The Supreme Court today asked what the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is for Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) after elections, in response to a petition urging that data from the machines not be deleted once vote counting is over. The bench, led by Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna, instructed that no data should be deleted or reloaded from EVMs for now.

The Election Commission has been directed to provide information on the process of erasing data from EVM memory and microcontrollers after elections.

“This is not adversarial,” Chief Justice Khanna remarked. “If a losing candidate seeks clarification, the engineer can confirm that there has been no tampering,” he added.

During the proceedings, it was revealed that engineers from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) had loaded dummy symbols and data into the EVMs, causing the original data to be erased. CJI Khanna questioned why this data was cleared and ordered that the Commission ensure no further deletion of EVM data.

The court’s remarks were made while hearing a petition from the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) in Haryana, along with a group of Congress leaders. The petition called for the Election Commission to create a policy to verify the original memory and microcontroller of EVMs to ensure there was no tampering. The petitioners also sought verification by engineers to confirm the integrity of the machines.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for March 17.