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5) In view of the pendency of the appeal filed by Dr. Subramanian Swamy, this Court issued notice in the writ petition and tagged with the said appeal.

6) Heard Dr. Subramanian Swamy, appellant-in-person in the appeal, Dr. R.R. Deshpande, learned counsel for the writ petitioner, Mr. Ashok Desai and Ms. Meenakshi Arora, learned senior counsel for the ECI. Contentions:

7) Dr. Subramanian Swamy, the appellant herein contended before this Court that the present system of EVMs, as utilized in the last few general elections in India, does not meet all the requirements of the international standards and though the ECI maintains that the EVMs cannot be tampered with, but the fact is that EVMs, like all electronic equipments, are open to hacking.

16) In wider fulfillment of the objectives of the field trial, the ECI has requested the National and State parties to extend necessary cooperation by getting involved in the trial process actively and also witness the trial in order to have a first hand experience of the system. The ECI has also requested the individuals including the appellant – Dr. Subramanian Swamy and the groups, who have been engaged with the ECI on the issue of EVM-VVPAT, to witness the trial.

27) In the said affidavit, it is finally stated that the ECI has decided to increase the use of VVPAT units in a phased manner and for this purpose the ECI has already written to the Government of India, Ministry of Law and Justice to issue administrative and financial sanction for procurement of 20,000 units of VVPAT (10,000 each from M/s BEL and M/s ECIL) costing about Rs. 38.01 crore.

28) Though initially the ECI was little reluctant in introducing “paper trail” by use of VVPAT, taking note of the advantage in the system as demonstrated by Dr. Subramanian Swamy, we issued several directions to the ECI . Pursuant to the same, the ECI contacted several expert bodies, technical advisers, etc. They also had various meetings with National and State level political parties, demonstrations were conducted at various places and finally after a thorough examination and full discussion, VVPAT was used successfully in all the 21 polling stations of 51-Noksen (ST) Assembly Constituency of Nagaland. The information furnished by the ECI, through the affidavit dated 01.10.2013, clearly shows that VVPAT system is a successful one. We have already highlighted that VVPAT is a system of printing paper trail when the voter casts his vote, in addition to the electronic record of the ballot, for the purpose of verification of his choice of candidate and also for manual counting of votes in case of dispute.

31) For implementation of such a system (VVPAT) in a phased manner, the Government of India is directed to provide required financial assistance for procurement of units of VVPAT.

32) Before parting with the case, we record our appreciation for the efforts made by Dr. Subramanian Swamy as well as the ECI, in particular Mr. Ashok Desai and Ms. Meenakshi Arora, learned senior counsel for the ECI.

33) With the above directions, the appeal and the writ petition are disposed of. No separate order is required in the applications for intervention. Both sides are permitted to approach this Court for further direction(s), if need arises.