MANILA - The Supreme Court (SC) has again deferred its decision on the petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) filed by a citizens' group on the poll automation contract signed by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) last week.

The High Court, on Tuesday, instead ordered the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM to submit a counter-affidavit on the petition filed by the Concerned Citizens' Movement led by lawyer Harry Roque.

The court scheduled the oral arguments on July 29 at 2 p.m.

The Comelec and the winning consortium signed last Friday the contract after the SC failed to immediately act on the TRO petition.

Roque had said that the implementation of the contract "may still be restrained" despite the SC's failure to act on their petition.

Abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak said in an earlier report that former SC Justices Angelina Gutierrez and Hugo Gutierrez were tapped by Comelec Chairman Jose Melo to go over the P7.2-billion poll automation contract, which was prepared by Smartmatic.

The former magistrates were working on the draft contract when the rift between Smartmatic and TIM broke out.

Roque's group said the joint venture violated the anti-dummy law when they declared in the Senate hearing that the operations between Smartmatic and TIM were actually 90-10 respectively, when the partnership was supposed to be 60-40 in favor of TIM. -- With a report from Marieton Pacheco, ABS-CBN News