Apex Court Nudges Centre Towards Totaliser Reform in EVM Counting
(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)
Delhi, 1, September,2026-In a significant intervention aimed at fortifying the secrecy of the ballot, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Union government to examine the feasibility of introducing totaliser machines for tallying votes cast on EVMs, seeking to shield voters at individual polling booths from identification and reprisal.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, was seized of a plea pressing for the mechanism, which pools votes from multiple EVMs before disclosure, thereby obscuring booth-wise voting trends.
Directing the Election Commission to place a formal proposal before the Centre, the CJI observed that the government “shall take a call on the proposal,” while asking that any impediments or adverse consequences of the move be duly weighed.
Appearing for the Election Commission, Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu conceded the merit of anonymising voter choice in principle, but flagged practical hurdles chiefly the need for statutory amendment and the resultant erosion of candidates’ ability to cross-verify results booth-wise under Form 17C.
He informed the Bench that an earlier ECI recommendation favouring totalisers had been shot down by a government-appointed expert panel, with a majority of political parties voicing opposition in all-party consultations.
The Bench, however, was unpersuaded that the Commission’s stated position amounted to a principled objection.
The CJI pointedly remarked that the ECI’s own affidavit had flagged “roadblocks,” not a “withdrawal of totalisation as an inadvisable step” a distinction Naidu attributed to political resistance rather than institutional reluctance.
Appearing for the petitioner, Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay invoked the ECI’s own 2018 stance favouring totalisers, arguing that booth-wise disclosure invites intimidation and post-poll reprisals.
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan went further, contending that the rule-making power under Section 169 of the Representation of the People Act already permits the Centre to effect the change without fresh legislation.
Justice Bagchi, invoking Rule 59A of the Conduct of Elections Rules which already permits aggregated counting where victimisation is feared held that there was no principled bar to extending this safeguard to EVM counting, clarifying that the Court was not proposing to supplant booth-wise counting altogether but to carve out a protective exception.
The Bench has now called upon the Centre to examine amending the Conduct of Elections Rules, with specific reference to Rule 59A and the Law Commission’s 255th Report on totalisation, before the matter is heard further.
