New Delhi/IBNS: A Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta Tuesday heard petitions seeking cross-verification of the votes cast with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

This came after advocate Prashant Bhushan had argued saying most European countries, who went for voting with EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines), had gone back to the paper ballots system.

In response, Justice Khanna, as quoted by Bar and Bench, said: “We are in our 60s. We all know what happened when there were ballot papers, you may have, but we have not forgotten.”

During the hearing, Bhushan also cited Germany’s example of ballot papers.

To this, Justice Dipankar asked him about Germany's population prompting Bhushan to reply that the European country’s population was around 6 crore, while India has 50-60 crore voters.

“My home state West Bengal has more population than Germany. We need to repose some trust and faith in somebody. Do not try to bring down the system like this,” Justice Datta was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Justice Khanna noted, “97 crore total number of registered voters. We all know what happened when there were ballot papers.”

The matter will again be taken up for hearing on Thursday.