-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday took less than a minute to seek the Election Commission’s response to a joint petition filed by leaders of 21 non-NDA political parties pleading for mandatory counting of VVPAT paper slips in at least 50% of EVMs in each assembly segment in the Lok Sabha elections even though it may delay declaration of results. Senior advocate AM Singhvi, who played a...

-The Hindu Justice Joseph cites information law as government seeks to keep Rafale pricing details under wraps An all-out effort by the government to claim privilege and push the Rafale jets’ pricing details back into the dark zone was met with a stoic counter from Justice K.M. Joseph in the Supreme Court on Thursday. The government’s reasons to hush the Rafale prices ranged from national security to not upsetting a “solemn undertaking” given...

-The Hindu Paper trail crucial, say petitioners; SC hearing today In a major show of pre-poll strength, 23 Opposition parties moved the Supreme Court on Thursday, demanding the random verification of at least 50% Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) using Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in every Assembly segment or constituency. They further sought to quash an Election Commission guideline that Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) should be conducted “only for VVPAT...

-The Hindu ‘Ensures transparency, checks misuse’ Electoral bonds have been introduced to promote transparency in funding and donation received by political parties, the government told the Supreme Court on Thursday. “They [bonds] can be encashed by an eligible political party only through their accounts with authorised banks. The bonds do not have the name of the donor or the receiving political party and only carry unique hidden alphanumeric serial numbers as an in-built...

-The Hindu SC wants list of names included in Assam rolls from 2017 The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday assured the Supreme Court that names have not been deleted from the Assam electoral roll on the basis of their exclusion from the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was published in July last year. However, a Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was not satisfied. “But a question looms large...