The Supreme Court on Friday said feeding serial numbers and names of candidates and their party symbols in bitmap files (images) in the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) cannot be equated with uploading a software.
The court was putting to rest apprehensions raised by petitioners that malicious software could be entered into the VVPAT along with symbols ahead of the elections.
Appearing for petitioner, Association for Democratic Reforms, advocate Prashant Bhushan, had argued in court that when a vote was cast, the signal would travel from the ballot unit to the VVPAT to the control unit. He said a malicious software hidden in the VVPAT would prove disastrous for free and fair elections.
“The symbol loading process undertaken by using the symbol loading unit cannot alter or modify the programme/firmware in the VVPAT which has been burnt/loaded in the memory. The control unit and the ballot unit are not subjected to the symbol loading process and not touched. The burnt/loaded firmware in the control unit and the ballot unit is and remains candidate and political party agnostic,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna observed.
The court explained that a laptop/PC with the symbol loading application is used to create a bitmap file comprising the serial number, the candidate name and the symbol. This file is loaded on VVPAT units by using the symbol loading units about 10 to 15 days prior to the date of polling. Prior to the symbol loading process, the flash memory of the VVPAT is empty or blank. The particulars of the candidates or the political parties are not loaded or stored in the VVPAT.
Authorised engineers of the manufacturers and the District Election Officer are involved in the symbol loading process. The whole process takes place in the presence of the candidates or their representatives and a monitor/TV screen displays the symbol loading process.
The EVM is composed of the ballot unit, the control unit and the VVPAT.
The control unit merely functions as a calculator. It computes the total votes cast on the basis of the number of times a button or all are pressed on the ballot unit. The control unit is agnostic to any political party or candidate, and only recognises the push button on the ballot unit.
Specific buttons on ballot units are allocated to each candidate after the loading of symbols.
“The sequence of buttons allocated to candidates of political parties is done in alphabetical order on the basis of the name of the candidate, first for the national and State recognised political parties, followed by other State registered parties, and then for independent candidates,” the judgment noted.
