sample that
achieves only 60% statistical confidence level is clearly contrary to the
spirit of the Hon'ble Supreme Court's orders in Swamy and is therefore a
violation of the mandate of Article 144.
31. The Petitioners crave liberty to add and/or urge other grounds at a later
stage in the proceedings.
32.This Review Petition has been filed bona-fide and with no oblique
motive.
340
.\l
3//
33.This Review Petition is the first such Review Petition in the captioned
Writ Petition and that no other proceeding of any nature whatsoever for
similar relief has been filed before this Hon'ble Court or anv other Court.
D. PRAYERS
In the premises, this Hon'ble Court may be pleased to issue appropriate

declarations, writs, orders and directions as set out below:
a) Aliow the Review Petition of the Petitioner against the order dated
08.04.2019 passed by this Hon'bie Court in W.P(Civil) 1514 of 2018.
b) Pass any other order or direction that this Hon'ble Court may deem just
and proper in the facts and circumstances of this case.
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KiNDNESS , TFIE PETITIONERS SHALL, AS

IN DUTY BOLIND , EVER PRAY
DRAV/N ON: 27.04.2019

DRAWNBY: Mr. PRASANNA S. Advocate.
FILED ON, :O.O+.ZOrS

FILED BY:
GOUTHAM SHIVSHANKAR
Advocate-on-Record
For the Petitioners,
Code No: 2698.
341
IN THE HON'BLE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
LA. No. OF 2024
IN
WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) No. 434 of 2023
ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS ...APPELLANT(S) /PETITIONER(S)

VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR

..RESPONDENT(S)/ DEFENDANT(S)
M.G. DEVASAHAYAM ...NTERVENOR/ APPLICANT
VAKALATNAMA
1, M.G. Devasahayam, Petitioner(s) in the above Petition/Appeal/Reference/Suit/ Application

do hereby appoint and retain Mr. LZAFEER AHMAD BF, Advocate-on-Record, Advocate of
the Supreme Court of India, to act and appear for me/us in the above
Petition/Appeal/Suit/Reference/Application and on my/our behalf to conduct and
prosecute(or defend) the same and all proceedings that may be taken in respect of any
application connected with the same or any decree or order passed therein, including
proceedings, in taxation and application for review, to file and obtain return of documents,
and to deposit and receive money on my/our behalf in the said Petition/Appeal/Reference
Suit and in application for Review, and represent me/us and to take all necessary steps on
my/our behalf in the above matter. I/We agree to ratify all acts done by the aforesaid
Advocate in pursuance of this authority.
Dated the sday of January, 2024
SWORN TO BEFORE ME
Accepted and ldentified and Certified 15 JAN 2024
MOHAN KUMAR.N., B.A,LL.B.,
ADVOCATE & NOTARY PUBLIC
GOVT. OF INDIA
(LZAFEER AHMAD BF) Rag. No. 12311
Code No.: 2941 No. 8, 6th Cross, 1st Main Road,
Advocate-on-Record S..Nagar. 2ANGALCRE - 360 02htervenor/ Applicant - M.G.
Devasahayam)
No. of CORRECTIONS.s) MEMO OF APPEARANCE
Please enter my appearance on behalf of the petitioner(s), Appellants, Respondent(s) in the

above matter.
Dated this the (S"day of January 2024

(LZAFEER AHMAD BF)
IAR
uOHANMBA,LLB,
CC. No.: 2941
Advocate-on-Record,
Metropolitan City Address: 5, LGE, Jaipur Estate, Nizamuddin East, New Delhi- 110013
Reg No. 12311 Mob: +91 - 9582296522
Email: ahmadlzafeer@gmail.co
My Term Expires on
28-12.D06
SECTION: PIL

(CIVIL ORIGINAL WRIT JURISDICTION)
IN THE MATTER OF:

ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS …. PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. …. RESPONDENTS
FILING INDEX
S. NO. PARTICULARS COPIES C. FEE
1. REJOINDER AFFIDAVIT ON BEHALF OF 1 20/-

THE PETITIONER
2. ANNEXURE R1 TO R11 1 NIL
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
301 NEW LAWYERS CHAMBER
NEW DELHI-110 001
CODE NO. 515
NEW DELHI
DATED: 18.10.2023
(CIVIL ORIGINAL WRIT JURISDICTION)
IN THE MATTER OF:
ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS …. PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. …. RESPONDENTS
PAPER BOOK
{REJOINDER ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER}

INDEX
1. Rejoinder Affidavit on behalf of the 1-16

Petitioner
2. Annexure-R1: A copy of the interview1 17-20

dated 28.12.2020 of former Chief Election
Commissioner Sh. S.Y. Quraishi given to
The Quint
3. Annexure-R2: A copy of article titled, ‘RTI 21-25

Reveals Pvt Consultants Have EVM Access,
Why is EC Denying It?’ published on
04.08.2019 by The Quint
4. Annexure-R3: A copy of expert opinion of 26-27

Professor Subhashish Banerjee who was a
professor at IIT and is presently with
Ashoka University
5. Annexure-R4: A copy of the deposition of 28-51

Professor Poorvi Vora, George Washington
University, Washington, DC, USA
6. Annexure-R5: A copy of paper titled, 52-59

“Electronic Voting and Democracy”
published by Subodh Sharma of School of
Computer Science & Engineering at IIT,
Delhi
7. Annexure-R6: A copy of deposition titled, 60-62

“To use or not to use? Electronic Voting
Machines in Indian Elections.” by Sandeep
K Shukla, Professor at IIT Kanpur
8. Annexure-R7: A copy of RTI reply 63-67
dated 03.04.2019 received from Indian
Statistical Institute
9. Annexure-R8: A copy of the opinion of 68-79

Dr. S.K. Nath annexed as Annexure P14
and P15 in W.P.(C) 1514/2018
10. Annexure-R9: article written by K. 80-115

Ashok Vardhan Shetty titled, “Winning
Voter Confidence: Fixing India’s Faulty
VVPAT-based Audit of EVMs” published
on 27.11.2018 in The Hindu Centre for
Politics and Public Policy
11. Annexure-R10: A copy of the article 116-119

titled, “A Hitchhiker's Guide to Electronic
Voting Machines and VVPATs” published
in The Wire, on 18th April, 2019,
12. Annexure-R11: A copy of the 120-156

judgement dated 03.03.2009 of the
Second Senate of Germany
1
2
3
4
5
6
17 20
7
8
9
21
25
26
27
10
28 51
52 59
60 62
11
63 67
12
68 79
80 115
13
116 119
14
120
156
15
16
17
ANNEXURE: R1
Count All VVPAT Slips, Make Info on

EVM-VVPAT Public: Ex-CEC
28 Dec 2020, 6:32 PM IST, Poonam Agarwal, The Quint
“I would say VVPAT slips should be counted 100 percent. Then,

questions are raised on the amount of time taken. Number one, time
should not matter, credibility should.”: SY Quraishi, former Chief
Election Commissioner of India
The former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi who had

always defended the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and the Voter
Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) systems – told The Quint that
the Election Commission of India (EC) should count 100 percent
paper slips rather than EVM votes.
The Quint has reported a series of articles highlighting EVM-VVPAT

vulnerabilities and the EC’s lack of transparency in addressing the
issue.
Here is the full interview with SY Quraishi.
Due to lack of transparency and vulnerabilities of the EVM voting

system, there is a demand for ballot paper voting. What do you have to
say?
Returning to the ballot paper would be a step backward. I would say,

VVPAT slips should be counted 100 percent. Then, questions are
raised on the amount of time taken. Number one, time should not
matter, credibility should. But, it should not even take time, as I have
checked with people who have been conducting the VVPAT election.
Counting one VVPAT slip from one machine takes about 20-25
minutes and the EVM takes the same time. We should not dispense the
EVM as it is essential, it should stay. (The VVPAT) is just a 3-inch
slip on which one vote is mentioned – either candidate A, B or C. It is
much easier to count. So, (the EC) should try it out.
18
Why is a cloak of secrecy maintained over the EVM-VVPAT?

Because, as per cyber experts, the source code and the component
used in the EVM-VVPAT should be made public.
I would like to say, and it was my attitude even then (when I was the
Chief Election Commissioner) that anybody who is questioning the
EVM shouldn’t be treated as an anti-national or an enemy. You have
to treat him as a friend. If you point out some flaw, which I had not
noticed, and on the basis of which I get the EVM-VVPAT examined,
you are actually doing me and the nation a favour by improving the
system. So, all those who are questioning the EVM-VVPAT should be
brought onboard and should provide proof rather than (the EC)
looking down on them and treating them as hostile people, which is
wrong.
The Election Commission should not maintain secrecy. It should be

transparent. The EC is like a glasshouse, and everything should be
visible to the people. I would suggest that everything (related to
EVM-VVPAT) should be out in open and nothing should be held back.
Do you think the EC is not addressing concerns related to the

EVM-VVPAT?
I have been cautioning the EC about one thing – when a political party
is doubting our system and the machine, it is easy for us to call them
and persuade them to accept our point of view. But, once it percolates
into the public’s mind, it is impossible to change their minds.
Unfortunately, what we see now...I am on social media and every time
I open it, 10 people pounce on me, asking about my opinion on the
EVM. Any suspicion in the public’s mind about the EVM is very
unfortunate. The EC should be concerned about it, and it should do
everything to dispel such notions.
Is it correct to declare election results on provisional data?
To say that the exact figures (of votes polled or counted) will be
known after a few days is wrong and unacceptable. When the polling
is over, say 650 votes have been cast in a machine. That number is
sacrosanct and known to everybody. Everybody knows that this
19
particular machine has 650 votes. So, the polling data is known by the
evening. And the counting day data is known as soon as you open the
machine. The figures are there, and they are exact. To say that they are
tentative is absolutely not understandable to me.
What do you have to say about some of the crucial matters related to
the EVM-VVPAT that are pending in the Supreme Court?
Why should the Supreme Court decide about these discrepancies? A

detailed statement from the EC should have been good enough. What
surprises me frankly is that why is the SC taking so long? These issues
are of national importance, and our democracy is dependent on them.
And the SC taking so long on such cases is another cause of concern. I
had always said that the SC is the guardian angel of democracy and
the EC, but this is something I used to say earlier. However, some
cases of this nature, like statistics and electoral bonds, have been
pending for years – that is not desirable or a happy situation at all.
Do you think the functioning of the EC is being questioned?
Not that there were no mistakes in our time. Eleven million people
were conducting elections. Somebody somewhere will make a
mistake. Any question mark on the EC is a matter of national concern.
The person to be concerned about it should be the Commission itself,
and they should introspect on why people are raising questions and
take corrective measures as well. The trust of the people and the
(almost) blind faith we had in our time has eroded a bit because the
EC is not prompt in its communications.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active
role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the
truth is worth it.)
Read Latest News and Breaking News at The Quint, browse for more
from news and india
Topics: Supreme Court Elections Election Commission of India
Viewed using Just Read

20
SOURCE:
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/election-commission-of-india-c
ount-all-vvpat-slips-make-info-on-evm-vvpat-public-ex-cec#read-mor
e, accessed 14.10.2023
(TRUE COPY)
21
ANNEXURE: R2
Electronic Voting Machine and VVPAT: EC is misleading that

Private consultants in ECIL are not involved in EVM checking
during LS & Assembly Elections
03 Aug 2019, 3:11 PM IST, Poonam Agarwal, The Quint
Video Editor: Vishal Kumar
The Election Commission of India has always maintained that no

private company or outsourcing in any form is involved in the election
process. But The Quint’s investigation has found this to not be true.
An RTI in The Quint’s possession shows that the Electronics

Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), a PSU that manufactures EVMs
and VVPAT machines, engaged private engineers as “consultants” and
that these private engineers have worked with the Election
Commission in Assembly Elections since 2017 and even in the 2019
Lok Sabha election.
Their job was extremely sensitive – to check and maintain EVMs and
VVPATs, starting from First level Checking (FLC) right up till and
including the Counting Day, which means they had easy access to
EVMs through the course of the elections.
ECIL engaged these private engineers for the Election Commission

from a Mumbai-based private company called M/s T&M Services
Consulting Private Limited.
22
23
ECIL engages private consulting engineers from a Mumbai based

private company T&M Services Consulting Private Limited(Photo:
Shruti Mathur/The Quint)
When we checked with the Election Commission, the body’s reply

was,“No private company was engaged to provide engineers by BEL
& ECIL.”
Clearly, the Election Commission is hiding information and

misleading the public. Why?
An RTI about engaging private engineers was filed with ECIL in the
context of the 2017 Uttarakhand Assembly Elections by a lawyer
named Amit Ahluwalia.
The Mystery ‘Consultant’ Firm
ECIL’s RTI reply said, “ECIL is engaging skilled and semi skilled
‘Consultants’ through a single authorised manpower supply agency,
M/s T&M Services Consulting Private Limited.”
ECIL confirmed that close to 50 private consulting engineers were

used to check EVMs during the 2017 Uttarakhand Assembly
elections, and that only eight regular employees of ECIL were
involved.
We spoke to some of the ‘consultant’ engineers, and some even

confirmed to The Quint that they had been deputed for the 2019 Lok
Sabha Elections… once again to handle EVMs and VVPAT up until
and including the Counting Day.
It’s remarkable that part of the private consulting engineers’ job was to
upload key details like party symbols and candidates’ names on the
EVMs and VVPAT, for which they had access to these machines for
15 days before polling.
● Were these engineers vetted by the Election Commission? We

don't know!
24
● The company, T&M Services Consulting, which provided these

engineers – was it vetted by the Election Commission, at least?
We don't know that either!
● What we do know and can say is that the entire election process
might have been compromised!
Free & Fair Elections Compromised?
The Quint has found out that about this matter, the Election
Commission hasn't just misled the public, but even one of its own
former bosses!
Former Chief Election Commissioner Dr SY Quraishi has told The

Quint that in 2017, he heard allegations that the sensitive task of
handling EVMs was being outsourced during Assembly elections in
2017. On reaching out to the EC, Quraishi says he was assured by EC
officials that only in-house engineers had checked EVMs and VVPAT
during those elections.
Quraishi had even tweeted about it in November 2017, going as far as

to even attach the guidelines EC had shared with him, which said:
“Only engineers of BEL/ECIL, who are on their payroll, are deployed

for FLC (First Level Checking) of elections.”
And yet, ECIL’s RTI reply concedes that they did use private
engineers during the Uttarakhand state elections – something the
Election Commission continues to deny!
We ask: Why this contradiction?
How can the EC not know whether ECIL is engaging a private

company for engineers or not? In national interest, in their role as
guarantors of free and fair elections, they have to know. And they are
obliged to tell you, the voter, as well!
ECIL and T&M Services Consulting have not yet responded to our
queries. We will update this story when they do.
25
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active
role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the
truth is worth it.)
Read Latest News and Breaking News at The Quint, browse for
more from news and india
Topics: EVM EVM Expose Lok Sabha elections 2019
Published:

Report an error
SOURCE:
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/pvt-consultants-had-evm-vvpat-
access-why-is-the-ec-denying-it#read-more
(TRUE COPY)
ANNEXURE: R3 26
Concerns with the current EVM and VVPAT system and

recommendations for improvement
1 Concerns with EVM+VVPAT
1. In a stand-alone Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) without Voter-Veri:ied Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT),
where votes are recorded electronically by press of a button and the voter cannot examine what has been
recorded, there is no way to provide a guarantee to a voter that her vote is cast as intended (recorded
correctly in the EVM), recorded as cast (what is recorded in the EVM is what is collected in the :inal tally)
and counted as recorded. This casts doubts on a purely EVM based system.
2. It is well known that establishing the correctness of a system as complicated as an EVM is a

computationally intractable problem. It is also well known that testing is never adequate to establish the
correctness of an EVM, and tests can detect only a small fraction of possible software or hardware errors
(follows a common maxim that tests do not constitute a proof of correctness). Further, pre-
determined and preset test patterns are inadequate for veri7ication of the integrity of an EVM.
3. If the correctness of an EVM cannot be established then it is impossible to predict whether an EVM can
be hacked or not, or whether all EVMs used in an election are identical in functionality. In particular, that
an EVM has not yet been hacked provides no guarantee whatsoever that it cannot be hacked. Thus,
elections must be conducted assuming that the electronic voting machines may possibly be
tampered with.
4. Using VVPAT is one possible way to make the voting system auditable. Using VVPAT a voter can in
principle verify that her vote is cast as intended, and a suitably designed end-of-poll statistical audit can
possibly determine that the collection and counting are correct. The electronic and paper records can
be used to cross check the integrity of each other. This, however, is crucially dependent on the
following requirements:
(a) The VVPAT slips should be counted before declaring the results, and used to audit the
electronically determined results. Currently, this is not the case.
(b) The VVPAT system should be made truly voter-veri7ied. The correct VVPAT protocol would be to
allow a voter to approve the VVPAT slip before the vote is :inally cast, and to provide an option to
cancel her vote if a discrepancy is noticed. This also requires a clear protocol for dispute resolution
if a voter complains that a VVPAT printout is incorrect. The ECI’s current VVPAT system is not
truly voter-veri7ied because it does not provide the necessary agency to a voter to cancel her vote
if she thinks it has been recorded incorrectly. Also, in case the voter raises a dispute, there is no way
for her to prove that she is not lying. As such, penalizing a voter in such a situation is incorrect.
2 Recommendations
1. EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The electronic voting system should be redesigned to
be software and hardware independent in order to be veri7iable or auditable. This does not imply
that software or hardware cannot be used, but that the correctness of the election outcome cannot be
entirely dependent on the assumption of their working correctly.
2. The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-veri7ied. The voter should be able to
approve the VVPAT printout before the vote is :inally cast, and be able to cancel if there is an error. It is
well understood in literature that this cannot be achieved by an additional electronic Cancel button.
If the :irst button cannot be trusted then neither can be the second. The only way the VVPAT slips can be
truly voter-veri:ied is if a voter is able to obtain the VVPAT slip in her hand and cast it into a box or discard
it with her own agency. There may be the concern that a malicious voter may try to discredit the system
by not casting a VVPAT or by casting a bogus one. This risk can be mitigated by requiring that the voter
folds the VVPAT slip in the privacy of the booth, comes out and casts the VVPAT in a ballot box kept in full
1
27
public view in front of polling agents and poll of:icials. They may possibly verify that a genuine VVPAT
slip is being cast by checking a predesignated mark on the outside of the fold.
3. The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines during the entire time after polling and before
counting and auditing must be ensured in a manner that is veri:iable by all (and especially the
candidates). There should be no trust requirement on the custody chain.
4. There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote count before the results are declared. The
audit should not be based on ad hoc methods but by counting a statistically signi7icant sample of
the VVPAT slips according to rigorous and well-established statistical audit techniques like the
Risk Limiting Audits (RLA, used in many elections world-wide), which guarantee that the declared
outcome matches the one that would have been determined with a full manual count of the VVPATs. Such
RLA may in some cases -- depending on the margin of victory -- require a full manual counting of VVPAT
slips. Moreover, the entire nation should not be treated as one population for the statistical audit.
Since election results are declared at the granularity level of constituencies, it is important that
there should be independent statistical audits for each constituency.
5. There should be legislation to decide what is to be done if the audits reveal a problem. The
amendments to the Representation of the People Act (RPA) suggest that in such cases the VVPAT count
should be considered as the correct one, which appears to be reasonable.
6. There is a de:inite need to move away from certi:ication of voting equipment and processes and
demonstrate – using RLA, or a full manual count of the VVPATs -- that the outcome of an election is correct
irrespective of machines and trust requirements on custody chains of EVMs.
7. Finally, the voting system design should be subjected to independent (of the government and ECI) review
and the integrity of the election process should be subjected to independent audit. The 7indings should
be made public. In particular, all design details should be transparent and publicly available.
(TRUE COPY)
2
28
ANNEXURE: R4 1
DEPOSITION ON: ELECTRONIC VOTING AND THE INDIAN EVM
20 April 2020
To,
Citizens’ Commission on Elections, India
Dear Chair Justice (Retd.) Lokur, Vice-Chair Habibullah and Other Members of the
Commission,
We are election integrity, computer security and computer science researchers with
hundreds of years of collective experience. We provide this deposition on:
(a) Compliance of electronic voting with the principles of democracy and
(b) EVM/VVPATs before and during polling, storage, counting and declaration of results.
The content of the deposition is summarized as follows.
ELECTRONIC VOTING AND THE PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY

An accurate and incorruptible voting process provides legitimacy to elected representatives
and is hence essential for a healthy democracy. Transparency is a key factor in achieving
these goals; aspects of an election that may be observed and independently-verified by the
public will naturally be viewed as accurate and incorruptible.
Electronic counting mechanisms¾whether implemented in computer hardware and
firmware as in Indian EVMs, or software as in western electronic voting systems¾are not
transparent to the voter, who does not know whether the vote was correctly recorded or
counted. Internet access is not the only way to manipulate electronic voting machines; they
provide a long time window¾over the cycle of design, implementation, manufacture,
testing, maintenance, storage and deployment¾for insiders or criminals to attempt other
means of access. The EVM is a computerized system and its internal logic can be changed by
someone with physical access to the machine.
While one may publicly test an electronic voting system for some known problems before
use, there are at least three challenges with testing. First, it is not possible to know every
vulnerability. Second, and relatedly, it is not possible to determine how a computer
software or hardware module will perform in all circumstances. Hence, even for each known
vulnerability, it is not possible to fully test that an electronic voting system will function as
desired in each possible scenario. Third, computerized systems, such as the EVM, can be
programmed to determine when they are being tested and to behave as expected during
the test. Thus, while one should test as extensively as possible, testing can only reveal some
29
2
problems. The absence of problems during testing does not mean that problems do not
exist.
For the above reasons, no electronic voting machine, including the Indian EVM, can be
assumed tamper-proof. Many countries—and even individual hackers—have the technical
expertise to manipulate voting systems. The EVM is no exception. The vulnerabilities of
electronic counting motivated France and The Netherlands to use paper ballots and hand
count their recent elections. There are reports that Russia tried to change the 2014 election
totals in Ukraine and to access voter databases in the 2016 US election.
Knowing that testing is not sufficient, what additional precautions can we take? While
voters cannot observe the internal counting mechanism of an electronic system, the
principles of public observation can and should be applied to elections that rely on
electronic technology. Best practices require that the use of an electronic voting system be
accompanied by the generation and secure curation of a voter-verified paper audit trail
(VVPAT). After the election, in addition to public audits of all election processes, the paper
record must be publicly audited to verify the election outcome. These public audits provide
the counterweight to the vulnerabilities of electronic counting mechanisms.
In summary, elections relying on electronic voting machines should be conducted assuming
the machines can be tampered with. Assurances from any official entity that the process or
technology is tamper-proof are not sufficient. Voters and losing candidates should not have
to trust an opaque machine and its counting mechanism, or an insider design, manufacture,
testing and maintenance process. Every part of the election process and the technology
should be open to examination and analysis by the candidates and the public. Transparency
in design, implementation and use; an openness to the incorporation of ideas from the
latest results in computer security; independent security testing of the design and
implementation by experts and its feedback into the design cycle; education of the public on
these aspects; full observation of the election process and manual audits of the VVPAT slips
are all essential for high integrity elections that rely on electronic voting machines.
THE INDIAN EVM, VVPATS AND ELECTION PROCEDURES

The Indian EVM is interesting because its design is far simpler than that of other electronic
voting machines. In India, it has greatly increased the efficiency of vote counting and
facilitated enfranchising voters in remote areas. It has also made ballot box stuffing much
harder. Pre-election procedures are, by and large, designed to be transparent and fair.
However, this is not sufficient to ensure high integrity elections.
We are not aware of any evidence that any elections using Indian EVMs were rigged.
However, the vulnerability of a fully-electronic vote counting mechanism is significant.
Attackers can be sophisticated enough to avoid detection, and the absence of evidence
does not imply that election integrity can be assumed. It is not sufficient to rule out some
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3
specific attacks, because other attacks could be discovered by those who wish to meddle
with elections. The Election Commission’s excessive reliance on secrecy of design and the
obviously false claim that the machines are tamper-proof greatly diminish the
trustworthiness of the electoral process. The following changes can improve
trustworthiness by increasing transparency:
1. EVM design and implementation, as well as the results of both software and hardware
verification, should be public and open to full independent review. Reports from
independent experts should be made available to the public, and the important
vulnerabilities discovered should be addressed as part of a regular public process with
comments from the public as well as experts not involved in the review.
2. A Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) should be generated for every EVM in every
election. The printed VVPAT slips should be stored securely and separately from the
EVMs. The storage boxes should be sealed in the same manner that EVMs are sealed,
with signatures from observers representing all candidates.
3. Voters should be allowed to verify the printed VVPAT slip before the vote is cast. The
use of a paper trail can greatly enhance the integrity of an electronic voting system.
VVPAT slips are, however, weaker than paper ballots because paper ballots exactly
represent the intended vote, but the VVPAT slip does so only if it is verified by the voter.
The Indian VVPAT system does not allow the voter to verify the slip before the vote is
cast.
The correct VVPAT protocol is to allow a voter to approve the VVPAT slip before the vote
is cast, to cancel her vote if there is a discrepancy, and have the opportunity to vote
from another machine. Such a protocol should be implemented with Indian EVMs and
VVPATs.
Additionally, it is virtually impossible to determine whether a voter reporting a
discrepancy is lying, because the EVM can behave differently when being observed.
Stringent punishment for voters unable to prove a reported discrepancy between the
VVPAT slip and the vote is counterproductive in this scenario.
4. It is heartening that the recent Indian general election was carried out with full VVPAT
capability and that VVPAT audits were carried out. However, the results of the audit
were confusing and not easily available to the public. Additionally, auditing a fixed
number of EVMs per constituency is not sufficient to verify elections with narrow
margins. A robust, well-designed audit can provide considerable confidence in the
outcome, and statistical principles would dictate when a full hand count would be
required. Subtle differences among audits can result in a significant difference in the
ability to detect problems. For this reason, best practices in the design of robust
election audits should be followed, and expert advice on their design sought.
5. Legislation will be needed on what to do when the audit reveals an outcome different
from that declared by the EVMs. Legislation on how/when/whether a candidate may
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4
request a full manual count independent/instead of the audit would need to be

developed, or existing legislation modified.
6. The use of risk-limiting audits using current EVMs, and end-to-end-independently-
verifiable (E2E-V) techniques for future EVMs, may be explored.
If recommendations 1-5 above are followed, it may not be necessary to go back to paper
ballots. If the VVPAT is not strengthened through improved voter-verification, secure
storage, robust audit and supporting legislation, however, the vulnerabilities of the EVM will
continue to pose a serious problem to election integrity and paper ballots could be
preferred.
Please find, on subsequent pages, details on the above comments and short biographies of
the signatories. Should you have additional questions, we would be happy to answer them.
Please send them to Prof. Poorvi L. Vora, poorvi@gwu.edu.
Signatories
Note that affiliations below are included for identification purposes only and do not
reflect the view of the signatories’ employers or collaborators.
Poorvi L. Vora, (poorvi@gwu.edu), George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Alok Choudhary, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA
J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Douglas W. Jones, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Nasir Memon, New York University (Brooklyn), New York, New York, USA
Bhagirath Narahari, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
R. Ramanujam, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India
Ronald L. Rivest, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Philip B. Stark, University of California, Berkeley
K. V. Subrahmanyam, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai, India
Vanessa Teague, Thinking Cybersecurity, Australia
32
5
DETAILED DEPOSITION
1. Uniqueness of the Indian EVM: The Indian EVM has an interesting design because it
relies largely on hardware and firmware, unlike other electronic voting machines which
are software-intensive. Additionally, it is a single-purpose machine; this implies that its
design could be very simple, allowing for more thorough security analysis. Its prescribed
use does not involve connections beyond its sole wired connection to the control unit,
and it is not fitted for internet or other network access, including wireless access. The
procedures used immediately pre-election are remarkably public. These features could
serve to strengthen the integrity of elections run using Indian EVMs.
2. Vulnerabilities in computerized counting: Yet, no computerized vote counting device
can be guaranteed to be tamper-proof. The Indian EVM relies on the implementation of
computer logic in computer chips and circuitry rather than on hundreds of thousands of
lines of computer software code. The chips were intended to be read-only¾once
manufactured to perform a certain computational task, the chips cannot be
reprogrammed to perform another. They can, however, be replaced by other chips at
any time in the long cycle of use of the EVMS. Further, the machines can contain
undetected errors or intentional changes to the circuit designs at the time of
manufacture.
3. Two plausible attacks:
● Wolchok et al (2010)1 describe and demonstrate the placement and use of a
dishonest display board with a built-in wireless receiver controlled through
wireless signalling. In the absence of wireless instructions, it will behave honestly,
displaying the correct vote totals.
● In response to an earlier announcement by the Election Commission (EC) inviting
the public to demonstrate that EVMs can be hacked, Amaldev2 describes the use
of a small specially-designed device at one end of the cable connecting ballot and
control units. While the Wolchok et al attack would need to be carried out before
the device is sealed, the Amaldev attack can be carried out even after the device
is sealed.
1
Scott Wolchok, Eric Wustrow J. Alex Halderman, Hari K. Prasad, Arun Kankipati, Sai Krishna Sakhamuri,
Vasavya Yagati, and Rop Gonggrijp “Security Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines” (video) Proc. 17th
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security CCS ’10, Chicago, October 2010. The display
board, which contains the circuitry required to display the vote counts provided to it by the electronic counter,
can be replaced by a dishonest display board at any time before the machine is first sealed for a particular
election. It can then also be used in future elections. The dishonest display board contains circuitry to receive
wireless instructions from the attacker, and to calculate new vote totals so as to provide the attacker’s favorite
candidate a win while arousing minimum suspicion.
2
V. Amaldev, “How to Hack Indian EVMs”, 30 April 2017.
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6
4. It is not about specific vulnerabilities: Every so often one hears about a “new”
vulnerability. For example, an RTI filing revealed in 2019 that the micro-controller chip
used in EVMs is not one-time programmable3 as claimed by the EC. The public does not
know how to evaluate this risk to election security. On the one hand, there is little
information in the public domain on the design of the Indian EVM4, and it is not
possible to independently verify the reassurances of the EC. On the other hand, the EC’s
case about the credibility of the EVM has been based on “trust us”5, yet this is an
example of an EC claim that has been proven to be false.
The issue of EVM security has been made into a patchwork of known problems and
whether these are being protected against. Every time a new problem comes to public
view, especially when it is counter to an EC claim, public trust is diminished. Such a
situation is particularly volatile and not conducive to trustworthy elections. A more
stable scenario arises if election protection depends on public designs, processes and
audits.
5. Voting machine designs should be public: It is not uncommon for computer security
experts to miss vulnerabilities in their own designs6. For this reason, it is recommended
that the design and implementation of any computerized voting system be widely
observed and examined on a planned schedule. This makes it more likely that
vulnerabilities are detected in the public domain, by experts, rather than left for
detection by those wishing to do harm7. Once discovered, the vulneabilities can be
addressed in a planned manner as well.
6. Little transparency in EVM design: The EC is relying on the secrecy of the design to
3
Venkatesh Nayak, “What the EC Is Hesitant to Tell the Public About EVMs and VVPATs”, The Wire, 22 May
2019
4
The only information on the detailed design available is from statements from the EC, for example, press
notes on 16 March 2017 and 8 August 2009 and the paper by Wolchok et al. Information on procedures is
available through explanatory videos, such as, for example, EVM Training Film dated 10 March, 2014 and
additional detailed documents.
5
See, for example, (b), (d) and (f), section 7 of the EC’s press note dated 16 March 2017, “Credibility of
Electronic Voting Machines, Regarding”. In the same press note, the EC says: “The Election Commission would
like to underline that it always had a firm conviction and complete satisfaction that EVMs could not be
tampered with. Its faith on the machine has never wavered through the conduct of elections in the last many
years”.
6
For example, the original Needham-Schroeder public key protocol (1978) is vulnerable to a man in the middle
attack; one of the simplest attacks on the Indian EVM described by Wolchok et al is a man in the middle attack.
7
As an example of transparency improving the design of security technology, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) held public competitions for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) block
cipher and the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) in 1997 and 2007 respectively. AES and SHA-3 are cryptographic
standards underpinning secure electronic commerce, internet banking and all online international financial
transactions. Designs were solicited in a public competition; experts from all over the world submitted entries
which were published online; experts then attempted to demonstrate security vulnerabilities in the entries;
the vulnerabilities thus detected were published online; the final winning designs were chosen based on their
security and efficiency.
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7
provide security8. Security best practices, however, require the assumption that the
design is known by the enemy9, whether it is public or not.
7. Independent Review Necessary: Best practices in election integrity include the
engagement of an independent team of experts to perform a security analysis, the
results of which are made public. (Note that independent EVM testing as currently
performed does not include security testing/analysis.)
For example, in 2007, the Secretary of State, California, USA, ordered the Top-To-
Bottom-Review, by noted academic and other experts, of all of the voting machine
models certified for use in the state. The resulting detailed report on system
vulnerabilities was made public, and action was taken against systems that were found
to be insecure.
Every time the EC has invited examination of Indian EVMs, however, the examination
has been severely limited10, preventing true security analysis and missing the
opportunity to educate the public on the strengths and vulnerabilities of its voting
technology.
8. Technical checks and balances can be circumvented: The EC points to technical reasons
why the published attacks are not possible, and to procedures in place that would
detect the attacks. These are useful and serve the purpose of providing some
deterrence. They are not, however, sufficient by themselves¾in part because they are
lacking, and in part because it is not possible to detect all possible attacks.
● Functionality Tests and Mock Polls: There are a number of tests in place to check
the performance of the hardware at various stages in the manufacturing and
maintenance cycle11 and later, during First Level Checking (FLC)12. Candidate
representatives participate in a number of mock polls13. However, a competent
attacker would manipulate the hardware to detect when it is being tested14.
Hardware manipulated at time of manufacture or afterward could provide testers
8
See, for example, (b), (d) and (f), section 7 of the EC’s press note dated 16 March 2017, “Credibility of
Electronic Voting Machines, Regarding”.
9
For example, Kerckhoffs’ second principle states that the security of a system cannot depend on the design
being secret; all security arguments must assume that those wishing to break system security would be able to
determine the design, even if it is not public. See: Auguste Kerckhoffs, "La cryptographie militaire" Journal des
sciences militaires, vol. IX, pp. 5–83, January 1883, pp. 161–191, February 1883. Peticolas, Fabien, electronic
version and English translation of "La cryptographie militaire".
10
See, for example, the invitation of 20 May 2017.
11
See, for example, (c), (e), (g) and (i) in section 7 of the EC’s press note dated 16 March 2017, “Credibility of
Electronic Voting Machines, Regarding”.
12
See section 9 (a-c) ibid.
13
See section 9 (c, e, g, h)
14
For example, Volkswagen pled guilty to the development and use of software to detect emissions control
testing in its 2L Diesel cars, which used improved emission controls during testing as compared to normal use.
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with the results they expected to see, yet perform differently when used in the
election15.
● Randomization of EVMs: EVMs are chosen at random for allocation to
constituencies and polling booths, after they undergo the FLC and are sealed with
special bands and signatures. The randomization procedure is performed in
software; this is not a truly random process, but a pseudo-random process, which
can be predicted by those who know the randomization algorithm and the
parameters used. Additionally, the software generating the random numbers can be
manipulated to produce a pre-determined set of numbers which will choose a pre-
determined set of EVMs for a pre-determined location, and, even, booth. If the
computer running the randomization software is on the internet, the randomization
software can be manipulated easily. Even if it is not, however, the software can be
manipulated without detection during manually-performed upgrades as well as at
other times.
● Candidate Order: Candidate order is not known till the candidate list is finalized, by
which time EVMs are already sealed. This is often provided as an argument for why
EVMs cannot be rigged, as an attacker would not know what button would
correspond to a vote for his favourite candidate. This is not a problem if the
attacker has a means of signalling after the EVMs are sealed, as described earlier.
Additionally, even in the absence of signalling, it is not a problem for someone who
wishes to simply ensure that the true winner will not win¾the dishonest hardware
can be designed so as to exchange votes among all the candidates, for example.
● Cryptography: Cryptography can be used by one hardware module to confirm that
the other module is what it claims to be, to prevent an attacker from inserting a
dishonest module. However, the security of cryptography depends on the secrecy of
key stored on the module, and this can often be detected through the use of
sophisticated equipment by a determined attacker. Also changes in the data before
encryption/digital signature and after decryption/verification of the digital signature
will not be detected.
9. EC’s procedures can be circumvented: The precautions of the EC can be circumvented,
including by insiders such as maintenance engineers. It is also possible that all processes
are not always followed as described (for example, VVPAT checks routinely unearth
instances of mock election votes being included in the tally). Many irregularities came
to light in the 2019 general election: unused EVMs were transported without security16;
15
Instructions to the dishonest hardware could be provided through the use of wireless signalling as by
Wolchok et al, with the wireless receiver being a part of the dishonest hardware.
16
Arnab Ganguly, “Uproar as EVMs moved in pvt vehicles; EC says they’re unused”, Mumbai Mirror, 22 May,
2019.
36
9
there was at least one complaint17 of an EVM serial number not matching at counting
time; an RTI filing revealed that 20 lakh EVMs18 claimed to be delivered by the
manufacturers are not in the possession of the EC. These belie the EC’s claims of a
tamper-proof process.
10. EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof: This is not because of a weakness in the
EVM design per se (we do not know the design beyond that reflected in public
information), but because no electronic system can be assumed to be tamper-proof.
Additionally, the administrative procedures do not prevent all tampering as we have
described above.
11. Best practices require that voting systems be software/hardware-independent19,20
and elections be evidence-based21: The election process should be designed so that an
undetected change in the voting system hardware or software cannot cause an
undetected change in election outcome. This can be done through the generation of
voter-verified evidence¾in the form of paper records of the votes¾and evidence that
all the procedures were correctly performed22.
12. Regular generation and secure storage of VVPAT: A complete VVPAT (each vote
printed on paper) should be generated for each EVM in each election; the records
should be stored securely, separate23 from EVMs. As with secure EVM storage, the
storage containers with VVPAT slips should be sealed and signed by representatives of
all candidates. The use of paper VVPAT slips is not anywhere near as burdensome as the
use of paper ballots, because each VVPAT slip lists a single candidate.
13. Voter Verification: Currently, VVPAT printers in India print the vote on a paper slip and
display it to the voter for a few seconds, after which the slip falls into a storage
container24. The voter is required to file an official complaint if the VVPAT slip is
incorrect, with stringent punishment for false complaints. However, note that a
dishonest EVM can avoid detection after the fact, and can, for example, behave
honestly in demo mode. Stringent punishment to the voter in such a situation is
17
Rajesh Kurup, “Urmila Matondkar files complaint over EVM discrepancies at Magathane polling station”,
Business Line, The Hindu, 23 May, 2019.
18
Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, “‘Missing’ EVMs”, Frontline, 24 May, 2019.
19
Ronald L. Rivest and John P. Wack. “On the notion of `‘software independence’ in voting systems.” (2006),
20
Ronald L. Rivest. “On the notion of `software independence’ in voting systems.” Philosophical Transactions
of The Royal Society A 366,1881 (2008) pp. 3759--3767.
21
P.B. Stark and D.A. Wagner, “Evidence Based Elections”, IEEE Security and Privacy, special issue on electronic
voting, 2012.
22
Many countries use paper in some form for their elections: 70% of the votes in the 2016 US election had a
paper record. Neither Britain nor Germany use electronic voting for general elections. France and The
Netherlands both hand-counted their most recent elections.
23
See, for example, section 7.8.2 “Basic Characteristics of IV Systems”, of the Voluntary Voting Systems
Guidelines, Version 1 (2005), Volume 1.
24
See, for example, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, training video.
37
10
counterproductive because it discourages voters from filing genuine complaints (as how
can they be proven to be correct?). The correct protocol for generating the VVPAT is,
however, as follows25: the vote is cast only after the voter has verified the printed slip.
If the printed slip is incorrect, the voter cancels the vote and reports the problem, after
which she is allowed to vote from another machine if she wishes. This discrepancy with
the correct protocol needs to be rectified if the VVPAT is to be of use in improving
election integrity.
14. The VVPAT should be regularly audited: It is not sufficient to generate VVPAT slips that
are verified by voters, as the EVM may still record or count the vote incorrectly. The
VVPAT slips need to be audited, or cross-checked. Audits involve the public, manual
examination of a randomly-chosen sample of the slips to ensure that the announced
outcome is correct, and pose a workload far smaller than that of a full hand count. A full
hand count is performed if the audit reveals that there is a problem. The design of a
robust statistical audit also requires adherence to best practices, and audits should be
designed by experts. Risk-limiting audits are strongly recommended.
Audits were performed in the general election of 2020 by cross-checking hand counts of
the VVPAT slips with EVM counts. We consider how many EVMs should be cross-
checked using India’s current approach. Another approach is described by Mohanty et
al26.
Abhay Bhatt Report: At the request of the Election Commission, Abhay Bhatt of Indian
Statistical Institute, Delhi, and others provided a report describing how many EVMs
should be cross-checked and why. The report recommends the cross-checking of only
479 EVMs across the country, independent of how many total EVMs there are. It says
that, if a fraction of 2% or more of the EVMs across the country are faulty, cross-
checking 479 chosen at random across the country will be sufficient to detect this fact
with virtual certainty. This is a correct answer to the wrong question.
The purpose of the cross-checking is to demonstrate that each constituency was
correctly called. For this reason, the computation should be for each Lok Sabha
constituency and not the entire country. We should ask how many EVMs need to be
cross checked in a constituency to detect, for example, 2% faulty EVMs in that
constituency. It is possible that only one constituency had faulty EVMs, but that there
was a large enough number to change the outcome. A sample of 479 EVMs may not
even include a single EVM from this constituency.
25
“The voting system shall print and display a paper record of the voter ballot selections prior to the voter
making his or her selections final by casting the ballot.”, from section 7.9.1, page 137, Voluntary Voting
Systems Guidelines, Version 1 (2005), Volume 1.
26
Mohanty, V., N. Akinyokun, A. Conway, C. Culnane, P.B. Stark, and V. Teague, 2019. Auditing Indian
Elections, Proceedings of E-Vote ID 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11759, R. Krimmer, M.
Volkamer, V. Cortier, B. Beckert, R. Küsters, U. Serdült and D. Duenas-Cid (Eds.) Springer Nature, Switzerland.
38
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Cross-checking 5 EVMS per Assembly Constituency: The current approach of checking

five EVMs per Assembly constituency27 is sufficient to detect malfunctioning EVMs in
wide margin contests but will not detect errors in narrow margin contests. For example,
if about 1% of the EVMs in a Lok Sabha constituency are faulty, this fact will be detected
only one-third of the time. Instead of auditing a fixed number of EVMs, the EC should
audit as many EVMs as necessary to ensure that, if the outcome is incorrect, this fact is
detected with a high pre-specified probability28. Additionally, if mismatches due to
mock poll votes are detected, they need to be considered as errors in the cross check.
At present, such mismatches are ignored; however, if these errors are made in all EVMs
in a constituency, they could change an outcome with small margin and statistical
estimates should take this into consideration.
15. Legislation will be required to deal with the case when the audit, and subsequent
recount, reveal a different winner from the winner obtained from EVM counts.
Legislation will also be required to regulate when, and if, a candidate can request a
hand count. Best practices suggest that legislation be based on statistical principles, as
opposed to the judgment of individual election officials, to the extent possible.
16. E2E-V EVMs may be considered: End-to-end-verifiable (E2E-V) voting systems29 enable
voters to independently verify the outcome of an election, without requiring them to
trust election technology or election procedures, other than those performed in public
on Election Day. It is possible that adding E2E-V capability¾or some E2E-V
techniques¾to EVMs can improve their transparency, though this can only be
definitively determined after a study of the constraints and use scenarios of Indian
elections. E2E-V capability cannot, however, entirely replace the need for the VVPAT
and its audit.
17. Should paper ballots be used: If recommendations 5, 7 and 11-15 above are
implemented in their true spirit, it does not appear necessary to return to the use of
paper ballots. The typical candidate list in Indian elections, as well as the number of
voters, is large enough that paper ballots present inefficiencies and difficulty in election
administration that can lead to disenfranchisement of voters in remote areas. The EVM,
on the other hand, is far more efficient and portable and also helps prevent ballot
stuffing. However, if the VVPAT is not strengthened as described in recommendations
11-15, the vulnerability of EVMs will continue to pose a threat to election integrity
and paper ballots may be preferred.
27
“VVPAT verification: Supreme Court orders counting of paper slips of five EVMs in every constituency”,
scroll.in, 8 April 2019.
28
Poorvi L. Vora, “Can We Improve on the Integrity of our Elections?”,
https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~poorvi/EVN/VVPAT-Cross-Checking.pdf 20 April 2020.
29
Josh Benaloh, Ronald Rivest, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Philip Stark, Vanessa Teague, Poorvi Vora, ‘End-to-end
verifiability”, arXiv:1504.03778, 15 April, 2015.
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Biographies
Alok Choudhary is the Henry and Isabel Dever Professor of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at Northwestern University. He also teaches at Kellogg School of
Management, and is the founder, chairman and chief scientist of 4C Insights. He has
received numerous prestigious awards including National Science Foundation's Presidential
Young Investigator Award IEEE Engineering Foundation award, an IBM Faculty Development
award, and an Intel Research Council award. He is a fellow of IEEE, ACM and American
Academy of Sciences.
Choudhary has consulted for many companies including Publicis Group, Vivaki, Southwest,
Intel, IBM, SPSS, Teradata, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Newsbank, Sony, Portland Group,
Lucent, Oliver Weinmen, and Netezza. Alok Choudhary’s work has appeared New York
Times, Chicago Tribune, The Telegraph, The Investor Business Daily, ABC, PBS and many
international media outlets all over the world.
Choudhary graduated with a PhD from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the field
of Supercomputing. He has published more than 400 papers and graduated more than 35
PhDs. He gives talks in many international conferences. His research interests are in
computer security, supercomputing, big-data science and algorithms their applications in
marketing, medicine, physics, materials and climate understanding.
J. Alex Halderman is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of
Michigan and Director of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society. His interests
include computer and network security, Internet security measurement, censorship
resistance, and electronic voting, as well as the interaction of technology with law and
international affairs. Named one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” for 2015, his recent
projects include ZMap, Let’s Encrypt, and the TLS Logjam and DROWN vulnerabilities.
A noted expert on electronic voting security, Prof. Halderman helped demonstrate the first
voting machine virus, participated in California’s “top-to-bottom” electronic voting review,
and demonstrated vulnerabilities in India’s EVMs. When Washington DC invited the public
to test its pilot Internet voting system, Halderman demonstrated security vulnerabilities that
would allow malicious entities to add and replace votes. His analysis received national
attention and resulted in DC's decision not to use the system. With Vanessa Teague, he
demonstrated serious security vulnerabilities in the iVote Internet voting system used by
New South Wales, Australia.
In 2015, Halderman received the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, which is awarded to "early
career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise" "in recognition of distinguished
performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their field". He
holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
40
13
Douglas W. Jones is a computer scientist at the University of Iowa. Together with Barbara
Simons, he published “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?”. His involvement with
electronic voting research began in late 1994, when he was appointed to the Iowa Board of
Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems. He chaired the board from
1999 to 2003, and has testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the
United States House Committee on Science and the Federal Election Commission on voting
issues. In 2005 he participated as an election observer for the presidential election in
Kazakhstan. Jones was the technical advisor for HBO’s documentary on electronic voting
machine issues, “Hacking Democracy”, that was released in 2006. He was a member of the
ACCURATE electronic voting project from 2005 to 2011. On Dec. 11, 2009, the Election
Assistance Commission appointed Douglas Jones to the Technical Guidelines Development
Committee, where he served until 2012. Jones received a B.S. in physics from Carnegie
Mellon University in 1973, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1976 and 1980 respectively.
Nasir Memon is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU
Polytechnic School of Engineering and director of the Information Systems and Internet
Security laboratory. He is one of the founding members of the Center for Interdisciplinary
Studies in Security and Privacy (CRISSP), a collaborative initiative of multiple schools within
NYU including NYU-Steinhardt, NYU-Wagner, NYU-Stern and NYU-Courant. His research
interests include digital forensics, biometrics, data compression, network security and
security and human behavior. Memon earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical
Engineering and a Master of Science in Mathematics from Birla Institute of Technology and
Science (BITS) in Pilani, India. He received a Master of Science in Computer Science and a
PhD in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska.
Prof. Memon has published over 250 articles in journals and conference proceedings and
holds a dozen patents in image compression and security. He has won several awards
including the Jacobs Excellence in Education award and several best paper awards. He has
been on the editorial boards of several journals and was the Editor-In-Chief of Transactions
on Information Security and Forensics.
Memon is the co-founder of Digital Assembly and Vivic Networks, two early-stage start-ups
in NYU-Poly's business incubators.
He is an IEEE fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
Bhagirath Narahari is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Student Affairs
and a Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Computer Science
in The School of Engineering and Applied Science at The George Washington University. Prof
Narahari received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1987,
and his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science,
Pilani. Since 1987 he has been on the faculty in the School of Engineering and Applied
Science at The George Washington University. From 1999 – 2002 he was the first Chair of
41
14
the Department of Computer Science, and he has been active in undergraduate education
with over a dozen years’ experience in undergraduate advising, curriculum development
and has taught a number of undergraduate courses in Computer Science.
His research interests are in the areas of Software Security, Architecture support for
trustworthy computing, Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Compiler optimization,
Pervasive Computing, and Parallel Computing. Prof. Narahari has published several refereed
articles in various areas of embedded systems, security, architecture, parallel processing
and computer systems. His current research focuses on compiler, operating system and
hardware support for software security, with projects funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF) and Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Prof. Narahari's prior
research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, AFOSR, Rome Air Force Labs,
NASA, NSA and America Online (AOL), and included research in power-aware computing,
embedded systems, optimizing compilers, software systems and specification, and pervasive
computing. His research projects have included both fundamental research and software
deliverables including an open source research compiler infrastructure for the Intel Itanium
processor.
Ronald L. Rivest is the Institute Professor of Computer Science in MIT’s Dept. of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a member of the lab’s Theory of Computation Group and is
a leader of its Cryptography and Information Security Group. He is a founder of RSA Data
Security and an inventor of the RSA public-key cryptosystem, and a co-founder of Verisign
and of Peppercoin. Professor Rivest has research interests in cryptography, computer and
network security, voting systems, and algorithms. He is a member of the National Academy
of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and is a Fellow of the Association for
Computing Machinery, the International Association for Cryptographic Research, and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also on the EPIC Advisory Board.
Together with Adi Shamir and Len Adleman, Dr. Rivest was awarded the 2000 IEEE Koji
Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award and the Secure Computing Lifetime
Achievement Award. He also received, together with Shamir and Adleman, the 2002 ACM
Turing Award and the 2009 NEC C&C Prize. He received an honorary degree from the
University of Rome. He is a Fellow of the World Technology Network and a Finalist for the
2002 World Technology Award for Communications Technology. In 2005, he received the
MITX Lifetime Achievement Award; in 2007, he received both the Computers, Freedom and
Privacy Conference “Distinguished Innovator” award and the Marconi Prize. In 2008, he
received an honorary doctorate from the Louvain School of Engineering at the Universite
Catholique de Louvain (UCL). In 2010, he was awarded MIT’s Kilian Faculty Achievement
Award. He has extensive experience in cryptographic design and cryptanalysis, and served
as a Director of the International Association for Cryptologic Research, the organizing body
for the Eurocrypt and Crypto conferences, and as a Director of the Financial Cryptography
Association.
42
15
Philip B. Stark is the Associate Dean, Division of Mathematical and Physical Science at the
University of California, Berkeley. Prof Stark is on the Board of Advisors of the US Election
Assistance Commission. He developed the notion of “risk-limiting audits”, which are now
required by the state of Colorado (C.R.S. 1-7-515) and this work has led to audit-related
legislation in California: California AB2023, SB360, AB44. He served on California Secretary
of State Bowen’s Post Election Audit Standards Working Group. Dr. Stark has published
more than one hundred articles and books, served on the editorial board of several
scientific journals, and lectured at universities and professional societies in seventeen
countries. He has consulted for the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade
Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,
the California Attorney General, the California Highway Patrol, and the Illinois State
Attorney. He has testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the
Census; the State of California Senate Committee on Elections, Reapportionment and
Constitutional Amendments; the State of California Assembly Committee on Elections and
Redistricting; and the State of California Senate Committee on Natural Resources. In 2011,
Dr. Stark received the University of California Chancellor’s Award for Public Service for
Research in the Public Interest.
K V Subrahmanyam is a Professor in the Computer Science group at the Chennai
Mathematical Institute (CMI). He has been with CMI since its early days, and has played a
pivotal role in establishing it as a premier centre for research and teaching in Mathematical
Sciences in India.
His research focus has been on Computational complexity. Since 2004 he has worked at the
crossroads of group representation theory, algebraic geometry and computer science, with
a view towards understanding hard lower bound problems in computational complexity
theory.
He is also interested in combinatorial and continuous optimization, machine learning and
cryptography, having taught these courses many times in CMI's graduate and
undergraduate programmes. Subrahmanyam did his PhD at the Tata Institute for
Fundamental Research, Mumbai and has a PhD degree in Computer Science from Bombay
University. He has a B. Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay and an M. S. in Electrical
Engineering from Vanderbilt University, USA.
Vanessa Teague is a cryptographer based in Melbourne, Australia. She is the CEO of
Thinking Cybersecurity and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian National
University. Her research focuses primarily on cryptographic methods for achieving security
and privacy, particularly for issues of public interest such as election integrity and the
protection of government data. She was part of the team (with Chris Culnane and Ben
Rubinstein) who discovered the easy re-identification of doctors and patients in the
Medicare/PBS open dataset released by the Australian Department of Health. She has co-
43
16
designed numerous protocols for improved election integrity in e-voting systems, and co-
discovered serious weaknesses in the cryptography of deployed e-voting systems in NSW,
Western Australia and Switzerland.
Poorvi L. Vora is Professor of Computer Science at The George Washington University. Her
research focus has been on end-to-end independently verifiable (E2E) voting systems which
enable voters and observers to audit election outcomes without requiring them to rely on
the trustworthiness of election technology or unobserved election processes. She has
recently also worked on risk-limiting election tabulation audits.
Vora was a member of the team that deployed polling-place, paper-ballot-based, E2E voting
system Scantegrity II in the Takoma Park elections of 2009 and 2011, and of the team that
developed remote voting E2E system Remotegrity and accessible voting variant
Audiotegrity, used in 2011.
She has worked with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on
definitions of desired properties of E2E systems, and on information-theoretic models and
measures of voting system security properties. She has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE
Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
Vora has Ph. D. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State
University, an M.S. in Mathematics from Cornell University and a B. Tech. in Electrical and
Electronics Engineering from IIT Bombay.
(TRUE COPY)
44
Can We Improve on the Integrity of our Elections?

Auditing India’s Elections
Poorvi L. Vora
Department of Computer Science, The George Washington University
This draft: 21 April 2020
Abstract: This note describes why the current tabulation audit process for India elections:
comparing manual vote counts with declared counts of 5 Electronic Voting Machines per
assembly constituency is not sufficient.
The legitimacy of an election is directly related to its perceived transparency by all candidates
and voters. For this reason, elections should be evidence-based and provide sufficient evidence
to convince the losers and their supporters that they lost.
This writer has previously described how EVMs, like all other computerised or electronic vote-
counters, can be tampered with. But, more importantly, all such vote counters are opaque to the
public and reduce the transparency of an election. Thus, simply saying “it is so because the EVMs
say so and they are tamper-proof” or “we test the EVMs and they are secure” is not sufficient.
Voters and losing candidates should not have to trust an opaque machine and its counting
mechanism, or an insider design, manufacture, testing and maintenance process.
For example, it is possible that the precautions of the EC are circumvented, including by insiders
such as maintenance engineers. It is also possible that all processes are not followed as described
(for example, VVPAT checks routinely unearth instances of mock election votes being included in
the tally). Irregularities have come to light in the last few days: unused EVMs were transported
without security; there was at least one complaint of an EVM serial number not matching at
counting time; an RTI filing revealed that 20 lakh EVMs claimed to be delivered by the
manufacturers are not in the possession of the EC; another reveals that the micro-controller chip
used in EVMs is not one-time programmable as claimed by the EC. These belie the EC’s claims of
a tamper proof device and process.
It is also not fair to shrug off the issue of EVM security saying that it is always the losers who
question EVMs. Rahul Gandhi voiced his concerns about EVMs even as the Congress saw large
gains in the 2018 Assembly elections. The BJP itself claimed to be able to demonstrate EVM
hacking in 2009 after a major loss in the general election. EVM security has been an issue of
concern among various parties since then. And, finally, all the losing parties together represent a
large fraction of the voters whose concerns are, by definition, legitimate.
45
Cross-checking EVMs is important

There is a simple solution to making the election extremely transparent while continuing to use
EVMs. VVPAT slips, if securely stored, can be used as evidence and cross-checked to increase the
transparency of the particular election. If the cross-checking corroborates the results shown by
the EVMs, this would satisfy sceptics that the particular elections were not rigged. And, indeed,
those saying EVMs are tamper-proof should not fear such cross-checking; if they are right, it can
only buttress their argument. On the other hand, if the cross-checking does not corroborate the
results, the VVPAT slips for that Lok Sabha constituency can be manually counted to determine
who the true winner is.
The idea is not to fully manually count the election and ignore EVM counts, but to verify that the
correct winner has been announced. The cross-checking requires far less effort than a full manual
count would. However, if a cross-check fails, then it is best to do a full hand count of that Lok
Sabha constituency.
Cross-checking of paper VVPAT slips has often been derided as a step backward and just another
predictable distraction drummed up by the Opposition. In fact, it is an important step in ensuring
that the results are correct, and in demonstrating this fact to the voters.
How many EVMs should be cross-checked?

At the request of the Election Commission, Abhay Bhatt of Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, and
others provided a report describing how many EVMs should be cross-checked and why. The
report recommends the cross-checking of only 479 EVMs across the country, independent of how
many total EVMs there are. It says that, if a fraction of 2% or more of the EVMs are faulty, cross-
checking 479 chosen at random across the country will be sufficient to detect this fact with virtual
certainty.
In response to a petition from the Opposition parties that the then standard of cross-checking
one EVM per assembly constituency was not sufficient, the EC used the Bhatt Report to claim
that their approach resulted in checking 4,125 EVMs over the entire country and was hence more
than sufficient. However, the Supreme Court ordered the Election Commission to increase the
number of cross-checked EVMs to five per Assembly constituency in order to assuage the
concerns of the petitioners (this corresponds to 20,625 EVMs across the country). The court later
turned down another petition by the Opposition parties to count 50% of EVMs per constituency,
saying this was not necessary.
Members of civil society have asked for all the VVPAT slips to be counted.
That’s a wide variety of recommendations. What should we do now? How many EVMs should we
cross-check? Is there a rational explanation that might guide us in our choice?
46
The Chance of Detecting Incorrect Outcomes with Five Cross-Checks Per Assembly Constituency
The number of EVMs that need to be cross-checked depends on at least two variables.
First, it depends on the fraction of EVMs reporting incorrect counts. A larger fraction is more
easily detected.
Second, it depends on what probability of detection is acceptable. If a lower probability is
acceptable, fewer EVMs need to be cross-checked.
Using Election Commission data for the 2014 Lok Sabha election and scholarly contributions in
the literature, we can make some rough calculations assuming all constituencies are average.
Using number of votes cast and balloting units used in the 2014 election, we estimate that, on
average, about 3,024 EVMs are used per Lok Sabha constituency. The current procedures require
that five EVMs are cross-checked from each Assembly constituency, which corresponds to about
38 per Lok Sabha constituency.
Table 1 presents approximate probabilities of detecting errors with this level of cross-checking;
these numbers are intended to be approximate and we make no claims that they are exact
numbers. They do, however, give us a sense of the order of magnitude of the probabilities and
illustrate the approach being proposed.
We say that an error is detected if even a single EVM count does not match the hand count, after
the hand count has been verified by recounting that batch of slips. Note that if the hand count
does not match because some mock poll votes were not zeroed, it is still a detected error which
should lead to a hand count of all machines for that constituency. If one wishes to ignore
mismatches that are clearly because of mock polls, the number of EVMs that needs to be cross-
checked needs to be larger.
Table 1: Chance of Detecting Errors using the Current Proposal of Five Cross-checked EVMs
per Assembly Constituency
Misreporting EVMs in a Lok Sabha Approximate Chance of Error Detection in

Constituency that Constituency
25% Virtually certain
20% 0.9998
10% 0.98
5% Six of seven (0.86)
2% One out of two (0.54)
1% One out of three (0.33)

47
Comparing These Results to the Claims of the Bhatt Report

Why do the numbers in Table 1 diverge considerably from the Bhatt-Report recommendations
(479 EVMs cross-checked across the country will detect a 2% rate of faulty EVMs with virtual
certainty)? Table 1 says five EVMs cross-checked per assembly constituency, a number more than
40 times larger than 479, will detect the problem with probability only about a half?
First, the Bhatt report considers a 2% rate of faulty EVMs all across the country, while the above
table considers it for a single Lok Sabha constituency. So, when the Bhatt Report assumes 2%
EVMs are faulty, that is 543 times as many as are assumed in the table above. If about 16 lakh
EVMs were used in the election, the Bhatt Report approach is proposed to detect if more than
32,000 were faulty, or, if roughly more than a crore votes (of about 60 crore cast) were potentially
incorrect. It is not being proposed for the detection of fewer faulty EVMs, or tens of thousands
of incorrect votes, which would be sufficient to swing a single Lok Sabha seat.
Second, and relatedly, the Bhatt Report does not explicitly say anything about faulty EVMs in a
single constituency. It argues that there is no difference among constituencies that would be
relevant to the working of the EVM and hence a constituency is not the unit to focus upon. it says
the only kind of EVM faults assumed should be assumed to exist countrywide. If there is rigging
in the elections, the election to every seat will be rigged by a similar fraction of the EVMs. It says
this is because of all the precautionary measures taken by the EC, which prevent individual
constituencies from being targeted.
This is a circular argument. The reason we are cross-checking the EVMs is to have a transparent
process that does not depend on the EC’s assurances, but is verified by the evidence. It is not the
public’s job to suggest a possible attack on EVM security that the EC will then refute. It is the EC’s
job to prove, through the VVPAT cross-checks, that the elections were correctly called. In
designing the cross-checking process to prove that all went as they assure us it did, they cannot
assume that most of it did! They may assume only that which can be verified publicly, such as a
VVPAT count.
In a similar incorrect statement, the Bhatt Report claims that previous cross-checks of the VVPAT
machines have not resulted in the detection of miscounts, and that this, too, provides statistical
evidence that EVMs cannot be rigged. The field of election tabulation audits is well established,
and it is understood there that each election is audited separately. It is not the technology that
is being audited, but whether it functioned correctly and called this particular election correctly.
In fact, the public does not know if the technology has changed between elections, or if existing
malicious technology on the EVM has been activated between elections. Evidence from previous
cross-checks, on totally different machines for totally different elections, should not be used as
evidence for a current election.
48
The assumption that the unit to focus on is the entire country is a major flaw in the reasoning of
the Bhatt Report. As a result, the report has provided the correct answer to the wrong question.
Because the purpose of the cross-checking is to demonstrate that each constituency was
correctly called, the unit should be a single Lok Sabha constituency.
Third, the Bhatt Report (correctly) says that the number of EVMs to be cross-checked is roughly
independent of the total number of EVMs (yes, this is roughly true if not intuitive). Hence we may
apply their result to the unit of the Lok Sabha constituency: in order to detect a 2% rate of faulty
EVMs in a single Lok Sabha constituency with the same degree of virtual certainty as in the Bhatt
Report, one needs to cross-check roughly 479 EVMs in that constituency. (A quick glance at the
table provided in the Bhatt Report shows us that the exact number is between 443 and 447, with
the difference being due to the smaller number of EVMs in a single constituency compared to
those used all over the country.)
Fourth, the converse of the third point above also holds. Five EVMs per Assembly constituency
corresponds to an average of about 38 EVMs per Lok Sabha constituency. If 38 EVMs are cross-
checked across the country, and the rate of faulty EVMs in the table are rates across the country,
the probabilities of detection should be approximately as in our table.
Relationship of Number of Misreporting EVMs to Election Margin
How should we evaluate the number of misreporting EVMs in Table 1? Can the election outcome
be correct if, say, 5% of the EVMs misreport?
Observe that one vote moved from the winner to the loser changes the margin by two votes,
because the winner’s tally decreases by one and the loser’s increases by as much.
Consider a simple scenario of two candidates getting most of the votes, and one-fifth of the votes
in all the faulty EVMs are moved from winner to loser. Suppose that 10 lakh votes are cast in that
constituency, 4000 EVMs used, each recording 250 votes. In this case a misreporting EVM rate of
5% corresponds to 200 misreporting EVMs, moving one-fifth of their votes each, a total of 10,000
votes, from the winner to the loser. This could change the outcome of a race with a margin of
20,000 votes or 2%. Similarly, 10% misreporting EVMs could change an election with a margin of
4% (roughly 40,000 votes in our example).
Assuming that one-fifth of votes are changed per misreporting EVM, we get the following plot
for detection probability as a function of margin.
49
Figure A: Probability of detection as a function of margin when five EVMs are cross-checked per assembly
constituency, and one-fifth of the votes in a faulty EVM are flipped from announced loser to announced winner
A brasher attempt to rig the election would change more votes per EVM and result in fewer
misreporting EVMs (because each misreports by a greater amount), and a lower probability of
detection through cross-checking. However, in such a case, the rigging might be more obvious
from the announced tallies, which might appear very different from expected. For example, if all
votes in an EVM were for a single candidate because votes for all other candidates were moved
to this candidate, this could attract attention and suspicion.
Reasoning about how many EVMs to cross-check
The chances of detection in Figure A are not good enough for contests with narrow margins. How
should we improve on our chances of detection?
The correct way to do this is to choose the number of cross-checked EVMs based on the margin
of the constituency. If the margin is 10% (corresponding to 25% misreporting EVMs if each
changes one-fifth of the votes from the loser to the winner), it is sufficient to check three EVMs
per Assembly constituency, or about 20 per Lok Sabha constituency, for a detection probability
50
of 0.9987. In this case, it is not necessary to cross-check more, and the resources can be diverted
towards closer elections.
The following table lists the approximate required number of cross-checked EVMs for some
example margins, for a detection probability of at least 0.98 (which is smaller than the detection
probability guaranteed by the Bhatt Report, but appears reasonable).
Table 2: Approximate number of cross-checked EVMs required per assembly constituency to

detect rigging with probability 0.98 or more in Lok Sabha contests, assuming one-fifth of
votes are flipped in faulty EVMs
Margin of Lok Sabha Contest Number of Cross-Checked EVMs Needed Per

Assembly Constituency for Detection
Probability 0.98
10% 3
8% 3
4% 5
2% 10
1% 20
0.8% 25
Thus, the smaller the margin, the more EVMs we need to check. This is because fewer EVMs need
to be rigged to change the election, and if we don’t check a large number, we will miss the few
that were rigged.
A more accurate approach than that we have described would take into consideration the
variation in number of votes across EVNs. A completely different approach specially designed for
the Indian election is described by Mohanty et al.
Other important aspects of the election audit
We can only rely on VVPAT cross-checking if the VVPAT slips do indeed represent the will of the
voters.
Currently, there is a heavy penalty for voters who complain that their slip did not represent their
vote if the EVM does not demonstrate the same behavior when it is tested by an official. This
dissuades voters from complaining. On the other hand, if we accept all complaints, voters may
choose to lie to call an election into doubt. One solution is to design the VVPAT machines so that
51
a voter may cancel her vote if the slip does not represent it correctly and she may vote again on
a different machine if available.
The VVPAT slips must be securely stored between vote casting and cross-checking.
The EVMs chosen for cross-checking must be chosen at random; the current proposal of using
lottery drawing by candidates and their representatives could serve this purpose.
The proposal to count VVPAT slips for each election is a very good one. It would be more effective
for the purpose of checking the election outcome if more EVMs were cross-checked, and how
many are cross-checked can be decided by the margin of the constituency using simple formulae
such as those proposed in Aslan et al. More complicated approaches may be used if one wants
to take into consideration the variation in the number of votes across EVNs.
-------------------
(TRUE COPY)
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ANNEXURE: R5
Electronic Voting and Democracy

Subodh Sharma
Email: svs@cse.iitd.ac.in
Computer Science and Engineering
(also associated with the School of Public Policy)
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
New Delhi 110016
Abstract
What are the salient properties that electronic voting systems must satisfy in order to meet democratic principles? Are
such requirements viable or are they of only theoretical interest? How would the ECI’s EVM fare against such properties?
These are some of the questions I shall attempt to answer in this deposition.
1 Introduction
India recently concluded the world’s largest parliamentary election [Wu and Gettleman, 2019] with 543 constituencies
and well over 1 million voters per constituency on the average. Complete polling with offline electronic voting machines
(EVM) not only ensured efficiency of the polling process and timely announcement of results, but, from several accounts,
also ensured that the election was fair [ET-Bureau, 2019, Purkayastha and Sinha, 2019]. Electronic voting perhaps is
essential for managing elections of such size and complexity. However, the EVM solution [Election Commission of India,
2019a,b] was not verifiable therefore its guarantees could not be established [Shukla, 2018, Banerjee and Sharma, 2019],
which inevitably generated disquiet during the elections [Vora, 2017, Venkataramakrishnan, 2019].
World-wide concerns with EVMs have resulted in their being discontinued in many countries. After several years of
controversy, Netherlands abandoned electronic voting in 2007 [Goldsmith and Ruthrauff, 2007], deciding that the integrity
of the democratic process was more important than efficiency. Similar considerations have led to their discontinuation
in Germany [NDI, 2019], France [Reuters, 2017], Ireland [O’Halloran and O’Regan, 2010] and several others. Many in
the USA have voiced their apprehensions [Mercuri, 2007, Schneier, 2018, Schwartz, 2018] against existing EVMs, and
the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has decided to design and build a secure open source voting
system for the future [Zetter, 2019]. In a recent report, the national academies in the USA have recommended conducting
elections with human readable paper ballots trails [National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2018].
It is clear that any electronic voting system must satisfy certain minimum requirements before they can be accepted as
instruments for enabling electoral democracy. It is worth noting that any set of technical requirements is, in fact, driven
by only three obligations: (i) the losing candidate has to be provided with a convincing proof of their loss, (ii) the voter,
should she demands, be supplied with the guarantee that her vote was indeed cast-as-intended (indicating that the voting
machine has registered the vote correctly), recorded-as-cast (indicating the cast vote is correctly included in the final
tally), and counted-as-recorded (indicating that final tally is correctly computed), iii) no vote should be recorded other
than those for which a designated polling officer certifies the eligibility and identity checks of the voter, and iv) all votes
are kept secret during and after polling.
These, in turn, dictate that any electronic voting system must establish the following three properties:
• Correctness: all votes are recorded-as-intended (composition of cast-as-intended and recorded-as-cast) and counted-
as-recorded; and that there is no spurious vote injection.
• Privacy: voter secrecy at all stages of the voting process attacks (such as vote manipulation, injection, and deletion)
Achieving the above properties in a technical design is known to be notoriously challenging (due to the seemingly con-
flicting requirements of security and privacy). Above all, the demanding set of technical requirements cannot be put in
a paternalistic design that takes away the understanding of the process of collection, recording and accounting of votes
1
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from the voters. It is crucial for democracy that not only are elections fair, but that they also appear to be fair and do not
depend on certification by experts and auditors. While banning electronic voting, the German Constitutional Court made
the following observation [NDI, 2019]:
The use of voting machines which electronically record the voters’ votes and electronically ascertain the
election result only meets the constitutional requirements if the essential steps of the voting and of the ascer-
tainment of the result can be examined reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject [...]
In light of the above observations, we may be pressed to ask the following:
Q1 can one design systems or are there existing ones, such as paper ballots, that meet the above-discussed properties?
Q2 does the ECI’s EVM meet the above-mentioned set of requirements? If not, can we identify the requirements on
which they (may) fail?
Paper ballots have been the cornerstone of electoral democracy for over two centuries. No analysis on electronic voting
systems, therefore, can be complete without a reflection on paper ballots first. While it may appear [Sampath, 2019] that
paper ballots meet the democratic principles, on a deeper analysis it emerges that paper ballots cannot guarantee some
crucial requirements listed above. Paper ballot based voting systems neither provide a guarantee to a voter that her vote is
recorded as intended and counted as recorded (without loss of privacy), nor provide guarantees against vote injection and
deletion to a losing candidate. Clearly, the correctness and security properties are not preserved.
In contrast, how do electronic voting systems fare? It may come as a surprise that design of electronic voting systems
has been studied extensively in the field of computer science for over three decades with the answer to the first part of
Q1 being in the positive. See [Bernhard et al., 2017] for a review. It is not clear whether such a rich literature was even
referred to while designing the Indian EVM.
In the absence of any public information on the design of ECI’s EVM, and a formal proof or even an informal statement
on the best design practices adopted relating to the correctness, security and privacy aspects of the machine, one can only
conclude the answer to Q2 to be in the negative.
In the following text, I will attempt to present a distilled set of principles from the literature which abstractly map to
the above mentioned requirements. Thereafter, I will present an argument on why ECI’s EVMs appear on a weak footing
in relation to some of these key principles. Subsequently, I will briefly discuss two recent and popular electronic voting
protocols as examples of robust designs before concluding this written deposition.
2 Trust assumptions and key democratic principles in electronic voting

2.1 (No) Trust requirement for correctness
Democratic principles demand that it should not be necessary to trust any authorities, individually or collectively, for
the correctness of the election process. Moreover, every component of the election process should be publicly auditable
without requiring trust on any special auditors or experts.
Polling also requires strict identity verification of voters against a voter list for all votes, and must rely either on digital
authentication or on offline identity verification by a polling officer. In the absence of a de-duplicated digital voter identity
system, trust on the latter is unavoidable for eligibility checking. However, this trust must be publicly recorded, and we
require the polling officers to certify each valid vote.
2.2 Trust requirement for voter secrecy

In any polling system voter secrecy must be preserved at all times. Hence, voting systems must never issue a receipt
for the cast vote to a voter to ensure that a voter is never able to prove to a coercer or a potential vote buyer who they
voted for [Benaloh and Tuinstra, 1994]. Secrecy and receipt-freeness are necessary conditions for coercion-free voting.
Receipt-freeness however does not preclude issuing a token receipt to a voter from which no information about who they
voted for can be gleaned.
All electronic voting systems need to trust the hardware security and privacy implementations - for example using
trusted execution environments [Sabt et al., 2015] - and also the custody chain of authorities for not compromising voter
secrecy. The protocol itself must guarantee not to leak information.
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2.3 Key democratic principles

Universal verifiability: A voting system is universally verifiable if it can provide provable recorded-as-cast and counted-
as-recorded guarantees for every vote, either deterministically or with a high probability. Universal verifiability
implies that a system is auditable.
Individual verifiability: Individually verifiable usually implies [Cortier and Lallemand, 2018, Castelló, 2016] that every
voter can verify that their vote is cast-as-intended and is recorded in the final list to be tallied. It turns out that
individual verifiability is essential for voter secrecy [Cortier and Lallemand, 2018].
Ideally, one may want a stronger version of individual verifiability where a voter can proactively seek a sound
and complete proof that their vote is also recorded-as-intended and counted-as-recorded. The proof of individual
verifiability should be available on demand, and if it depends on a global universally verifiable component, then
that component should be publicly auditable without requiring any special auditors. In other words, every voter
should be able to trace their vote to the tally for their chosen candidate and verify the tally. Individual verifiability
is necessary to establish that a cast vote is non-repudiable, i.e., a voter cannot later claim that their vote was
not recorded or counted correctly. It is also worth noting that universal verifiability does not imply individual
verifiability, therefore preserving individual verifiability is necessary in its own right.
Such individual verifiability is the very root of voter confidence in electoral democarcy.
Dispute resolution: Effective dispute resolution requires a process for clear determination in favour of either the voter
or the election authority in case of a challenge, without compromising voter secrecy. Central to dispute resolution
is the non-repudiability of a cast vote. Non-repudiability of a cast vote cannot be established without the election
authority being able to provide a sound proof of recorded-as-intended, or compromising on voter secrecy. It is
also worth noting that universal verifiability does not always establish the non-repudiability of a cast vote without
relying on instruments beyond the control of an individual voter (such as publicly auditable processes), or without
compromising voter secrecy.
Finally, dispute resolution also requires non-repudiability of the verification receipts issued to voters by the election
and polling authorities. This, in turn, requires all receipts to be duly signed.
Software independence: A voting system is software-independent if an undetected change or error in its software cannot
cause an undetectable change or error in an election outcome [Rivest, 2008]. Software independence is a necessary
condition for universal verifiability, because hardware-software verifiability of a system such as an EVM is almost
surely an intractable (at least NP-Hard) problem. [Mercuri, 1992].
A typical EVM consists of a push-button user interface for voters to cast votes, a memory card to store the cast
votes, and the software performing the recording and accounting operations running on a CPU. An EVM system
composed from its components can exist in one of a very large number of states, which, in most cases, is an
exponential function of the configuration parameters. either software or hardware may occur in a manner that is not
deterministically reproducible, which necessitates examination of all the states that the system can be in. (These
are not systematic failures like due to hacking, and can only cause denial of service type of faults) Examination
of such large systems is an intractable problem, which often compels the examiners to rely on weaker forms of
verification such as quality assurance (QA) methods – for instance, testing. However, well documented studies
have shown that such weaker notions of verification can only detect a fraction of software errors (follows a common
maxim that tests do not constitute a proof). Even if through weaker verification procedures one could ascertain
the correctness of software to a reasonable degree, it is still inadequate. Ken Thompson, in his 1984 Turing award
speech, illustrated that even with software programs shown to be correct the effort is far from over. One could insert
a back-door (Trojan) into the hardware thereby facilitating exploits which remain undetectable. Thus, hardware
specification, down to the chip level, along with the formal specification of all the side-channels must also be
revealed and examined. In particular, it may be impossible to determine with reasonable amount of computation or
testing whether such systems can ever reach a compromised state, perhaps due to hacking, where the democratic
principles are violated.
Finding faults in such large composed systems is either impossible in general or highly expensive. Thus, the
correctness of an E2E (end-to-end) verifiable voting systems should best not depend on the hardware or software
used, and must be established solely from the output computed at various stages.
Protection against spurious vote injection: A voting system must also be free of spurious vote injection, at all times
before, during or after polling. A voting system must guarantee that no votes are recorded and tallied other than those
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approved by the polling officer. Universal verifiability does not usually guarantee against spurious vote injection by
collusion of authorities.
Bare-handed voting: It has also been advocated that a voter should have zero digital computing available at voting time
[Chaum, 2004]. The reasons for bare-handed voting are twofold. First, it is unfair to rely on voters to be able
to compute cryptographic functions - or even digitally sign - when they may not have the agency or necessary
understanding of the process. Second, it is unreasonable to assume that voters can have access to trusted comput-
ing platforms that will not leak information [Rivest, 2001a, Adida, 2006]. For example, commodity laptops and
handhelds, which a voter may own but not have complete understanding of, certainly cannot be trusted either for
correctness of cryptographic computations or for privacy of voting. The secure platform problem [Rivest, 2001b] ef-
fectively rules out internet voting [Chaum, 2004, Rivest, 2001a,b, Mercuri, 2007], and bare-handed voting systems
must necessarily be polling booth protocols.
Large aggregation: Finally, making the vote tally of an EVM or a polling booth - typically of a few thousand voters
- public may enable profiling of a locality or a community. Hence, it is essential to aggregate the votes over
several polling booths and EVMs leading up to perhaps even an entire constituency before making the tally public.
Large aggregations are essential for community privacy, and necessitates hiding the polling officers’ identities, yet
requiring the polling officers to certify each recorded vote.
3 A Comment on EVMs and VVPATs

Any EVM based solution that relies on hardware and software integrity, with or without voter-verified paper audit trails
(VVPAT) [Mercuri, 1992, Election Commission of India, 2019a], is not software independent and is hence not universally
verifiable. Besides, VVPAT only ensures that the electronic vote count matches that of the paper audit trail, and that
by itself provides no guarantee against spurious vote injection or deletion in both post the polling process. Thus, the
fundamental principle of correctness cannot be established for software/hardware dependent EVM based voting systems.
Reliance on ad hoc and unverifiable processes such as in [Election Commission of India, 2019a, Purkayastha and Sinha,
2019] can only result in uncertain technological solutions for electoral democracy.
Even if EVMs were to be shown to be universally verifiable, in absence of individual verifiability the elections cannot
offer any instrument through which they can convince the voter about her vote is cast as intended and counted as cast,
without compromising the privacy of the cast vote.
A silver-lining, however, exists. Several E2E verifiable electronic voting protocols have been formulated that formally
guarantee many of the principles discussed in the previous section. In the following section, I will cover two such protocols
that are either direct-recording electronic (DRE) or optical scanning based electronic voting systems which have been in
existence prior to the 2019 elections in India.
4 Some existing E2E voting protocols

4.1 Scantegrity
Scantegrity [Chaum et al., 2008] is an E2E universally verifiable voting protocol which is identical to optical scan voting
systems with an additional feature that voters can take home a receipt from which no privacy information is leaked. The
ballots are pre-prepared as shown in Figure 1, where the candidate to letter code mapping is randomized in each ballot.
Each voter after casting her vote tears off the perforated top right corner of the ballot which has a unique serial number
and notes down the letter code corresponding to the choice.
Each voter also has an option to do a cast-or-audit challenge [Benaloh, 2006]. In case of a challenge the voter retains
that unmarked blank ballot and is issued a fresh one for voting. At a later point of time the voter can demand an audit of
the correctness of the ballot encryption, i.e., the correctness of the candidate to letter code mapping for the ballot serial
number for the challenged ballot. A statistically significant number of voter challenges provide a probabilistic universal
guarantee that the mappings are correct.
The chosen code letter against the serial number for all cast votes are published on a public bulletin board without
the candidate names (Figure 2). A voter can verify that her vote is cast-as-intended - for the letter code - by looking up
the row in the bulletin board marked with her serial number. An anonymous but a verifiable mapping between the actual
vote and the receipt serial number is maintained by a special component called mixnet [Chaum, 1981, Chaum et al., 2008]
(Figure 2). A mixnet is similar to a switchboard that applies cryptographic operations to conceal the path of messages
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56
Figure 1: Scantegrity Ballot (from [Chaum et al., 2008])

Figure 2: Mixnet (from [Chaum et al., 2008])
through the network. A typical mixnet can have many layers, each layer leading to cryptographic concealment. A voter
can trace an encoded receipt only up to the input of the mixnet. Thereafter they can only verify partial correctness by
examining parts of a mixnet that are trusted to be randomly chosen by an auditor and are revealed publicly. For every
path, at least one part is kept hidden to preserve voter secrecy. The public audit of large parts of the mixnet for a sufficient
number of voters provide a probabilistic guarantee and ensure universal verifiability. The final result of the mixnet is
publicly displayed on another bulletin board and anybody can verify the tally.
Individual verifiability is only partial in the protocol because the voter cannot trace her vote to the final tally and must
rely on universally verifiable guarantees (thus, recorded-as-cast guarantee is not available). Prêt à voter [Ryan et al., 2009]
is a system quite similar to Scantegrity in principle which has been tested in several public elections.
4.2 Starvote
Starvote [Bell et al., 2013] is an E2E DRE voting system offering similar guarantees as Scantegrity, however, its methods
of hiding the vote and preserving privacy and universal verifiability are different.
The voter casts her vote in a voting terminal with GUI (for clear sight voters) or auditory UI (for visually handicapped
voters). After the vote is selected, the terminal performs three actions: (i) its prints a take-home receipt that identifies a
short cryptographic digest that serves as the commitment of the vote along with some additional meta-data such as the time
of the vote, the terminal used for casting the vote, etc., (ii) it prints a paper ballot with a random serial number along with
the summary of the vote in clear text, which serves as a voter verified paper record. The voter after reviewing the second
receipt can either cast the ballot (drop it in a box) or use the current choice as a challenge-and-audit action [Benaloh,
2006] to convince herself later of the correctness of the cryptographic encoding of her vote, and (iii) the terminal sends
the encrypted data to the election commission’s office.
The encrypted votes are posted on a public bulletin board. The voters can verify the presence of their votes on the
bulletin board by matching the cryptographic digest on their take-home receipts with specific rows in the bulletin board.
The tallying of the cryptographic votes is performed by the election authority using a special homomorphic property of
cryptographic operations. In other words, the homomorphic property on encrypted data allows the election authority to
perform counting on encrypted votes without ever requiring to decrypt the votes. Anybody can verify the homomorphic
tallying.
The protocol is universally verifiable. However, the universal verifiability is only partial because a voter can only have
a universal statistical guarantee that her vote was correctly encoded.
4.3 Discussion
While protocols such as Scantegrity and Starvote preserve properties like universal verifiability and software indepen-
dence, they do not offer non-repudiation on cast votes; in particular, Scantegrity does not guarantee recorded-as-cast
property and Starvote does not preserve cast-as-intended property. Therefore, in such class of protocols the individual
verifiability guarantee is met only partially. Both these systems are also vulnerable to spurious vote injection post-election
through insider attacks or collusion among authorities. There have been recent works to partially strengthen the protocols
against these weaknesses.
For a recent DRE protocol that provides complete individual verifiability for both cast-as-intended and counted-as-cast
guarantees, and ensures that there can be no spurious vote injection, see [Agrawal et al., 2019].
In comparison the ECI’s EVM lacks critical properties such as software independence, universal and individual veri-
fiability.
5
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5 Conclusions
The use of EVMs in Indian election has indeed demonstrated credible gains in efficiency with respect to the polling and
counting processes. It is the fatalistic claims of the kind – since the EVMs have not been hacked so far, therefore, they
are safe – that require attention. That a system has not been hacked yet does not give formal assurance of its infallibility.
The burden of establishing trust either through verifiable proofs or through best practices lies with the designers and the
election authority. Since neither ECI’s EVM designs nor verifiable proofs have been made open, the critical question
of which correctness properties are satisfied by EVMs in India remains open. Ensuring security by obfuscation may be
legitimate way for enterprises operating for profit but cannot be applied to instruments that enable democracies to function.
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(TRUE COPY)
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ANNEXURE: R6
To use or not to use? Electronic Voting Machines in Indian Elections.
Sandeep K. Shukla
Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are a very commonly discussed example of an embedded
computing system which has also been at the center of political storm in India in the recent days.
A number of allegations have surfaced that the EVMs are being reprogrammed or tampered with
during elections to favor candidates of a specific political party. Given that EVMs are very classical
embedded systems with simple microcontrollers whose program instructions are burnt into a
ROM, and cast vote counts are stored in an EPROM, and few peripherals, one would think that it
would be easy to verify by experts to indubitably establish their tamper proof design, and
implementations. However, looking at various aspect of this simple yet very critical embedded
system, it seems a lot more research is required on multiple aspects of the democratic franchise
that are dispensed through these simple systems. It should be mentioned also that recently in
response to ‘right-to-information’ query, one of the manufacturers divulged that new generation
of Indian EVM are no longer having program instructions burnt into ROM but they are using a
specific microprocessor with writable memory. This raises lot more questions than one would
have raised with the previous generation EVMs. Furthermore, one of the two manufacturers
refused to even entertain the query – raising further suspicion.
Before coming to the Indian case, let me focus on some other countries. In the Netherlands,
electronic voting machines were abandoned in 2007 after several years of controversy regarding
the security of the voting data, the machines, as well as the privacy of the voter. The engagement
of civil society, computer experts and others paved the way to experimentation that showed the
ease with which one can replace the memory chips in those machines in less than five minutes,
allowing manipulation, thereby possibly subverting democracy. More concerning was the fact
that with simple radio receivers, people could see variations in electro-magnetic signals that
would allow one to detect who a voter is casting the vote for – from outside the polling station.
After some iterations in the design, other such side channel attacks were found in certain versions
of the machine, and eventually honoring the fact that integrity of the democratic process is more
sacrosanct than efficiency – the Netherlands abandoned the electronic voting [1].
In 2009, the federal constitutional court of Germany ruled that electronic voting is
unconstitutional [2]. The court ruled “The use of Nedap electronic voting machines violated the
principle of the public nature of elections (Article 38 in conjunction with Article 20.1 and 20.2 of the Basic
Law) that requires that all essential steps in the elections are subject to public examinability unless other
constitutional interests justify an exception.” This is very significant. Given that the legitimacy of
democratic processes depends on the public’s trust in the processes, any member of the public should
be able to examine, if he/she desires so, to test and verify every step – including the functioning of the
voting machines, their design, the security and safety safe guards, and measures to secure their franchise.
61
If the voting machine design, software, or the security proofs are not possible to verify by members of the
public, there is enough reason to worry about safeguarding our democracy.
Ireland also abandoned electronic voting in 2004. In the United states, 27 states are using electronic voting
machines of which 15 are using verifiable audit trail. However, given the issues surrounding the hacking
incidents during the last presidential election in the united states, there is reasonable doubt whether it is
prudent to continue the electronic machine-based voting.
Coming back to the Indian case, the voting machines are quite simple, with a ballot unit, a control
unit, display unit, and the wires connecting them. While the software is kept under extreme
confidentiality with the government sector companies who manufacture these machines, the
machine instructions were burnt into a ROM in the previous generation EVMs with the claim that
it cannot be changed. The microcontroller being used is simple, and the memory units are
connected with simple protocol. In 2010, a group of security experts got hold of a unit and
showed that there are numerous ways to tamper with these machines within matters of few
minutes [3]. One can replace the microcontroller, the memory units, and even the PCB board
with relative ease provided physical access is possible. Also, if the EPROM is replaced with an
attacker’s chosen instructions, the behavior of the machine could be changed, including how it
responds to pre-poll mock polling phase vs. real polling phase. Further, the display unit can be
replaced, and clip on radio frequency devices may be used to control the behavior of the
programs. Of course, the Indian authorities now have responded by adding mutual
authentication between the components, and also doing some redesign. The design of the latest
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c t t t e tec n c co ttee ere t o ny e pert n cy er ecur ty cert ed t – o e no
on er need ny urt er c ec y out de e pert
Given the cloak of secrecy about the design, the program, and even the mechanisms of
authentication – security by obscurity seems to be their goal. Another defense is that the EVMs
are very well protected during its storage, transfer, and randomized methods for allocating them
to polling booths. Unfortunately, given the large population, and various uncertainties during a
nationwide polling process, many of these safe guards might be violated if properly orchestrated.
If none of these happen, even then, the fact that all the steps associated with the electronic
voting machine design, manufacturing, and security studies are not subject to the verification
and testing by the common people, and experts – there are scope of doubt about the security of
the entire process. With the current advances in data science and exfiltration of personal data as
exemplified in the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook case, it is not inconceivable that data analytics
can pin point exactly which polling stations need to be tampered with, leaving the rest as it is –
62
and still manipulate the outcomes of the election. Therefore, it might be possible to manipulate
only a few of the EVMS per parliamentary constituency to tamper with the results of that
constituency. Which booths to target can be decided by appropriate use of data science on
demographic data. This is not to say that such manipulations do happen, but the citizens should
have a right to be fully convinced that it does not. Only way to do this is to provide copies of the
machines to experts at various Indian institutes and have them thoroughly test the machines for
security, side channels, programmability etc.
EC in the past sent out challenge to community to hack EVMs by inviting teams to their
headquarters but they severely restrict the kind of tests that the teams can do – for example,
using of oscilloscope on the pins by opening the boxes are not allowed. Therefore, side channel
analysis, checking whether the micro-controller JTAG pins are fused etc – cannot be checked. It
seems that only tests allowed are pressing buttons in order to change results. However, even if
there are 10 buttons, there are 2^10 possible combinations, and each such combination has a
factorial number of permutations to test – which is not possible to try for any one. Therefore,
these ‘come-and-hack’ events are more of an eye wash than real honest attempt to convince the
citizens about the security of these machines.
So as cyber security researchers, it seems to be incumbent on us to figure out systems whose

safety and security can be verified by anyone – while it is secure enough without the need for
obscurity/secrecy of the algorithms, designs, methods etc. That is the only way, electronic voting
machines can be made acceptable to a democratic nation. Creating a cloak of secrecy to protect
from tampering never works – all security researchers would agree.
This is an important need that embedded systems community can attempt to cater to, and at the
same time, save the democratic election process in every democratic jurisdiction. If experts can
show to anyone interested the risk, the potential attack surfaces, the side channel vulnerabilities,
and make every bit of software/firmware, architecture, protocols open, and check the plausibility
of exploitations that still may remain in the fully vetted system – that will put the population at
ease regarding their enfranchisement – even with systems they do not fully understand.
I, therefore, request all readers to think about this problem, and demand EVM designs to be
transparent and open, have experts to test them, do their risk analysis, before EVM is accepted
as the instrument of our democracy.
1. https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/5_Netherlands.pdf
2. http://www.dw.com/en/german-court-rules-e-voting-unconstitutional/a-4069101
3. https://indiaevm.org/evm_tr2010-jul29.pdf
(TRUE COPY)
ANNEXURE: R7 63
INDIAN STATISTICAL INSTITUTE

Shri Durgam Giri 203 EARRAC(PORT TRUNX ROAÞ
Senior Administrative OffÍcer & (oLKA rA 700108, INDfA
cPto Fax : +(91){33} 2577 5033

E-ma¡l : g.dur8àm@grn¿¡l.com
No CAF / 21-A/62/2018-t9l ùL2-

rfr, K'shanu 03 APril' 20i9
Maurik
13 Ekdatìa place,
Kolkata - 70001g
St,U- : JiT^n! applicalion dared 13.03.2019, received by r¡is ofllce on

13_03.2019
Dear Si:-,
to your RT] appiication dated 13.OJ.20t9, received by rhis

^ fl,:^."i"."the information
on .13.03.2019. sought, a_re lurnished below ;
oftice
mallo¡ suppljed
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Cc¡tified copy ol the communrca¡ion Iroã -'
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Certified copv
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rhe ofilce order of
office orde: tsl
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;ì 3. j ieru,-l s a,ç9m-qu!ss-loltr9'?-e19. t¡ q. r.epgi!:_

held.
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I Name and clesignarìon of thc Inembers of the t inlf<lrma tion

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: Ineettng.
Your RTI application dated 13.O3,2019, received by this office on 13.03.2OI9,

is djsposed ol. The First Appeal, if any, agajnst the reply of the CPIO may be made to
! t.he First Appelìate Aurhor.ity wirhin 30 days irom the receipt of reply from the CPIO.
tî Tlìe name and address ofThe First Appellate Âutbority is given below:
Brìg J N Pandey
Chief Execurive (A&F) & FÀA of the
ln stitute
203, B.T. Road, Kolkata - 700 108
Phenei +9\ 33 2575-2251
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66
,¿.i F'
-a'' {DIAN STATISTICAL ¡NsTITTJTE
2O3 B,qRRACT(PORE TRUNK ROAD
KOLKATA 70.0108
q1
OFF¡CE ORDER'NO. D.O./2o1ó/392 DATED J0 JUNE 2016
All progronrrnes other than the regulor degree/diplomo courses undertohen by the lnstitute
or its scient¡sts Ínuolving externql ogencies will henceforth be tohen up by the Cell foi
Cooperotion
with.Accdemia, lndustry ond Reseqrch Lobs (c-cAlR). The cell will comprle the following
members:
1, Professor tshorgob B.Bhottochoryo .., Choirperson

2. Professor Ayonendronoth Bosu ... Vice_Choirperson
3. Professor Dii¡p Sqho ,.. Member
4. Ðr. Þrosun Dos ,.. Member
s. Dr. Utpol Goroin ... Member
6. Dr. Ansumon Bonerjee .., Member
Z. Dr. Anil K. Ghosh ... Member
B, Dr, Soumyonetrq Munshi ... Member
9. l-leqd, Delhi Centre or his nominee ... Member
Io. l{eod, Bongolore Centre or hir nominee ,.. Member
ij. Heod, Chennoi Centre or his nominee .,. Member
l2..Dr. RqEhunqth Chotterjee ... Conuener
Responsibilities
The Committee will be responsible for motters reloted to the

followìng :
joting colloborotionslstudent exchonges/MoUs

ln¡t
with other Univenitiellnstitutes or with ony
externollgouernment agencies including reseorch lcbs;
Reviewing project proposors, ond proposors for coüsborotions submitted
by the scientific
worhers; this will Ìncrude funding proposors to be sent to governmènt
ogencies or privdte
orgqnizqtions. The Cell should consult other releuont committees
to decíde on reloted issues;
Colloborotions with lndustries;
EstobJishing qnd promoting incubotion efforts
The Comrnittee will olso be responsible for the following
Formulcting werr-defined procedures for submission, reuiew/sonction

of ofi such proposois;
Formuloting o policy for lp-shoring; "
Reviewing the policiês on lncome Generoting/Non-lncome
Generoting/Consultoncy proiecis.
ossocioted leove rules, qnd potents;
Revîew the policv for income shoring ond usoge poricy
omong the rnstitute, the Depqrtment
ond the DivÍsion os opplîcqble;
Formuloting policies of incubotion.
Contd. 2Ê
67
Generol Guidelines 5o
All proposoìs will be subrnitted to the Chcirperson (or Vice-Choirperson), C-CAIR Cell. These
wìll be reviewed by the Committee snd recommended to the Director, strid(ly following the well-lqid
out procedures, by the C-CAIR Cetl. Any deviqtion hqs to be forworded to the Director with fpecif¡c
recomrnendotion ond justificotion. The decisîon of the Direcior on such mdLters will be finol.
All policies formulqted by the Committee, ond ony chonge thereofter, must be sqndcíoned by
the Ð!rector.
The existinE policies procedures will continue to opply till new policies ore formuloted.
It is expected thqt oìl poìicies qre well-loid out within six months of the issue of this order.
Thereafter the different Centres (other thon the Heod quorter) will form their own Cells, with the
Ðirector's opprovoi, Choired by the Centre Heod ond. with of leost one mernber eoch from Heod
quorter ond other Centre (from the correspond¡ng C-CAIR Cell). The Cells in the Centres will function
in exoccly the sarne woy os loid out for the C-CAIR Cell in thit order.
This order supenedes the Office Order No. D.O.l2o15i5o9 dqted 1o August 2015.
, -)(:
..\'lbA¡"*,L 7.'þ r-'-i i
': I
-t áI
(Songhomitrq bondyopodhYuy¡ ;'
Direcior
Copy to : All Foculty Members

Professors-in-Chqrgei Heod, 5QC & OR Division
.A,ll
Hecd of Centres
Alt Heods of Departments/SectionllJnits including outlying centres/brqnches
Chief Executive (A&F)
Dy. Chief Executive (Ð
i_ilrectols (Jffrce.
(TRUE COPY)
ANNEXURE: R8 68
230
ANNEXURE-P-14
Comments on the presentation “on Testing of EVM via VVPAT Slip-

verification: Sample Issue “made before the Election Commissioner of
India on 24th August 2018 by Abhay G. Bhatt and Rajeeva L. Karandikar
[Dr. SK Nath – 25 August, 2018]
The MAIN issue before the public was whether selection of ONE (1) EVM
machine per Constituency was enough to prove that there is no difference
between EVM count vis a vis VVPAT slip count within a constituency. In
other words, whether there is scope of suspicion about the trustworthiness
of EVM machine. But instead of formulating issue in its right perspective,
the presenters set up the issue as below (Please refer to the slide on
Notation):
N – the size of the population – Total number of polling stations.
Comment: There is confusion about the definition used. The presenters

may please define what is the POPULATION – no of EVM machines
deployed or total number of polling booths. Two are not the same. In the
first line the presenters have defined the Population as “All EVMs used in
an election” whereas “N” has been defined as total number polling booth.
Secondly, THIS ISSUE IS ABOUT SELECTION OF POLLING BOOTH PER
CONSTITUENCY WHY THEY HAVE STUDIED all polling stations for any
election.
In subsequent slides the presenters set up two questions namely,
1) Should the sample size depend on the population size?

2) What is a reasonable sample size or sampling fraction?
69
231
Let us look at the basic formulation of determination of Sample size as per

any standard literature on Sample Survey is as follows assuming the
Population size infinite.
𝑝𝑞
𝑛 = 𝑍2 × ……………………………………………………………(i)
𝑒2
Where n = sample size (no. of polling booths to be determined), p = the

proportion of polling booths where total EVM counts do not match with
that of VVPAT slip counts and e = the margin of error – generally it is taken
as 5% or less. Z = the level of confidence. For Gaussian distribution it is 1.96
at 95% level of confidence.
Obviously, this formulation is not dependent on N which is the total

number polling booths in a constituency (or, election as defined by the
presenters). BUT WHEN THE “N” IS finite, IT IS NECESSARY TO APPLY FOR
“fpc” – finite population correction which is a function of N.
IN PRACTICAL TERMS IF WE USE ABOVE FORMULATION WHERE

“POPULATION” IS THE TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOTHS WITHIN A
CONSTITUENCY, THE SAMPLE SIZE(n) WILL BE DEPENDENT ON
“POPULATION SIZE(N)”. BUT WHERE ANY STUDY IS MADE TAKING ALL
CONSTITUENCIES TOGETHER WITHIN A STATE OR COUNTRY OR TOTAL EVM
MACHINES DEPLOYED IN AN ELECTION, THE SAMPLE SIZE WILL NOT BE
DEPENDENT ON THE SIZE OF POPULATION as done by the presenters
Let us now go to the second question, namely, what is a reasonable sample

size or sampling fraction.
The pertinent question is whether the sample is to determined according to

constituencies or all constituencies together for an election. The election
commission of India in their circular number 51/8/VVPAT-INST/2018-EMS
dated 13th February 2018, it has been clearly mentioned that one (1) polling
booth (station) per Assembly constituency will be selected for verification
of EVM counts with VVPAT counts. THIS IS UNDERSTANDABLE SINCE THE
70
232
PUBLIC DEMAND IS KNOW THE TRUST WORTHINESS OF EVM DEPLOYED IN

EACH CONSTITUENCY.
Thus, the issue is whether selection of one (1) polling booth is sufficient or
not. And if not, what should be the estimated value of “n” – the number of
sample polling booths to be selected. THUS, THE FORMULATION OF THE
ISSUE AS PRESENTED BY THE PRESENTERS IS NOT APPLICABLE.
Here it is observed that the presenters instead of using the formulation for
determining the sample size as per (i) above, they preferred to compute
probabilities based some past data where 843 EVM machines were chosen
and found ZERO mismatch with VVPAT count. IT IS NOT CLEAR WHAT MADE
THE PRESENTERS TO CHOOSE 843 EVMS TO PROVE THEIR HYPOTHESIS.
In the last two slides, they have computed the estimated number of EVM
machines to be selected in an election (although this is the subject of
discussion) using past data with some formulation without any reference
and using value of parameters.
The presenters have computed n = 479 Polling booths for an election. The
presenters in their concluding lecture wanted to justify that had this 479
been allocated over all constituencies within a state and then the effective
sample size per constituency will be much lower than 1. In other words of
the presenters, the sample size of one (1) per constituency as decided by
the office of Election Commission vide their letter under reference is more
than justified.
Now let us calculate the “margin of error” or risk we may find with sample
size =1 within a constituency with p=.02 (that means when the defective
EVM is just 2%)
(margin of error)2 = Z2 x pq /n = (1.96)2 x (.02) x (.98) /1 = .0747936 using

the formula at (i)
Means the “Margin of Error” is 27.35% . This will increase with higher value
of “p”. Will anyone in the world accept such high level of error?
Let us now come out with the fallacy in the presentation.

71
233
The analysis made by the presenters is too simplistic and according to their
formulation, even for the country as a whole the value of n= will be 479
AND it is done for a single Constituency the value of n will again be 479.
AN IMPORTANT ISSUE WHICH WAS NOT CONSIDERED:
Whatever be the size of “n”, the outcome of counts between EVMs and
VVPAT may vary from polling booth to polling booth in respect of each
party if party was analysis is done. THIS IS NATURAL AND NO CONCLUSION
CANNOT BE DONE ABOUT TRUSTWORTHYNESS OF ELECTION PROCESS.
Mind that if a fresh sample of “n” polling booths are chosen one may get
opposite result. In other words, if all (or majority) EVM machines show
higher figure as compared to VVPAT count in respect of a political Party
(say X) it does not necessarily prove any biasness of EVMs. In such situation,
it is necessary to conduct “Statistical Test of Significance” to prove
whether the EVMs are biased in favour of a political party. The method of
Testing has already been circulated.
72
234
ANNEXURE-P-15
Sampling Design and Test of Hypothesis for VVPAT based Auditing of EVM
By
Dr. S.K.Nath
(Fmr. Director-General, Central Statistical Organisation- 26 August, 2018]
1.Introduction:
The Election Commission of India has recently decided to use
VVPAT machines with each EVM machine during election of all Parliament
and State Legislative Assemblies. According to modus operandi for auditing EC
has decided that after declaration of results of an election, one VVPAT
machine will be randomly selected in each constituency and the VVPAT paper
slips will be counted and to be compared with the count of EVM machine with
which it was interfaced during polling in a polling booth.
Many has raised about the efficacy of the sampling design as

suggested by EC. It may be noted that whenever any decision is taken based on
sampling, it is necessary to observe two important issues namely, size of sample
(here VVPAT machine per Constituency minus defective machines) and the
sampling design. Unless these are as per proper Statistical theory, there will be
enough room for a wrong decision / wrong suspicion about EVMs. And this
can safe guarded using the Statistical theory of “Testing of Hypothesis”.
Before we took up this exercise, it was felt necessary to have

certain back ground information from experienced Bureaucrats who actually
conducted Elections and have the knowledge of the status of VVPAT based
auditing tried by the Election Commission in recently concluded election of
State Assemblies in Karnataka, Tripura and Gujarat. It is also felt necessary to
know the experience of those Senior Engineers who were deployed to various
Constituencies to provide technical support in case of any machine fault be it
EVM machine or VVPAT machine.
From my discussions with stakeholders, we could gather extremely

important information. Some of these are enumerated below:
73
235
i) 15 to 20% of VVPAT machines became “out of order” during the polling

at the polling station itself or subsequently. On enquiry, it is also noted
that these machines malfunctioned due to much heat generated inside
the machines resulting damaging the “Thermal paper” used as “VVPAT
paper slips. Secondly, the reflection of light above VVPAT machines
made VVPAT “sensor” malfunctioning in some cases.
ii) About 5% EVM machines found to have certain technical problem
mostly during the poll.
Besides, machine fault, following are other reasons which may cause
mismatch of EVM counts with VVPAT paper trails as per onsite
observation of a Senior Engineer from ECIL who was on duty during
polling of last election of Tripura etc.
It is also learnt that before commencement of actual polling, the

Presiding officer concerned is supposed to give a Demo of functioning
of EVM before all political party representatives by physically pressing
each BUTTON for a fixed number of times and placing before them
the result of “counts” of VVPAT paper trails and that of EVM. After the
Demo, the paper slips are to be destroyed and both the EVM and
VVPAT machined are to be “initialized” and sealed by the presiding
officer. In case the EVM machine is sealed without “initializing”, the
memory of the EVM will keep the “demo-counts” stored. This can the
source of mismatching of “counts” during auditing.
Based on above inputs, the following Sampling design has been

formulated
2. Sampling Design:
Suppose there are “N” number of polling booths in a
constituency and each polling has one or more than one EVM (since it is learnt
if any EVM malfunctions the machine is sealed and a new EVM is used for rest
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of polling process). And in a particular constituency the total number of EVMs

deployed will be higher than “N” - the no. of polling booths.
Notations used: Let N = be the size of population which is the total number of
Polling stations(booths) within a constituency.
Let n = be the sample size for the purpose of auditing.
As per the ORDER of EC dated 13th February 2018 on “mandatory verification

of VVPAT paper slips”, only one Polling Station will be selected per
constituency namely, n=1
The question is whether the sample size “n”=1 is statistically valid sample size.
In the following paragraph, we will explain the basic methodology followed for
sample selection.
3.Methodology:
Suppose:
There are k candidates contesting in a constituency
A polling booth in the constituency has P voters
i-th candidate got x1i votes as per EVM count and x2i votes as per VVPAT paper
slips
O1 is the total no. of NOTA votes, absentees and cancelled votes as per EVM
counting
O2 is the total no. of NOTA votes, absentees and cancelled votes as per VVPAT
print-outs
Then ideally,
∑𝑘𝑖=1 𝑥1𝑖 + 𝑂1 = ∑𝑘𝑖=1 𝑥2𝑖 + 𝑂2
This may not happen due to various reasons as stated above and but it is
necessary to verify whether the difference between two sets of “counts” are due
to RANDOM effect or due to faulty EVM . Random effect may include non-
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initialization of EVMs before commencement of polling at a polling booth

during an election, as mentioned at 1(ii) above or other formalities.
Suppose:
α = proportion of EVMs is presumed to be defective (as found during auditing)
β = 1 – α = proportion of EVM machines having no problem.
Since Statistics deals with chance variable there may be some error in making
decision based on “sample” even under “Random Sampling”. Thus, we attach
a level of “CONFIDENCE” linked to our decision (it may be 95% or 99%, say)
so that one can say the statistical result is at least 95% (or 99%) correct. These
figures are called “confidence level”. For the purpose of auditing it is better to
take higher confidence level namely, 99%
Now in order to find out the sample size (n out of N as defined above)
n= minimum sample of polling booths required for auditing for decision
making substantiated by Statistical theory;
According to Statistical methodology (can be found in any book on Sample

survey or UN publication), the minimum sample size (n) is given below
presuming “N” is quite large:
𝛼𝛽
𝑛 = 𝑍2 ×
𝑒2
where Z = standard normal deviate and

e = degree of accuracy required often known as “margin of error”
[design effect = 1 since the sample design uni-stage Simple Random
Sampling without replacement (SRSWOR)]
In case, where the value of “N” is small or finite, finite population correction
will be used namely,
The finite population corrected sample size (n’) is given by 𝑛′ = 𝑛 𝑋 𝐹𝑃𝐶 ;
where FPC= {(N-n)/(N-1)}1/2
Hereafter we shall call fpc corrected n’ as “n” for the sake of simplicity.
Table: Finite population corrected Sample size with 99% confidence level
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Probable Margin Estimate of Margin Estimate of

number of of Sample size of Sample size
Polling Booths error = with e=2% error with e=5%
within a 2% =5%
constituency
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
200 2% 69 5% 24
220 2% 82 5% 24
240 2% 92 5% 24
260 2% 99 5% 25
280 2% 105 5% 25
300 2% 110 5% 25
320 2% 114 5% 25
340 2% 118 5% 25
350 2% 121 5% 25
( Note: Minimum value of α has been used for above calculation. With
Higher value of α, the estimates of sample size “n” will go up.)
Conclusion: It is a matter of decision of EC to choose the “margin of error” as

2% or 5% accordingly, the sample size will depend.
4.Statistical Testing of Hypothesis
Since share of votes in respect of political party “Y” as per two machines ( EVM
and VVPAT) may ( or may not also) vary in both directions, it is not
DESIRABLE to come out with a final conclusion on the basis of outcome of
verification based on sample size proposed. As mentioned in the beginning, the
mismatch between EVM counts with VVPAT counts could be due to several
reasons other than faulty EVMs.
It may be noted that if a fresh sample of “n” polling booths are chosen one may
get even opposite result. In other words, if all (or majority) EVM machines show
higher figure as compared to VVPAT count in respect of a political Party (say
X) it does not necessarily prove any biasness of EVMs. In such situation, it is
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239
necessary to conduct “Statistical Test of Significance” to prove whether the

EVMs are biased in favour of a political party. The method of Testing of
Hypothesis is an instrument for finding out the truth.
Let us now work on proportion of votes recorded in favour of a candidate “Y”

by two different machines
Let p1 = is the proportion of VOTES received as per EVM counts in respect of
“Y” candidate as compared total vote cast in EVM
and p2 = is the proportion of VOTES received as per VVPAT counts in respect
of “Y” candidate as compared total paper slips found in VVPAT.
We may now come across following situation:

i) EVM proportion of Votes are more: p1 > p2
ii) TTVAT proportion of Votes are more: p1 < p2
iii) EVM and VVPAT proportions are equal: p1 = p2
Where p1 =x1/n1
where x1 = Total votes received by “Y” candidate as per count of all
EVMs
and n1 = Total number of votes cast in favour of all candidates as per
EVMs
Where p2 = x2/n2
x2= Total votes received by “Y” candidate as per count of paper slips
of VVPAT
n2 = Total number of votes cast in favour of all candidates as per
VVPAT slips
( Please note that n1 and n2 above are different from sample size (n) we
have talked earlier)
Now in order to derive at a conclusion that both EVMs and VVPATs

machines are reliable, we will use the following Statistical Test for which our
NULL Hypothesis will be H0(P1 = P2) which we will test against the alternative
Hypothesis H1(P1 ≠ P2), where P1 and P2 are the TRUE values of p1 and p2.
which are UNKNOWN
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240
To Test we will calculate a test-statistic (not statistics) as below for testing of

sample proportions:
Now accept the null Hypothesis H0(P1 = P2 ) if the value of Z < 1.96. That
means the count of EVM machines for the is NOT BIASED towards the
candidate “Y”. Otherwise, there is every reason to suspect the EVMs
concerned.
Such test can be done for other parties and also for other constituencies
wherever there is question of doubt expressed by any political parties.
6. Is there any need for stratification?

The way the sampling design has been explained above there is no need for
any stratification.
_____________________________________________________________
____________________________
Brief-Bio of Expert - Dr. Swaraj Kumar Nath
Dr. Nath is MSc in Statistics (Gold Medalist) from Calcutta University. He did
his PhD in development of innovative models for measurement of “Export
Swing” technology.
Joined Indian Statistical Service in 1971. Former Director-General, Central

Statistical Organisation and Chief Economic Census Commissioner of India.
Did pioneering work in Computerisation of Foreign Trade Statistics. Worked
with National Sample Survey of India.
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241
Active member of many Expert groups of United Nations, World Bank,

SIAP, Japan. After his superannuation he has been working as International
Consultant to UNFAO, UNIDO, WTO, UNSIAP, UNDP, World Bank,
ILO, ESCAP, GIZ, ADB, SAARC, PARIS21(OECD).
Important assignments/contributions: “Sampling Advisor” to UNDP

(Georgia) and ILO and assisted Russia in conducting multiple surveys in an
integrated form. Pioneering work on developing model for “Global Value
Chain” for FAO/UNIDO/WTO and creation of SAARCSTAT under
SAARC. Setting up Ghana Statistical Training Centre. Developing blue print
for “Implementation of Human Rights in Turkmenistan” for UNDP and
online Gender database “G-datashop” for SAARC’
Recently he developed “costing model” for development of Integrated Land

ports on India-Bangladesh and India-Nepal borders as ADB Consultant.
(TRUE COPY)
80
ANNEXURE: R9
81
© The Hindu Centre for Politics & Public Policy, 2018
The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Chennai, is an independent platform for
exploration of ideas and public policies. As a public policy resource, our aim is to help the
public increase its awareness of its political, social and moral choices. The Hindu Centre
believes that informed citizens can exercise their democratic rights better.
In accordance with this mission, The Hindu Centre’s publications are intended to explain and
highlight issues and themes that are the subject of public debate, and aid the public in making
informed judgments on issues of public importance.
Cover Photo: View of an Election Counting Centre during the 2018 Assembly Elections in
Bengaluru on May 15, 2018. Photo: Sampath Kumar G P
All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
without the written permission of the publisher.
82
Winning Voter Confidence:

Fixing India’s Faulty VVPAT-based Audit of EVMs
K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty

83
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I INTRODUCTION 1
II SOME ODDITIES OF STATISTICAL SAMPLING 5
HYPERGEOMETRIC DISTRIBUTION MODEL: AN

III 10
EXACT FIT FOR EVM SAMPLING
TH VM PER ASSEMBLY
IV 14
C TIT C ’ C
V ECI MUST SET THE CONTROVERSY AT REST 23
VI ANNEXURE I 25
VII ANNEXURE II 26
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ABSTRACT
A
s the world’s lar est democrac ears up for a season of elections, including the 2019
General Election, there is an urgent need to examine the integrity of the electoral
process. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are black boxes’ in which it is
impossible for voters to verify whether their votes have been recorded correctly, and counting
mistakes and frauds are undetectable and unchallengeable.
The oter eri ied paper audit trail’ (VVPAT) is an additional verifiable record of every vote cast
that allows for a partial or total recount independent of the ’s electronic count. It is a critical
safeguard that can help detect counting mistakes and frauds that would otherwise go undetected.
The success of the VVPAT audit, however, depends on a proper, statistically acceptable, and
administratively viable sample plan.
The Election Commission o India CI ’s prescription of a uniform sample size of just “one polling
station (i.e. one EVM) per Assembly Constituency” for all Assembly Constituencies and all States stirs
up an avoidable controversy and diminishes voter confidence. The ECI has not made public as to
how it arrived at this sample size, and it has also not clearly specified the population to which this sample
size relates. The latter is important because in the event of a defective EVM turning up in the sample,
the hand counting of VVPAT slips will have to be done for all the remaining EVMs of the specified
population.
In this Policy Watch, K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, a former Indian Administrative Service (IAS)
officer, demonstrates that the sample size prescribed by the ECI for VVPAT Audit is a statistical
howler that fails to conform to fundamental sampling principles, leading to very high margins of
error which are unacceptable in a democracy. By failing to detect outcome-altering miscounts due
to EVM malfunction or fraud, it defeats the very purpose of introducing VVPAT. Spending
hundreds of crores of rupees on procurement of VVPAT units makes little sense if their utilisation
for audit purposes is reduced to an exercise in tokenism.
This report suggests statistically correct and administratively viable sample sizes to eliminate
the risk of electoral fraud and infuse public confidence in the electoral process. It suggests ways in
which the ECI can set the controversy at rest and make a beginning with the elections for 5 States
whose counting is scheduled for December 11, 2018.
WINNING VOTER CONFIDENCE:
85
FI I I I ’ F -BASED AUDIT OF EVMS
I. INTRODUCTION
“ tatistical t in ing ill one ay be as necessary or e icient citi ens ip as t e ability to rea an rite.” 1
H.G. Wells
[1866-1946]
E
lectronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have many advantages including ease of operation,
reduction of invalid votes cast and the speeding up of counting. But they also have
some glaring disadvantages. EVMs are blac boxes’ in which it is impossible for
voters to verify whether their votes have been recorded and counted correctly. There is always
some risk of the votes cast being lost due to equipment malfunction. Electronic recounting is
meaningless because it will simply yield the same total. Contrary to the claim by the Election
Commission of India (ECI), even under election conditions and with all the security features and
administrative safeguards in place, it is still possible for a determined attacker, acting in collusion
with insiders, to tamper with EVMs and steal votes on a scale large enough to change election
outcomes2. The problem with EVMs is that counting mistakes and frauds are undetectable and
the losers are left with no means to challenge the results.
It follows that EVMs are not fully reliable and there should be an additional verifiable physical
record of every vote cast. This is called the oter eri ie paper au it trail (VVPAT). After a voter
casts his vote, he gets to view for a few seconds - before it drops into a box - a printed paper slip
so that he can verify if his vote has been recorded correctly. It provides a back-up in case of loss
of votes due to equipment malfunction, and allows for a partial or total recount of the paper slips
independent of the electronic count. In 2013, the Supreme Court passed an order mandating the
use of EVMs with VVPAT units and directed the ECI to implement them in a phased manner.
The importance of conceptual clarity

VVPAT is an additional safeguard, a very critical, and final safeguard, which can help detect
counting mistakes and frauds that would otherwise go undetected. But VVPAT, by itself, cannot
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
86
prevent EVM malfunction or tampering. If it is to have any real security value, it should be backed
by a proper sampling process. This involves 4 steps:
(1) Defining the population3 clearl in terms o population units’ pollin stations or s and
population boundaries’ e ssembl Constituenc , arliamentar Constituency, State,
country). The population size varies depending upon how the boundaries are set.
(2) Determining the correct sample size, or what is called the statistically significant sample size, of
EVMs whose VVPAT slips will be hand counted. The sample size should not only be
statistically sound but also administratively viable.
(3) Random sampling of the EVMs, preferably by draw of lots by the candidates or their authorised
representatives on the counting day.
(4) A ecision rule , based on the sample results, to determine whether the election results can be
declared or the hand counting of VVPAT slips should be done for all the remaining EVMs of
the population. The latter entails additional time and effort but is justified by the need to
declare the election results correctly without any outcome-altering miscounts due to EVM
malfunction or fraud. Two types of decision rules are possible:
a) Comparison of the EVM electronic count and the VVPAT hand count for the sample of
EVMs to verify if (i) the two totals tally, and (ii) the votes secured by the leading candidate tally. If
both tally, then there is no problem and the election results based on the EVM count can
be declared4. But if any one or both do not tally, then there is a problem and the hand
counting of VVPAT slips should be done for all the remaining EVMs of the population
and the election results declared only on the basis of the VVPAT count.
b) Adoption of “ ot Acceptance ampling , a statistical ualit control techni ue widel used in
industry and trade the world over for assuring the quality of incoming and outgoing goods.
The decision, based on counting the number of defectives in a sample, can be to accept the lot,
reject the lot, or even, for sequential sampling schemes, to take another sample and then
repeat the decision process.
n acceptance number’ - c’ - is specified. If the number of defectives found in the sample
is less than or e ual to c’, the lot is accepted otherwise, the lot is re ected nli e industr
and trade where the presence of a few defectives in the sample may be tolerated depending
upon the size of the lot and the quality norms, in the election context, the acceptance
number c’ will ha e to be zero.
In other words, the election results can be declared onl i no de ecti e ’5 is found
in the randomly drawn sample of EVMs. If even a single defective EVM is detected in the
87
sample6, the hand counting of VVPAT slips should be done for all the remaining EVMs
of the population and the election results declared only on the basis of the VVPAT count.
The second option is preferable and easier to implement. For the rest of this paper, it will be
assumed that this decision rule will be followed.
Unfortunately, the issue of sampling procedure for VVPAT-based audit of EVMs has received
scant attention by policy-makers, the academic community, and most importantly, the voting
public in India until recently7. This Policy Watch aims to point out the statistical weakness of the
procedure that is in place and make the case for statistically significant sample sizes that are also
administratively viable. VVPAT-based audits are the final check and remedy against electoral
fraud. The ECI, which oversees the largest electoral exercise in the democratic world should
ensure that this audit is both infallible and statistically acceptable, and correctly reflect voter-
choice.
The error of uniform sample size

The ECI has courted controversy by prescribing a uniform sample size of “one polling station (i.e. one
EVM) per Assembly Constituency” for all Assembly Constituencies and all States. This sample size
was adopted in the Assembly Elections for Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh held in November-
December 2017; for Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura held in February 2018; and for Karnataka
held in May 2018.
For reasons best known to it, the ECI has not made public as to how it arrived at this sample size,
and it has also not clearly specified the population to which this sample size relates. The latter is important
because in the event of a defective EVM turning up in the sample, the hand counting of VVPAT
slips will have to be done for all the remaining EVMs of the specified population.
A mistake with grave consequences

As we shall demonstrate shortly, the sample size prescribed by the ECI is a statistical howler that
fails to conform to scrutiny of statistical principles, leading to very high margins of error which are
unacceptable in a democracy. It is open to legal challenge on this score. It defeats the very purpose
of introducing VVPAT and is fraught with all the risks of conducting elections with paperless
EVMs.
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
88
In something as important as ensuring the integrity of the election process a process which in
any case takes about 2-3 months from the date of announcement to the date of counting a delay
of a few hours or even a couple of days in hand counting VVPAT slips of a larger sample of EVMs
should not matter at all. Spending hundreds of crores of rupees on procurement of VVPAT units
makes little sense if their utilisation for audit purposes is reduced to an exercise in tokenism. This
could result in the easily avoidable perception that the ECI is afraid that pro-active implementation
of VVPAT may show up many EVMs to be defective and raise a question mark about the sanctity
of the election process.
89
II. SOME ODDITIES OF STATISTICAL SAMPLING
“The mind is not designe to grasp t e la s o probability e en t oug t e la s rule t e uni erse.” 8
Steven Pinker
[Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University]
S
tatistical sampling is fundamental to almost all of our understanding of the world. It
provides a means of gaining information about a population without the need to examine
the population in its entirety. The latter is usually neither cost-effective nor practicable.
No estimate taken from a sample is expected to be exact, and there is likely to be some difference
between the sample estimate and the actual population alue Con idence le el’ is how certain one
wants to be that the population value is within the sample estimate and its associated margin of
error. The purpose of statistical sampling is to draw conclusions about a suitably defined population on
the basis of the most economic sample for a specified level of confidence in the results.
If I were to tell a layperson that (for a given set of parameters) the sample size required for a
population size of one lakh is 458 but the sample size required for a population size of one crore
(100 times greater) is only 459, he is likely to think that I am mistaken. It seems counter-intuitive
but that is the way statistical sampling theory works! As population size (N) increases, the sample
si e n also increases but at a much slower rate and hits a plateau’ be ond some point so that
further increases in population size have no effect on the sample size. The following example illustrates how
sample size varies with population size.
Let us assume that one per cent of the EVMs used in an election are defective. [It must be
remembered that a de ecti e ’, accordin to our de inition, is one which has a mismatch
between the EVM count and the VVPAT count]. Random samples are drawn without replacement.9
etectin a de ecti e is treated as a success’ The sample si es re uired, or arious
population sizes, for 99 per cent probability of detecting at least one defective EVM are shown in Table 1,
and are also displayed graphically in Chart 1. [All Tables and Charts compiled by author.]
5
POLICY WATCH NO. 7
90
Table 1
How Sample Size varies with Population Size
Population Size (N) Sample Size (n) % of n to N
100 99 99
200 180 90
500 300 60
1,000 368 36.8
2,000 410 20.5
5,000 438 8.76
10,000 448 4.48
20,000 453 2.27
50,000 457 0.91
1,00,000 458 0.46
2,00,000 458 0.23
10,00,000 459 0.05
20,00,000 459 0.02
1,00,00,000 459 0.005
Source: Compiled by author using Hypergeometric Distribution.
It is seen that when the population size of EVMs is 100, the sample size is 99 i.e. it is nearly as big
as the population size. When the population size is 1,000, the sample size is 368 and when the
population si e is , , the sample si e is ut the samplin raction’ n i e the sample
size relative to the population size is seen to decrease rapidly. The sample size then hits a plateau’
and increases to only 458 for a population size of one lakh; to only 459 for a population size of
ten lakhs, and remains at 459 even for a population size of one crore. In other words, for big populations,
the population size is irrelevant to sample size.
Chart 1 makes the point clearer. [To avoid the crowding of figures at the lower end and for ease
of visualisation, the figures are plotted on a logarithmic scale]. In this particular example, it is seen
that increase of population size beyond about 10,000 (N/n > 20) has little or no impact on the sample size.
91
Chart 1
Graphic Representation of Table 1
How Sample Size Varies with Population Size

457 458 458 459 459 459
500 438 448 453
450 410
400 368
Sample Size (n)
350 300
300
250
180
200
150 99
100
50
0
100 1000 10000 100000 1000000 10000000
Population Size (N)
The figures in Table 1 also tell us how statistical sampling is superior to arbitrary, non-statistical sampling
such as, sa , a lat per cent sample n ith statistical samplin , the sample si e
required is 99 for a population size of one hundred, and just 459 for a population size of one crore.
ut with a lat per cent sample , or a population si e of one hundred, the sample size is 10
which is too small and statistically incorrect; and for a population size of one crore, it is 10 lakhs
which is too bi and administrati el impractical Thus, a lat per cent sample is utterl wron
for small population sizes and is utterly inefficient for very big population sizes.
As Robert Schlaifer, author of a classic text on Statistics, puts it:
ne o the most common ul ar errors’ concernin samplin is the belie that the
reliability of a sample depends upon its percentage relationship to the population. Many
businessmen operate sampling inspection plans which call for inspection of a certain
percentage of each lot usually 10 per cent. . . however, this policy is completely misguided:
unless the sample takes in a really substantial fraction of the population, its reliability depends
on its absolute rather than its relative size. 10
The relevance of the foregoing discussion to VVPAT-based audit of EVMs should be obvious. In
the election context, depending upon how the population is defined, the population size can vary widely as shown
in Table 2 below.
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
92
Table 2
How population is defined and its effect on population size
Population Size (N)
Population Boundary
(Number of EVMs)
Assembly Constituency 30 to 300
Parliamentary Constituency 300 to 1800
Ranging from 589 (Sikkim) to
1,50,000 (U.P)
A State as a whole
For 9 States N < 10,000
For 20 States N > 10,000
India as a whole 10,00,000
is the s mbol or approximatel e ual’
The importance of defining the a i n’

Studying the figures in Table 1 and Table 2 together, it is obvious that if the EVMs used in an
Assembly Constituency are defined as the population, the population size (N) will be very small; the
sampling fraction (n/N) will be very big; and the sample size (n) will vary considerably across
Assembly Constituencies. The same is true if the EVMs used in a Parliamentary Constituency are
defined as the population.
If the EVMs in a State as a whole are defined as the population, there is considerable variation in
population size from the very small (Sikkim) to the very big (Uttar Pradesh). For the nine smaller
States with population size less than 10,000 EVMs, the sampling fraction (n/N) will be quite big
and the sample size will vary considerably across the States. For the 20 bigger States with
population si e reater than , s, the sample si e will hit a plateau’ in the 450s and
further increase in population size will have little or no effect on it.
I the s used in India as a whole are de ined as the population, due to the plateau e ect’, the
sample size is just one more than that for U.P.
Chapter will elaborate upon these points and explain wh the uni orm sample si e o one
per ssembl Constituenc or all ssembl Constituencies and all tates presently adopted by
the ECI is completely off the mark, and with serious implications.
The CI’s critics ha e not ared an better The are also uilt o committin the ul ar error’
to use obert chlai er’s tellin phrase o demandin arbitrar , non-statistical sample sizes like
93
per cent o the s per ssembl Constituenc or T-based audit of EVMs. This is
precisely what Congress leader Kamal Nath did in a writ petition filed before the Supreme Court11.
Other critics of the ECI have demanded per cent samples and e en per cent samples
under the mista en impression that a bi er percenta e uarantees reater accurac o results
It does not. What guarantees greater accuracy of results is a statistically significant sample size
based on a properly defined population and the appropriate probability distribution model.
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
94
III. HYPERGEOMETRIC DISTRIBUTION MODEL:

AN EXACT FIT FOR EVM SAMPLING
“ robability t eory is not ing more t an common sense re uce to calculation”.

Pierre-Simon Laplace
[French Mathematician, 1749-1827]
Consider the following two problems:

A: There are 100 fish in a pond. 95 of them are grey and five are green. The fish are caught without
replacement. The characteristic of interest here is a green fish, catching which is treated as a
success’ I we catch a random sample o , sa , three ish, what is the probabilit that the sample
will contain at least one green fish?
B: There are 100 EVMs in an Assembly Constituency. 95 of them are good while five are defective.
The characteristic o interest here is a de ecti e , detectin which is treated as a success’ I
we pick a random sample of, say, three EVMs, what is the probability that the sample will contain
at least one defective EVM?
Problems A and B are exactly equivalent. They are both classic examples of what is called a
Hypergeometric Probability Distribution. The probabilities can be calculated using the standard formula
for Hypergeometric Distribution12 or using Excel or an online calculator13 or any of the statistical
analysis software.
The answer to problems A and B is that there is only a 14.4 per cent probability of the sample size
o three ha in at least one success’14.
If we wish to be 99 per cent sure o ha in at least one success’, then the sample size should be
increased to 5915.
e ypergeometric istribution mo el is an e act it to t e EVM problem an s oul orm t e basis o the

sampling plan for VVPAT-based audit of EVMs16.
In the fish problem, if the number of green fish in the pond is large, say, 50 out of 100, then it is
easy to catch a green fish even if you cast the net narrow. But if the number of green fish in the
95
pond is very small, say, only five out of 100, then you will have to cast the net much wider in order
to catch a green fish.
Therefore, with the H per eometric istribution, as the proportion o the characteristic o
interest’ in the population decreases, the sample si e n re uired or detectin at least one success’
increases. Applied to VVPAT-based audit of EVMs, it means that the sample size (n) required for
detecting defective EVMs is the biggest when the proportion of defective EVMs (P) is assumed to be very small and
it gets smaller when P gets bigger. Table 3 and Chart 2 (compiled by the author) make this point clear.
Table 3
a i ai s i i n aa is i in s’
Population Size (N) = 100 EVMs.
Sample Size (n) required for
Proportion of Number of
99% probability of detecting
defective EVMs (P) defective EVMs in
at least one defective EVM
the population
in the sample
0.50 50 7
0.40 40 9
0.30 30 12
0.20 20 19
0.10 10 35
0.05 5 59
0.02 2 90
0.01 1 99
Chart 2
How Sample Size varies with with Proportion of

'characteristic of interest'
120
99
90
Sample Size (n)
100
80
59
60
35
40
19
7 9 12
20
0
0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
Proportion of defective EVMs (P)
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
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In the case of EVMs employed in an election, the proportion of defective EVMs (P) is unknown.
It may be zero or 0.01 or 0.02 or 0.10 or whatever. The ECI thinks that P is zero or very close to
zero. But just because tamperin didn’t ta e place in the past, we can’t assume that it won’t
take place sometime in the future. So even if P was zero or very close to zero in the past, there is
no uarantee that it won’t be hi h in the next election n debate on the precise alue o is
bound to be unin ormed and there ore, inconclusi e as each one’s uess would be as ood as the
other’s.
With the Hypergeometric Distribution model, the debate about the precise value of P is
inconsequential because the sample size is the greatest when P is very close to 0 (which is what
ECI claims it is), and it becomes lesser as P increases. So, the sample size calculated for P = 0.01 (one
per cent) will hold good for all higher proportions of defectives. It therefore obviates the need to make
questionable assumptions about the value of P or estimate it based on the data of past trials which may or may not
be fully reliable.
n an igging s ss ’
A question may be asked as to why we should not assume a value for P that is less than one per
cent, as then the sample size required will be even bigger. The following thought experiment will show
that the actual value of P required for the successful rigging of an election, even in a neck-to-neck contest, needs to be
much higher than one per cent.
In India, the average number of polling stations (N.B. There is one EVM per polling station) per
Assembly Constituency is around 240. The actual number of polling stations in an Assembly
Constituency varies widely from State to State and sometimes even within a State - from about
less than 30 to about 300-plus polling stations. In what follows, the figures are hypothetical but
the logic holds good, even if we assume different sets of figures.
On an average, a polling station has about 900 voters attached to it out of whom about 65 per cent
may vote. That means about 600 votes may be cast in a typical EVM. Not all of the votes can be
stolen’ i e trans erred to the winnin candidate b tamperin with the There are practical
limits to the maximum percenta e o otes o an that ma be stolen’ without attractin the
CI’s ad erse attention et us assume that this is about 20 per cent of the votes cast i.e. 120 votes.
Consider an Assembly Constituency where the election is expected to be very close. Let us assume
that the contest is onl between the candidates o the two main parties and the rest don’t matter,
97
and that the otes are stolen’ onl rom the ri al candidate o the other main part Clearl , it is
not sufficient to tamper with just one EVM to be sure of victory when the number of votes that
can be stolen’ is onl
A potential attacker may have to tamper with at least five EVMs in an Assembly Constituency to
steal’ at least x otes rom his ri al candidate, which would ma e him reasonabl
sure of victory. Even in a large-sized Assembly Constituency with 300 EVMs, five EVMs work
out to 1.5 per cent of the total EVMs; for an average-sized Assembly Constituency with 240 EVMs,
it is 2.1 per cent of the total; for an Assembly Constituency with 100 EVMs, it is five per cent of
the total; for even smaller Assembly Constituencies, the percentage is much higher.
o, our assumption o one per cent de ecti e s as the alue or is itsel on the lower side,
and will yield the most conservative (i.e. biggest) sample size that is adequate for our purpose. Let
us recall that for higher values of P, the sample size required is smaller.
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IV. I ’
FALLACY
“A statistical analysis properly con ucte is a elicate issection o uncertainties a surgery o

17
suppositions
M.J. Moroney
[Facts from Figures, 1951, p 3]
I
n Statistics, there are no hard-and-fast rules as to how a population should be defined
except that (i) the boundaries of the population should clearly separate items which are of
interest to us from items which are not, and (ii) the sampling process is administratively
viable.
We now proceed to show that whereas the boundaries for the population of EVMs can be an
Assembly Constituency, or a Parliamentary Constituency, or a State as a whole, or India as a whole, only one
of these populations [a State as a whole] is administratively viable.
It must be remembered that in the event of a defective EVM turning up in the chosen sample of
n’ s, the hand counting of VVPAT slips will have to be done for all the remaining (N n) EVMs forming
part of the population.
Let:
 Wn represent the administrative workload involved in hand counting VVPAT slips for the
chosen sample o n’ s, and
 W(N-n) represent the administrative workload involved in hand counting VVPAT slips of all the
remaining (N n) EVMs in the population.
There has to be a trade-off between Wn and W(N-n). As we shall demonstrate presently,

if Wn is small, W(N-n) is big and vice versa. Both cannot be small. e EC is at liberty to e ine population
suitably as long as it is commonsensical and represents the right balance between the administrative workloads
Wn and W(N-n).
99
In all the scenarios that follow, we assume a very low proportion of defective EVMs (P = one per
cent or 0.01) and work out the sample sizes required, using the Hypergeometric Distribution
model, for 99 per cent probability that the sample will detect at least one defective EVM.
1. EVMs of an Assembly Constituency as a i n’: Let us assume four hypothetical

Assembly Constituencies A, B, C and D with 50, 100, 200 and 300 polling stations (EVMs) in
them respectively. The results are shown in Table 4.
Table 4
Sample Sizes if EVMs of an ASSEMBLY CONSTITUENCY

are the Population
Probability that
the ECI -
Population Size prescribed sample
Number of
(N) [Total size of
defective
Assembly number of Sample Size % of one EVM
EVMs in the
Constituency polling stations (n) required n to N per Assembly
population @
in the Constituenc
P = 0.01
constituency] will fail to detect
a defective
EVM
A 50 1# 50 100 98%
B 100 1 99 99 99%
C 200 2 180 90 99%
D 300 3 235 78.3 99%
# - rounded off to the next highest integer.
s emplo ed in an ssembl Constituenc would seem to be the lo ical choice o population’

for Assembly Elections. But it is seen that the resulting sample sizes are nearly as big as the respective
population sizes leaving little or no scope for statistical sampling! We may as well have paper ballots and
count them 100 per cent instead of having EVMs and hand-counting the VVPAT slips of between
78.3 per cent and 100 per cent of EVMs in each Assembly Constituency!
oreo er, in the e ent o a de ecti e ’ turnin up in the chosen sample, the number o the
remaining EVMs in the population whose VVPAT slips need to be counted i.e. (N n) is very
less in this case. But this advantage is more than negated by the fact that the sample sizes are nearly
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
100
as big as the population sizes. In other words, workload Wn is enormous even if workload W(N-n)
is very less.
So, EVMs used in an Assembly Constituency are not an appropriate c oice or population .
The last column of Table 4 shows why the ECI-prescribed sample size of one EVM per
Assembly Constituenc is utterly wrong. The probability that the sample will not detect a defective EVM
is 99 per cent!18 (It is 98% for Assembly Constituency A only because of the rounding off).
2. EVMs of a Parliamentary Constituency as a i n’: A Parliamentary Constituency

typically comprises about six Assembly Constituencies and may have between 300 and 1800 polling
stations. Consider four hypothetical Parliamentary Constituencies P, Q, R and S with 300, 600,
1200 and 1800 polling stations in them. The results are shown in Table 5.
Table 5
Sample Sizes if EVMs of a PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUENCY

are the Population
Probability that the

Population Size ECI - prescribed
Number of
(N) sample size of
defective Sample
Parliamentary [Total number of % of one per
EVMs in the Size (n)
Constituency polling stations n to N Assembly
population @ required
in the Constituenc # will
P = 0.01
constituency] fail to detect a defective
EVM.
P 300 3 235 78.3 94.1%
Q 600 6 321 53.5 94.1%
R 1200 12 381 31.75 94.1%
S 1800 18 405 22.5 94.1%
# - This works out to a sample size of six EVMs per Parliamentary Constituency as per ECI norms.
EVMs employed in a Parliamentary Constituency would seem to be the logical choice for
population’ or Parliamentary Elections. But it is seen that the resulting sample sizes are very big
relative to the respective population sizes and do not serve the purpose of statistical sampling i.e.
workload Wn involved in the hand counting of VVPAT slips for the chosen sample size (n) is
enormous. In the event of a defective EVM turning up in the chosen sample, the number of the
101
remaining EVMs in the population whose VVPAT slips need to be counted, (N n), is also quite
large i.e. workload W(N-n) is also considerable.
o, so arliamentar Constituenc are not an appropriate choice or population’ It is not

administratively viable on both counts [Wn as well as W(N-n)]. The last column of Table 5 shows
why the ECI-prescribed sample size of one EVM per Assembly Constituenc is seriously wrong
even in this case. The probability that it will fail to detect a defective EVM is 94.1 per cent.
3. s s d in a a as a as a i n’: Let us consider the five States that will

have Assembly Elections in November-December 2018 Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Telangana,
Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. The results are shown in Table 6.
Table 6
Sample Sizes if EVMs of a STATE AS A WHOLE are the Population
Probability that
Average
the ECI-
Population Number of
Sample prescribed sample
Number Size (N) EVMs per
Size (n) size o one
of [Total Assembly
required % of EVM per
State Assembly number of Constituency
for the n to N Assembly
Constitue polling whose
State as Constituenc
ncies stations in VVPAT slips #
a whole will fail to
the State] should be
detect a defective
hand counted
EVM
Mizoram 40 1164 370 31.79 10 65.6%
Chhattisgarh 90 23672 455 1.92 5 40.3%
Telangana 119 32574 455 1.40 4 30.1%
Rajasthan 200 51796 457 0.88 2 13.3%
Madhya
230 65341 457 0.70 2 9.9%
Pradesh
# - This works out to a sample size of 40 EVMs for Mizoram as a whole, 90 EVMs for Chhattisgarh as a
whole, 119 EVMs for Telangana as a whole, and so on as per ECI norms.
As the population size of EVMs is very small for Mizoram, the sampling fraction (n/N) is big but
this is inevitable. For the remaining 4 States, the sampling fraction is very reasonable and is
administratively viable. The average number of EVMs to be hand counted per Assembly
Constituency is also indicated (fractions rounded off to the next higher integer). It is seen that the
administrative workload Wn involved in the hand counting of VVPAT slips for the chosen sample
size is minimal.
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
102
Since the sample size is for a State as a whole, in the event of a defective EVM turning up in the
chosen sample, the VVPAT slips of all the remaining EVMs in the population (throughout the State)
will need to be hand counted and not just EVMs of the particular Assembly Constituency in which
the defective EVM was detected. The workload W(N-n) involved in the hand counting of VVPAT
slips for the remaining (N n) EVMs is considerable. As already indicated, there has to be a trade-
off between Wn and W(N-n); both can’t be small hereas Wn is unavoidable, W(N-n) is contingent
upon a defective EVM being discovered which may be rare. It is preferable to have a small or
reasonable Wn and a large W(N-n) than vice versa.
Moreover, the purpose of VVPAT is not just to detect fraud but also to deter it. The knowledge
that if a defective EVM turns up, full hand count of VVPAT slips of all EVMs will be done is a
sufficient deterrent for any likely fraudster. It will also put pressure on the two EVM manufacturers
(Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited) to improve the quality
of their EVMs and VVPAT-units so that instances of malfunctioning of EVM or VVPAT unit are
negligible.
The average number of EVMs to be hand counted per Assembly Constituenc , which is ust two
or a asthan and adh a radesh, ma seem er small’ and create a doubt in the mind o a
la person about its correctness ut when it is remembered that the sample si e is or the tate
as a whole or both tates and that the discovery of even a single defective EVM anywhere
in the State among the sample of 457 will entail the hand counting of VVPAT slips of all the
remaining EVMs in all the Assembly Constituencies of the State, our layperson will realise that the
sample size is correct.
The last column of Table 6 shows why the ECI-prescribed sample size of one EVM per
Assembly Constituenc is seriously wrong even in this case. The probability that it will fail to detect a
defective EVM varies from 9.9 per cent for Madhya Pradesh to 65.6 per cent for Mizoram.
103
4. s India as a i n’: The results are shown in Table 7:

Table 7
Sample Size if INDIA AS A WHOLE is the Population
Average
Probability that the
Population Number of
Number Sample ECI-prescribed
Size (N) EVMs per
of Size (n) sample size of
[Total Assembly
Assembly required % of one per
Unit number of Constituency
Constitue for India n to N Assembly
polling whose
ncies in as a Constituenc
stations in VVPAT slips
India whole will fail to detect a
India] should be
defective EVM
hand counted
0.11
Almost
INDIA 4120 10,00,000 459 0.045 [rounded
ZERO
off to 1].
# - This works out to a sample size of 4,120 EVMs (after the rounding off) for India as a whole.
t oul appear t at t e EC as arri e at its sample si e o “one EVM per Assembly Constituency” by treating
EVMs in n ia as a ole as population . The ECI-prescribed sample size will work correctly only in
this case. But the ECI as well as its statistical advisors seem to have overlooked two crucial aspects:
First, since the sample si e is or n ia as a ole , in the event of a defective EVM turning up in
the chosen sample, the VVPAT slips of all the remaining EVMs in the population (i.e. throughout
India) will need to be hand counted, and not just EVMs of the particular Assembly Constituency in which
the defective EVM was detected. Can the ECI keep the declaration of results throughout India on hold
and order the hand counting of all the remaining 99.96 per cent of EVMs in the country? Surely
not hen s used in the countr as a whole are treated as the population’, Wn becomes very
small but this small sample size comes at a big price’, viz. W(N-n) is too large and just not
administratively viable in the event of a defective EVM turning up in a sample anywhere in the
country.
Second, EVMs employed in 'India as a whole' can be treated as the population’ only for an all-India
Parliamentary Election; not for individual State Assembly Elections. When we have an Assembly Election
for Mizoram or Telangana or Madhya Pradesh, the ECI should treat only the EVMs used in the
'State as a whole' as the population’ In that case, the sample size should be 370 for Mizoram; 455
for Telangana; and 457 for Madhya Pradesh which works out to an average of 10 EVMs per
Assembly Constituency for Mizoram; four for Telangana; and two for Madhya Pradesh. So, the
ECI-prescribed sample size of "one EVM per Assembly Constituency" which may be appropriate for 'India as a
whole' is illogical and inappropriate if used for Assembly Elections. So EVMs used in the country as a whole are
also not an appropriate c oice or population .
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
104
What should the ECI do?

s alread stated, the CI is at libert to de ine the population’ suitabl as lon as it is
logical, statistically sound, administratively viable, and represents a proper trade-off between
Wn and W(N-n). It is evident from the foregoin discussion that s used in ssembl
Constituenc ’, arliamentar Constituenc ’ or the countr as a whole’ are T suitable choices
or population’ The only suitable choice, both for Assembly and Parliamentary Elections, are EVMs used in
a tate as a ole .
Is the ECI worried that the administrative workload W(N-n) involved in the hand counting of
VVPAT slips all over a State on discovery of a stray defective EVM anywhere in the State is too
much It shouldn’t be worried or reasons
(i) The CI’s present sample si e holds ood onl when s used in India as a whole’ are
treated as the population’ In the e ent o a de ecti e turnin up an where in India, the
hand counting of VVPAT slips must be done for VVPATs of all EVMs in all constituencies
throughout India. In other words, the status quo is much worse.
(ii) The CI has claimed per ect tall in ’ between electronic counts and T hand
counts in 843 constituencies in the past Assembly elections where VVPAT-units were
deployed and its sample si e o one per ssembl Constituenc was adopted I this
was indeed the case, the ECI has nothing to worry about as the biggest sample size for a State
is onl ut the correctness o the CI’s claim is open to uestion First, there is a bias in
sample selection when the de ecti e T units that couldn’t be replaced are le t out rom the
population from which the sample of one EVM per Assembly Constituency is chosen. Since
the percentage of defective VVPAT units on polling day was reportedly as large as 20 per cent,
and the polling went ahead in many of these polling stations without the VVPAT units, the legitimacy of
the population is open to question. Second, the CI’s minuscule sample si e o one per
Assembly Constituenc had er hi h mar ins o error and would ha e missed out on man
defective EVMs which a larger, statistically sound sample may have detected.
If the ECI wants greater accuracy, it should go in for a sample size that will have 99.9 per cent
probability of detecting at least one defective EVM. The sample sizes for the five States are
indicated in Table 8.
105
Table 8
Sample Sizes using A STATE AS A WHOLE as the Population
Percentage of defective EVMs (P) is assumed as 1%.
Probability of detecting at least one defective EVM is chosen as 99.9%.
Average Number
Population Sample Size of EVMs per
Number of Size (N) [Total (n) required Assembly
% of
State Assembly number of for the Constituency
n to N
Constituencies polling stations State as a whose VVPAT
in the State] whole slips should be
hand counted
Mizoram 40 1164 508 43.64 13
Chattisgarh 90 23672 677 2.86 8
Telengana 119 32574 680 2.09 6
Rajasthan 200 51796 683 1.32 4
Madhya
230 65341 685 1.05 3
Pradesh
The sample sizes and the average number of EVMs per Assembly Constituency whose VVPAT
slips are to be hand counted are relatively greater in this case but are still reasonable and
administratively viable.
Sample size determination is not a purely statistical exercise. Since elections are the bedrock of
democracy and the perceptions of political parties and voters are important, the ECI would do well
to opt for 99.9 per cent probability that the sample will detect at least one defective EVM.
The average number of EVMs to be hand counted per Assembly Constituency have been indicated
in Table 6 and Table 8 so as to i e an order-of-ma nitude’ i ure is-a-vis the present figure of
one EVM per constituency. Since the sample is for a State as a whole and since the number of
polling stations per Assembly Constituency may vary widely even within a State, the ECI may
apportion the total sample among the various Assembly Constituencies in proportion to the number of
polling stations in each constituency and round off fractions to the next higher integer. The rounding-off is likely
to increase the sample size for each constituency slightly which is a good thing.
The State-wise sample sizes required have been worked out and are shown in Annexure I (for
99% probability of detecting at least one defective EVM) and Annexure II (for 99.9% probability).
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
106
It is best that the ECI do the necessary calculations and communicate to the Chief Electoral
Officer (CEO) of each State the sample size for hand counting of EVMs' VVPAT slips (1) for the
State as a whole, and (2) for each Assembly Constituency. Unless there is a significant change in
the number of polling stations, the CI should permanentl ix’ the sample si e or the tate as a
whole and for each Assembly Constituency for all future elections.
There may be a problem for by-elections where an Assembly Constituency or a Parliamentary

Constituency will have to be taken as the population and the sampling fraction for VVPAT-based
audit will be very large as seen in Table 4 and Table 5. But the ECI usually groups together several
Assembly Constituencies and Parliamentary Constituencies for which by-elections have to be
conducted. The total EVMs used in all these by-elections put together may be taken as the population
which will yield an administratively viable sample size for VVPAT-based audit.
107
V. ECI MUST SET THE CONTROVERSY AT REST
“ ere are t o possible ays to approac p enomena. e irst is to rule out t e e traor inary an ocus on
the "normal." The examiner leaves aside "outliers" and studies ordinary cases. The second approach is to
consider that in order to understand a phenomenon, one needs to first consider the extremes - particularly if,
li e t e lac an t ey carry an e traor inary cumulati e e ect.” 19
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
[Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering]
M
ost people expect all swans to be white because that’s what their experience tells
them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. According to Nassim Nicholas
Taleb, a lac wan ent is characterized by the following three attributes.
First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past
can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, it will seem
obvious in hindsight with people asking why the warning signs were not noticed sooner. In sum:
rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability.
The Great Depression of 1929, the precipitous demise of the Soviet bloc during 1989-91, the
global financial crisis of 2008, and the Punjab National Bank-Nirav Modi scam of 2018 were some
typical Black Swan Events. History is replete with them. Our inability to predict the course of
history is due to our inability to predict Black Swan Events. According to Taleb, no matter how
hard we try, it is very likely that the next Black Swan Event will also take us by surprise. So, while
we should prepare for the specific threats that we envision we should not forget to also prepare
for the unexpected.
Rigging of an election through raud its Taleb’s depiction o a lac wan Event. The
unexpected that the CI should prepare or is EVM fraud. It may have a very low (but non-
zero) probability and it may be unpredictable in terms of time and place. However, if EVM fraud
were to occur, the damage to the sanctity of the electoral process will be immense. There is no
point in regretting or rationalising after the event.
What is worse, without a credible VVPAT-based audit of EVMs, the fraud may be undetectable
and may be carried on with impunity. The ECI should, therefore, move out from its comfort zone
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
108
and ocus on outlier e ents li e raud The risk of EVM fraud, howsoever remote, is
something the political parties and voters of India will never accept not because they
overestimate the risk but because the cost of the catastrophe is too dreadful to contemplate.
More than 100 years after H.G. Wells wrote that statistical understanding will one day be as
necessary for efficient citizenship as reading and writing, a shocking lack of statistical
understanding continues to persist among citizens in India today. The ECI prescribing a patently
wrong sample si e o one per ssembl Constituenc or all ssembl Constituencies in
all States and managing to get away with such a statistical howler for so long is a case in point.
It is important that the ECI must set the controversy at rest and implement the Supreme Court’s
order of 2013 properly both in letter and spirit. It should adopt the statistically correct sample sizes
of EVMs for hand counting VVPAT slips, suggested in this paper, starting from the Assembly
Elections for Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh due in
November December 2018. If the ECI persists with its statistically incorrect sample, an adverse
inference is liable to be drawn against it and it may lose the perception battle in the minds of the
political parties and voters.
109
Annexure I
State-wise Sample Sizes for 99% probability that the sample will detect at
least one defective EVM
EVMs in t e tate as a ole are assume as population
Average
Population Size Number@ of
Number of
(N) = Total Sample EVMs whose
Assembly
Number of Size (n) VVPAT slips
Sl.No. State Constituenc
Polling Stations for the are to be hand
ies in the
(EVMs) in the State counted per
State
State Assembly
Constituency
1 Sikkim 32 589 315 10
2 Mizoram 40 1164 370 10
3 Goa 40 1642 409 11
4 Nagaland 60 2194 413 7
5 Arunachal Pradesh 60 2562 414 7
6 Manipur 60 2794 422 8
7 Meghalaya 60 3082 424 8
8 Tripura 60 3174 424 8
9 Himachal Pradesh 68 7521 446 7
10 Jammu & Kashmir 87 10035 450 6
11 Uttarakhand 70 10854 450 7
12 Haryana 90 16357 451 6
13 Kerala 140 21498 454 4
14 Punjab 117 22615 454 4
15 Chhattisgarh 90 23672 454 6
16 Jharkhand 81 24803 455 6
17 Assam 126 24890 455 4
18 Telangana 119 32574 455 4
19 Odisha 147 35959 455 4
20 Andhra Pradesh 175 39970 456 3
21 Gujarat 182 50128 457 3
22 Rajasthan 200 51796 457 3
23 Karnataka 224 56696 457 3
24 Bihar 243 65337 457 2
25 Madhya Pradesh 230 65341 457 2
26 Tamil Nadu 234 65616 457 2
27 West Bengal 294 77247 458 2
28 Maharashtra 288 91329 458 2
29 Uttar Pradesh 403 150000 458 2
INDIA 4120 About 10,00,000 459 1
@ - Rounded off to the next higher integer.
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POLICY WATCH NO. 7
110
Annexure II
State-wise Sample Sizes for 99.9% Probability that the sample will detect at
least one defective EVM
EVMs in t e tate as a ole are assume as population
Average
Number Population Size
Number@ of
of (N) = Total Sample
Assembly Number of Size (n) EVMs whose
Sl. No. State VVPAT slips are to
Constitue Polling Stations for the
ncies in (EVMs) in the State be hand counted per
the State State Assembly
Constituency
1 Sikkim 32 589 461 15
2 Mizoram 40 1164 508 13
3 Goa 40 1642 574 15
4 Nagaland 60 2194 589 10
5 Arunachal Pradesh 60 2562 595 10
6 Manipur 60 2794 608 11
7 Meghalaya 60 3082 613 11
8 Tripura 60 3174 614 11
9 Himachal Pradesh 68 7521 659 10
10 Jammu & Kashmir 87 10035 667 8
11 Uttarakhand 70 10854 669 10
12 Haryana 90 16357 672 8
13 Kerala 140 21498 677 5
14 Punjab 117 22615 678 6
15 Chhattisgarh 90 23672 679 8
16 Jharkhand 81 24803 678 9
17 Assam 126 24890 678 6
18 Telangana 119 32574 680 6
19 Odisha 147 35959 680 5
20 Andhra Pradesh 175 39970 681 4
21 Gujarat 182 50128 683 4
22 Rajasthan 200 51796 683 4
23 Karnataka 224 56696 684 4
24 Bihar 243 65337 685 3
25 Madhya Pradesh 230 65341 685 3
26 Tamil Nadu 234 65616 684 3
27 West Bengal 294 77247 685 3
28 Maharashtra 288 91329 685 3
29 Uttar Pradesh 403 150000 686 2
About
INDIA 4120 688 1
10,00,000
@ - Rounded off to the next higher integer.
111
Endnotes
1
In his presidential address to the American Statistical Association in 1950, Samuel S. Wilks said,
erhaps H ells was ri ht when he said tatistical thin in will one da be as necessar
or e icient citi enship as the abilit to read and write ’ The uote was then published in the
ssociation’s ournal in This is the orm in which it is popularl uoted ut H ells’
original quote which appeared in his book “Man in in t e Ma ing” was as ollows The
great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless
social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a
sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be
understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex
world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in
a era es and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write
2
Shetty, K.A.V. 2018. “Ma ing Electronic Voting Mac ines amper-proof: Some Administrative and
Technical Suggestions , The Hindu Centre or olitics and ublic olic , olic atch o ,
published on August 30, 2018 and updated on October 3, 2018. Please see Chapter VI “ e
Vulnerability o n ian EVMs”, Chapter VII “ ree ecurity oop oles” and Chapter VIII “EC s
A ministrati e a eguar s are not oolproo ”.
3
In Statistics, the population, or universe, refers to the complete set of elements (persons or objects)
that possess some common characteristic which is of interest to the researcher. e.g. all persons
with HIV-AIDS in a city; all EVMs used in an election, etc. A sample is a subset of the population
consisting of one or more elements drawn from the population. Based on the sample results,
the researcher can make inferences or extrapolations from the sample to the population.
4
Let us assume that 300 EVMs were used in an election. A sample of three EVMs is drawn
randomly. As per the EVM electronic count, let the total votes polled in these three EVMs put
together be 1,800 and the votes secured by the leading candidate be 600. If the hand count of
VVPAT slips for these three EVMs also yields the same total of 1,800 votes and the same
number of 600 votes for the leading candidate, then there is no possibility of any EVM
malfunction or fraud. The results of the election (for 300 EVMs put together) can be declared
based on their EVM electronic count.
5
A 'defective EVM' is defined as one which has a mismatch between the 'EVM count' and the
'VVPAT count'. The mismatch may be due to EVM malfunction or EVM tampering or
VVPAT-unit malfunction or mistakes in the hand counting of VVPAT slips. In the event of a
mismatch, at least one recounting of the VVPAT slips of the particular EVM may have to be done
to rule out mistakes in hand counting. The VVPAT total as per the recount should tally either
with the count or the pre ious T count I it doesn’t tally with either, further
recounts should be done until the last VVPAT count matches either with the EVM count or
one of the previous VVPAT counts.
27
POLICY WATCH NO. 7
112
6
Should the discrepancy of even a single vote or single digit votes between the EVM count and
VVPAT count (even after following the recount procedure stated in Endnote 5 above) lead to
the desi nation o the as de ecti e’ Ideall , yes. Or, should the ECI ignore minor
discrepancies of not more than, say, five votes in order to avoid the huge administrative workload
of hand counting VVPAT slips of all the remaining EVMs of the population? Whether to ignore
such minor discrepancies or not in cases where there will be no change in election outcomes is
a policy decision to be made by the ECI in consultation with various political parties and other
stakeholders.
7
Chapter 5 titled “ er unctory mplementation o VV A ” of Policy Watch no. 6 “Ma ing Electronic
Voting Machines Tamper-proof: Some Administrative and Technical Suggestions written b the author
was one of the first papers in India to deal with the issue of sampling plan of EVMs for
VVPAT-based audit. In that paper, sample sizes were calculated using ready reckoners based
on the ormal istribution model The ormal istribution model is a reasonabl ood it’
to the EVM problem but the Hypergeometric Distribution model (which is used in the present
paper) is even better for the following three reasons:
(i) It is an exact it’ to the problem
(ii) It yields a more economic (i.e. smaller) sample size; and
(iii) In the Normal Distribution model for a given confidence level and a given margin of
error the sample si e is maximum when the roportion o de ecti es’ in the
population is assumed to be 0.5 and decreases significantly as the value of P decreases and
approaches zero. But in the Hypergeometric Distribution, the exact reverse is the case i.e.,
the sample size is maximum when P is close to zero and decreases significantly as P
increases. So, irrespective of what the true value of P is, if we calculate the sample size for
P very close to zero such as P = 0.01 (which is what the ECI thinks it is), then this holds
good for all the other scenarios where P is higher. We do not need to make any
questionable assumptions about the value of P as in the Normal Distribution model nor
do we need to extrapolate trends based on questionable past empirical data.
8
Pinker, S. 1997. “ o t e Min or s” W.W.Norton & Co.
9
When a sample is drawn without replacement from a finite population, the probability of occurrence
of the various outcomes is given by the Hypergeometric Probability Distribution model.
Note: probabilit distribution’ is a mathematical function that gives the probability of

occurrence o di erent possible outcomes in an experiment The simplest case is the uni orm
distribution’ in which all outcomes ha e an e ual probabilit o occurrence part rom
Hypergeometric Distribution, Binomial Distribution, Poisson Distribution, and Normal
Distribution are some of the most commonly used probability distribution models.
10
Schlaifer, R. (1959) “ robability an tatistics or usiness ecisions An Introduction to Managerial
Economics un er ncertainty”, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
113
11
Supreme Court of India, 2018. Writ Petition (civil) no. 935 of 2018 in Kamal Nath vs Election
Commission of India. Oct. 12.
12
In H per eometric istribution, the probabilit o indin x’ successes in a sample o si e n’
drawn rom a population o si e ’ with ’ successes is i en b the ormula
M Cx . (N-M)C(n-x)
Prob (x, n, M, N) =
NCn
13
The online Casio calculator available at https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1180573201
is very useful for calculating probabilities under Hypergeometric Distribution. Enter the
known values o population si e and successes’ in the population , where
where is the proportion o the characteristic o interest’ Tr out di erent alues o sample
size (n) in the calculator such that the probability that x = 0 (of not findin an success’ in
the sample) is less than the specified level, say, less than 0.01 or 0.001; or, which is the same thing,
the probabilit o indin at least one success’ in the sample is reater than or
14
In the online Casio calculator referred to above, enter N = 100, M = 5, n = 3, x = 0 (not finding
e en a sin le success’ The probabilit o x ’ is r, the probabilit o ettin at least
one success’ is 0.856] = 0.144 i.e. 14.4%.
15
In the same calculator, enter N = 1 , ,x not indin e en a sin le success’ nter
increasin alues o n’ till the probabilit o x ’ becomes less than It is seen that the
probabilit o x ’ is or n , and is or n o, with a sample si e of 59,
the probabilit o not ettin a sin le success’ is less than r, the probabilit o ettin at
least one success’ is
16
The superiority of the Hypergeometric Distribution model to the Normal Distribution model
has already been discussed in Endnote 7. The Binomial Distribution is applicable to infinite
populations or where the samples are taken with replacement. In Binomial Distribution, the sample
size (n) is independent of the population size (N) and depends on the proportion of the
characteristic of interest (P) and the confidence level (C). The formula for sample size is:
n = ln (1 C) / ln (1 where ln’ stands or natural lo arithm
For C = 0.99 and P = 0.01, n = ln (1-0.99) / ln (1-0.01) = ln (0.01) / ln (0.99) = 458.21, rounded
off to 459 (the next highest integer).
Only the Hypergeometric Distribution gives the correct, economic sample sizes for finite
populations. In the example discussed in pages 2-4 (please see Table 1), with Hypergeometric
Distribution, n = 448 when N = 10,000; n = 457 when N = 50,000; n = 458 when N = 1,00,000
and n= 459 when N = 5,00,000. So, as the population size (N) increases, the sample size (n) as
per the Hypergeometric Distribution model approaches the value given by the Binomial
Distribution model The inomial istribution model is a reasonabl ood it’ when the
population size is very large but is not suitable for smaller, finite populations.
29
POLICY WATCH NO. 7
114
17
Moroney, M.J. 1951. “ acts rom igures”, Penguin, London.
18
In the online Casio calculator in end note 11, enter N = 300, M = 3, n = 1 and x = 0. The
probabilit o x i e o not indin a sin le success’ is That is, the CI-prescribed
sample size will miss a defective EVM 99% of the time. Repeat the calculations for N = 200,
N = 100 and N = 50 to get the figures for the last column of Table 4.
19
Taleb, N, N. 2007 The lac wan The Impact o the Hi hl Improbable , Random House.
115
(TRUE COPY)
116
ANNEXURE: R10
A Hitchhiker's Guide to Electronic Voting Machines and VVPATs
18.04.2019, Antar Bandyopadhyay, Krishanu Maulik and Rahul Roy,
The Wire
In Douglas Adams’s irreverent sci-fi classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to

the Galaxy, the supercomputer Deep Thought, after spending
seven-and-a-half million years on it, derives the ‘Answer to the
Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything’. It is the
number 42.
Deep Thought also clarifies that the answer is meaningless because

the people who programmed the computer didn’t actually know what
the question was.
Closer to home, a few judges of our Supreme Court and many

renowned lawyers sought to understand the meaning of the number
‘479’, obtained ostensibly from an Indian Statistical Institute report to
the Election Commission of India. The three learned authors of this
report spent seven-and-a-half months to come up with this number,
which indicates the number of EVMs that should be randomly
checked with VVPAT.
On a careful reading of the report, we now understand the question to

which the answer is 479.
It is the answer to a question of statistical quality-control. Indeed, this

would have been the same answer to the question of how many
pencils need to be checked to ensure that in a pencil factory, the
weekly production of 15 lakh pencils doesn’t have more than 2%
defects – or in other words, whether the EVMs when they were
produced had manufacturing defects or not.
Before we move to other aspects of this report, we first point out a

fundamental flaw in the assumptions on which this report is based.
The report considers all the EVMs of India to be a single population,
among which defects have to be searched. India does not have a
presidential system of elections. Instead, we choose representatives in
each constituency to send to Parliament.
117
In such a model, a voter from a particular constituency has to be

satisfied that their representative has legitimately won the elections
and the result is not because of machine tampering. Thus, the random
checks have to be done among the machines at constituency-level,
which constitutes the relevant population.
Once this fact is noted, then following the ‘hypergeometric model’ of

the report, and assuming 1,500 EVM-VVPATs in each constituency
with 2% having defects, one comes to a figure of approximately 350
per constituency as the number of EVMs whose VVPATs have to be
tallied. This gives an overall number for the country of around 2 lakh
of randomly selected EVMs whose VVPATs have to be cross-checked.
However, this number of 350 per constituency, which is arrived at

from the hypergeometric model used in the report, is flawed.
Indeed suppose that there are 15 lakh voters in each of two distinct
constituencies ‘A’ and ‘B’. Also assume that in constituency A the
winning margin is 1.5 lakh votes, while in constituency B the winning
margin is 15,000 votes, and this is not an unrealistic scenario, as a
perusal of past election data will suggest. It is not rocket science to
realise that even a small error may change the outcome in constituency
B, while it will need a larger error to change the outcome in
constituency A.
For constituency B, tampering of 7,500 votes is enough to change the

outcome, while for constituency A there has to be tampering of 75,000
votes. In percentages terms, an error in the count of 0.5% of the
electorate of constituency B is enough to change the outcome, whereas
in constituency A the percentage required is 5%.
Thus the number of samples to be checked for constituency B has to

be much larger than that for constituency A. Indeed the sample size
has to depend on the size of the winning margin. A ‘one size fits all’
cannot be a solution as is done in the said report where a uniform 2%
error is used.
A quick calculation, assuming there are 1,500 EVMs in the

constituencies (each EVM on an average handles 1000 votes), it will
be enough to check 150 VVPATs for the constituency ‘A’, while to
118
obtain a precision given in the report, it will be required to check

about 950 VVPATs for the constituency ‘B’.
The report also proceeds to give a sequential scheme of checking in

case of mismatch between the VVPAT and the EVM counts. If there is
only one mismatch in the 479 randomly selected EVMs, the report
suggests that an extra 128 EVMs be randomly selected and their
VVPATs checked for mismatches. If there are two mismatches in the
original 479 and the additional 128, then another extra 110 are to be
selected and their VVPATs tallied to check for mismatches, etc.
Again, clearly, if there is a mismatch in an EVM used in a particular

constituency, in the random choice of the EVMs for the additional
checks, the chosen machines may come from completely different
constituencies. This hardly makes any sense.
There is one more fallacy of checking a fixed number (1 or 5) of

EVM-VVPATs for each assembly segment of a parliamentary
constituency. For example, each parliamentary constituency in UP has
five assembly segments and hence, assuming five VVPATs are to be
verified per assembly segment, we need to check 25 machines.
On the other hand, Mizoram has one parliamentary constituency with

40 assembly segments, leading to checking of 200 of them. Given the
objection of the ECI about the difficult terrain, checking 200 machines
in Mizoram should have been a bigger concern than checking only
five in UP. An even more interesting conundrum arises in the five
parliamentary seats in the union territories without any assembly.
Recall what professor P.C. Mahalanobis said to the 125th meeting of

the American Statistical Association, about the difficulty of applying
“Statistics as a Key Technology” to the official systems in India. The
Father of Indian Statistics lamented: “The very idea of having
crosschecks is frightening as conflicting results arising from
independent checks would be ‘confusing’ and must be resisted and is
being resisted even today.”
How correct and contextual Mahalanobis sounds, even 54 years later.

119
Antar Bandyopadhyay, Krishanu Maulik and Rahul Roy work at the

Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Division of the Indian
Statistical Institute. The views expressed here are personal.

Report an error
SOURCE:
https://thewire.in/government/a-hitchhikers-guide-to-electronic-voting
-machines-and-vvpats
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SECTION: PIL
IN THE MATTER OF:
VERSUS
FILING INDEX
S.NO. PARTICULARS COPIES C.FEE
1. ADDITIONAL AFFIDAVIT ON BEHALF OF 1 20/-

THE PETITIONER
2. ANNEXURE A1 TO A3 1 NIL
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
NEW DELHI 110001
CODE NO.: 515
NEW DEHI:
DATED: 17.08.2023
DOL RAJ BHANDARI, REGD. CLERK, I.D. NO. 3745, MOB. NO. 9868255076
IN THE MATTER OF:
VERSUS
PAPER BOOK
INDEX
1. Additional Affidavit on behalf of the Petitioner 1-6
2. Annexure-A1: A copy of the Article published on 7-35

SSRN dated 25.07.2023
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dated 01.08.2023
4. Annexure-A3: A copy of the Article published dated 40-44

29.07.2023

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ANNEXURE: A1
Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy
Sabyasachi Das*
Ashoka University
July 3, 2023
Abstract
Democratic backsliding is a growing concern globally. This paper contributes to the discussion
by documenting irregular patterns in 2019 general election in India and identifying whether they are
due to electoral manipulation or precise control, i.e., incumbent party’s ability to precisely predict
and affect win margins through campaigning. I compile several new datasets and present evidence
that is consistent with electoral manipulation in closely contested constituencies and is less support-
ive of the precise control hypothesis. Manipulation appears to take the form of targeted electoral
discrimination against India’s largest minority group – Muslims, partly facilitated by weak monitor-
ing by election observers. The results present a worrying development for the future of democracy.
JEL Codes: D72, D73, P00, Z12

Keywords: Electoral fraud, precise control, democracy, economics of religion
* Das: Economics Department, Ashoka University, National Capital Region, India. Email: sabyasachi.das@ashoka.edu.in.
The author wishes to thank Lakshmi Iyer, Ajay Shenoy, Sam Asher, Milan Vaishnav, Amrita Dhillon, Sourav Bhattacharya,
Siddharth George Ajay Shah, Rohit Lamba, Gaurav Chiplunkar, Raphael Susewind, Jonathan Lehne, Dev Patel, Neelanjan
Sircar, Aaditya Dar, Vimal Balasubramaniam and Sugat Chaturvedi for valuable comments. Rakesh Kumar provided excellent
research assistance. The author is responsible for errors, if any.
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4512936

8
I Introduction
Free and fair elections are cornerstone of a democracy. Yet in many democracies, the fairness of elec-
tions is increasingly in doubt. In 2020, for example, the Constitutional court of Malawi declared the
Presidential election to be fraudulent.1 The 2019 Presidential election result in Bolivia is also reported
to be have been manipulated (Escobari and Hoover 2020). In the US, one-third of voters believe that
Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election solely because of voter fraud, even though there is no
evidence favoring such a claim.2 Even before the election, the share of American voters reported to have
confidence in the honesty of elections has been declining for several years, and in 2019, stood at only
40%.3 This figure is 50% for the entire world, according to the Gallup World Poll (2007-13).
The global erosion of trust in electoral institutions coincides with the autocratizing tendencies of
several democracies, known as democratic backsliding or deconsolidation (Waldner and Lust 2018, Foa
and Mounk 2016, 2017a,b). Freedom House 2021 report points out that global freedom deteriorated for
15 consecutive years, with 75 percent of the world living in a country that experienced deterioration in
2020. Democracy Report (2020) mentions: “For the first time since 2001, democracies are no longer
in the majority. [...] The countries that have autocratized the most over the last 10 years are Hungary,
Turkey, Poland, Serbia, Brazil and India.” While the overall pattern of democratic backsliding is based
primarily on subjective evaluation by experts, objective evidence on this trend is lacking (Little and
Meng 2023).
I contribute to this important debate by examining objective evidence of democratic backsliding
in the form of electoral manipulation in the world’s largest democracy – India. India is a somewhat
unusual case for electoral fraud as it stands out in terms of the public trust its election authority enjoys.
Two-third of its voters reported to have confidence in the honesty of elections in 2019, based on the
Gallup Poll survey. Moreover, the confidence in elections is rising in India at least since 2006.4 The
level of confidence is also higher than many democracies with strong institutions, such as Japan (57%),
France (57%), UK (61%) etc. The independence and institutional strength of the electoral authority
in charge of conducting elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI), is an important factor that
can potentially explain such high degree of confidence.5 This makes the ECI one of the most powerful
election management bodies in the world.
In the past few years, however, the credibility of the ECI has been called into question, with alle-
gations of bias in scheduling of elections (Ramachandran 2022) and arbitrary deletion of names of reg-
istered Muslim voters (Malhotra 2019, Trivedi 2019, Naqvi 2022), both favoring the ruling party. The
recent democracy reports of the V-Dem Institute highlight that various indicators of democracy in India,
including the autonomy of the ECI, has been declining. Democracy Report (2021) have consequently
classified India as an “electoral autocracy”. As the V-Dem report points out, decline in the autonomy
of the ECI was one of the important factors contributing to the reclassification of India’s regime type.
Similarly, Freedom House has changed India’s status in 2021 from Free to Party Free (Repucci and
Slipowitz 2021). The Supreme Court of India, in a recent judgement in 2023, acknowledged the dangers
1
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/world/africa/Malawi-president-election-fraud.html
2
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/MonmouthPoll_US_031721/
3
https://news.gallup.com/poll/285608/faith-elections-relatively-short-supply.aspx
4
https://news.gallup.com/poll/248495/confidence-key-institutions-high-india-votes.aspx
5
Section II provides a brief discussion on the independence of election authorities in India and the contextual details of
India’s general elections.

9
of a weak ECI and granted it significant autonomy and protection from executive overreach.6
In light of these developments, I first document that the 2019 general election in India that reelected
the incumbent party shows significant irregularities in the election data – the density of the incumbent
party’s win margin variable exhibits a discontinuous jump at the threshold value of zero. It implies that in
constituencies that were closely contested between a candidate from the incumbent party and a rival, the
incumbent party (BJP) won disproportionately more of them than lost. This is known as the McCrary
test and is now a standard check for manipulation of running variable in the regression discontinuity
design (RDD) method used in analysis of political economy (Prakash et al. 2019, Nellis et al. 2016,
Bhalotra et al. 2014). I do not find similar discontinuities in the previous general elections for either
BJP or INC (Indian National Congress), the other major national party, as well as for state assembly
elections held simultaneously with the 2019 general election and those held subsequently. Moreover,
BJP’s disproportionate win of closely contested constituencies is primarily concentrated in states ruled
by the party at the time of election.
Failure of McCrary test however does not necessarily imply electoral fraud. If the incumbent party,
due to its superior electoral machinery, was able to accurately predict and affect win margins in closely
contested constituencies – a phenomenon known as precise control (Jeong and Shenoy 2020, Vogl 2014),
then it could also generate such patterns. The incumbent party in India may have been able to exercise
precise control in 2019 since it had significantly built up its organizational capacity in several states,
subsequent to its 2014 general election victory. It mobilized active party workers at the level of polling
stations who monitored and shaped voter attitudes, backed by centrally managed teams analyzing the
collected information and suggesting campaign strategies (Jha 2017). Precise control in this context,
therefore, if exercised, is likely to be facilitated by localized and targeted campaigning facilitated by
grassroots presence of the party organization. This can explain the patterns described above. In the
subsequent analysis I attempt to look for evidence that may distinguish between the two competing
hypotheses.7
For my analysis, I put together several new datasets in addition to accessing the candidate level
general election results for 1977-2019 and state assembly election results for 2019-2021 from standard
sources. To examine precise control, I access the well-established post-poll survey – the National Elec-
tion Survey (NES) of 2019 that gives micro data on election campaigning by political parties. To investi-
gate election manipulation, I compile two different but official versions of constituency level Electronic
Voting Machine (EVM) turnout data (for 2019 general election) to directly measure data discrepancy.
The ECI initially released in its official website the “final” count of EVM votes polled for each Parlia-
mentary Constituency (PC) for the first four out of seven phases of the 2019 elections (373 out of 543
PCs). Subsequently, it released constituency wise number of votes counted in EVMs, which did not
match the initial numbers. When the media pointed out the discrepancy, the ECI removed the earlier
figures from its website. I access copies of the earlier turnout data to measure discrepancy. I also put
together the list of counting observers assigned to each constituency by the ECI to monitor counting
of votes in 2019. The data provides various characteristics of the counting observers such as the state
where they work, their cadre (i.e., whether they are part of the central or state bureaucracy), year of
joining service etc. Additionally, I compile polling station level election outcomes for the 2019 general
6
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/committee-of-pm-lop-cji-to-advice-on-appointment-of-election-
commissioners-supreme-court/article66570806.ece
7
The excess mass of constituencies that BJP barely won could also arise purely due to chance.

10
election by scraping and parsing the scanned PDFs containing the data, available from the official web-
sites of election authorities in individual states. To examine targeted voter suppression of Muslims as a
potential mechanism of manipulation, I compute electorate share of Muslims at the level of Assembly
Constituencies (ACs) using a 3 percent representative sample of voter lists and applying a highly accu-
rate religion prediction algorithm on their names, and match it to polling stations and ACs.8 . Section III
describes the datasets and their sources.
I use a new question added to the NES in 2019 to measure campaigning in the form of door-to-door
visits by BJP and other political parties in a representative sample of PCs to directly test for precise
control. I find that neither BJP nor any other party campaigned significantly harder in constituencies
that BJP barely won. Moreover, in BJP ruled states, campaigning by BJP does not exhibit statistically
significant discontinuity, while that for the other parties does. This makes precise control less likely to
be the primary mechanism.
Electoral manipulation, on the other hand, can take place at the stage of voter registration (registra-
tion manipulation) or at the time of voting or counting (turnout manipulation). To examine the mecha-
nisms facilitating manipulation, I focus on Muslim voters who generally do not support BJP (Varshney
2019), and are easily identified in the voter list due to their culturally distanct names. Therefore, they
are potentially subject to both registration and turnout manipulation.9 I consider two channels; first,
strategic deletion of Muslim names from the list of registered voters or electoral rolls (Lehne 2022).
Second, strategic suppression of Muslim votes at the time of voting (or counting) (Neggers 2018). I do
not consider the possibility of manipulation of EVMs themselves as a mechanism, as Purkayastha and
Sinha (2019) have pointed out that given its technology, it is hard to manipulate them at scale.
To test for registration manipulation, I compute growth rate of electorate (i.e., number of registered
voters) for each Parliamentary Constituency (PC) between 2014 and 2019. I show that the growth rate
falls discontinuously by 5 percentage points (compared to mean of 0.09) in PCs barely won by BJP, and
the fall is concentrated in PCs with higher share of Muslim electorate. To examine turnout manipulation,
I first examine the absolute difference between the two official versions of EVM turnout data. The
discrepancies could be due to administrative errors during counting of votes. However, the extent of
discrepancy, in that case, should not exhibit any discontinuous change with respect to the incumbent’s
win margin at its threshold value of zero. I however find that there is a large discontinuous increase in
the magnitude of data revision at the threshold. Consistent with previous results, the discontinuity is
concentrated in BJP ruled states.
I interpret the evidence on turnout discrepancy as indicative of manipulation done locally at the
polling stations, rather than resulting from aggregation fraud at the constituency level (Callen and Long
2015). It is unlikely that ECI would engage in direct tampering of turnout data ex-post. Moreover,
barring one case, the magnitude of data revision is smaller than BJP’s absolute margin of victory. I show
that polling station level election outcomes in the relevant PCs exhibit irregularities consistent with local
8
Census data on religious composition of population is not ideal in this case, since the lowest level of geographic unit for
which such data is available is tehsil, which (a) does not always map to a single AC and (b) hard to map to polling stations,
since the map of geographic area covered by a polling station is not available and data on location of polling stations is also
error-prone (Hintson and Vaishnav 2021). Additionally, electorate share of Muslims is the ideal measure, which can differ
from their population share because of various reasons such as differential fertility and child survival rates etc., which could be
correlated with their support for BJP.
9
Religious identity, especially the Hindu-Muslim divide, is a salient political cleavage in India (Bhalotra, Clots-Figueras,
Iyer, and Vecci 2021, Varshney 2003). Moreover, the salience of religion has heightened under BJP’s rule since 2014 (Khosla
and Vaishnav 2022).

11
manipulation.
To examine whether turnout manipulation was in part facilitated by weak monitoring of counting of
votes, I analyze the assignment of counting observers across PCs. I compute the fraction of counting
observers assigned in a PC who are from the State Civil Service (SCS), as opposed to the Indian Ad-
ministrative Service (IAS).10 Since SCS officers are appointed by the state government, unlike the IAS
officers who are centrally appointed, they more likely to be politically pliable. I also compute the frac-
tion of observers in a PC who are SCS and work in a BJP ruled state.11 I find that both fraction exhibits
large, positive and statistically significant discontinuity at the BJP win margin of zero. For the fraction
of SCS officers from BJP ruled states, the discontinuity is larger in magnitude in PCs of BJP ruled states,
while it is smaller and statistically insignificant for non-BJP ruled states. Additionally, in PCs won by
BJP, the fraction of counting observers who are SCS and come from BJP ruled states positively predicts
the extent of turnout data discrepancy in the PC; in PCs that BJP lost, no such relationship holds.
I analyze polling station level election results to test for local manipulation. For each polling station,
I compute the vote share of BJP at that polling station relative to its vote share in the PC; I refer to this
as the relative BJP vote share. This makes comparison of polling stations across constituencies easier.
I show that within a constituency, relative BJP vote share typically hovers around one across polling
stations with different turnout, except in closely contested constituencies barely won by BJP in BJP ruled
states. In those constituencies, the relative vote share of BJP exhibits a large spike in polling stations with
high turnout. The pattern is replicated with a polling station level indicator of BJP’s vote share exceeding
95th percentile of its distribution.12 I compute the distribution of second digit in the polling station level
vote tallies of candidates to measure departure from Benford’s law at the polling station level. Benford’s
law (Benford 1938) specifies distribution of digits in naturally occurring numbers, and departures of
the observed distribution from Benford’s specification is often used as an indicator of manipulation. I
show that the departures from Benford’s law exhibit the same pattern. Additionally, I perform tests on
the shape of the BJP’s vote share density, proposed in more recent research on electoral fraud, and find
results consistent with fraud. Moreover, the spike in the relative BJP vote share mentioned above is
higher in PCs with larger discrepancy in turnout data. While the first couple of results are consistent
with both mechanisms, the rest of the results indicate manipulation.
Finally, manipulation in the form of targeted electoral discrimination against Muslim voters would
imply that within a PC barely won by BJP, high vote shares of the party should be concentrated in
areas with higher Muslim presence. On the other hand, if precise control is the appropriate explanation,
then we should expect the opposite, as the increase in BJP’s vote share in 2019 relative to 2014 came
primarily from Hindus, especially from its lower caste groups, while its support among Muslims was
low and constant across the two elections (Varshney 2019).
I match the data on AC level electorate share of Muslims (described above) to polling stations to test
the above hypothesis. ACs are smaller than PCs, and each PC contains about 7 ACs on average. The
matched data therefore provide us within PC variation in electorate share of Muslims across polling sta-
tions located in different ACs. I find that in PCs that BJP barely lost, its vote share is less likely to exceed
the 95th percentile in polling stations located in high Muslim share ACs within the PC. However, this
negative relationship gets significantly reduced in PCs barely won by the party; in those PCs, the likeli-
10
There are typically multiple counting centers in a PC, each of which is assigned a counting observer.
11
Observers are deployed in a state different from where they work.
12
In those polling stations, BJP on average received 90% of votes cast.

12
hood of the event does not fall in ACs with higher Muslim share. This again supports the manipulation
hypothesis.
The paper is unable to comment on the overall extent of manipulation in the 2019 general election.
It focuses on closely contested constituencies as an empirical strategy to detect the presence of poten-
tial manipulation. Back of the envelope calculation shows that in PCs with BJP win margin less than
5%, BJP’s “excess” win is in about 11 PCs. Therefore, even if all the disproportionate wins of BJP in
closely contested PCs is due to manipulation, it likely would not have changed the government forma-
tion.13 Nonetheless, the results signify a worrying development for the future of democracy in India and
consequently, in the world at large.
This paper contributes to our understanding of democratic backsliding in consolidated democracies
using objective measures. Little and Meng (2023) argue that subjective evaluation of nature of democ-
racy by experts may be subject to their biases. Therefore, claims about democratic backsliding need to
be grounded in more objective evidence. The authors examine objective measures of democracy and do
not find any evidence of systematic backsliding across democracies. They conclude, “[...] it may be the
case that major backsliding is occurring precisely in ways that elude objective measurement. However,
this is an extraordinary claim, which requires a stronger theoretical and empirical basis than has been
offered to date.”
Additionally, several studies examining democratic backsliding have focused on the “demand side”
issues, specifically, voters’ willingness to sacrifice democratic principles in the context of increased po-
larization (Braley et al. 2022, Fishkin et al. 2021, Graham and Svolik 2020), rise of populism (Martinelli
2016) etc., resulting in dismantling of check-and-balances (Şaşmaz, Yagci, and Ziblatt 2022). The paper
shows that dilution of electoral integrity is also an important and “supply side” contributor to democratic
backsliding. Several consolidated or stable democracies, such as India14 , Mexico15 , Hungary (Scheppele
2022), have witnessed weakening of its electoral institutions in recent times. It is relevant to understand
whether and how this weakening contributes to democratic backsliding. There is little evidence in mature
democracies of direct electoral fraud typically observed in weaker democracies, such as ballot stuffing,
booth capturing or direct manipulation of data by election authorities. Incumbents in these countries are
likely to adopt subtler strategies, such as fragmentation of opposition (Arriola, Devaro, and Meng 2021)
or voter suppression (Manheim and Porter 2019) etc. My examination of the latest general election in
India adds to our understanding of this process.
Empirical analyses of electoral fraud have typically focused on weak democracies such as Afghanistan
(Callen and Long 2015), Ghana (Asunka et al. 2019), Nigeria (Onapajo and Uzodike 2014), Russia
(Enikolopov et al. 2013, Rundlett and Svolik 2016), Mexico during 1980s (Cantú 2019), nineteenth
century Germany (Ziblatt 2009), or local elections in robust democracies such as Japan (Fukumoto and
Horiuchi 2011). In these cases, the nature of fraud typically entails aggregation fraud, tampering of elec-
tion documents at the polling station level etc. In case of India, my paper shows, manipulation took the
form of localized and targeted discrimination against a well-identified minority group, via manipulation
of voter registration as well as weaker monitoring of the election process.
Previous studies have employed several methods to detect electoral fraud – Cantoni and Pons (2020)
use sampled data on proven and suspected fraud cases, Asunka et al. (2019) and Enikolopov et al.
13
BJP won 303 PCs and it needed 272 PCs to form the government.
14
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/election-commission-weak-kneed-say-former-officials/cid/1688448
15
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64742733

13
(2013) examine effect of poll observers on incumbent vote share, Christensen and Schultz (2014) ana-
lyze turnout behavior of specific voting groups more likely to be targeted for frauds, James and Clark
(2020) conduct survey of polling station workers etc. My paper contributes methodologically by ana-
lyzing irregularities across polling stations and constituencies with different demographic composition
of minority voters and applying regression discontinuity and difference-in-discontinuity designs. Ad-
ditionally, papers on electoral fraud typically employ one specific method to detect fraud. In contrast,
this paper employs a combination of methods to demonstrate consistent results. This is of particular
importance given that the nature of irregularities is more subtle, as one may expect in a consolidated
democracy, and hence, requires a deeper examination.
II Background and Context

Autonomy of the Election Authority in India: Election Commission of India is the central authority
in charge of conducting national (and state) elections in India. It was established in 1950. Several
scholars have highlighted the exemplary role played by the ECI in ensuring free and fair elections and
consequently, in the consolidation of India’s democracy, in spite of its challenging social, cultural and
economic environment. Banerjee (2017), for example, says: “In contrast to the usual inefficiencies of
Indian public institutions, the well-oiled machinery of the Election Commission stands out because of
its excellent performance in conducting elections on an unimaginably large scale.” (p 410) Sridharan
and Vaishnav (2017) point out: “What has emerged over the past six-and-a-half decades is an Election
Commission that has significant powers, far greater than what its counterparts in many democracies have
at their disposal. [...] According to a 1996 poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, the ECI was the most respected public institution in all of India with 62 per cent of respondents
favourably disposed. A 2008 study found that an even higher percentage – nearly 80 per cent – of Indians
surveyed expressed a high degree of trust in the Commission, second only to the army among state
institutions.” (p 419 of Kapur et al. (2018)) Multiple researchers have shown that redistricting in India
does not suffer from gerrymandering, a common phenomenon in the US, thanks to the independence of
the Delimitation Commission of India from any political interference (Kjelsrud et al. 2020, Nath et al.
2017, Iyer and Reddy 2013). Eggers et al. (2015) in their study of elections across a number of countries
find no evidence of manipulation of election results in India for the period 1977-2004.
Elections in India: India follows a Parliamentary system. The Parliament has 543 legislatures or
Members of Parliament (MPs), each of whom is elected from a Parliamentary Constituency (PC) using
the first-past-the-post rule. The national or general elections in India are conducted every 5 years, unless
there is an early dissolution of the government. There are several parties that field candidates in the
general elections. The two main national parties are the BJP (Bhartiya Janata Party) and the INC (Indian
National Congress). Apart from the national parties, there are several regional or state parties that are
important political actors in specific states.
The ECI also conducts the state elections in India. In a state election, voters from each Assembly
Constituency (AC) elect one representative (Member of Legislative Assembly) to the state legislature.
The size of the legislature in a state depends on its population. Taken together, there are roughly 4, 300
ACs in India. An AC is always subsumed within a PC. The timing of state elections is not synchronized

14
with the general elections. During every general election, a subset of states has their state assembly
elections simultaneously with it. But the subset of states changes over time due to either early dissolution
of state government, or the central government or both (Balasubramaniam et al. 2021). In 2019, the states
of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim had simultaneous general and state elections.
General Election in 2019: The most recent general election in India happened in 2019 that reelected
the incumbent coalition (the National Democratic Alliance or NDA), led by the BJP, to power. There are
two significant developments related to the 2019 general elections that are worth highlighting. First, the
incumbent party, BJP, had built up its grassroots organizational presence significantly in the lead up to
the 2019 elections, especially in certain states. The party deployed it efficiently during its 2019 election
campaign, as discussed in Jha (2017). The author describes that the party created polling booth level
committees who were in charge of connecting with voters enrolled in the booth, organizing membership
drives, collecting household level data on various social, demographic and economic indicators, along
with their political attitudes. The households were classified according to their intention to vote for
the party to decide the party’s campaign strategy. This localized campaign, in conjunction with the
allocation of abundant campaign resources, gave the party an edge over the other parties.
At the same time, there were reports of mass deletion of voter names of minority groups from
electoral rolls (Malhotra 2019, Trivedi 2019, Naqvi 2022). Since the incumbent party enjoys lower
electoral support among the minority groups, such deletions may provide an electoral advantage to the
party. Additionally, subsequent to the elections, the ECI released two “final” versions of the PC level
EVM turnout data that did not match (Agarwal 2019). ECI did not provide any accounting of the data
discrepancy.16 These reports raise fears about possible electoral manipulation during the 2019 elections.
III Data
Aggregate Election Results: I first access the candidate level Parliamentary election results from
1977-2019 and state assembly election results of 2019-2021. It is published by the Election Commission
of India, and is compiled and made public by the Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TCPD) at Ashoka
University (Bhogale et al. 2019).17 The data contain for each PC (AC, in case of state election) and
each election year, details of candidate names, their party affiliations, votes received by candidates, total
turnout and electorate size.
Two Versions of EVM Turnout Data: The Election Commission of India (ECI) initially published
“Final Voter Turnout” figures for the first four (out of seven) phases of the 2019 general election.18
These figures reflect the PC wise number of votes polled in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
These numbers however do not match with the PC wise number of votes counted in the EVMs, as
available in the official website of the ECI. This is unusual as votes polled and votes counted in the
EVMs should be identical. The news media pointed out this discrepancy in the data, following which
16
The Association for Democratic Reforms, an independent election watch body, has filed a petition in the Supreme Court
of India seeking reconciliation of the data: https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/adr-files-petition-in-supreme-court-on-
mismatch-in-evm-data.
17
The data is publicly available from the TCPD’s website http://lokdhaba.ashoka.edu.in.
18
For the rest of the PCs, it released the “estimated” turnout figures, and therefore, are not considered for analysis.

15
the ECI removed the “Final Voter Turnout” figures from its website. The PDF copies of the data are
publicly available here: https://www.scribd.com/docu ment/411811036/EC-s-votes-polled-data-Phase-
1. I digitize the data and match it against the (revised) official EVM turnout figures available in the
ECI’s website: https://eci.gov.in/files/file/10969-13-pc-wise-voters-turn-out/.
Counting Observers in 2019: The ECI appoints officials who are responsible for overseeing and
monitoring the counting of votes in each counting center. They are referred to as counting observers.
The counting observers have the power to stop the counting process or not declare the results if they
find breach of counting procedure or if they suspect that some form of fraud has taken place. They
have to report to the ECI if they take such actions. I access the list of counting observers for 2019
general election from the official website of ECI. The data contain the names of officials assigned to
each PC, along with their ‘office state’, i.e., the state where they were currently working as a bureaucrat,
their ‘home state’, i.e., where they were born, whether they are an Indian Administrative Service (IAS)
officer or from the State Civil Service (SCS) and their year of joining the service. I am able to match
data for 539 PCs (out of 543) containing 1, 804 counting observers.
Polling Station Level Results: I put together polling station level election results for the 2019 general
election. Polling station level election records are available in each of the states’ Chief Electoral Officer’s
official website. The format of the data differs from state to state. While in one state the digitized data
is available, in most states the data come in the form of scanned PDFs containing the polling station
level results for each constituency. I scrape, digitize, clean and compile the results for 22 major states
of India covering more than 900, 000 polling stations. For each polling station, the data provide the PC
and AC it falls under, candidate-wise vote tallies (along with votes in favor of “None of the Above”)
and candidate’s party affiliation. This allows me to calculate the absolute turnout and vote share of BJP
at the polling station level. Except the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), the data do not contain number of
electorates at the polling stations. Therefore, barring UP, it is not possible to calculate turnout rate at the
polling station level.
National Election Survey 2019: National Election Survey (NES) is a post-poll voter survey con-
ducted by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). The surveys, conducted right after
every general election but before declaration of results, ask a representative sample of voters in a ran-
domly selected sample of PCs questions about their political attitudes, knowledge and activities, among
other things. NES has been conducted regularly in India since 1990s and is a credible source of voter
preferences and political activities (Balasubramaniam et al. 2021, Banerjee et al. 2019, Thachil 2014). I
access the relevant sections of the NES 2019 data to examine the campaigning activities of parties. NES
2019 surveyed 24,236 voters across 208 PCs.
Muslim Electorate Share using Voter List: I create reliable estimates of Muslim electorate share
at the AC and PC level to examine electoral discrimination against Muslims as a potential source of
manipulation. For this, I use a 3 percent random sample of registered voters, representative at AC
level (about 25 million observations). I access this proprietary data from a private organization that has
compiled the full list of registered voters for the entire country using the electoral rolls published by
the ECI. The data uses electoral rolls published till 2018, and therefore, is not subject to any strategic

16
deletion that may have happened during the 2019 revision prior to the general election. I use a religion
prediction algorithm (with 97 percent accuracy) developed by Chaturvedi and Chaturvedi (2023) to
predict each voter’s religion from their name, which allows me to compute Muslim share in each AC.19
Appendix Figure A1 plots the local polynomial relationship between vote share received by all Muslim
candidates running in an AC in a state assembly election (during 2008-2018) against the electorate
Muslim share and finds strong positive relationship. This indicates that my measure of AC level Muslim
share is reliable.
IV Irregularities in Aggregate Election Results

I first perform the McCrary test that checks for discontinuity in the distribution of win margin (of any
party) at the value of zero (Calonico et al. 2014, McCrary 2008) . The presence of discontinuity would
imply that there is disproportionately higher mass of closely contested electoral constituencies where
the party has barely won or lost, depending on whether the discontinuity is positive or negative. The
idea is that, if elections are fair, then conditional on an election being closely contested between party A
and any other party, the party A’s chance of winning would be close to 50%. This is because, whether
it ends up winning a really close election would effectively be random. I perform the McCrary tests by
computing the win margins for the two major national parties of India, namely BJP and INC. Any party
A’s win margin is defined as:
Party A win margin = (vote share of A - vote share of winner), if A loses

= (vote share of A - vote share of runner up), if A wins
BJP win margin therefore takes negative values in constituencies where it lost and positive values where
it won.20 When the variable takes values close to zero, it implies that BJP either lost or won the election
with a narrow margin. Similarly, a large negative (or positive) value would imply that BJP lost (or won)
that election with a large margin. Same is true for INC win margin. Figure 1a and 1b plot the densities
of BJP and INC win margins, respectively, for the 2019 general election. I observe a large discontinuous
jump in the density of BJP Win Margin just right of zero. This implies that conditional on a closely
contested election between a BJP candidate and another candidate, BJP was significantly more likely to
win that election than lose. I do not observe any discontinuity in the density of INC Win Margin.21
Before commenting on the interpretation of this finding, I wish to point out that failure of McCrary
test in electoral context is rare, both in India as well as internationally. I perform the test for past general
elections of India using BJP and INC win margins. Table 1 reports the estimated discontinuities in the
densities of the two variables for all general elections going back to 1977. I find that the BJP win margin
in 2019 is the only case exhibiting statistically significant estimate of the discontinuity. To illustrate
this point more clearly, Appendix Table A1 reports the number and percentage of constituencies BJP
won and lost in constituencies with small absolute BJP win margins for the past 4 general elections. I
consider three narrow win margin bands - within 0.05, 0.03 and 0.02. For each band, the 2019 elections
19
I thank Sugat Chaturvedi for implementing the algorithm in the data.
20
This is a standard definition in this kind of exercise. Nellis et al. (2016), for example, use the same running variable
defined for INC to estimate the causal effect of electing an INC politician on violence.
21
It implies that the disproportionately higher wins of BJP candidates were primarily against regional parties.
10

17
Figure 1—McCrary Tests Demonstrate Discontinuity in BJP Win Margin Distribution
(a) BJP Win Margin: All States (b) INC Win Margin: All States
(c) BJP Win Margin: BJP Ruled States (d) BJP Win Margin: Non-BJP Ruled States
show the most lop-sided share of win for BJP; the share of BJP victory is 69-74% in 2019, depending on
bandwidth. For each bandwidth, 2019 is the only year where the data rejects the null that the likelihood
of BJP victory is 0.5. In each case, the null hypothesis is rejected with with p-value less than 0.01, i.e.,
there is less than 1% probability of observing the patterns with BJP’s true probability of victory in close
elections being 0.5.
Nellis, Weaver, Rosenzweig et al. (2016) find that INC win margin passes the McCrary test in state
assembly elections for the period 1962–2000. Uppal (2009) find the same using incumbent win margin
as the running variable for state elections during the period 1975–2003. Moreover, the only evidence of
failure of McCrary test that has been documented in a robust democracy, is in the context of elections in
the US (Jeong and Shenoy 2020, Vogl 2014, Caughey and Sekhon 2011). Eggers et al. (2015), however,
have shown that it is in fact an exception as the test works in a number of countries (including the US
and India) and for different time periods. Hence, the failure of the test in the 2019 general election in
India warrants notice and additional investigation.
Interpretation: While the result is consistent with possible manipulation of the election results in
favor of the BJP, the incumbent party, it is not the only interpretation. Alternatively, it could be that BJP,
being the incumbent, was able to exercise precise control over win margin, i.e., it was able to precisely
predict win margins, especially in constituencies where a close contest was expected, and was able to
11

18
Table 1—Estimates of the Discontinuity in the Density of BJP and Congress Win Margins
2019 2014 2009 2004 1999 1998 1996 1991 1989 1984 1980 1977
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)
Estimate of discontinuity: BJP Win Margin 1.51** -0.24 -0.83 1.88 2.41 -0.79 -1.20 0.43 -0.01
(0.75) (0.74) (1.15) (1.20) (1.63) (1.28) (0.94) (0.60) (1.24)
Estimate of discontinuity: INC Win Margin 0.78 -0.37 1.80 -1.02 -1.37 -0.24 0.66 -1.19 0.36 0.49 -0.54 0.89
( 0.60) (0.73) (1.30) (1.03) (0.91) (1.01) (0.79) (0.81) (0.77) (0.86) (0.73) (0.71)
Notes: The table reports the estimates of the discontinuity in the density at the threshold value of zero for two running variables – BJP Win Margin (first row) and
INC/Congress Win Margin (second row). The year in each column refers to the general election year. Each estimate, therefore, comes from a separate test for a given
of running variable in a given general election year. The estimates are computed using the method proposed by Calonico et al. (2014). The robust standard errors are
reported in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
affect it, thanks to its comparative advantage in electoral campaigning and greater access to resources.
Notice that it is not enough for BJP to predict the constituencies where it will face a close fight to
generate failure of McCrary test. In such a case, it would campaign harder in all the constituencies
expected to have a close contest, resulting in a uniform shift of its win margin to the right and hence,
no discontinuity would emerge at zero.22 The party would have to accurately predict whether they are
ahead or falling behind in the close contest. Hence, for precise control to be the explanation, BJP had
to accurately predict the sign as well as the magnitude of the win margin, to be able to target the set
of constituencies where it expects to lose in a close contest. Jeong and Shenoy (2020) have shown that
incumbent parties in US state legislative elections do exhibit behavior consistent with precise control
and it can explain their ability to consistently win majority of close races. While election prediction in
India is still not as sophisticated as in developed countries such as the US, it is possible that BJP, due to
its superior electoral machine, was able to precisely predict and affect win margins.
State Assembly Elections: Seven states had their state assembly elections in 2019, including four
states where the state elections were held concurrently with the general election.23 BJP was the incum-
bent party in the government in three of the seven states. I compute the BJP win margin for state election
results for BJP and non-BJP ruled states separately. I find that it does not exhibit failure of McCrary
test (Appendix Figures A2a and A2b). Same is true for state elections held in 2020 and 2021 (Appendix
Figures A2c and A2d). If precise control is the mechanism responsible for Figure 1a, then we should
expect it at work at state level elections as well, at least in 2019. I however do not find that.
BJP vs. Non-BJP Ruled States: I now perform the McCrary test for the 2019 general election in
two sub-samples of constituencies – those in states that were ruled by the BJP at the time of the 2019
election and those in non-BJP ruled states.24 The two sub-samples have equal number of constituencies.
Figures 1c and 1d show the densities of BJP win margin for the two sub-samples respectively. I find
that for BJP ruled states, the density shows an even larger discontinuous jump to the right of threshold.
For non-BJP ruled states, the jump is muted. Appendix Table A2 reports the estimated discontinuities
in the densities for the two sub-samples of states separately. The estimate of the jump for BJP ruled
states is highly statistically significant (p-value = 0.007), while it is statistically insignificant (p-value
22
Lee and Lemieux (2010) refer to this as imprecise control over the running variable and argue that the regression discon-
tinuity design remains valid under imprecise control.
23
The seven states are Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim.
24
In 2019, the BJP ruled states were Assam, Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra,
Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand.
12

19
Figure 2—McCrary Test for General Elections in 2014 and 2009
(a) 2014 Election: BJP Ruled States (b) 2014 Election: Non-BJP Ruled States
(c) 2009 Election: BJP Ruled States (d) 2009 Election: Non-BJP Ruled States
= 0.84) for non-BJP ruled states. Therefore, the overall failure of McCrary test is primarily driven by
constituencies in the BJP ruled states. Those states, on the other hand, do not exhibit differential patterns
in the previous two general elections (Figure 2).
The results are consistent with both mechanisms. Having control over the state’s bureaucratic ma-
chinery can help a party target its manipulation efforts better, especially in a context where widespread
manipulation is hard to implement given the intense media attention during elections and vocal rival po-
litical parties.25 It is also consistent with precise control if being in power at the state government helps
in mobilizing party workers at the ground. Greater presence of party workers at the ground can generate
more precise information about a party’s expected vote share vis-a-vis the main rival party, which can
facilitate precise control.26
Comparability of PCs that BJP Closely Won and Lost: Table 2 reports the estimates of discontinu-
ity of various PC level electoral variables at the BJP win margin threshold of zero. It finds no systematic
25
Even though bureaucrats (Indian Administrative Service officers) are employees of the central government, their appoint-
ment and promotion are influenced by state governments (Iyer and Mani 2012). During general election, they report to the
ECI, but the pool of officers available is shaped by the state government, making them pliable to the interests of the incumbent
party at the state.
26
Among the states not ruled by BJP, several of them, such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Orissa, have strong
presence of the party. Appendix Figure A3 shows the discontinuity for that subsample of states. It does not exhibit a differen-
tially larger discontinuity than the one in Figure 1d.
13

20
differences between PCs that BJP barely lost and won. The variables examined are electorate size,
turnout rate27 , number of candidates, reservation status for SC/STs, share of female candidates, share of
candidates switching political parties (i.e., turncoats), whether the incumbent is running in the election,
and whether BJP won the PC in the previous general election. The coefficient on BJP victory in 2014
is large and negative, though is noisily estimated. Therefore, in terms of various characteristics of PCs,
the ones that BJP barely lost vs won appear to be comparable.
Table 2—Comparability of PCs across BJP Win Margin Threshold
Electors Turnout #Candidates SC/ST Female Turncoat Incumbent BJP Won

rate reserved share share rerun in 2014
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
BJP Won 0.178 -0.029 -0.931 0.125 -0.004 -0.002 -0.009 -0.170
(0.172) (0.036) (1.273) (0.154) (0.016) (0.010) (0.172) (0.181)
Mean Dep. var. 1.66 0.69 14.46 0.30 0.09 0.03 0.41 0.54
Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16
Observations 189 189 189 189 189 189 189 189
Notes: The table reports RDD estimates using BJP win margin on various PC level variables, such as electorate size in
millions (column 1), turnout share (column 2), number of candidates (column 3), Reservation status for SC/ST (column 4),
share of female candidates (column 5), share of candidates who switched parties (column 6), whether the incumbent is run-
ning (column 7) and whether BJP won the PC in 2014 (column 8). The bandwidth used is the optimal bandwidth used for
McCrary test in Figure 1a and Table A2. Standard errors are reported in the parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
V Evidence on Precise Control via Campaigning

BJP’s ability to exercise precise control is likely to arise from the party’s superior organizational strength
and the related election campaign strategy. It allowed the party to collect and utilize detailed and local-
ized information about voters’ attitudes and voting intentions. This can result in precise control, as the
party can mobilize voters better than its opponent in closely contested elections, resulting in dispropor-
tionate wins. This is similar to Vogl (2014) who argues that in mayoral elections in southern US, Black
voters were better mobilized than White voters, resulting in disproportionate wins of Black candidates
in closely contested elections. Therefore, for precise control to be the primary explanation of Figure 1, I
expect the constituencies barely won by BJP to have significantly more campaigning by BJP relative to
other parties. It is well-established in the literature on political campaigning that a party’s relative cam-
paigning, as opposed to its absolute campaigning activity, matters for its vote share (Bekkouche et al.
2022, Gerber 1998, Levitt 1994). Hence, the ideal test would estimate the discontinuity in the relative
campaigning by BJP at the BJP win margin value of zero.
There is no existing data on campaigning by political parties across constituencies in India. To
address this, I exploit a new question added to the post poll National Election Survey in 2019. In the
2019 round, the new question asks: “Did a candidate/party worker of the following parties come to your
house to ask for your vote in the last one month?” The survey listed the major political parties in each
state. The response to this question, therefore, reveals campaigning activity separately by individual
political parties in each of the sampled PCs.28 I use this question to define two dummy variables – home
27
This is calculated using the revised turnout numbers as they are last version of data available with ECI.
28
In previous rounds, the survey asked whether any candidate or party worker visited the respondent’s house for campaign-
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Table 3—Campaigning by Political Parties in Closely Contested Elections
Home Visit by Party Worker/Candidate

Full Sample BJP Ruled States Non-BJP Ruled States
BJP Any Other BJP Any Other BJP Any Other
Party Party Party
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Panel A: BJP Win Margin  0.191
BJP Won 0.03 0.00 0.05 0.34** 0.04 -0.09

(0.10) (0.13) (0.17) (0.17) (0.15) (0.19)
Mean Dep. Var. 0.41 0.49 0.33 0.37 0.48 0.58

Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.191 0.191 0.191 0.191 0.191 0.191
Observation 8945 8945 3927 3927 5018 5018
No. of PCs 76 76 32 32 44 44
Panel B: BJP Win Margin  0.160
BJP Won -0.01 -0.01 0.10 0.38** -0.01 -0.14

(0.11) (0.14) (0.18) (0.17) (0.16) (0.20)
Mean Dep. Var. 0.41 0.49 0.33 0.39 0.47 0.57

Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.160 0.160 0.160 0.160 0.160 0.160
Observation 7897 7897 3297 3297 4600 4600
No. of PCs 68 68 28 28 40 40
Notes: The sample is individual level survey data from the National Election Survey (post
poll) 2019. The dependent variable in columns (1), (3), (5) is a dummy variable that takes
value one if a BJP party worker or candidate visited the house of the respondent to campaign
for general election and is zero otherwise. The dependent variable in columns (2), (4) and (6)
is also a dummy variable that indicates whether party worker or candidate from any other party
visited the house for campaigning. BJP Won is an indicator of whether BJP is the winner of
the Parliamentary Constituency (PC). Sample in Panel A consists of PCs with BJP win mar-
gin less than 0.191 – the optimal bandwidth calculated using the MSERD method proposed
by Calonico et al. (2014), while Panel B uses the sample of PCs with BJP win margin less
than 0.16 – the optimal bandwidth used for McCrary test in Figure 1a and Table A2. Columns
(1) and (2) use the full sample of PCs within the respective bandwidths. Columns (3) and (4)
restrict the sample to states ruled by BJP during 2019 general election. The last two columns
use the sample of non-BJP ruled states. Standard errors are clustered at the PC level and are
reported in the parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
visit by BJP, that takes value one if a BJP party worker or candidate visited the respondent’s house, and
home visit by any other party, that takes value one if any other party visited the house. The mean values
of the two variables are 0.38 (BJP) and 0.50 (any other party). Moreover, they are positively correlated
(r = 0.58), suggesting that parties tend to target similar set of “swing” voters.
I test whether likelihood of home visits by BJP and other parties increase discontinuously at BJP win
margin value of zero, and whether the increase for BJP is larger than other parties. Table 3 reports the
results. In Panel A, columns (1) and (2) report the RDD estimates for the two outcome variables using
the optimal bandwidth of 0.191. We find that both estimates are small in magnitude and statistically
insignificant. In columns (3) and (4), I restrict attention to BJP ruled states, as the failure of McCrary
test is concentrated in that sample. The coefficient for BJP home visits is 0.05, which is statistically
ing, i.e., it did not ask the question for each party separately.
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insignificant, while that for any other party is 0.34, which is statistically significant at 5%. Therefore, in
this sample, the estimate for BJP is not larger than that of other parties. For non-BJP ruled states, both
estimates again are statistically insignificant. The results remain same if we use 0.16 as the bandwidth
(Panel B). Therefore, differentially greater campaigning by BJP relative to other parties cannot be the
primary reason for its disproportionate win in closely contested constituencies.
Social Media and Election Outcomes: BJP and other major parties extensively used social media
during the 2019 election campaign. While smartphone penetration in India is not widespread, social
media could potentially play a pivotal role in shaping voting behavior. There is no micro-data on social
media campaigning by political parties. The NES 2019, however, asks individuals about their social
media usage. For each social media platform, I define a dummy variable (“social media user”) that takes
value one if an individual uses that platform at least once every day and zero otherwise. Appendix Table
A3 shows how social media usage predicts voting in favor of BJP in the full sample. I find that only
Facebook users are statistically significantly more likely to vote in favor of BJP, while users of other
social media platforms either vote less for BJP or vote for other parties with equal likelihood.29 For each
PC p, I then run the following regression:
0
I(Voted for BJP)ip = ↵p + p F b_userip + ✓p Xip + ✏ip (1)
where the vector of controls Xip includes gender, age and caste categories. p captures the propensity of
Facebook users in constituency p to vote differentially in favor of BJP. The estimate of p therefore can
be interpreted as a proxy of BJP’s differential intensity of Facebook campaigning in the constituency.
I use p as an outcome variable to test whether its value jumps discontinuously at BJP win margin of
zero. Appendix Table A4 column 1 reports the RDD coefficient. It is positive and statistically significant,
suggesting that constituencies barely won by BJP exhibited relatively more intense social media cam-
paigning by the party. Columns 2 and 3 report the same coefficient when the RDD analysis is performed
on BJP ruled and non-BJP ruled states separately. The estimate in column 2 is small and statistically
insignificant, while that in column 3 is positive, comparable in magnitude to column 1 and statistically
significant. The evidence therefore cannot explain the patterns observed in the previous section that
failure of McCrary test is concentrated in the BJP ruled states.
VI Evidence on Manipulation
Manipulation of elections can take place at one of three stages of elections. First, at the time of voter
registration, in the form of targeted deletion of names of voters who are unlikely to vote for the incum-
bent party. I refer to it as registration manipulation. Second, at the time of voting, when polling officers
can strategically discriminate against registered voters, who are likely to vote against BJP. Finally, ma-
nipulation can take place at the time of counting of votes.30 Distinguishing between voting and counting
29
This is consistent with the recent investigative media report that Facebook gave preferential rates to BJP for political ads
during 2019 campaign. See here: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/3/16/facebook-charged-bjp-lower-rates-for-india-
polls-ads-than-others.
30
A fourth possibility is through manipulation of EVMs. However, some commentators have pointed about that widespread
manipulation of EVMs may be hard to achieve, given the technology (Purkayastha and Sinha 2019), making it an unlikely
mechanism.
16

23
manipulation is difficult. Barring one analysis that comments directly on counting manipulation, the
rest of the evidence are consistent with both voting and counting manipulation. Hence, I refer to both
as turnout manipulation. Section II above mentions media reports of potential registration and turnout
manipulations. In the sections below, I discuss evidence consistent with each of them.
VI.I Registration Manipulation

To examine the presence of this channel, I compute the growth in the number of electorate (i.e., number
of registered voters) in a PC between 2014 and 2019. For each PC p, I define:
Electoratep,2019 Electoratep,2014
Gp ⌘
Electoratep,2014
If names were strategically deleted from the electoral rolls in an attempt to flip closely contested election
in favor of BJP, then we should expect the electorate growth rate to fall discontinuously at BJP win
margin value of zero. Moreover, if Muslims were the primary target of this strategic deletion, we expect
a greater fall in the electorate growth rate in PCs with higher Muslim electorate share. I implement the
regression discontinuity design on the full sample of PCs as well as on samples of PCs with Muslim
share greater and lower than the median of distribution of Muslim shares across PCs.31
Table 4—Electorate Growth Rate Smaller in PCs Barely Won by BJP
Electorate Growth Rate (Gp )

Full High Low Full High Low
Sample Muslim Share Muslim Share Sample Muslim Share Muslim Share
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
BJP Won -0.05*** -0.06** -0.02 -0.05*** -0.07*** -0.03

(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02)
Mean Dep. Var. 0.10 0.10 0.09 0.09 0.09 0.09
Observations 123 72 51 181 101 80

Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.107 0.107 0.107 0.16 0.16 0.16
Notes: The data is at Parliamentary Constituency (PC) level. The table reports the regression discontinuity design
estimate using BJP win margin as the running variable. The dependent variable in all the columns is the growth rate
in the PC electorate between 2014 and 2019. BJP Won is a dummy indicating whether BJP won the PC in 2019.
Columns (1) and (3) use the full sample of PCs. Columns (2) and (4) use PCs where the electorate share of Muslims
is higher than the median, and column (3) and (6) use PCs where the share is lower than median. Columns (1)-(3) use
the optimal bandwidth using the MSERD method specfied by Calonico et al. (2014), while columns (4)-(6) use the
optimal bandwidth calculated for McCrary test in Figure 1a. Robust standard errors are are reported in the parenthe-
ses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
Table 4 shows the estimates for discontinuity for the three samples. Column (1) reports the RDD
estimate for the full sample using the optimal bandwidth 0.125. The estimated discontinuity is 0.05,
which is statistically significant at 1%. This implies that constituencies barely won by BJP had a 5
percentage points smaller growth rate in electorate between 2014 and 2019 compared to PCs that it
barely lost. This is a large fall, given the mean growth rate of 0.09. Moreover, in PCs with higher
Muslim share, the estimated fall is 6 percentage points (column (2)), while it is 2 percentage points (and
statistically insignificant) in PCs with lower Muslim shares. The difference between the two estimates
31
I calculate PC level Muslim electorate share by taking a weighted average of AC level Muslim shares using electorate
share of an AC as the weight.
17

24
in columns (2) and (3) is statistically significant at 10%. The result remains the same if we use the
bandwidth of 0.16. The result, therefore, is consistent with strategic deletion of Muslim names being an
important channel of manipulation.
Additionally, Appendix Table A5 reports the RDD coefficients for high and low Muslim share PCs
in the BJP ruled and non-BJP ruled states separately. Consistent with previous results, I find that the
only statistically significant coefficient is for the sample of high Muslim share PCs in BJP ruled states
(Column (1)). The Column (1) coefficient is also larger in magnitude than that low Muslim share in BJP
ruled states (Column (2)), though the difference is not statistically significant. The result for non-BJP
ruled states is also similar, though both the coefficients are noisily estimated.32
VI.II Turnout Manipulation: EVM Turnout Data Discrepancy

I compile the two different EVM turnout figures described in Section III for the 373 PCs covered in
the first four phases of election. In 64% of PCs the turnout was revised up, and in the rest of the
cases it was revised down. I compute the absolute difference in vote tallies between the two reports.
While the median difference is 358, the 90th and 95th percentiles of the difference are 3302 and 7357,
respectively. The largest mismatch is of 57,747 votes in the Gautam Buddha Nagar constituency in Uttar
Pradesh. I define a dummy variable called “large” turnout discrepancy: it takes value one if the absolute
discrepancy is larger than the 95th percentile and zero otherwise. If the mismatch occurred due to some
administrative errors or glitches in the EVM, then we expect the “large” discrepancies to be randomly
spread across PCs with different BJP Win Margins.
Figure 3—EVM Turnout Data Mismatch in Closely Contested Constituencies
(a) “Large” Data Discrepancy (b) Absolute Data Discrepancy
Figure 3a plots the relationship between the dummy variable and BJP win margin separately on
the two sides of the threshold value of zero. I find that the probability of “large” discrepancy jumps
significantly at zero. The estimate of the jump, using the method proposed by Calonico et al. (2014), is
0.26 (p-value = 0.008), implying that conditional on close election, the PCs that BJP barely won have 26
percentage point larger likelihood of having a “large” mismatch than PCs that BJP barely lost. This is
a large effect considering the average value of the dummy variable, by construction, is 0.05. The result
implies that the sample of closely contested constituencies that were disproportionately won by BJP
32
The p-value of the Column (3) coefficient is 0.103.
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25
also has a disproportionately higher likelihood of “large” turnout revision. If the failure of McCrary test
demonstrated in the previous section involved manipulation of turnout figures, then we should expect this
pattern. Figure 3b plots the same graph directly using the absolute turnout discrepancy (in thousands)
and finds a similar pattern, though with a noisier estimate. The estimate of the discontinuity is 5.70
(p-value = 0.09).33 Hence, the result is consistent with the manipulation hypothesis. Moreover, it is not
obvious why precise control would lead to larger turnout revisions by the ECI in the closely contested
constituencies won by the BJP.
Table 5—Heterogeneity in RDD Estimates of Turnout Discrepancy
BJP Ruled States Non-BJP Ruled States

(1) (2)
Panel A: “Large” Turnout Discrepancy
BJP Won 0.45** 0.16

(0.19) (0.11)
Panel B: Absolute Turnout Discrepancy
BJP Won 15.54** -0.43

(7.42) (1.02)
Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.153 0.153

Notes: The table reports RDD estimates for two dependent vari-
ables – the dummy variable “Large” Turnout Discrepancy (Panel
A) which takes value one if the absolute discrepancy in turnout
data is larger than the 95th percentile, and the absolute turnout dis-
crepancy, in thousands (Panel B). The running variable is BJP Win
Margin. The sample only includes the 373 constituencies for which
turnout discrepancy information is available. Column 1 has states
ruled by BJP in 2019, while column 2 has the rest of the states.
Optimal bandwidth for Panel A is calculated using the MSERD
method proposed by Calonico et al. (2014) and is maintained in
Panel B. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
BJP vs. Non-BJP Ruled States: Similar to the previous section, I test for heterogeneity across BJP
and non-BJP ruled states. Table 5 reports the RDD estimates for the two sub-samples for both outcome
variables. We observe in Panel A that the jump in the probability of “large” discrepancy is statistically
significant and large in magnitude for BJP ruled states, while it is statistically insignificant and smaller
in magnitude in non-BJP ruled states. The estimated jump in column 1 is 0.45 (and the value just to the
left of threshold is close to zero), i.e., the likelihood of “large” discrepancy in the PCs barely won by the
BJP is 9 times higher than what it would be under the random chance scenario. It is, on the other hand,
3 times higher for non-BJP ruled states. The results in Panel B are similar. While the estimated jump
in absolute discrepancy is more than 15, 000 votes (statistically significant at 5%) in BJP ruled states,
it is -430 (statistically insignificant) in non-BJP ruled states. The difference between the coefficients in
Panel A is not statistically significant, but in Panel B, it is significant at 5%.
33
Appendix Figure A4 plots the same relationships using INC win margin and does not find discontinuity at the threshold.
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26
Discontinuity in Turnout Difference: Appendix Figure A6 shows discontinuity in turnout difference

at the BJP win margin threshold of zero for the past general elections. Turnout difference for a PC in
a general election is the difference between its turnout rates in the current and previous elections. We
observe that the discontinuity is positive and statistically significant for 2019. The discontinuity estimate
is 0.023 (p-value = 0.05). For previous elections going back to 1989, the discontinuity estimates are
statistically insignificant. This is consistent with the result that turnout data discrepancy went up in PCs
barely won by BJP.
Interpretation: It would be inappropriate to treat the data revision as aggregation fraud (Callen and
Long 2015), i.e., one where higher level ECI officials directly engaged in turnout manipulation while
aggregating turnout data from polling station level results. Such acts by the ECI is unlikely. Moreover,
in all cases, barring one, the revision is not larger than the win margin. Rather, the revisions are likely
indicative of possible manipulations committed locally, at the polling stations. The local manipulations
could either be at the time of voting or counting. Most electoral frauds are decentralized in nature, as
Rundlett and Svolik (2016) point out. The analysis in the following section suggests that it was at least
partly facilitated by weaker monitoring during counting, while the next section provides evidence that
local manipulation may explain part of the observed turnout manipulation.
VI.III Counting Manipulation: Assignment of Counting Observers

I examine assignment of counting observers in PCs across the BJP win margin threshold. All counting
observers are assigned to a state different from their ‘office state’ and ‘home state’, as defined in Section
III. 36% of observers are from the SCS cadre. The SCS officers typically work in lower ranked positions
in a state bureaucracy, as compared to the IAS officers with same experience (Iyer and Mani 2012).
They are also more likely to be politically pliable by the state government, since they are appointed
by them, as opposed to the IAS officers who are appointed by the central government. I compute the
fraction of counting observers in a PC who come from the SCS cadre. About 50% of PCs have at least
one SCS observer assigned. Since I know the ‘office state’ of each observer, I also compute the fraction
of observers who are SCS and work in a BJP ruled state. The mean fraction is 0.13.
Table 6 columns (1) and (4) report the estimates of discontinuity in the two outcomes variables at the
BJP win margin threshold of zero. In both cases, we find that the RDD estimate is positive – 0.24 and
0.22, respectively. They are large in magnitude and statistically significant at 5%. Columns (2) and (5)
report the results for BJP ruled states and columns (3) and (6) for non-BJP ruled states.34 All coefficients
are positive and 3 out of the 4 coefficients are statistically significant; coefficients for BJP ruled states are
larger in magnitude. Specifically, for the fraction of observers who are SCS and come from BJP ruled
states, the coefficient is 0.37 and is statistically significant at 1% for BJP ruled states (column (5)) but
is 0.17 and statistically insignificant for non-BJP ruled states (column (6)). Appendix Figure A5 depicts
the RDD graphs for the four cases. The results indicate that more politically pliant counting observers
were assigned in PCs barely won by BJP, and the pattern is concentrated in BJP ruled states.
I regress the absolute data discrepancy in turnout and the indicator for “large” turnout discrepancy
computed in Section VI.II above on the fraction of counting observers who are SCS and from BJP ruled
states, whether BJP won the PC and their interaction. I include all PCs in the sample to check whether in
34
Here BJP and non-BJP ruled states refer to the PCs where the observers were deployed.
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27
Table 6—RDD Estimates of Characteristics of Counting Observers
SCS Observer SCS Observer from BJP States

All BJP Ruled Non-BJP All BJP Ruled Non-BJP
States States Ruled States States States Ruled States
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
BJP Won 0.236** 0.335** 0.241* 0.224** 0.371*** 0.166

(0.100) (0.131) (0.136) (0.104) (0.0739) (0.154)
Mean dep. var. 0.36 0.31 0.40 0.17 0.17 0.17
Observations 188 83 105 188 83 105

Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16
Notes: The table reports RDD estimates for two dependent variables – share of counting observers as-
signed to a PC who are State Civil Service (SCS) officers (columns (1)-(3)) and share of counting ob-
servers who are SCS and work in BJP ruled states (columns (4)-(6)). The running variable is BJP Win
Margin. The columns (1) and (4) include all PCs with BJP win margin within 0.16, columns (2) and (5)
include PCs with the same win margin and are in BJP ruled states, columns (3) and (6) include PCs with
the same win margin and are in non-BJP ruled states. Robust standard errors are reported in the paren-
theses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
the full sample, assignment of politically pliant observers is correlated with data discrepancy. Appendix
Table A6 reports the results. I find that in PCs that BJP lost, the relationship between data discrepancy
and the fraction of SCS observers from BJP ruled states is negative. However, in PCs that BJP won, the
relationship turns positive for both outcomes. For the absolute discrepancy measure, the relationship is
statistically insignificant (p-value=0.104), while for the “large” discrepancy indicator, the relationship
is statistically significant at 5% (p-value = 0.041). This suggests that greater presence of politically
pliant counting observers in PCs barely won by BJP may have partly contributed towards discrepancy in
turnout data.
VI.IV Irregularities in Polling Station Outcomes

This section examines irregularities in polling station level election results for 2019 from 22 major states
of India.35 For each polling station, the data provide information on the total turnout and candidate wise
vote tallies. The data do not mention the number of electorates at the polling station level.36 If the
turnout discrepancy discussed above electorally benefited the incumbent party, then we should expect it
to be reflected in its vote share across polling stations. To examine this, I compute vote share of BJP
in each polling station in constituencies with a BJP candidate. To make polling station level BJP vote
shares comparable across PCs, I then compute the relative vote share of BJP in each polling station j in
each PC p:
BJP vote sharejp
Relative BJP vote sharejp =
BJP vote sharep
35
The states are Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jhark-
hand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh,
Uttarakhand, West Bengal.
36
The only exception is Uttar Pradesh; it releases the electorate size of polling stations along with vote tallies of parties in
the same dataset.
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28
where BJP vote sharejp is BJP’s vote share in a polling station and BJP vote sharep is its vote share in
the entire constituency that the polling station belongs to. I use the revised turnout figures to calculate
vote shares, as that is the official data on turnout and are available for all PCs. Hence, relative BJP vote
share captures the party’s vote share in a polling station relative to its vote share in the constituency.
If its value is greater than one, then in the polling station, BJP’s vote share is higher than that in the
constituency. The average value of Relative BJP vote share should be approximately one.
Figure 4a plots, for the states ruled by BJP, the local polynomial relationship between the relative
BJP vote share and turnout at polling station level in closely contested constituencies, i.e., constituencies
where BJP’s win margin was less than 0.16 – the optimal bandwidth for the McCrary test performed in
Figure 1a. I estimate it separately for PCs where BJP won and lost, depicted by the solid and dashed
lines respectively. For comparison, Figure 4b plots the same graph for the states not ruled by BJP. Figure
4a shows that in both types of constituencies, the estimated relationship hovers around one for polling
stations with turnout 800 or below. In polling stations with higher turnout, relative BJP vote share spikes
in constituencies where BJP won, and falls in constituencies where BJP lost.37 In Figure 4b we do not
see such striking patterns.
I examine this directly by creating a dummy variable at the polling station level, called “high”
BJP vote share that takes value one if the BJP vote share in the polling station is higher than the 95th
percentile of the BJP vote share distribution in the entire sample. In these polling stations, BJP’s vote
share on average is 0.90. By construction, the average value of the dummy variable is 0.05. The dummy
variable essentially flags polling stations with “extreme” outcomes in favor of BJP. Figures 4c and 4d
plot the relationships for BJP ruled and non-BJP ruled states. The sample of PCs is same as before –
those with absolute BJP win margin within 0.16. We observe in Figure 4c that in both constituencies won
and lost by BJP, the average value of “high” BJP vote share is low in polling stations with turnout below
800. However, in larger turnout polling stations, the estimated relationships diverge. In constituencies
won by BJP, the average likelihood of “high” BJP vote share increases sharply, going beyond 0.4, while
the other graph remains flat. This is consistent with Figure 4a. Moreover, there is no such pattern
in the corresponding figure for non-BJP ruled states (Figure 4d). The pattern in Figure 4c is especially
noteworthy given the fact that I only consider closely contested constituencies for the estimation. Hence,
the rival party in these constituencies have received comparable vote share, which would make it less
likely for BJP to get “high” vote shares in any polling station.
Bemford’a Law: I compute second digit distribution of absolute vote tallies across all candidates for
each polling station to check departures from the Benford’s law. Benford’s law specifies the distribution
of digits in different positions of naturally occurring numbers (Benford 1938, Raimi 1976). Manipu-
lation of such numbers leads to a different distribution of digits, which allows analysts to detect the
manipulation (Hill et al. 1995). This method is used in a variety of contexts to detect fraud (Diek-
mann 2007, Nigrini 2012) – such as, income tax receipts, financial transactions, as well as elections.
In the context of election forensics, analysts usually focus on the distribution of second digits (Mebane
37
The pattern for PCs lost by BJP is similar in constituencies that BJP lost with margin higher than 0.16 (Appendix Figure
A7). Therefore, in all the PCs that BJP lost, it got lower vote share in polling stations with high turnout. These polling stations
are likely to be located in urban centers. Since BJP’s primary support base is more urban than other parties, less support in
urban areas is a good indicator of its performance in a PC.
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29
Figure 4—Distribution of BJP vote share across Polling Stations – Win margin  0.16
(a) Relative BJP Vote Share: BJP ruled states (b) Relative BJP Vote Share: non-BJP ruled states
(c) “High” BJP Vote Share: BJP ruled states (d) “High” BJP Vote Share: non-BJP ruled states
(e) Benford distance: BJP ruled states (f) Benford distance: non-BJP ruled states
2008a,b).38 However, treating a significant deviation from Benford’s distribution in a given constituency
as evidence of fraud (in that constituency) can lead to misleading conclusions, as researchers have shown
that even in cases without fraud, empirical distributions of second digits can deviate from Benford’s law
(Shikano and Mack 2011). This can happen due to a myriad of reasons as discussed by Mebane (2011).
I therefore do not test for deviations from Benford’s distribution in each PC individually. I argue that
presence (or absence) of patterns in deviations across PCs and polling stations is a better statistical test.
38
There are other digit-based tests of electoral fraud, for example, examining distribution of last digits (Beber and Scacco
2012) etc. However, Benford’s law is the most widely used method in this context.
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30
I compute the Euclidean distance between the second digit distribution of the vote tallies of candi-
dates in each polling station and the “ideal” second digit distribution specified by Benford’s law. Figure
4e plots the Benford distance for each polling station against turnout for the same sample of PCs as Fig-
ure 4c. Figure 4f plots it for the sample of PCs used in Figure 4d. We observe that the Benford distance
typically falls with larger turnout, except for PCs won by BJP in BJP ruled states. In those PCs, the
Benford distance falls initially with turnout, but then rises for polling stations having turnout higher than
800. This is the same set of polling stations that exhibits irregular patterns, as discussed above. This
suggests that the “extreme” outcomes in favor of BJP observed in Figure 4c may have resulted from
some form of manipulation of vote tallies in that subset of polling stations.
Shape of vote share density: Some recent works on detection of electoral fraud examine the shape
of the density of vote share and turnout distributions using the booth (or precinct) level data. Rozenas
(2017), for example, test for presence of excess mass at coarse vote shares using a resampled kernel
density method. The method returns as output an estimated fraction of booths exhibiting fraudulent
results. I apply this method to the polling station level data from Uttar Pradesh (UP)– the only state
for which turnout rate as well as BJP’s vote share are available at polling stations, a requirement for
the analysis. Also, a significant number of PCs from UP are in the list of PCs with narrow win margin
(Appendix Table B1). I find that in the full sample, 0.13% booths are fraudulent. The share increases to
0.19% in PCs with BJP win margin less than 0.08 and won by BJP. The estimates are low but move in
the direction that is indicative of fraud. Additionally, for comparison, Rozenas (2017) analyze data from
Russian elections in 2011 and 2012 and find estimates of 0.94-0.97%. Klimek et al. (2012) argue that
the density of vote share (appropriately calculated and scaled) exhibits high kurtosis in case of fraud and
finds that Russian elections in 2011 and 2012 have kurtosis exceeding 10, while in other well-established
democracies in Europe, it is typically 5 or lower. In UP, the kurtosis is 29. Appendix Figure A8 shows
the density, which looks very similar in shape to those in Russian elections in 2011 and 2012 and unlike
those in other countries (Figure 2 in Klimek et al. (2012)).
Interpretation: The patterns observed in Figures 4a and 4c are consistent with both mechanisms. If
the incumbent party was able to accurately predict the win margins in closely contested constituencies,
and wished to affect them, it might be optimal for the party to target the larger polling stations, as they are
fewer in numbers and mostly located in urban areas, making voters easily accessible for campaigning.
This may result in high vote shares for the party in large turnout polling stations. Figure 4e and the
analysis of the shape of BJP’s vote share density, however, advance the manipulation hypothesis over
precise control.
VI.V Data Discrepancy and Irregularities at Polling Stations

To further distinguish between manipulation and precise control mechanisms, I utilize the fact that in
closely contested PCs barely won by BJP, the EVM data discrepancy is significantly larger. If discrepan-
cies in turnout data and high vote share of BJP in large polling stations are both driven by manipulation,
then I should expect the two phenomena to be correlated, i.e., the irregular pattern in polling stations to
be primarily driven by constituencies with larger data revisions. However, if precise control is the ex-
planation, then such patterns should be similar irrespective of whether data revision was large or small.
24

31
This is because, in that scenario, larger data revisions only reflect administrative errors during count-
ing of votes, which should be uncorrelated with BJP’s ability to exercise precise control at the time of
elections.
To test this hypothesis formally, I estimate the difference-in-discontinuity specification (Grembi et al.
2016) specified below:
Rel. BJP vote sharejp = ↵1 + 1 BJP _W onp + 2 BJP _W onp ⇥ Dp (2)

+ 1 BJP _M arginp + 2 BJP _M arginp ⇥ BJP _W onp
+ Dp ⇥ {↵2 + 3 BJP _M arginp + 4 BJP _M arginp ⇥ BJP _W onp }+✏jp
where Dp is the absolute discrepancy in turnout data in PC p, measured in unit of 10,000 votes and the
rest are as defined before. 1 measures the RDD estimate for relative BJP vote share in PCs without any
turnout discrepancy. 2 measures the differential discontinuity in the relative BJP vote share in PCs with
additional discrepancy in 10,000 votes. Our coefficient of interest, therefore, is 2.
Table 7—Discrepancy in Turnout Data and Irregularity in Election Results
Relative BJP vote share

All BJP ruled Non-BJP
states states ruled states
(1) (2) (3)
BJP Won -0.063** -0.105*** -0.094*

(0.030) (0.034) (0.048)
Absolute Turnout Discrepancy -0.234* -1.738 -0.174*
(0.137) (1.059) (0.092)
Absolute Turnout Discrepancy * BJP Won 0.236* 1.737 0.196
(0.137) (1.060) (0.130)
Mean Dep. Var. 0.998 0.998 0.998
Observations 183,275 82,921 100,354

Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.160 0.160 0.160
Notes: The data is at polling station level. The dependent variable in all columns is the
ratio of BJP vote share in a polling station and BJP vote share in the PC. Absolute Turnout
Discrepancy is the absolute mismatch (in unit of 10,000 votes) in EVM turnout data in
2019. Optimal bandwidth calculated for McCrary test in Figure 1a has been used in all
specifications. Standard errors are clustered at the constituency level and are reported in
the parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
Before discussing the results, I emphasize that even though the difference-in-discontinuity method is
used to estimate heterogeneity in causal effect of some treatment, that is not the appropriate interpretation
in this context. The estimation of equation (3) allows us to examine whether irregular outcomes in the
polling stations are positively correlated with extent of turnout discrepancy in PCs barely won by the
BJP. Table 7 reports the results for the full sample (column (1)), BJP ruled states (column (2)) and non-
BJP ruled states (column (3)). We find that estimate of 1 is negative and statistically significant in
all columns, i.e., PCs barely won by BJP with no data discrepancy exhibits a fall in relative BJP vote
share. However, estimate of 2 in column (1) is positive and statistically significant at 10%. Moreover,
the magnitude of 2 is about 4 times larger than 1, suggesting that in PCs with discrepancy larger
25

32
than 2500 votes, the relative BJP vote share is higher in PCs won by BJP (relative to PCs lost by BJP).
Estimate of 2 in column (2) is 17 times larger than 1, while in column (3), it is twice as larger. The
coefficients in both columns however are noisily estimated. We therefore have weak and suggestive
evidence that turnout discrepancy (at the level of PCs) is positively correlated with irregular outcomes
at the polling stations in constituencies barely won by the BJP.
VI.VI Turnout Manipulation in High Muslim Share Areas

This section tests whether electoral discrimination of minorities, specifically Muslims, is a potential
source of turnout manipulation. Lehne (2022) shows, using individual voter level panel data on electoral
rolls from the state of Uttar Pradesh during 2012-2017, that in state assembly constituencies with BJP
incumbents (elected in 2012), Muslim voters have a significantly higher probability of being deleted
from the electoral rolls in 2017. Neggers (2018) shows using data from the state of Bihar, that polling
officers in charge of conducting election in a polling station exercise significant discretion in allowing
registered voters, specially from minority communities such as Muslims, to vote. Since Muslim names
are culturally distinct, Muslim voters are easily identified in the electoral roll. Therefore, they can
be subject to both strategic deletion (discussed above) and strategic discrimination. Moreover, such
exercises are easier in states controlled by the incumbent party, since the state government can influence
assignment of officials in charge of electoral roll revisions as well as polling officers. Hence, if fraud is
the appropriate explanation, I expect the polling station level irregularities to be concentrated in areas
within a PC that have high Muslim presence.
Precise control, on the other hand, would predict the opposite. This is because, the party historically
enjoyed minimal support among Muslim and consequently, spent significantly less effort in mobilizing
Muslim voters. Jha (2017), for example, points out that the party did not focus on areas with significant
Muslim presence, since it did not expect to get significant support from them. It instead directed its
efforts towards voters who could be converted to vote in favor of the party, especially those belonging
to lower castes among Hindus.39 This is consistent with Varshney (2019) who reports, using NES
data, that while support for the party increased substantially between 2014 and 2019, especially among
Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) – two large disadvantaged caste groups
among Hindus, it remained constant among Muslims. In both elections, only 8 percent of Muslims are
reported to have voted for the BJP. Using the data on home visits by party workers, I also find that BJP
is significantly less likely to visit Muslim homes compared to non-Muslim homes, while other parties
are more likely to visit them (Appendix Table A7). Hence, if the polling station level irregularities are
due to exercise of precise control, we should expect it to be concentrated in areas within a PC that have
low Muslim share of the electorate.
Since Muslim electorate share at the polling stations is not known, I map each polling station to
the Assembly Constituency it falls under. Each AC is subsumed within a PC and each PC on average
contains about 7 ACs. The data on AC level Muslim electorate share (described in Section III) would
provide within-PC variation in Muslim electorate share across polling stations falling in different AC-
segments. The final sample for this analysis contains more than 850, 000 polling stations mapped to 3098
ACs (76% of all ACs) covering 475 PCs. The mean Muslim share in an AC is 0.14. However, there is
39
In Uttar Pradesh, for example, during BJP’s state-wide membership drive it did not focus on the 13, 000 polling stations
with significant Muslim presence, since it did not receive any votes in those areas.
26

33
wide variation across ACs, with 5th percentile at 0.01 and 95th percentile being 0.43. Appendix Figure
A9 shows the distribution across all ACs. Appendix Table A8 regresses polling station level BJP vote
share on AC level Muslim share and finds a sizable and statistically significant negative relationship, both
across PCs as well as within a PC. Now, to shed light on the mechanisms discussed above I focus on close
election PCs, i.e., those with absolute BJP win margin within 0.16 and run the following specification:
Yjap = p + BJP _W onp ⇤ M uslim_shareap + M uslim_shareap

+ 1 BJP _W inM arginp ⇤ M uslim_shareap
+ 2 BJP _W onp ⇤ BJP _W inM arginp ⇤ M uslim_shareap + ✏jap
Table 8—Polling Station Level Irregularities Concentrated in High Muslim Share ACs
BJP Rel. BJP BJP share

vote share vote share 95th pctile
(1) (2) (3)
Panel A: All states
Muslim Electorate Share in AC -0.745*** -1.811*** -0.194**

(0.087) (0.300) (0.085)
BJP Won * Muslim Electorate Share in AC 0.327** 0.818** 0.199*
(0.127) (0.369) (0.101)
Observations 280,391 280,391 280,391
Panel B: BJP Ruled states
Muslim Electorate Share in AC -0.633*** -1.282*** -0.250**

(0.173) (0.373) (0.124)
BJP Won * Muslim Electorate Share in AC 0.367 0.695 0.269*
(0.224) (0.474) (0.147)
Observations 145,574 145,574 145,574

PC Fixed Effect YES YES YES
Bandwidth (h⇤ ) 0.160 0.160 0.160
Notes: The data is at polling station level. The dependent variables are polling station level
BJP vote share (column 1), relative BJP vote share (column 2) and a dummy variable that
takes value one if the BJP vote share in a polling station exceeds the 95th percentile (column
3). BJP Won is an indicator of whether BJP is the winner of the Parliamentary Constituency.
Muslim Electorate Share in AC is the share of Muslim voters in the Assembly Constituency in
which a polling station is located. The sample in Panel A is PCs from all states while that in
Panel B is BJP ruled states. Optimal bandwidth calculated for McCrary test in Figure 1a has
been used in all specifications. Standard errors are clustered at the PC level and are reported
in the parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
where j denotes polling station, a denotes AC and p denotes PC. Yjap is one of three outcome
variables – (i) vote share of BJP in a polling station, (ii) relative BJP vote share, as defined above, and
(iii) the indicator “high” BJP vote share defined above. p is PC fixed effect and M uslim_shareap
is Muslim electorate share in AC a in PC p. The regression implements the difference-in-discontinuity
specification with PC fixed effects that subsume the running variable, the treatment BJP Won and their
interaction. It compares polling stations within a PC and checks if the BJP’s vote share is high or is more
27

34
like to exceed its 95th percentile in AC segments with higher Muslim share and whether this relationship
is different between PCs that BJP barely won and lost. estimates the relationship in PCs lost by BJP.
is the differential estimate for PCs won by BJP and is our coefficient of interest. Precise control
hypothesis implies < 0, while manipulation would imply > 0.
Table 8 reports the results. The three columns correspond to the three outcome variables mentioned
above. Panel A reports the results for the full sample, while Panel B reports it for the BJP ruled states. As
before, I restrict attention to PCs with BJP win margin within 0.16. In Panel A, the estimates of in all
the columns is negative and statistically significant at 1% or 5%. However, the estimates of are positive
and statistically significant at 10% or 5%. In Panel B, the estimates of are also positive, but in columns
(1) and (2) they are noisily estimated. The estimate for the dummy indicating “high” BJP vote share in
a polling station (column (3)) is large in magnitude and statistically significant at 10%. The estimates of
and jointly indicate that the Muslim electorate share does not predict “extreme” outcomes in favor
BJP in PCs barely won by BJP, even though it strongly negatively predicts such outcomes in PCs barely
lost by the party.
Appendix Table A9 partitions the sample used in Panel B column (3) into polling stations with
turnout higher and lower than 800 and estimates the same specification. To allow comparison, column
(1) of Table A9 reports the same result as column (3) of Table 8. Columns (2) and (3) report the results for
the two sub-samples separately. We find that the the estimate of is large in magnitude and statistically
significant at 1% in column (2), while it is smaller in magnitude and statistically insignificant in column
(3). This is consistent with the graphs reported in Figure 4.40
VII Concluding Remarks

The paper documents irregularity in India’s 2019 general election data by showing that the incumbent
party’s win margin distribution exhibits excess mass at zero, while no such pattern exists either in pre-
vious general elections or in state elections held simultaneously and subsequently. This implies that the
incumbent party in 2019 won a disproportionate share of closely contested elections. Moreover, the pat-
tern is concentrated in the states ruled by the incumbent party at that time. While the result is consistent
with electoral fraud or manipulation, the incumbent party’s superior ability to predict and affect win mar-
gin (i.e., precise control), owing to its significant advantage in electoral campaigning over other parties
can also explain it. To isolate the two mechanisms, I conduct a series of analyses to check for presence
of precise control and manipulation. I do not find that the incumbent party did greater door-to-door
campaigning than other parties in constituencies barely won by it. On the other hand, I find evidence
consistent with electoral manipulation at the stage of voter registration as well as at the time of voting
and counting (turnout manipulation). In both cases, the results point to strategic and targeted electoral
discrimination against Muslims, in the form of deletion of names from voter lists and suppression of
their votes during election, in part facilitated by weak monitoring by election observers.
The tests are, however, not proofs of fraud, nor does it suggest that manipulation was widespread.
Proving electoral manipulation in a robust democracy is a significantly harder task that would require
detailed investigation of electoral data in each constituency separately. In the 1960 Presidential election
in the US, for example, there was reporting of possible fraud in Illinois state that may have resulted in
40
The result remains the same if I use turnout threshold of 700 or 600, instead of 800.
28

35
John F. Kennedy winning that state. Analysis of detailed data on recounting of votes from Cook county
showed patterns consistent with fraud, and yet, were not able to conclusively determine its magnitude
and whether it caused the result to flip in Kennedy’s favor (Kallina 1985). This case also highlights
that electoral fraud is often decentralized (Rundlett and Svolik 2016), as opposed to being implemented
centrally. Consequently, fraud may occur even in contexts where it would not have mattered for govern-
ment formation. In 1960, Kennedy would have won the Presidential election even if he had lost Illinois.
Similarly, in my context, even if manipulation of election data drives all of the observed irregularities
in closely contested constituencies, the aggregate election outcomes in terms of government formation
would likely have remained unchanged. Appendix Table A10 reports the number of PCs with “excess”
BJP wins in closely contested PCs. It varies from 9-18, depending on the definition of a close contest;
the numbers are smaller than the lead of 31 PCs that BJP has over the threshold required to form govern-
ment. Nonetheless, electoral fraud even in a single constituency would imply that such manipulations by
incumbent parties are possible. In view of the depletion of trust in electoral processes across the globe
and the exceptional integrity of India’s electoral institution in its past, the paper presents a worrying
development with potentially far-reaching consequences for the world’s largest democracy.
References
AGARWAL , P. (2019): “EVM Vote Count Mismatch In 370+ Seats and EC Refuses to Explain,”
The Quint, 31 May, 2019, https://www.thequint.com/news/india/lok–sabha–election–results–2019–
mismatch–in–votes–polled–and–counted–in–evm–on–multiple–seats.
A RRIOLA , L. R., J. D EVARO , AND A. M ENG (2021): “Democratic subversion: Elite cooptation and
opposition fragmentation,” American Political Science Review, 115, 1358–1372.
A SUNKA , J., S. B RIERLEY, M. G OLDEN , E. K RAMON , AND G. O FOSU (2019): “Electoral fraud
or violence: The effect of observers on party manipulation strategies,” British Journal of Political
Science, 49, 129–151.
BALASUBRAMANIAM , V., A. Y. B HATIYA , AND S. DAS (2021): “Behavioral Voters in Synchronized

Elections: Evidence from India,” Available at SSRN 3636183.
BANERJEE , A., A. G ETHIN , AND T. P IKETTY (2019): “Growing Cleavages in India?” Economic &
Political Weekly, 54, 35.
BANERJEE , M. (2017): “Vote,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 40, 410–412.
B EBER , B. AND A. S CACCO (2012): “What the numbers say: A digit-based test for election fraud,”
Political analysis, 20, 211–234.
B EKKOUCHE , Y., J. C AGE , AND E. D EWITTE (2022): “The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence
from multiparty systems, 1993–2017,” Journal of Public Economics, 206, 104559.
B ENFORD , F. (1938): “The law of anomalous numbers,” Proceedings of the American philosophical
society, 551–572.
B HALOTRA , S., I. C LOTS -F IGUERAS , G. C ASSAN , AND L. I YER (2014): “Religion, politician identity
and development outcomes: Evidence from India,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization,
104, 4–17.
29
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Parliamentary panel tells Law Ministry to get information from poll panel
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The committee asked the Legislative Department to prioritise the matter and get the requisite
information from the Election Commission without further delay. The EC spokesperson did not respond
to a request for comment on the delay and if any discrepancies had been noticed.
Listen to this article

00:00 1x 1.5x 1.8x
Four years after the government told Parliament that it would collect information
from the Election Commission about possible discrepancies between the Electronic
Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) tallies
during the 2019 elections, a Parliamentary panel this week noted that the reply was
yet to be provided, adding that identifying such issues was necessary for the
security of the voting process.
In its report on the pending assurances pertaining to the Law and Justice Ministry,
which was presented in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, the Committee on Government
Assurances said an unstarred question regarding “discrepancy in EVM and VVPAT”
was asked on June 26, 2019. The government was asked whether any discrepancy
between the EVM and VVPAT counts was found in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and
if so, what corrective measures had been taken. In the reply, the government gave
an assurance that the information was being collected and would be laid on the
table of the House.
The Law Ministry informed the committee, which is chaired by BJP MP from 42
Meerut Rajendra Agrawal, that it had asked the EC for the required information on
March 12, 2020 and sent reminders on September 3, 2020, February 19, 2021,
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October 7, 2021, November 26, 2021 and June 3, 2022. “The requisite information 'Blaming Neh
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from the EC is still awaited,” the ministry said. Giving oral evidence in January this Expert weigh
year, the Legislative Department Secretary said the EC had been called, but they
could not attend as they were “having discussions with some political parties”. The
committee then gave the ministry a month’s extension to fulfil the assurance.
5 BHK | Siddharth Vihar
“The Committee note that finding discrepancies between EVMs and VVPAT is a
crucial aspect of ensuring the integrity and transparency of the electoral process.
The Committee feel that the need for identifying such issues is all the more
necessary to ensure the security and reliability of the voting process. EVMs and
VVPATs are designed to provide an accurate reflection of voters’ choices…The
Committee, however, regret to note that precious little has been done in this
direction…The Committee are deeply concerned to note that the requisite
information is still awaited from the Election Commission,” the report said.
The committee said the fact that the information was yet to be received by the
ministry indicated the lack of coordination.
“The Committee feel that there is an urgent necessity for identifying the
discrepancies between the EVMs and VVPAT as it helps in maintaining trust in the
electoral process by ensuring that votes are being recorded and counted correctly,”
the report said.
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The committee asked the Legislative Department to prioritise the matter and get the
requisite information from the Election Commission without further delay. The EC
spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the delay and if any
discrepancies had been noticed.
ADVERTISEMENT
The 2019 Lok Sabha elections were the first to have 100% use of VVPAT — each EVM
had a VVPAT attached to it. After casting the vote, the voter can see a paper slip
printed in the VVPAT for a period of seven seconds that displays the name and the
symbol of the selected candidate. The slip then drops into a sealed drop box of the
VVPAT. As per Supreme Court directions, the EC verifies VVPAT slips in five
randomly selected polling stations in each Assembly constituency.
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Independence Day ... resolve issues
In a recent petition in the Supreme Court, the Association for Democratic Reforms
asked for directions to the EC to cross verify the count in EVMs with the VVPAT
slips. The petition argued that “there is no way for any of the voters to verify that
their vote has actually been ‘counted as recorded’ because there is no procedure
provided for by the EC for them to match the VVPATs that they had certified as
being ‘recorded as cast’ with what is actually counted.” Hearing the petition on July
17, the Supreme Court asked a copy of the petition to be sent to the EC and asked
the poll panel to respond to the same.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
First published on: 29-07-2023 at 00:40 IST
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(TRUE COPY)
SECTION: PIL

{PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION)
I.A. NO. ___________OF 2024
IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS … PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. ...RESPONDENTS
FILING INDEX

1. APPLICATION FOR DIRECTION WITH 1 120/-
AFFIDAVIT
2. ANNEXURE-A1 TO A3 1 NIL
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
NEW DELHI-110 001
CODE NO. 515
NEW DELHI
DATED: 13.01.2024
I.A. NO. ___________OF 2024
IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

VERSUS
PAPER-BOOK
{APPLICATION FOR DIRECTION ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER}

INDEX
1. Application for Direction on behalf of the Petitioner 1-16

with Affidavit
2. Annexure-A1: A copy of the youtube video 17

available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NqF4E-rgaog&abchannel=Satyagraha
3. Annexure-A2: A copy of news report dated 18-19

19.12.2023 published in IndiaToday
4. Annexure-A3: A copy of article titled, Cloud of 20-22

Silence Hangs Over One-Third of VVPAT Machines
in Use Since 2018, Deemed ‘Defective’, published
on 18.04.2023 in The Wire
1
I.A. NO. ___________OF 2024
IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. RESPONDENTS
TO,
individually and severally verify that their vote has been
‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’ and issuance of
ancillary directions in this regard with the following prayers:
I. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate
writ, order, or direction to the respondents to cross
2
verify the count in EVMs with votes that have been
verifiably ‘recorded as cast’ by the voters
II. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate
writ, order, or direction to the respondents to
ensure that the voters are able to verify through
VVPATs that their vote has been ‘counted as
recorded’;
Rules, 1961, and the practice and procedure of
Election Commission of India to the extent that
they violate the fundamental right of the voters to
verify through VVPATs that their vote has been
‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’;
2. That the only way that the voter can verify that their vote
has been ‘recorded as cast’ is when the VVPAT slip is
displayed for about 7 seconds after the casting of the vote
through a glass window before the VVPAT slip is cut and
falls into the VVPAT Ballot Box.
3. That on 26.07.2023, a youtube channel called, ‘ Satyagraha’,

has published a video showing a demonstration by Mr.
Rahul Mehta who is a computer engineer which
demonstration shows how a machine developed by Mr.
Rahul Mehta as a replica of an EVM and VVPAT can be
hacked. A copy of the youtube video available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqF4E-
rgaog&ab_channel=Satyagraha is enclosed herewith in a
USB drive as Annexure A1 (Page 17). The relevant
demonstration in the short video starts at the 5 minute 46
second mark. The petitioner craves liberty from this Hon’ble
Court to refer to the same in court if so required.
3
4. That in the video it is stated that prior to June, 2017, all
VVPATs had a transparent glass window through which the
voter could see the print out of the symbol on VVPAT for the
candidate for whom the voter had cast their vote and could
see the VVPAT slip being cut and falling into the VVPAT
Ballot Box. However, for unknown reasons, post June, 2017,
the transparent glass window was replaced by a darkened
reflective glass window in the VVPATs by the Election
5. The video points out that this change in the colour of the
glass from clear glass to a reflective darkened glass window
leaves the VVPAT system open to the possibility of hacking
as now the voter can only see inside of the window when a
light is illuminated inside the window and cannot verify that
the VVPAT slip which has been shown to him is in fact being
‘cut’ and is dropped into the VVPAT Ballot Box.
6. It is stated in the video that this new physical change in the

color of the glass window can be used to manipulate the
election results by coding the software inside maliciously at
the time of manufacturing of the machine or at the time of
loading of the symbols of the candidates in the manner
elaborated hereinafter and yet having the VVPAT count tally
with the EVM count and results therefore leaving no trace of
the manipulation as the people will be satisfied that VVPAT
counts are matching with the EVM count and results.
7. The manipulation can be done in the following manner by
maliciously programing the machine:
4
a. Suppose there are 3 voters and two candidates A
and B between whom the voter has to choose.
b. If Voter No. 1 casts the vote for candidate A; then
the VVPAT ballot will be printed with A; which print
out would be shown to Voter No.1 only when the
light inside the darkened glass window illuminates
for about seven seconds. Voter No. 1 will be
satisfied that his vote has been ‘recorded as cast’.
c. Though, the electronic vote of Voter No. 1 is
registered in favour of Candidate A; the software
can be maliciously programmed to ensure that after
the light is switched off, the print out of the VVPAT
does not get ‘cut’ and fall into the ballot box at this
stage.
d. Now suppose Voter No. 2 casts his vote also for
candidate A and the machine is programmed to
hack the results in favour of candidate B. In such a
case; the previously printed VVPAT slip which was
shown to Voter No. 1 and which had not been cut
off and deposited in the ballot box is again shown
to Voter No. 2 by illuminating the light inside the
darkened window. Voter No. 2 will also be satisfied
that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ but
again the VVPAT slip is not cut off and deposited in
VVPAT Ballot Box and the voter will not be aware of
the same. Further, at this stage the vote of Voter
No. 2 would also not be electronically recorded.
e. Now suppose Voter No. 3 genuinely casts their vote
for Candidate B. At this stage; the previous VVPAT
5
slip showing vote being caste for Candidate A
which had been printed & shown to Voter No. 1 &
also shown to Voter No. 2 is finally cut off and
deposited in the VVPAT Ballot Box. The machine
then prints two VVPAT slips for Candidate B and
shows one of them for seven seconds to Voter No.
3 who is satisfied that their vote too has been
recorded as cast.
f. The machine then deposits both the new VVPAT
slips having print out of Candidate B into the
machine and also electronically records the votes of
Voter No. 2 and Voter No. 3 as being cast for
Candidate B.
g. Thus the vote of Voter No. 2 has been stolen in
favour of candidate B with the Voter No. 2 being
clueless about the same and having no way of
knowing the same.
h. So after three voters have voted with two actually
having voted for Candidate A and one actually
having voted for Candidate B; inside the VVPAT
drop box, there would be one VVPAT vote for
candidate A and two VVPAT votes for candidate B.
Similarly; even the electronic count would show
that there has been one vote for Candidate A and
two votes for Candidate B.
i. That though the aforesaid example is for 3 voters
and 2 candidates; it will work in the same manner
for any number of voters and any number of
candidates so long as there are sequential votes
6
which can be stolen. As generally families vote
together; there are a number of sequential votes at
risk of being stolen.
8. That the aforesaid demonstration would also show that the

cross verifying of the votes in the VVPATs with the
Electronic Votes can be a futile exercise because both will
still match if the election result is manipulated through the
aforementioned process.
9. That the above manipulation can also evade detection at the

time of demonstration on the day of elections in the
presence of candidates/their representatives as there is a
built in clock inside the EVM-VVPAT which can be coded in a
manner so as to put in process the above manipulation
between a particular time window for example between
12:00pm to 2:00pm or any other time window or after a
particular numbers have already been cast.
10. That the aforesaid illustration is only one of the many
ways which have been flagged by experts that could lead
the EVM-VVPAT system vulnerable. Expert opinions on
the other vulnerabilities of the EVM-VVPAT system are
already annexed to the Rejoinder Affidavit filed by the
petitioners. A copy of expert opinion of Professor
Subhashish Banerjee who was a professor at IIT and is
presently with Ashoka University is annexed as Annexure
P3 of the Rejoinder Affidavit. A copy of the deposition of
Professor Poorvi Vora, George Washington University,
Washington, DC, USA, et all is annexed as Annexure P4 of
7
the Rejoinder Affidavit. A copy of paper titled, “Electronic
Voting and Democracy ” published by Subodh Sharma of
School of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT, Delhi is
annexed as Annexure P5 of the Rejoinder Affidavit. A copy
of deposition titled, “To use or not to use? Electronic Voting
Machines in Indian Elections.” by Sandeep K Shukla,
Professor at IIT Kanpur is annexed as Annexure P6 of the
Rejoinder Affidavit
10. That it has already come on record in the counter affidavit

filed by the Election Commission of India that the source
code of the EVM-VVPAT set up is not in the public domain
and has never been audited by independent experts except
those engaged by the Election Commission itself.
11. Further, at the time of loading of candidate details in the

EVMs (after the last date for withdrawal of candidature);
the hardware of EVM-VVPAT is connected to laptops for
loading of candidature details and sequence through what is
ermed as Symbol Loading Units.
12. That no details are available in the public domain as to who are
the persons responsible for loading these candidate details just
a few days prior to elections; whether the devices that they
carry to load the candidate details are provided by the Election
Commission; what precautions are taken to secure those
devices and the overall process at the time of loading of
candidate details through Symbol Loading Units.
8
13. That even the Symbol Loading Unit Manual that governs
the process to be followed for loading of candidates
details is not in the public domain.
14. That the petitioners in their rejoinder at Paragraph 21

have already pointed out that private persons working on
contract basis have been deployed for Symbol Loading by
the Election Commission as under:
Further, Election Commission’s claim that the EVMs
are secure as the software and hardware for it is
developed exclusively by inhouse employees of
Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited (BHEL) and
Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) is
denied. News publication, The Quint, in an article
titled, ‘RTI Reveals Pvt Consultants Have EVM
Access, Why is EC Denying It?’ published on
04.08.2019, reported that as per RTI documents
available with it; the ECIL, a PSU that manufactures
EVMs and VVPAT machines, engaged private
engineers as “consultants” and that these private
engineers have worked with the Election
Commission in Assembly Elections since 2017 and
even in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Their job was
extremely sensitive – to check and maintain EVMs
and VVPATs, starting from First level Checking
(FLC) right up till and including the Counting Day,
which means they had easy access to EVMs
through the course of the elections. ECIL engaged
these private engineers for the Election Commission
from a Mumbai-based private company called M/s
T&M Services Consulting Private Limited. ECIL
confirmed that close to 50 private consulting
engineers were used to check EVMs during the
2017 Uttarakhand Assembly elections, and that
only eight regular employees of ECIL were
involved. The private consulting engineers’ job was
to upload key details like party symbols and
candidates’ names on the EVMs and VVPAT, for
which they had access to these machines for 15
9
days before polling. (Para 21 of Petitioner’s
rejoinder affidavit)
15. It is humbly submitted that the conduct of elections in

the world’s largest democracy cannot be done in such an
opaque manner where even the source code of the
VVPAT-EVM machines is not open to scrutiny by
independent experts.
16. That the petitioner association has relied on the report of

the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE) chaired by
Hon’ble Justice (retd) Madan B. Lokur, former Supreme
Court Judge, with several domain experts as stated in the
main petition to point out that in a report titled, ‘ An
inquiry into India’s Election System: Is the Indian EVM
and VVPAT system fit for democratic elections?’ in
January, 2021 the committee found that:
● Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E)
verifiability, the present EVM/VVAPAT system is not
verifiable and therefore is unfit for democratic
elections.
● That an EVM has not yet been detected to have
been hacked provides no guarantee that it cannot
be hacked. Thus, elections must be conducted
assuming that the EVMs may possibly be tampered
with.
● In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs
than even what the civil society and the political
parties demand (30% and 50% respectively) to
ensure verification and reliable ascertainment of
results.
● There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic
vote count before the results are declared. The
audit may in some cases - depending on the
margin of victory - require a full manual counting of
VVPAT slips.
10
● The electronic voting system should be re-designed
to be software and hardware independent in order
to be verifiable or auditable.

● The decision making processes within the ECI need
to be much more logical, rigorous and principled
compared to what it was for the 2019
parliamentary elections.
● EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The
electronic voting system should be redesigned to
be software and hardware independent in order to
be verifiable or auditable. This does not imply that
software or hardware cannot be used, but that the
correctness of the election outcome cannot be
entirely dependent on their working correctly.
● The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be
fully voter-verified. The voter should be able to
approve the VVPAT printout before the vote is
finally cast, and be able to cancel if there is an
error.
● The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM
machines during the entire time after polling and
before counting and auditing must be ensured in a
manner that is verifiable by all (and especially the
candidates). There should be no trust requirement
● There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote
count before the results are declared. The audit
should not be based on ad hoc methods but by
counting a statistically significant sample of the
VVPAT slips according to rigorous and well
established statistical audit techniques. The audit
may in some cases - depending on the margin of
victory - require a full manual counting of VVPAT
slips.
● There should be legislation to decide what is to be
done if the audits reveal a problem. Such legislation
should ideally be based on well-established
statistical procedures and not on subjective
● There is a definite need to move away from
certification of voting equipment and processes and
11
demonstrate that the outcome of an election is
correct irrespective of machines and trust on
custody chains of EVMs. Two ways to do this are by
adopting rigorous and well established strategies
for risk-limiting audits or by using a provably end-
to-end verifiable cryptographic protocol, or both.
The ECI should explore the possibilities.
● Finally, the voting system design should be
subjected to independent (of the government and
ECI) review and the integrity of the election
process should be subjected to independent audit.
The findings should be made public. In particular,
all design details should be transparent and publicly
available.
17. That due to the concerns with EVM-VVPATs; an alliance

of major political parties , ‘I.N.D.I.A’ had submitted a
memorandum to the Election Commission, questioning
the design and operation of the EVMs but the poll panel
has been reluctant to meet their delegation on this
memorandum. Reportedly, the resolution states that:
“INDIA parties reiterate that there are many doubts
on the integrity of the functioning of the EVMs.
These have been raised by many experts and
professionals as well. There is widespread demand
for a return to the ballot paper system…”
“Instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it
should be handed over to the voter who shall then
place it in a separate ballot box after having
verified his or her choice. 100% counting of VVPAT
slips should then be done.”
A copy of news report dated 19.12.2023 published in

IndiaToday is annexed herewith as Annexure A2
(Pages 18 to 19). (https:// www.indiatoday.in
/india/story/india-bloc-passes-resolution-on-suspension-
of-mps-evms-operation-2478038-2023-12-19)
12
18. That it has also been reported that almost 33% of
VVPATs machines manufactured post 2018 elections have
been found to have manufacturing defects and have
been sent back by the Election Commission to the
manufacturers i.e. ECIL & BHEL for rectification. The
reported absolute number of defective VVPATs have been
put at 6.5 lacks. Entire series of manufactured VVPATs
which have been put to use for elections have been
found to defective. The silence of the Election
Commission of India in this regard is not in consonance
with the principle that Elections must not only be free
and fair but also be seen to be free and fair. A copy of
article titled, Cloud of Silence Hangs Over One-Third of
VVPAT Machines in Use Since 2018, Deemed ‘Defective’,
published on 18.04.2023 in The Wire is annexed herewith
as Annexure A3 (Pages 20 to 22). https://
thewire.in/government/ cloud-of-silence-hangs-
over-one-third-of-vvpat- machines-in-use-since-
2018-deemed-defective.
19. That the petitioners have pointed out that many

countries in the world have discontinued the use of
Electronic Voting Machines such as the Netherlands,
Italy, Ireland, England, France, & Germany due to
concerns with their integrity. In Germany, judgement
dated 03.03.2009 of the Second Senate of Germany
ordered the discontinuation of the use of EVMs on the
ground that in view of the public nature of elections; “ it
must be possible for the citizen to check the essential
13
steps in the election act and in the ascertainment of
results reliably and without special expert knowledge .” A
copy of the judgement dated 03.03.2009 of the Second
Senate of Germany is already annexed as Annexure P11
to the rejoinder affidavit of the petitioner. That most
recently, even Bangladesh discontinued the use of EVM-
VVPAT system.
20. It is submitted that the electoral process must be

transparent and verifiable in accordance with the
mandate of Articles 14, 19(1)(a), & 324 of the
Constitution of India. This Hon’ble Court has held that
free and fair elections are part
PRAYER

handed over to the Voter and they must be able to
deposit them in the VVPAT Ballot Box which must then
be cross verified by the electronic count in the EVMs;

14
manner prior to the conduct of the 2024 general
elections; &/or,
III. Pass such other orders or directions as this Hon’ble Court

may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances
of the present petition
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KINDNESS, THE PETITIONER AS

IS DUTY BOUND SHALL EVER PRAY
DRAWN BY:
RAHUL GUPTA (ADVOCATE)
FILED BY:
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
NEW DELHI
DATED: 09.01.2024
15
16
18
ANNEXURE: A2
INDIA BLOC PASSES RESOLUTION ON SUSPENSION OF

MPS, EVMS OPERATION
Published By:
Anuja Jha
Published On:
Dec 19, 2023
INDIA parties passed two resolutions as it held a crucial meeting in

New Delhi on Tuesday. The INDIA bloc condemned the suspension
of opposition MPs in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Top leaders of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc met in the national
capital on Tuesday against the backdrop of nearly 150 MPs being
suspended from Parliament. The INDIA bloc adopted two
resolutions, including one condemning suspension of MPs from
Parliament, in its fourth meeting.
“The MPs were raising a perfectly legitimate demand: that the

Home Minister make a statement in both Houses on the
extraordinary security breach that took place on December 13 in
the Lok Sabha and on the role of a BJP MP from Mysuru who
facilitated the entry of the two intruders,” the resolution
mentioned.
It accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of

acting in “arrogant manner” and refusing the Opposition MPs’
demands. “But the PM and the HM chose to speak on the incidents
to the media while Parliament is in session,” INDIA bloc said.
“INDIA parties resolve to fight this authoritarianism with full might.

Democracy is under assault, The Constitution is under attack,” the
Opposition alliance said.
The INDIA bloc also adopted a resolution on Electronic Voting

Machines (EVMs). The Opposition alliance had submitted a
memorandum to the Election Commission, questioning he design
19
and operation of the EVMs. But the poll panel has been reluctant
to meet a INDIA delegation on this memorandum, the resolution
mentioned.
“INDIA parties reiterate that there are many doubts on the

integrity of the functioning of the EVMs. These have been raised
by many experts and professionals as well. There is widespread
demand for a return to the ballot paper system,” it said.
The INDIA bloc said it would be “happy” if there was a return to

voting through ballot paper. “If ECI has any reservations, it is
possible and desirable to have a hybrid ballot paper-EVM system
for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” the INDIA bloc said.
It suggested that “Instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it

should be handed over to the voter who shall then place it in a
separate ballot box after having verified his or her choice. 100%
counting of VVPAT slips should then be done.”
( Available at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/india-bloc-
passes-resolution-on-suspension-of-mps-evms-operation-2478038-
2023-12-19 )
(TRUE COPY)
20
ANNEXURE-A3:
CLOUD OF SILENCE HANGS OVER ONE-THIRD OF VVPAT

MACHINES IN USE SINCE 2018, DEEMED ‘DEFECTIVE’
Published by:Meetu Jain
Published on:18/APR/2023
An ex-chief election commissioner says some machines being

defective is routine, but 6.5 lakh is too high a number and is a
“serious” matter. Experts have called for more transparency. The
Election Commission is yet to respond to our queries.
New Delhi: The Wire has learnt that the Election Commission of
India (ECI) has flagged over 6.5 lakh VVPAT machines as
‘defective’. These are now being sent back to the manufacturers
for rectifying the defects. Notably, these are the newest machines,
the latest M3 generation machines introduced for the first time in
2018. To put this in perspective, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections,
a total of 17.4 lakh VVPATs were notified for use for the Lok Sabha
polls and also the assembly elections being held simultaneously.
This means that over one-third (37%) of these machines have
now been found to be defective by the Election Commission.
What is even more surprising is that entire series of VVPATs are

being replaced. For instance, among machines that will be sent to
the Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad, the series
beginning EVTEA 0001 to EVTEA 99999 have been marked as
‘defective’. So also, are the rest of the series, namely, EVTEB,
EVTEC, EVTED each comprising a batch of 99999 machines.
The story is the same for machines that are being sent back to
Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore. Series like BVTAK
00001 to BVTAK 30000, BVTEA 00001 to BVTEA 30000 and BVTEC
05001 to BVTEC 75000 among others, are all batches that have
been marked as ‘defective’. In all, 25,3500 machines from BEL
have been found to be defective of which the series BVTEH 00001
to BVTEH 68500 are to go to BEL, Panchkula.
“These series were first introduced in 2018 and have been used in
subsequent elections ever since. The machines were picked up
21
from across the country and the new replaced machines have now
almost reached all districts,” sources said.
What happens to ‘defective’ machines?
Any machine that is under litigation has been excluded. The

directions from Election Commission’s headquarters at New Delhi’s
Nirvachan Sadan were sent on January 27, 2022. The defective
VVPATs were awaiting repairs following a decision taken by the
ECI on October 8, 2021. The Wire has learnt that instructions
have not been sent to the union territories of Andaman and
Nicobar islands, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu.
While the directions to the CEOs say recognised national and state
political parties shall be invited to remain present at the time of
opening and closing of warehouses, a member of an opposition
political party said, “We were informed in December that the
VVPATs would be moved out and were asked to give our consent.
When we asked what was wrong with the machines and why
entire series of the machines were being moved out, no
explanation was given. For instance, what does T1 to T4
rectification mean, which is being cited as the reason for the
machines being sent back. There are no answers.”
Transparency is the need of the hour: Experts
Experts have raised an alarm at the high number of defective

machines and that too in a series. “Normally in an election,
around 4000 EVMs are found to be defective. The corresponding
number of VVPATS, which have higher chances of damage as
these are electro mechanical devices, could be a maximum of 10
times that figure. But if what you are saying is correct that over
6.5 lakh are defective, then this is very serious,” says S.Y.
Qureshi, former Chief Election Commissioner who was in office
when the 2014 general elections were held.
As per ECI’s standard operating procedure, a first set of checks is

required to be carried out at the level of the district electoral
officer. The EVMs/VVPATs rejected at this First Level Check (FLC)
are required to be sent to the manufacturers for repair within
seven days of completion of the FLC in the district in coordination
with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) concerned. Going by ECI
22
correspondence we have reviewed, the instructions have been

sent top down to the districts. The defective machines have been
lying in ECI custody for over a year now.
Professor of computer science at IIT Kanpur Sandeep Shukla says,

“Claims of sturdiness of VVPATs and EVMs have been made by the
manufacturers and the Election Commission. Ideally, these
machines should be given to a diverse set of experts to test for
themselves. The lack of transparency and cloak of secrecy is the
problem.”
Professor Subhashish Banerjee from IIT Delhi and a member of

Citizens Commission for Elections says, “Was there an audit done
for these machines? Were they matched with the EVMs and if so,
what was the result? A 30% rate of defect is too high a figure.”
Banerjee said he was speaking in his personal capacity.
A detailed set of questions have been sent to the Election

Commission on April 10, 2023. This article will be updated once a
response comes in.
(Available on: https://thewire.in/government/cloud-of-silence-

hangs-over-one-third-of-vvpat-machines-in-use-since-2018-
deemed-defective )
(TRUE COPY)
1/13/24, 2:03 PM Gmail - Sub: Application for Direction in Writ petition (Civil) No. 434 of 2023 titled Association for Democratic reforms Vs. Election …
Dol Bhandari <bhandaridolraj@gmail.com>
Sub: Application for Direction in Writ petition (Civil) No. 434 of 2023 titled
Association for Democratic reforms Vs. Election Commission of India & Anr.
1 message
Dol Bhandari <bhandaridolraj@gmail.com> Sat, Jan 13, 2024 at 2:03 PM

To: Amit Sharma <amitsharmalaw@gmail.com>
Cc: Prashant Bhushan <prashantbhush@gmail.com>
Bcc: Rahul <ragpta@gmail.com>
Annexure-A1.mp4
Dear Sir,
I, on behalf of the Petitioner have filed an attached copy of the Application for Direction in Writ petition (Civil) No. 434 of
2023 titled Association for Democratic reforms Vs. Election Commission of India & Anr.
Thank You.
Yours sincerely
Dol Raj Bhandari

Clerk of Mr. Prashant Bhushan
Mobile No. 9868255076
Final Application (VVPAT).pdf

1506K
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=e70fb94714&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r-6291414568014641997&simpl=msg-a:r-71854083790827… 1/1
SECTION: PIL

I.A. NO. ___________OF 2024
IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

VERSUS
FILING INDEX

1. APPLICATION FOR DIRECTION WITH 1 120/-
AFFIDAVIT
2. ANNEXURE-A1 TO A3 1 NIL
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
NEW DELHI-110 001
CODE NO. 515
NEW DELHI
DATED: 13.01.2024
I.A. NO. ___________OF 2024
IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

VERSUS
PAPER-BOOK
{APPLICATION FOR DIRECTION ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER}

INDEX
1. Application for Direction on behalf of the Petitioner 1-16

with Affidavit
2. Annexure-A1: A copy of the youtube video 17

available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=NqF4E-rgaog&abchannel=Satyagraha
3. Annexure-A2: A copy of news report dated 18-19

19.12.2023 published in IndiaToday
4. Annexure-A3: A copy of article titled, Cloud of 20-22

Silence Hangs Over One-Third of VVPAT Machines
in Use Since 2018, Deemed ‘Defective’, published
on 18.04.2023 in The Wire
1
I.A. NO. ___________OF 2024
IN
IN THE MATTER OF:

ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS PETITIONER
VERSUS
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. RESPONDENTS
TO,
individually and severally verify that their vote has been
‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’ and issuance of
ancillary directions in this regard with the following prayers:
I. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate
writ, order, or direction to the respondents to cross
2
verify the count in EVMs with votes that have been
verifiably ‘recorded as cast’ by the voters
II. Issue a writ of Mandamus or any other appropriate
writ, order, or direction to the respondents to
ensure that the voters are able to verify through
VVPATs that their vote has been ‘counted as
recorded’;
Rules, 1961, and the practice and procedure of
Election Commission of India to the extent that
they violate the fundamental right of the voters to
verify through VVPATs that their vote has been
‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’;
2. That the only way that the voter can verify that their vote
has been ‘recorded as cast’ is when the VVPAT slip is
displayed for about 7 seconds after the casting of the vote
through a glass window before the VVPAT slip is cut and
falls into the VVPAT Ballot Box.
3. That on 26.07.2023, a youtube channel called, ‘ Satyagraha’,

has published a video showing a demonstration by Mr.
Rahul Mehta who is a computer engineer which
demonstration shows how a machine developed by Mr.
Rahul Mehta as a replica of an EVM and VVPAT can be
hacked. A copy of the youtube video available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqF4E-
rgaog&ab_channel=Satyagraha is enclosed herewith in a
USB drive as Annexure A1 (Page 17). The relevant
demonstration in the short video starts at the 5 minute 46
second mark. The petitioner craves liberty from this Hon’ble
Court to refer to the same in court if so required.
3
4. That in the video it is stated that prior to June, 2017, all
VVPATs had a transparent glass window through which the
voter could see the print out of the symbol on VVPAT for the
candidate for whom the voter had cast their vote and could
see the VVPAT slip being cut and falling into the VVPAT
Ballot Box. However, for unknown reasons, post June, 2017,
the transparent glass window was replaced by a darkened
reflective glass window in the VVPATs by the Election
5. The video points out that this change in the colour of the
glass from clear glass to a reflective darkened glass window
leaves the VVPAT system open to the possibility of hacking
as now the voter can only see inside of the window when a
light is illuminated inside the window and cannot verify that
the VVPAT slip which has been shown to him is in fact being
‘cut’ and is dropped into the VVPAT Ballot Box.
6. It is stated in the video that this new physical change in the

color of the glass window can be used to manipulate the
election results by coding the software inside maliciously at
the time of manufacturing of the machine or at the time of
loading of the symbols of the candidates in the manner
elaborated hereinafter and yet having the VVPAT count tally
with the EVM count and results therefore leaving no trace of
the manipulation as the people will be satisfied that VVPAT
counts are matching with the EVM count and results.
7. The manipulation can be done in the following manner by
maliciously programing the machine:
4
a. Suppose there are 3 voters and two candidates A
and B between whom the voter has to choose.
b. If Voter No. 1 casts the vote for candidate A; then
the VVPAT ballot will be printed with A; which print
out would be shown to Voter No.1 only when the
light inside the darkened glass window illuminates
for about seven seconds. Voter No. 1 will be
satisfied that his vote has been ‘recorded as cast’.
c. Though, the electronic vote of Voter No. 1 is
registered in favour of Candidate A; the software
can be maliciously programmed to ensure that after
the light is switched off, the print out of the VVPAT
does not get ‘cut’ and fall into the ballot box at this
stage.
d. Now suppose Voter No. 2 casts his vote also for
candidate A and the machine is programmed to
hack the results in favour of candidate B. In such a
case; the previously printed VVPAT slip which was
shown to Voter No. 1 and which had not been cut
off and deposited in the ballot box is again shown
to Voter No. 2 by illuminating the light inside the
darkened window. Voter No. 2 will also be satisfied
that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ but
again the VVPAT slip is not cut off and deposited in
VVPAT Ballot Box and the voter will not be aware of
the same. Further, at this stage the vote of Voter
No. 2 would also not be electronically recorded.
e. Now suppose Voter No. 3 genuinely casts their vote
for Candidate B. At this stage; the previous VVPAT
5
slip showing vote being caste for Candidate A
which had been printed & shown to Voter No. 1 &
also shown to Voter No. 2 is finally cut off and
deposited in the VVPAT Ballot Box. The machine
then prints two VVPAT slips for Candidate B and
shows one of them for seven seconds to Voter No.
3 who is satisfied that their vote too has been
recorded as cast.
f. The machine then deposits both the new VVPAT
slips having print out of Candidate B into the
machine and also electronically records the votes of
Voter No. 2 and Voter No. 3 as being cast for
Candidate B.
g. Thus the vote of Voter No. 2 has been stolen in
favour of candidate B with the Voter No. 2 being
clueless about the same and having no way of
knowing the same.
h. So after three voters have voted with two actually
having voted for Candidate A and one actually
having voted for Candidate B; inside the VVPAT
drop box, there would be one VVPAT vote for
candidate A and two VVPAT votes for candidate B.
Similarly; even the electronic count would show
that there has been one vote for Candidate A and
two votes for Candidate B.
i. That though the aforesaid example is for 3 voters
and 2 candidates; it will work in the same manner
for any number of voters and any number of
candidates so long as there are sequential votes
6
which can be stolen. As generally families vote
together; there are a number of sequential votes at
risk of being stolen.
8. That the aforesaid demonstration would also show that the

cross verifying of the votes in the VVPATs with the
Electronic Votes can be a futile exercise because both will
still match if the election result is manipulated through the
aforementioned process.
9. That the above manipulation can also evade detection at the

time of demonstration on the day of elections in the
presence of candidates/their representatives as there is a
built in clock inside the EVM-VVPAT which can be coded in a
manner so as to put in process the above manipulation
between a particular time window for example between
12:00pm to 2:00pm or any other time window or after a
particular numbers have already been cast.
10. That the aforesaid illustration is only one of the many
ways which have been flagged by experts that could lead
the EVM-VVPAT system vulnerable. Expert opinions on
the other vulnerabilities of the EVM-VVPAT system are
already annexed to the Rejoinder Affidavit filed by the
petitioners. A copy of expert opinion of Professor
Subhashish Banerjee who was a professor at IIT and is
presently with Ashoka University is annexed as Annexure
P3 of the Rejoinder Affidavit. A copy of the deposition of
Professor Poorvi Vora, George Washington University,
Washington, DC, USA, et all is annexed as Annexure P4 of
7
the Rejoinder Affidavit. A copy of paper titled, “Electronic
Voting and Democracy ” published by Subodh Sharma of
School of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT, Delhi is
annexed as Annexure P5 of the Rejoinder Affidavit. A copy
of deposition titled, “To use or not to use? Electronic Voting
Machines in Indian Elections.” by Sandeep K Shukla,
Professor at IIT Kanpur is annexed as Annexure P6 of the
Rejoinder Affidavit
10. That it has already come on record in the counter affidavit

filed by the Election Commission of India that the source
code of the EVM-VVPAT set up is not in the public domain
and has never been audited by independent experts except
those engaged by the Election Commission itself.
11. Further, at the time of loading of candidate details in the

EVMs (after the last date for withdrawal of candidature);
the hardware of EVM-VVPAT is connected to laptops for
loading of candidature details and sequence through what is
ermed as Symbol Loading Units.
12. That no details are available in the public domain as to who are
the persons responsible for loading these candidate details just
a few days prior to elections; whether the devices that they
carry to load the candidate details are provided by the Election
Commission; what precautions are taken to secure those
devices and the overall process at the time of loading of
candidate details through Symbol Loading Units.
8
13. That even the Symbol Loading Unit Manual that governs
the process to be followed for loading of candidates
details is not in the public domain.
14. That the petitioners in their rejoinder at Paragraph 21

have already pointed out that private persons working on
contract basis have been deployed for Symbol Loading by
the Election Commission as under:
Further, Election Commission’s claim that the EVMs
are secure as the software and hardware for it is
developed exclusively by inhouse employees of
Bharat Heavy Electronics Limited (BHEL) and
Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) is
denied. News publication, The Quint, in an article
titled, ‘RTI Reveals Pvt Consultants Have EVM
Access, Why is EC Denying It?’ published on
04.08.2019, reported that as per RTI documents
available with it; the ECIL, a PSU that manufactures
EVMs and VVPAT machines, engaged private
engineers as “consultants” and that these private
engineers have worked with the Election
Commission in Assembly Elections since 2017 and
even in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Their job was
extremely sensitive – to check and maintain EVMs
and VVPATs, starting from First level Checking
(FLC) right up till and including the Counting Day,
which means they had easy access to EVMs
through the course of the elections. ECIL engaged
these private engineers for the Election Commission
from a Mumbai-based private company called M/s
T&M Services Consulting Private Limited. ECIL
confirmed that close to 50 private consulting
engineers were used to check EVMs during the
2017 Uttarakhand Assembly elections, and that
only eight regular employees of ECIL were
involved. The private consulting engineers’ job was
to upload key details like party symbols and
candidates’ names on the EVMs and VVPAT, for
which they had access to these machines for 15
9
days before polling. (Para 21 of Petitioner’s
rejoinder affidavit)
15. It is humbly submitted that the conduct of elections in

the world’s largest democracy cannot be done in such an
opaque manner where even the source code of the
VVPAT-EVM machines is not open to scrutiny by
independent experts.
16. That the petitioner association has relied on the report of

the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE) chaired by
Hon’ble Justice (retd) Madan B. Lokur, former Supreme
Court Judge, with several domain experts as stated in the
main petition to point out that in a report titled, ‘ An
inquiry into India’s Election System: Is the Indian EVM
and VVPAT system fit for democratic elections?’ in
January, 2021 the committee found that:
● Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E)
verifiability, the present EVM/VVAPAT system is not
verifiable and therefore is unfit for democratic
elections.
● That an EVM has not yet been detected to have
been hacked provides no guarantee that it cannot
be hacked. Thus, elections must be conducted
assuming that the EVMs may possibly be tampered
with.
● In practice, it may be necessary to test more EVMs
than even what the civil society and the political
parties demand (30% and 50% respectively) to
ensure verification and reliable ascertainment of
results.
● There must be stringent pre-audit of the electronic
vote count before the results are declared. The
audit may in some cases - depending on the
margin of victory - require a full manual counting of
VVPAT slips.
10
● The electronic voting system should be re-designed
to be software and hardware independent in order
to be verifiable or auditable.

● The decision making processes within the ECI need
to be much more logical, rigorous and principled
compared to what it was for the 2019
parliamentary elections.
● EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The
electronic voting system should be redesigned to
be software and hardware independent in order to
be verifiable or auditable. This does not imply that
software or hardware cannot be used, but that the
correctness of the election outcome cannot be
entirely dependent on their working correctly.
● The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be
fully voter-verified. The voter should be able to
approve the VVPAT printout before the vote is
finally cast, and be able to cancel if there is an
error.
● The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM
machines during the entire time after polling and
before counting and auditing must be ensured in a
manner that is verifiable by all (and especially the
candidates). There should be no trust requirement
● There must be stringent audit of the electronic vote
count before the results are declared. The audit
should not be based on ad hoc methods but by
counting a statistically significant sample of the
VVPAT slips according to rigorous and well
established statistical audit techniques. The audit
may in some cases - depending on the margin of
victory - require a full manual counting of VVPAT
slips.
● There should be legislation to decide what is to be
done if the audits reveal a problem. Such legislation
should ideally be based on well-established
statistical procedures and not on subjective
● There is a definite need to move away from
certification of voting equipment and processes and
11
demonstrate that the outcome of an election is
correct irrespective of machines and trust on
custody chains of EVMs. Two ways to do this are by
adopting rigorous and well established strategies
for risk-limiting audits or by using a provably end-
to-end verifiable cryptographic protocol, or both.
The ECI should explore the possibilities.
● Finally, the voting system design should be
subjected to independent (of the government and
ECI) review and the integrity of the election
process should be subjected to independent audit.
The findings should be made public. In particular,
all design details should be transparent and publicly
available.
17. That due to the concerns with EVM-VVPATs; an alliance

of major political parties , ‘I.N.D.I.A’ had submitted a
memorandum to the Election Commission, questioning
the design and operation of the EVMs but the poll panel
has been reluctant to meet their delegation on this
memorandum. Reportedly, the resolution states that:
“INDIA parties reiterate that there are many doubts
on the integrity of the functioning of the EVMs.
These have been raised by many experts and
professionals as well. There is widespread demand
for a return to the ballot paper system…”
“Instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it
should be handed over to the voter who shall then
place it in a separate ballot box after having
verified his or her choice. 100% counting of VVPAT
slips should then be done.”
A copy of news report dated 19.12.2023 published in

IndiaToday is annexed herewith as Annexure A2
(Pages 18 to 19). (https:// www.indiatoday.in
/india/story/india-bloc-passes-resolution-on-suspension-
of-mps-evms-operation-2478038-2023-12-19)
12
18. That it has also been reported that almost 33% of
VVPATs machines manufactured post 2018 elections have
been found to have manufacturing defects and have
been sent back by the Election Commission to the
manufacturers i.e. ECIL & BHEL for rectification. The
reported absolute number of defective VVPATs have been
put at 6.5 lacks. Entire series of manufactured VVPATs
which have been put to use for elections have been
found to defective. The silence of the Election
Commission of India in this regard is not in consonance
with the principle that Elections must not only be free
and fair but also be seen to be free and fair. A copy of
article titled, Cloud of Silence Hangs Over One-Third of
VVPAT Machines in Use Since 2018, Deemed ‘Defective’,
published on 18.04.2023 in The Wire is annexed herewith
as Annexure A3 (Pages 20 to 22). https://
thewire.in/government/ cloud-of-silence-hangs-
over-one-third-of-vvpat- machines-in-use-since-
2018-deemed-defective.
19. That the petitioners have pointed out that many

countries in the world have discontinued the use of
Electronic Voting Machines such as the Netherlands,
Italy, Ireland, England, France, & Germany due to
concerns with their integrity. In Germany, judgement
dated 03.03.2009 of the Second Senate of Germany
ordered the discontinuation of the use of EVMs on the
ground that in view of the public nature of elections; “ it
must be possible for the citizen to check the essential
13
steps in the election act and in the ascertainment of
results reliably and without special expert knowledge .” A
copy of the judgement dated 03.03.2009 of the Second
Senate of Germany is already annexed as Annexure P11
to the rejoinder affidavit of the petitioner. That most
recently, even Bangladesh discontinued the use of EVM-
VVPAT system.
20. It is submitted that the electoral process must be

transparent and verifiable in accordance with the
mandate of Articles 14, 19(1)(a), & 324 of the
Constitution of India. This Hon’ble Court has held that
free and fair elections are part
PRAYER

handed over to the Voter and they must be able to
deposit them in the VVPAT Ballot Box which must then
be cross verified by the electronic count in the EVMs;

14
manner prior to the conduct of the 2024 general
elections; &/or,
III. Pass such other orders or directions as this Hon’ble Court

may deem fit and proper in the facts and circumstances
of the present petition
AND FOR THIS ACT OF KINDNESS, THE PETITIONER AS

IS DUTY BOUND SHALL EVER PRAY
DRAWN BY:
RAHUL GUPTA (ADVOCATE)
FILED BY:
(PRASHANT BHUSHAN)
NEW DELHI
DATED: 09.01.2024
15
16
18
ANNEXURE: A2
INDIA BLOC PASSES RESOLUTION ON SUSPENSION OF

MPS, EVMS OPERATION
Published By:
Anuja Jha
Published On:
Dec 19, 2023
INDIA parties passed two resolutions as it held a crucial meeting in

New Delhi on Tuesday. The INDIA bloc condemned the suspension
of opposition MPs in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Top leaders of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc met in the national
capital on Tuesday against the backdrop of nearly 150 MPs being
suspended from Parliament. The INDIA bloc adopted two
resolutions, including one condemning suspension of MPs from
Parliament, in its fourth meeting.
“The MPs were raising a perfectly legitimate demand: that the

Home Minister make a statement in both Houses on the
extraordinary security breach that took place on December 13 in
the Lok Sabha and on the role of a BJP MP from Mysuru who
facilitated the entry of the two intruders,” the resolution
mentioned.
It accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government of

acting in “arrogant manner” and refusing the Opposition MPs’
demands. “But the PM and the HM chose to speak on the incidents
to the media while Parliament is in session,” INDIA bloc said.
“INDIA parties resolve to fight this authoritarianism with full might.

Democracy is under assault, The Constitution is under attack,” the
Opposition alliance said.
The INDIA bloc also adopted a resolution on Electronic Voting

Machines (EVMs). The Opposition alliance had submitted a
memorandum to the Election Commission, questioning he design
19
and operation of the EVMs. But the poll panel has been reluctant
to meet a INDIA delegation on this memorandum, the resolution
mentioned.
“INDIA parties reiterate that there are many doubts on the

integrity of the functioning of the EVMs. These have been raised
by many experts and professionals as well. There is widespread
demand for a return to the ballot paper system,” it said.
The INDIA bloc said it would be “happy” if there was a return to

voting through ballot paper. “If ECI has any reservations, it is
possible and desirable to have a hybrid ballot paper-EVM system
for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” the INDIA bloc said.
It suggested that “Instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it

should be handed over to the voter who shall then place it in a
separate ballot box after having verified his or her choice. 100%
counting of VVPAT slips should then be done.”
( Available at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/india-bloc-
passes-resolution-on-suspension-of-mps-evms-operation-2478038-
2023-12-19 )
(TRUE COPY)
20
ANNEXURE-A3:
CLOUD OF SILENCE HANGS OVER ONE-THIRD OF VVPAT

MACHINES IN USE SINCE 2018, DEEMED ‘DEFECTIVE’
Published by:Meetu Jain
Published on:18/APR/2023
An ex-chief election commissioner says some machines being

defective is routine, but 6.5 lakh is too high a number and is a
“serious” matter. Experts have called for more transparency. The
Election Commission is yet to respond to our queries.
New Delhi: The Wire has learnt that the Election Commission of
India (ECI) has flagged over 6.5 lakh VVPAT machines as
‘defective’. These are now being sent back to the manufacturers
for rectifying the defects. Notably, these are the newest machines,
the latest M3 generation machines introduced for the first time in
2018. To put this in perspective, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections,
a total of 17.4 lakh VVPATs were notified for use for the Lok Sabha
polls and also the assembly elections being held simultaneously.
This means that over one-third (37%) of these machines have
now been found to be defective by the Election Commission.
What is even more surprising is that entire series of VVPATs are

being replaced. For instance, among machines that will be sent to
the Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad, the series
beginning EVTEA 0001 to EVTEA 99999 have been marked as
‘defective’. So also, are the rest of the series, namely, EVTEB,
EVTEC, EVTED each comprising a batch of 99999 machines.
The story is the same for machines that are being sent back to
Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore. Series like BVTAK
00001 to BVTAK 30000, BVTEA 00001 to BVTEA 30000 and BVTEC
05001 to BVTEC 75000 among others, are all batches that have
been marked as ‘defective’. In all, 25,3500 machines from BEL
have been found to be defective of which the series BVTEH 00001
to BVTEH 68500 are to go to BEL, Panchkula.
“These series were first introduced in 2018 and have been used in
subsequent elections ever since. The machines were picked up
21
from across the country and the new replaced machines have now
almost reached all districts,” sources said.
What happens to ‘defective’ machines?
Any machine that is under litigation has been excluded. The

directions from Election Commission’s headquarters at New Delhi’s
Nirvachan Sadan were sent on January 27, 2022. The defective
VVPATs were awaiting repairs following a decision taken by the
ECI on October 8, 2021. The Wire has learnt that instructions
have not been sent to the union territories of Andaman and
Nicobar islands, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu.
While the directions to the CEOs say recognised national and state
political parties shall be invited to remain present at the time of
opening and closing of warehouses, a member of an opposition
political party said, “We were informed in December that the
VVPATs would be moved out and were asked to give our consent.
When we asked what was wrong with the machines and why
entire series of the machines were being moved out, no
explanation was given. For instance, what does T1 to T4
rectification mean, which is being cited as the reason for the
machines being sent back. There are no answers.”
Transparency is the need of the hour: Experts
Experts have raised an alarm at the high number of defective

machines and that too in a series. “Normally in an election,
around 4000 EVMs are found to be defective. The corresponding
number of VVPATS, which have higher chances of damage as
these are electro mechanical devices, could be a maximum of 10
times that figure. But if what you are saying is correct that over
6.5 lakh are defective, then this is very serious,” says S.Y.
Qureshi, former Chief Election Commissioner who was in office
when the 2014 general elections were held.
As per ECI’s standard operating procedure, a first set of checks is

required to be carried out at the level of the district electoral
officer. The EVMs/VVPATs rejected at this First Level Check (FLC)
are required to be sent to the manufacturers for repair within
seven days of completion of the FLC in the district in coordination
with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) concerned. Going by ECI
22
correspondence we have reviewed, the instructions have been

sent top down to the districts. The defective machines have been
lying in ECI custody for over a year now.
Professor of computer science at IIT Kanpur Sandeep Shukla says,

“Claims of sturdiness of VVPATs and EVMs have been made by the
manufacturers and the Election Commission. Ideally, these
machines should be given to a diverse set of experts to test for
themselves. The lack of transparency and cloak of secrecy is the
problem.”
Professor Subhashish Banerjee from IIT Delhi and a member of

Citizens Commission for Elections says, “Was there an audit done
for these machines? Were they matched with the EVMs and if so,
what was the result? A 30% rate of defect is too high a figure.”
Banerjee said he was speaking in his personal capacity.
A detailed set of questions have been sent to the Election

Commission on April 10, 2023. This article will be updated once a
response comes in.
(Available on: https://thewire.in/government/cloud-of-silence-

hangs-over-one-third-of-vvpat-machines-in-use-since-2018-
deemed-defective )
(TRUE COPY)
1/13/24, 2:03 PM Gmail - Sub: Application for Direction in Writ petition (Civil) No. 434 of 2023 titled Association for Democratic reforms Vs. Election …
Dol Bhandari <bhandaridolraj@gmail.com>
Sub: Application for Direction in Writ petition (Civil) No. 434 of 2023 titled
Association for Democratic reforms Vs. Election Commission of India & Anr.
1 message
Dol Bhandari <bhandaridolraj@gmail.com> Sat, Jan 13, 2024 at 2:03 PM

To: Amit Sharma <amitsharmalaw@gmail.com>
Cc: Prashant Bhushan <prashantbhush@gmail.com>
Bcc: Rahul <ragpta@gmail.com>
Annexure-A1.mp4
Dear Sir,
I, on behalf of the Petitioner have filed an attached copy of the Application for Direction in Writ petition (Civil) No. 434 of
2023 titled Association for Democratic reforms Vs. Election Commission of India & Anr.
Thank You.
Yours sincerely
Dol Raj Bhandari

Clerk of Mr. Prashant Bhushan
Mobile No. 9868255076
Final Application (VVPAT).pdf

1506K
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IN THE HON’BLE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA

CIVIL ORIGINAL WRIT JURISDICTION

(PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION)

WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. _______ OF 2023

IN THE MATTER OF:

ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA & ANR. ….RESPONDENTS

COUNSEL FOR THE PETITIONER: PRASHANT BHUSHAN

S. NO. PARTICULARS PAGES

Sl. No. Particulars of Documents Page No. of Part Rema

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

2. Listing Proforma A1- A2 A1- A2

3. Cover Page of Paper Book A3

8. Synopsis & List of Dates

9. Writ Petition with Affidavit 1-29

11. Annexure P2: A true copy 39-44

13. Annexure P4: A copy of 81-86

14. Annexure P5: A copy of 87-130

15. Annexure P6: A copy of 131-133

16. Annexure P7: A copy of 286-287

17. Annexure P8: A copy of 136-140

18. Annexure P9: A copy of 293-460

19. Annexure P10: A copy of 309-355

PROFORMA FOR FIRST LISTING

The case pertains to (Please tick/check the correct box):

(d) Sentence Awarded: - NA -

It is noteworthy that the term used is ‘Voter’ verifiable. It is the

However, there is a complete vacuum in law as the ECI has provided no

Pertinently, only due the last minute nature of the proceedings in N.

Further, at paragraph 5.20 of the counter affidavit filed by the ECI in

During the 2019 general elections there were ECI acknowledged

Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ chaired by Hon’ble Justice

In such circumstances, the Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE)

The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs primarily on

The group relied on depositions and expert opinions of several national

The report has devoted considerable time and expertise in

The Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPAT as an

The conclusions of the report are as under:

Hence, the present petition.

The Election Commission of India, in consultation with the

The Election Commission of India referred the matter to its

Committee, BEL and ECIL made a prototype and

14.08.2013 Accordingly, introduction of VVPAT was facilitated by

Rule 56(D)(4)(b) as incorporated through Section 66A of

2013 In Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of

28. From the materials placed by both the sides, we are

gesture made by ECI in introducing the same. For

29.09.2014 In 2014, the Election Commission decided to use VVPATs

along with EVMs in certain assembly constituencies during

24.04.2017 By Order dated 24.04.2017, this Hon'ble Court disposed of

procurement of the said units.

By virtue of this Hon’ble Court’s aforesaid orders there was

11.10.2017 The Election Commission of India, on 11.10.2017, intimated

slips of randomly selected 01 (one) polling station per

2019 In N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, (2019) 15

Further, at paragraph 5.20 of the counter affidavit filed by the

same to be tallied mechanically through a counting machine”

13.12.2019 Amidst reports of discrepancy in the data on number of votes

2021 The Citizens’ Commission on Elections’ (CCE) came into being

The CCE’s expert group reviewed the functioning of EVMs

In light of it’s findings as regards various deficiencies in the

a. Due to the absence of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the

IN THE HON’BLE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA