The Supreme Court on Friday rejected the petitions filed by Congress leaders Sachin Pilot and Kamal Nath. The petition had directions to the Election Commission to conduct the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in MP and Rajasthan. The Congress had wanted this verification on a random basis for 10% water in poll-bound states.

Justice AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan rejected the petition, saying it was of the opinion that the format in which the draft electoral roll is supplied to the petitioner fulfills the requirement contained in the election manual.

On the plea for random VVPAT verification, the bench noted that the opposition party had raised similar prayers earlier. The Attorney General had then informed the court that ‘EC has already given the guidelines.’

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What Cong demanded through plea?

Kamal Nath had cited clause of the Election Manual, 2016, in support of his demand for a text version of the draft electoral rolls published on January 19 this year. The clause deals with ‘putting the draft roll on the website.’

Additionally, the draft roll shall be put in public domain, at Chief Electoral Officer’s website, in a PDF format on the same day.

The draft roll shall be put on the website in a text mode and no photographs would appear against the elector’s details. Instead, it would indicate in the box meant for the photograph of elector whether the photograph is available or not.

Since the Congress party is going nothing more than hurdling the EC’s process, the Supreme Court has finally shown the reality to the party. It seems that the party is doubting the process of Election Commission and raising some baseless issues before elections.

The Supreme Court did not entertain the Congress and cleared the way to work for Election Commission. It is known that the 4 states- Chattisgarh, MP, Rajasthan, Mizoram, and Telangana states are poll-bound till December, hence the EC has got to do a lot of tasks.