The current Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in use in elections comply with the legal framework strengthened by successive Union governments, the Election Commission (EC) told Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday in the backdrop of multiple letters sent by members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc raising concerns about the integrity of the machines.

The 28-party INDIA bloc had submitted a memorandum to the poll panel on August 9, 2023 raising questions over the use of EVMs and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs). The bloc followed it up with four letters in the same month to meet with the EC. On December 30, Congress’s Jairam Ramesh had also sent a letter on the issue and sought a meeting.

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The EC, however, recently updated its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section on EVMs on its website from 76 to 85 to answer some of the questions, but did not address the specific concerns raised by the parties.

The EC responded to Ramesh on Friday. “It is stated that current EVMs in use in Indian election are compliant to the extant legal framework created and strengthened by the successive Union Government of the day and jurisprudence evolved over more than 40 years by the Constitutional Courts of India. Anything beyond existing legal framework and established jurisprudence is beyond the singular domain of the Commission,” the letter signed by principal secretary Pramod Kumar Sharma said.

Sharma also said that the Supreme Court and the Delhi high court, in three different cases against use of EVMs and VVPATs, had dismissed the petitions and imposed cost on the petitioner for filing frivolous applications.

On December 19, the INDIA bloc passed a resolution raising concerns around the integrity of EVMs and asked the EC to allow all voters to verify their VVPAT slips. They had suggested, “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.”

The poll body subsequently increased the number of its FAQs around EVMs to answer some of the questions about properties of the VVPAT slips, why and when they were included, tracing the origin of the VVPAT slips, and what happens when the VVPAT or the control unit are run out of battery during voting.

Currently, VVPAT slips of five randomly selected polling stations of every assembly constituency or assembly segment are tallied 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 an older question, the poll body had said, “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 [control unit] and VVPAT count have always been traceable to human errors.”

It explained that the VVPAT was introduced by the poll body to comply with the Supreme Court judgement of 2013 in the case Dr Subramanian Swamy v Election Commission of India. The then Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi had noted, “[W]e are satisfied that the ‘paper trail’ is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections. … EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system.”

Subsequently, the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, were amended to allow paper slips to voters.

In its response to Ramesh, the EC addressed one additional question about whether the seven-second visual in the VVPAT machine is apt for confirmation. “During an All-Party Meeting held on 10.05.2013, a suggestion was made to increase the viewing time of printed slip in the viewing window for a longer time from the then existing five seconds. Subsequently, the time frame was increased by two seconds and presently the VVPATs have a slip display time of about 7 seconds,” the response said. The EC noted that the Calcutta high Court had deemed this time period to be “sufficient for the human eye to catch a meaningful glimpse” in a 2021 judgment.

The poll body said that the VVPAT slip is a thermal paper which can retain what is printed on it for “about five years when stored properly”. It also mentioned that the printed slip of VVPAT contains the candidate’s serial number, name of the candidate, the party or the candidate’s symbol, the session number and the VVPAT ID.

Each VVPAT slip bears the unique ID number of the VVPAT that printed the slip so using the slip, the poll body can identify the source VVPAT, the EC reiterated in the new questions.