"Don't Delete Data": Supreme Court To Poll Body On EVM Petition

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 top court was told that engineers of BEL (Bharat Electronics Limited) had loaded dummy symbol and data in the EVMs and data of the original machine was cleared.

CJI Khanna questioned the poll body why the data was cleared and ordered that it ensure that EVM data is not deleted.

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 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  engineers to prove that EVM has not been tampered with.

The next hearing will be held on March 17.