A public interest litigation petition has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking a direction to Election Commission of India (ECI) to introduce headphone based-audio enabled Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system during the polling for Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly elections on April 23, 2026.
The petition filed by Chennai-based public charitable trust Nethrodaya, working primarily for the empowerment of the visually challenged, has been listed for hearing before the first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan on Wednesday (April 15, 2026).
In an affidavit filed through his counsel R.S. Raveendhren, Nethrodaya founder and managing trustee C. Govindakrishnan, 55, said, under the current VVPAT system, a printing machine gets attached to the ballot unit of every Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in order to confirm the voter’s choice. Immediately after casting of every vote, the VVPAT enables visual verification by printing the voter’s choice on a slip of paper.
The paper slip with the candidate’s details gets displayed for seven seconds behind a glass window on the printer before dropping into a compartment below.
Stating that the VVPAT system in vogue does not enable the visually challenged to independently verify the votes cast by them and makes them dependant on a companion, Nethrodaya suggested introduction of headphone based audio enabled VVPAT system for the benefit of those who could not verify visually.
