EVMs Not Tampered When You Win?” Supreme Court Says No To Paper Ballots

How do you get these brilliant ideas, the Supreme Court asked a petitioner Tuesday while dismissing his petition seeking to go back to ballot paper voting in elections in the country.

During the hearing, the petitioner, KA Paul, said that even leaders like Chandrababu Naidu and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had questioned Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) tampering.

To this the bench said what happens is, if you win the elections, EVMs or voting machines are not tampered

When Chandrababu Naidu or Mr Reddy lost, they say that EVMs are tampered and when they won, they don’t say anything. How can we see this? We are dismissing this. This is not the place where you argue all of this,” remarked a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and PB Varale.

Mr Paul had also sought a directive to the Election Commission to disqualify candidates for a minimum of five years if found guilty of distributing money, liquor or other material inducement to the voters during polls.

“You have interesting PILs. How do you get these brilliant ideas?” asked the top court to the petitioner, who is the president of an organisation which has rescued over three lakh orphans and 40 lakh widows.

“Why are you getting into this political arena? Your area of work is very different,” the bench said.