Supreme Court Sends VVPAT Timestamp Issue To Election Commission

Should VVPAT slips show the exact time a vote was cast? The Supreme Court has now referred the demand to the Election Commission, calling it a technical issue linked to election management and transparency.

Post Published By: Ayushi Bisht

Updated : 27 May 2026, 7:27 PM IST

Supreme Court declines to alter VVPAT system (Img: Internet)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that the demand for including a timestamp indicating the actual time when the vote is cast in the VVPAT slips is a technical issue within the jurisdiction of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The court dismissed the public interest litigation (PIL) demanding changes in the existing VVPAT system and instructed the court registry to send the petition to the poll body. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi heard the petition.

The petitioner requested an order directing to modify Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) guidelines so that every slip generated during voting would show the precise time when vote was cast.

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The bench said that although the concern mentioned in the petition was relevant to the conduct of the election process. The decision on whether such an amendment can be made was a technical matter to be considered by the Election Commission. No order for modification of the existing system was passed.

Petition demanded greater transparency

According to the petition, the inclusion of timestamp on every VVPAT slip would make the entire election process more transparent, verifiable and also audit-ready. It was alleged that in some elections, there had been some concerns regarding the higher number of votes recorded from the last few minutes of voting hours.

Advocate Devadatt Kamat representing the petitioner told the court that while VVPAT slips were provided for in the existing electoral rules, there was no indication of the time of voting on the slip itself.

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VVPAT system allows for printing of brief information on a slip regarding the chosen candidate for a limited time and then dropping the slip inside the VVPAT box. The slips are used only for purposes of manual scrutiny after the electronic counting process.

VVPAT issues come before SC again

The Supreme Court had earlier received various petitions filed against the use of EVM/VVPAT for election processes. As recently as in 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea demanding that all EVM slips be manually counted against the VVPAT slips.