New Delhi:
What is the Standard Operating Procedure for Electronic Voting Machines after polls are over, the Supreme Court asked today in response to a petition that sought data from the machines not be deleted even after the counting of votes is over. For now, do not delete any data from EVM nor reload any data, said a bench led by Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna.
The Election Commission has to provide information to the court about the process of burning EVM memory and microcontroller after elections
“This is not adversarial,” said the Chief Justice. “If the losing candidate wants clarification, the engineer can give clarification that there has been no tampering,” he added.
The court’s comments came while it was hearing a petition by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), Haryana, and a group of Congress leaders. The petitions had sought that the court directs the Commission to formulate policy for checking original burnt memory/microcontroller of EVM components.
The petition has also demanded that the burnt memory and microcontroller of EVM be verified by the engineer to prove that EVM has not been tampered with.
The next hearing will be held in the week starting March 3.
