Congress will continue with campaign on greater use of VVPATs: Jairam Ramesh

Election officials explain the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and VVPAT to the staff at a polling booth on the eve of the second phase of Lok Sabha elections, in Karad, Maharashtra on April 26, 2024. | Photo Credit: PTI

The Congress will continue with its political campaign on greater use of VVPATs to increase public trust in the electoral process, the party said on April 26 after the Supreme Court rejected pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs.

The Congress was not a party, directly or indirectly, to the petition on VVPATs rejected by the Supreme Court today, party general secretary Jairam Ramesh said.

"We have taken note of the verdict of the 2-judge bench and our political campaign on the greater use of VVPATs to increase public trust in the electoral process will continue," Ramesh said in a post on X.

The Supreme Court has rejected pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and said "blindly distrusting" any aspect of the system can breed unwarranted scepticism.

Maintaining that "democracy is all about striving to build harmony and trust between all institutions", a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta delivered two concurring verdicts and dismissed all the pleas in the matter, including those seeking to go back to ballot papers in elections.