The Supreme Court on Wednesday will pronounce its verdict on a batch of petitions seeking 100 percent EVM-VVPAT verification

The Supreme Court will today pronounce its verdict on a batch of petitions seeking directions to tally Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the elections. 

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta had reserved the judgment on the petitions on April 18 after two days of hearing.

During the hearing, which spanned over nearly two days, the bench had extensively interacted with an official from the Election Commission of India (ECI) to understand the functioning of EVMs.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the poll panel, had told the court that EVMs are standalone machines and cannot be tampered with, but the possibility of human error cannot be ruled out.

Underscoring that the electoral process has to have sanctity, Justice Datta told Mr Singh, “You have to allay the apprehensions, both in the court and outside the court. Let nobody have the apprehension that something which is expected is not being done.”

Following the Election Commission’s submissions, the Supreme Court told the petitioners that over suspicion of everything is a problem.

“Everything cannot be suspected. You cannot be critical of everything. If they (the ECI) have done something good, you have to appreciate it. You don’t have to be critical of everything,” the bench told the counsel of one of the petitioners.

In an earlier hearing on April 16, The bench expressed reservations about the manual counting process, saying the electoral process in India is a “humongous task” and attempts should not be made to “bring down the system”.

The VVPAT – Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail – enables a voter to see if the vote was cast properly and went to the candidate he/she supports. The VVPAT generates a paper slip that is kept in a sealed cover and can be opened if there is a dispute.

Currently, VVPAT slips of five randomly selected EVMs in every Assembly segment are verified.

Amid the Opposition’s questions and apprehensions regarding the EVM system of voting, the petitions call for cross-verification of every vote.

The petitions have been filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and activist Arun Kumar Agarwal. Mr Agarwal has sought the counting of all VVPAT slips. The ADR’s petition seeks the court’s direction to the Election Commission and the Centre to ensure that voters are able to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been “counted as recorded”.

Student anger with university officials and law enforcement fueled worsening tensions on several US campuses Tuesday after days of pro-Palestinian protests that have triggered mass arrests and shut down classes.

Some of America’s most prestigious universities have been rocked by protests in recent weeks as students and other agitators take over quads and disrupt campus activities, furious over the Israel-Hamas war and ensuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

At Columbia University in New York, the core of the spreading protests, organizers are calling for the university to divest from companies “that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”

Pro-Israel supporters and others worried about campus safety have pointed to anti-Semitic incidents and argue that campuses are encouraging intimidation and hate speech.

“Students have the right to protest, but they are not allowed to disrupt campus life or harass and intimidate,” Columbia’s vice president of public affairs Ben Chang told reporters Monday. 

“We are acting on concerns we are hearing from our Jewish students,” he said, adding that university officials were meeting “in good faith” with the demonstrators.

Protesters meanwhile — including a number of Jewish students in the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — say they’ve disavowed instances of anti-Semitism and are there to support Palestinians.

“My college administration, my representatives in Congress and my own president have continually acted as spokespeople for the Jewish community, equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism,” Jewish student Sarah Borus, from Columbia’s Barnard College, said at a news conference held by Jewish and Palestinian students.

“They silence us, suspend us,” she added.

Protesting students also said they had been called slurs by a pro-Israel professor and that anti-Muslim incidents on campus were being ignored.

But another Jewish student at Columbia, Nick Baum, told CNN he has felt “downright unsafe” on campus in recent days, saying anti-Semitism there has “reached a boiling point.” 

Professors have pushed back since Columbia President Minouche Shafik called in police last week to arrest students, with some announcing they would not enforce student suspensions.

While there is a long history of campus activism around Israel and the Palestinian cause, flaring tensions amid the war have attracted major media and political scrutiny.

“Jewish students at Columbia University don’t feel safe. It’s become so dangerous that students were forced out of the classroom,” Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Tuesday.

“Let’s be clear: these are not peaceful protests, these are anti-Semitic mobs.”

NYU arrests

Further downtown, 133 people were arrested at New York University (NYU) and released after being issued with court summons, the New York Police Department told AFP, as protests also intensify at other colleges.

An NYU spokesman said the decision to call police to the campus came after additional demonstrators, many of whom were not thought to be affiliated with the university, breached the barriers erected around the protest encampment.

This “dramatically changed” the situation, the spokesman said in a statement on the school’s website Monday, citing “disorderly, disruptive and antagonizing behavior” along with “intimidated chants and several anti-Semitic incidents.”

On the West Coast, California State Polytechnic University announced it would be closed until at least Wednesday after pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied an administrative building.

The protests have also drawn the attention of President Joe Biden and his administration.

“Anti-Semitic hate on college campuses is unacceptable,” US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona posted on X on Tuesday, expressing concern about the unrest. 

That afternoon, hundreds of NYU students and faculty staged a walkout.

There have also been demonstrations at MIT, the University of Michigan, UC Berkeley and Yale, where at least 47 people were arrested Monday after refusing requests to disperse.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)