The Election Commission has informed a Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy that it has identified critical and vulnerable booths and that 100% web-casting of the entire activities on polling day shall be done thereof.
There will be 100% web-casting of the entire activities on polling day at the critical and vulnerable polling booths.
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Over 44,000 polling booths, covering more than 50% of the total polling stations in the State, would be covered by webcasting.
However, the monitoring of the activities on the virtual platform will be undertaken only by the Election Commission officials and no outsider will be allowed to participate real time, though the recordings may be available for inspection subsequently.
Information pertaining to identification of the critical and vulnerable polling booths should not be shared with political parties on the grounds of security.
On the question of expiry of Voting machine by the DMK party that Court should check use of machine older than 15 years .. Election Commistion has Said M3 voting machines would only be used, which have been manufactured in 2017 and later.
Regarding counting of the paper trail, the random counting in accordance with the Supreme Court directions would be conducted. On hearing the responses from Election commission Madras High Court Disposes DMK’s Plea Seeking CCTV Coverage Of Voting
It is to be noted on April 2019 Chief election commissioner Sunil Arora on Monday said the the EC would operationalise and implement “with immediate effect the directions of the Supreme Court to count paper trail of of votes for five EVMs per assembly segment.
Pre-poll guarding of the EVMs would be conducted in accordance with the Election Manual. Towards this end, each EVM handed over to a polling booth is checked before the polling starts and only if it reveals nil votes, the machine will be used.
Every EVM is sealed and the candidates’ signatures are obtained across the seal and the seals are not broken or opened till the period of limitation after the conduct of the polls runs out and no challenge to the election in the relevant constituency has been made.
Significantly, the Petitioner-party DMK had also sought installation of jammers at the strong rooms where EVMs are stored to ensure that they are not tampered with remotely.
On this issue, the Election Commission submitted that the EVMs cannot be tampered by any wi-fi or radio device.
It added, “it is also its practice to cut off supply inside the strong-rooms where the EVMs are stored, both at the pre-poll and at the post-poll stages, not because the machines are affected by any electrical activity, but to ensure that there is no cause for fire by any short-circuit of the lines.”
In light of the above submissions, the Bench recorded its satisfaction and disposed of the petition with hope that the election week, starting April 6 will pass off peacefully and uneventfully.
It should be noted EC has said The counting of VVPAT paper slips for five randomly selected .would be taken up sequentially on the same counting table.
As per the rule, the counting of paper slips shall be taken up last after completing the full EVM count, followed by counting of VVPAT trail demanded by the candidates under Rule 56(D).
Besides, in the remote event of a mismatch between VVPAT and EVM count, which until now has never happened, a recount demand by the candidates cannot be ruled out, which may further delay the result claim say EC official
But Experts question why not 5 VVPATs at random to be counted at first and then EVM count to start and in case of non tally that help the authorities to hold the counting process ..
Rather after announcing EVM votes in full and declare the candidate victory and then counting the VVPAT
