The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Thursday recommended to the government the appointment of three new Chief Justices to the High Courts of Uttarakhand, Orissa, and Meghalaya.

The Collegium has largely followed the norms of merit, seniority, and integrity of the judges in its recommendations.

It has recommended the appointment of Justice Ritu Bahri as the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court, an office that has been vacant Justice Vipin Sanghi retired on October 26. Justice Bahri is the senior puisne judge of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, and has been serving on the Bench since August 16, 2010.

The Collegium has proposed Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh as the Chief Justice of the High Court of Orissa, a post that has been vacant since October 3 following the retirement of Justice Subhasis Talapatra. Justice Singh is the senior puisne judge in the Patna High Court.

Justice S. Vaidyanathan of the Madras High Court has been recommended for appointment as Chief Justice of the Meghalaya High Court. The post of the Meghalaya top judge became vacant with the retirement of Justice Sanjib Banerjee on November 1.

The Collegium, in its resolution, noted that while recommending Justice Vaidyanathan’s name, it has taken into consideration the fact that the “Madras High Court which is one of the largest High Courts in the country, is presently represented by only one Chief Justice among the Chief Justices of the High Courts”.

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a PIL seeking an independent audit of source code of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) used by the Election Commission, saying no “actionable material” was placed to indicate that the poll panel was in breach of its “constitutional mandate”. Observing that it will not venture into the “policy issue”, the Supreme Court dismissed the PIL which had also sought a direction to the poll panel to put in the public domain the audit report, if any, of EVM’s source code.

“The Election Commission of India (ECI) is entrusted constitutionally with superintendence and control over the conduct of elections. Presently, the petitioner has placed no actionable material on the record in this court to indicate that the ECI is actually in breach of its constitutional mandate,” a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said in its order.

The bench said the manner in which the source code should be audited and whether the audit report should be placed in public domain falls within the domain of the poll panel.

“On such a policy issue, we are not inclined to issue a direction of this sort which has been sought by the petitioner. There is no material before this court at this stage to indicate that the Election Commission is not taking suitable steps to fulfil its mandate,” the bench said while dismissing the PIL filed by an individual named Sunil Ahya.

The source code is a set of instructions and statements of a programmer using a computer programming language.

The ‘Hash functions’ are used to digest or condense a message down to a fixed size which can then be signed in a way that makes finding other messages with the same hash extremely difficult.

During the brief hearing, the bench referred to certain things related to the functioning of the Supreme Court and said it recently allowed electronic passes for entering into the Supreme Court. “If I start putting out what is source code in public, you know, who will be able to hack that,” the CJI said.

Before filing the petition, PIL petitioner Ahya had made representations to the Election Commission seeking an independent audit of the source code of the EVMs.

“The source code is the brain behind the EVM and it is about survival of democracy,” Ahya said.

Ahya had earlier moved the petition before the general elections in 2019. The court had then said in view of the announcement of the general elections it was not possible to go into the issues raised in the PIL.

It had, however, granted Ahya the liberty to file a fresh plea if a new cause of action arises.

After that, another fresh PIL was instituted and the bench had permitted Ahya to make a representation to the EC.

In the third plea, the PIL petitioner said he also made some representations to the poll panel and was still in the dark on what steps have been taken on the issue.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)