New Delhi: While Telangana CM met his Kerala counterpart in an effort to "stitch up a federal front", other Opposition leaders are geared up for the crucial Supreme Court hearing on raising VVPAT verification from just one to five EVMs.
According to reports, Opposition leaders like Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, CPI(M)'s T K Rangarajan and Nilotpal Basu and CPI's D Raja among others would be present in the court room when the plea is being heard on Tuesday.
The leaders of 21 parties had urged the top court to reconsider its April 8 directive to the Election Commission of India to increase random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs from one to five polling booths per assembly segment in every Lok Sabha constituency. Among them was Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Sharad Pawar, K C Venugopal, Derek O'Brien, Sharad Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, Satish Chandra Mishra, M K Stalin, T K Rangarajan, Manoj K Jha, Farooq Abdullah, S S Reddy, Danish Ali, Ajit Singh, Mohd Badruddin Ajmal and Jitin Ram Majhi.
Sources said that many of these leaders could be present in court during the hearing.
A report said that Naidu has already left for New Delhi on Monday evening. Naidu will spend a day in the capital mobilising support for his demand to count at least 50% of the VVPAT slips along with the EVMs.
The petition claims that after the first phase of polling, in many cases, EVMs were found to be defective and faulty. "It has been reported that in some cases where voters would vote for one party, EVMs would record their vote having been cast for another party," says the review petition. The Election Commission of India (EC) has consistently maintained that the glitches experienced by EVMs are within acceptable limits in terms of number of defects.
VVPAT machines, attached to EVMs, display the name of the candidate and his/her symbol on a piece of paper after a vote is cast. The voter can see the paper through a glass display for seven seconds before it drops into a sealed container.
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