{"id":1851,"date":"2026-09-02T08:32:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2026\/09\/02\/supreme-court-asks-centre-totaliser-fallback\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T08:32:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:32:36","slug":"supreme-court-asks-centre-totaliser-fallback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2026\/09\/02\/supreme-court-asks-centre-totaliser-fallback\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court asks Centre to weigh totaliser use as EVM fallback"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Quick Adsense WordPress Plugin: http:\/\/quickadsense.com\/ -->\n<div class=\"9fece8afa224fd09e54b043d0febfb58\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- NR ATF -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8898941184964366\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4839033563\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>On September 1, 2026, the Supreme Court of India issued an order asking the Union government to submit its position on the possible deployment of \u201ctotalisers\u201d as a fallback mechanism for the country\u2019s electronic voting machines (EVMs). The court\u2019s directive came while it was hearing a petition that frames totalisers as a tool that could protect voter privacy by aggregating results from multiple voting units without exposing booth\u2011wise patterns.<\/p>\n<h2>Legal and political landscape<\/h2>\n<p>A totaliser is a device that links a cluster of fourteen EVM control units \u2013 each unit serving a separate polling station \u2013 via a cable and produces a single, consolidated result for each candidate across that group. Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, the petitioner, argued that such aggregation would shield individual voters from retaliation, contending that political parties often target voters after identifying voting trends in specific booths.<\/p>\n<p>The Election Commission of India (EC) responded with a cautionary affidavit, noting that the present climate is characterised by \u201cfrequent public questioning\u201d of the functioning and integrity of EVMs. The EC warned that introducing a new, unregulated mechanism like the totaliser could spark fresh allegations and controversy, further eroding confidence in an already sensitive element of the electoral process.<\/p>\n<p>According to the EC, no existing statute \u2013 neither the Representation of the People Act nor the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, nor any allied enactment \u2013 provides for the recognition, regulation, or governance of totalisers. The commission stressed that substantive amendments to the statutory framework governing vote counting would be required before totalisers could be incorporated into the electoral system.<\/p>\n<p>Political parties have largely opposed the proposal. Senior advocate Seshadhri Naidu, representing the EC, submitted that three of the six national parties and eighteen of the twenty\u2011nine state parties have voiced a \u201cbig \u2018no\u2019\u201d to totalisers. The only formal recommendation in favour of selective use came from the Law Commission of India in its 255th report.<\/p>\n<h2>Election Commission\u2019s concerns on transparency and public confidence<\/h2>\n<p>The EC highlighted that the current counting process is designed to be transparent and self\u2011verifying. Candidates and their agents are present during both polling and counting, and they can cross\u2011verify results using Form\u202f17C, which records vote counts at each polling station at the end of polling and after counting. Form\u202f17C data are also employed in adjudications before election tribunals and courts, forming the \u201cbackbone of the self\u2011verifying and transparent character of the present counting process,\u201d as the commission phrased it.<\/p>\n<p>Introducing totalisers, the EC argued, would obscure the one\u2011to\u2011one correspondence between individual booths and their respective EVMs. By aggregating votes at a single point, any technical malfunction or human error in a specific machine could be concealed within the overall figure, making independent verification by parties or observers impossible. The commission warned that this loss of granularity could mask both equipment failures and deliberate tampering.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond technical concerns, the EC expressed apprehension that totalisers could become fodder for further misapprehensions about EVMs. Recent electoral cycles have seen intense public scrutiny, widespread litigation, and persistent doubts about the integrity of electronic voting. Adding an intermediate aggregating device, the commission noted, would introduce an \u201calgorithmic pooling\u201d layer that could generate fresh anxieties, allegations of data integrity breaches, machine tampering, and transmission glitches.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court\u2019s request for the Centre\u2019s response therefore arrives at a pivotal moment. While the petition seeks to protect voter anonymity, the EC\u2019s detailed objections underscore the potential trade\u2011off between privacy and the transparency mechanisms that have historically underpinned confidence in India\u2019s electoral outcomes. The court will consider the Union government\u2019s reply alongside the strong opposition from most political parties and the EC\u2019s legal and procedural reservations before deciding whether totalisers should be permitted as a fallback option for EVMs.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court sought the Union government&#8217;s view on deploying totaliser machines as a fallback for electronic voting, amid strong objections from the Election Commission and most political parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[299],"tags":[1837,1840,1839,216,335,1838],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-election","tag-election-commission","tag-evm","tag-india","tag-supreme-court","tag-totaliser","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}