The Election Commission has rejected the demand from 22 political parties to make last-minute changes to the way votes will be counted on Thursday, news agency ANI reported.
On Tuesday, leaders of 22 political parties told the poll watchdog that ‘if any discrepancy is found anywhere during the VVPAT verification, 100 per cent counting of paper slips of VVPATs of all polling stations of that assembly segments should be done’.
The commission had told the delegation of opposition leaders that the poll panel would meet on Wednesday to take a decision on this proposal.
“We raised these same issues in last one and half months. Why did they not respond?” asked Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi who called the suggestion to first verify the VVPAT paper slips a “no-brainer”.
ALSO READ: Opposition parties meet EC; to meet again tomorrow to discuss issue of VVPAT tally with EVMs
At present, the counting will involve the matching of paper slips in five polling booths picked at random for each assembly segment.
Besides this, the Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a PIL seeking 100 per cent matching of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes for the 17th Lok Sabha elections on May 23.