The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Election Commission to respond to a petition by the non-profit Association for Democratic Reforms seeking verification of the burnt memory and symbol loading units of Electronic Voting Machines, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta also told the poll panel not to erase or reload data on EVMs during verification.

The burnt memory in EVMs stores election data permanently, while a symbol loading unit uploads candidate details to the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, or VVPAT, system. The court had ruled in April 2024 that symbol loading units must be sealed for 45 days after elections and that candidates who placed second or third could seek access to burnt memory.

The burnt memory of EVMs and VVPATs refers to the devices’s non-volatile memory, where data is stored permanently even when the machine is switched off. It is a key repository of votes cast during an election.

The VVPAT is a machine that prints a paper slip of the candidate’s name, serial number and their party symbol after people have cast their vote. To avoid election fraud, it displays the paper slip for seven seconds so that citizens can check if their vote has been cast correctly.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms contending that the standard operating procedure framed by the Election Commission for the verification of EVMs was not in compliance with the guidelines it issued in an April 2024 verdict.

On April 26, 2024, the court rejected petitions seeking the tallying of all VVPAT slips to verify votes cast through EVMs. However, it said that the symbol loading unit should be sealed and kept available for at least 45 days after the election.

The court had also said that candidates who place second or third could seek to examine the burnt memory of the EVMs.

At the hearing on Tuesday, advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the Association for Democratic Reforms, told the court that the standard operating procedure issued by the poll panel was not in compliance with the 2024 verdict, Live Law reported.

“What we want is that somebody should examine the software and hardware of EVM to see whether they have any element of manipulations or not,” Live Law quoted him as saying.

The court told Senior Advocate Maninder Singh, representing the poll panel, that the directions issued in the April 2024 judgment did not intend to erase or reload the data in the EVMs. It intended for the EVM to be verified and checked by an engineer from its manufacturing company after vote counting.

“What we intended was that, if after the polls somebody asks, the engineer should come and certify that according to him in their presence, there is no tampering in any of the burnt memory or the micro-chips stock,” the bench said. “That’s all. Why do you erase the data?”

The court added: “We didn’t want such a detailed process that you reload something…Do not erase the data, do not reload the data…All you need to do is somebody should come and verify, they have to examine.”

The bench also expressed concern about the cost of verification set by the Election Commission after another petitioner in the matter said that it cost Rs 40,000 to verify the data from a single EVM, reported PTI. “Reduce the cost of 40,000 – that’s too high,” the court said.

The bench ordered the Election Commission to submit a short affidavit on the standard operating procedure adopted for the verification of EVMs. It also recorded a response from the poll panel that no modification or correction of EVM data would take place during the verification process, PTI reported.

The court will hear the matter next on March 3.