The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta reserved its verdict after hearing the response of Election Commission on the pleas. The petitioners have also sought reversal of the poll panel’s 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass on VVPAT machines with an opaque glass through which a voter can see the slip only when the light is on for seven seconds. Senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the Election Commission,

Nongriat, India, April 18 (Reuters): India was preparing on Thursday for the world’s largest general election, as polling officers clambered up hills, travelled deep into areas riven by violent insurgencies and crossed rivers to reach millions of voters across the sprawling nation. The first vote in the seven-phase election will be cast on Friday, with results set for June 4, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks set to win a historic third term in the face of a straggling opposition challenge. The Election Commission has to set up more than 1 million polling stations for the nearly two-month duration, with

More than 960 million Indians will head to the polls in the world’s biggest election between April 19 and early June. The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is seeking a third term in office. And the polls suggest it will achieve this objective. If one was to go by economic growth figures alone, the Modi government’s performance has been impressive. When Modi came to power in 2014, economic growth was sluggish. A series of high-profile corruption cases led to a loss of investor confidence in the Indian economy. But between 2014 and