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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to send a PIL seeking time-stamping of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) – a paper slip that matches votes cast in EVMs – to the Election Commission for examining its technical feasibility, while clarifying that this issue was in the poll panel’s policy domain.Appearing for petitioner N Suresh Reddy, a Telangana-based businessman, senior advocates Devadatt Kamat and Amit Raval told a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant that given the oft-repeated phenomenon of last-minute surges in voting, time-stamping of VVPATs would ensure transparency and fairness in the elections.EVMS must be enabled to print the exact time of voting by a voter on VVPAT without disclosing his/her identity, Kamat said. The bench said that as it fell within the EC’s policy domain and involved examination of technical feasibility aspects, it would be better that the commission examined this issue.Kamat persisted that several reforms related to elections and voting were implemented at the behest of the SC or by its orders. But the bench said since the petitioner has never given a representation to the EC on this issue, it would be better that the commission examines it threadbare. The petitioner further said that he was not seeking a return to paper ballots or 100% counting of VVPAT slips and was not questioning the results of any election.He said he was seeking an additional audit attribute on the VVPAT slip, namely time-stamping of every slip.
