Opposition demands VVPATs to be considered first before counting

Earlier, in the day, the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a 100 per cent matching of Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips with Electronic Voting Machines (EMVs) while counting of votes for Lok Sabha polls on May 23,

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told media: "The Supreme Court said five random VVPATs should be counted, but the EC has said that counting will be done first and then VVPATs will be counted. We have said - let them count the five first, so that if there is a problem, we can then count all of them before it is too late."

The Commission on Wednesday will take a call on the issue.

After the 2017 Assembly Elections in Uttar Pradesh, in which the BJP won, the oppositions concluded that the voting machines have been tinkered with.

The Supreme Court had then asked the Election Commission to increase random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs from one to five polling booths per assembly segment in Lok Sabha polls.

However, the Commission informed that matching VVPAT slips with each EVMs would be time-consuming even as the court said it would provide more satisfaction to the political parties.

These 22 political parties, that are collaborating to keep the BJP out of power, sought a meeting with the Election Commission after exit polls on Sunday predicted a comfortable victory for the BJP and its allies.

Twelve of 14 exit polls predicted the NDA getting full majority with seats ranging seats from 282 to 365. A party or an alliance needs 272 seats to form the government.