SC rejects all petitions seeking 100 per cent verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips
The top court also rejected the prayers of petitioners to return to ballot paper voting.
The four top Supreme Court judges’ stunning bid on Friday to publicly question the administration and functioning of the apex court and to virtually raise a banner of revolt over it against Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra stunned the legal and judicial circles as well as the government and political parties throughout the country.
Rahul Gandhi, Congress president, described the concerns expressed by four Supreme Court judges ~ Justice J Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice M B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph ~ over the top judicial institution’s functioning as “extremely important”, even as he also sought investigation into the death of the special CBI judge B H Loya by the “highest level” of the apex court. Making a brief statement at a press conference here, Rahul said the judges’ statement that democracy will not survive in the country if the Supreme Court is not preserved, was “extremely serious” that “needs to be looked into carefully”.
Adopting a wait-and-watch and cautious position, the Narendra Modi government indicated that it would not intervene in the top court’s internal issues and the face-off between the CJI and his four senior-most judges.
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“Our judiciary is reputed all over the world, is independent and will sort out the matter itself,” Union Minister of State for Law P P Chaudhury said. The Congress said : “The judges have specifically highlighted two issues: (1) The long silence of the Government of India to the Memorandum of Procedure that was finalised by the Supreme Court and (2) the assignment of cases in the Supreme Court to what is described as ‘selectively to the benches of their preference without any rational basis for such assignment’.”
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