I am the Chief Election Commissioner of India, not of the Government of India.
(T.N. Seshan, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India)The Election Commission is responsible for maintaining India’s electoral rolls. But what happens when the officials responsible for those rolls say the software they use does not give them full control over the decisions they are legally expected to make?
That question lies at the centre of an internal disagreement between the two Election Commissioners - Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi- and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the management of electoral rolls and the ECINet software.
The Indian Express investigation reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had warned against the ‘centralisation of ECINet’ and the exclusion of state-level and ground-level officials from aspects of electoral-roll management. The report said these concerns played out in Goa, where the handling of 97 voters brought the issue into focus.
At the centre of the controversy is not just who made which decision, but also the system through which those decisions are implemented.
But what exactly is ECINet, and why has it become central to the debate?
ECINet is the Election Commission of India’s unified digital platform for election and voter services. It brings together multiple Election Commission applications and portals into a single platform for citizens, candidates, political parties and election officials.
ECINet has been used during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, allowing voters to submit forms and supporting documents while enabling election officials to process applications and update voter records.
Before ECINet, election services were spread across separate applications and portals, including the Voter Helpline app, cVIGIL, Saksham, Know Your Candidate and voter-turnout services. ECINet was designed to bring these functions together through a common digital platform.
The Election Commission launched the ECINet app in January this year, after testing a beta version during the Bihar Assembly elections last November. While the platform provides citizens with election-related information and services, it is also used by election officials to manage electoral processes.
Among the voter-related functions available through ECINet are:
ECINet also brings together services for candidates, political parties, election officials and the public, including:
According to The Indian Express investigation, Sandhu and Joshi warned about the ‘gradual centralisation’ of electoral-roll management and its effect on the powers of field-level election officials.
Their concern was that state- and constituency-level officials could, in some instances, be denied complete access or prevented by the software from adding, deleting, correcting or reversing voter records.
Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) are responsible for the preparation and revision of electoral rolls.
The reported concerns centred on a possible gap between the powers assigned to these officials under law and the actions they were able to perform through the software.
Among the issues reported were:
Restricted ERO access: Officials could face limitations in adding, deleting, correcting or reversing entries.
Centrally controlled permissions: The software could determine which actions officials were able to perform.
Limited rollback options: In some cases, officials reportedly could not reverse earlier decisions through the system, even after determining that voters should be restored.
The Election Commission says ECINet is decentralised because statutory tasks remain with designated field- and state-level officers. It says no other ECI officer can perform those functions through the platform. The ECI also says cybersecurity is centrally managed, which it argues is necessary to protect the system from attacks.
The Goa case involving 97 voters became a key example of the concerns raised by the two Election Commissioners.
According to The Indian Express, during the Special Intensive Revision, local EROs found 97 voters eligible after examining their documents. However, the officials were unable to use the software to reverse the earlier deletions and restore the names.
The Goa authorities subsequently approached the Election Commission seeking a solution. The final electoral roll was published without those 97 names.
The Goa Chief Electoral Officer’s office has since said that many of those voters have been enrolled and that the remaining cases are being processed separately.
The Indian Express investigation reported that the case illustrated the concern raised by the two Election Commissioners: what happens when a field-level official reaches a decision but the software does not allow that decision to be implemented?
The disagreement within the Election Commission may appear to be an internal institutional issue. For an ordinary Indian voter, however, the issue goes beyond the disagreement itself.
If the electoral roll is where your right to vote is recorded, the system used to add, delete or correct your name matters to you.
If an eligible voter’s name is wrongly removed, they may be unable to vote even if they have a voter ID. If a correction or restoration is not properly recorded in the system, a voter could face problems when they go to the polling booth.
The reported dispute over the centralisation of electoral-roll systems also raises a broader question: who has the authority to make changes to your voter record, and how are those decisions recorded and corrected?
This becomes especially relevant during electoral-roll revisions, when large numbers of entries may be added, deleted or updated. For citizens, even an administrative or technical error can have a direct consequence: your name may not be on the roll when you need it to be.
That is why the ECI disagreement is not just about differences among Election Commissioners. It concerns the system through which every eligible Indian citizen exercises one of their most important democratic rights: the right to vote.