The EC submitted before a bench of justices P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi said that trial of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in EVMs has been done in around 180 polling stations in various states and it could be incorporated in elections after an expert committee's nod.
Senior Advocate Ashok Desai, appearing for the Commission, said VVPAT would first be used in bye-elections and then in state election and general elections.
"The Expert Committee is keen to have reliable system. The manufacturers have made considerable progress and it is hoped that the system will be stabilised within a few months," he said, adding 17 review and monitoring meetings have so far been held with EVM manufacturers.
"The Commission asked EVM manufacturers to accelerate their development and further fine-tune the design of VVPAT system for making it suitable for use in elections at the earliest. Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronic Corporation of India are working on improvement in the design of VVPAT system," the EC said in its report.
The apex court was hearing a plea of Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy seeking direction to the poll panel to ensure that EVMs should have a paper trail and issue a paper receipt to each voter.
Earlier, Swamy had made a plea for reverting to paper- ballot system saying all advanced countries, including the US and Japan, have discarded EVMs and gone back to the old system.
The Janata Party leader had contended that even Japan, which had pioneered the launch of EVMs, was today relying on the paper-ballot system only.
He said only private companies across the world are manufacturing EVMs, which are vulnerable to hacking.