NEW DELHI,2025: The journey of Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission of India’s intensive exercise to purify the voter rolls, could have been a smooth journey. But it is not the case, all thanks to the non-stop flip-flop over the rules and procedures governing the process.
The tussle reached the Supreme Court, where the Election Commission did everything to defend its pet project. During the hearing, the poll body called its own deduplication software defective, claiming its method to manually find duplicates in Bihar’s SIR was far superior to a “random search by software”.
However, it seems the ECI soon quietly ate its own words.
In the latest investigation, The Reporters’ Collective has found that despite discrediting its de-duplication software, the ECI has now abruptly reactivated it for the ongoing SIR in 12 states, including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. It has left up to the BLOs (Booth Level Officers) to decide with duplicate names are to be deleted.
If this wasn’t enough, the poll body has also deployed another undocumented algorithm without a written protocols, manual and written instructions or information to the citizens and political parties.
Eight days after informing SC that its de-duplication software is defective, ECI abruptly reactivated it for 12 states. But scrapped the established protocol for its safe use. It also deployed a second undocumented algorithm without a written protocol
Voters who could trace themselves or their ‘relatives’ back to the two-decade-old list were exempted from producing any documents. Others would be termed ‘unmapped’, and these would be issued notices to produce one of the 12 documentary proofs of their voting rights.
Who could this relative be (besides parents), and how would one have to prove they are relatives? The ECI again failed to put down written instructions for either the citizens or their officials to answer this question.
The only definition of who could be a ‘relative’ came from the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar speaking to the media on October 27, saying this definition included “father, uncle or anyone of that generation.” His oral statements hold no legal value.
After claiming that its de-duplication software was far too defective, the ECI has reactivated it midway through the revision of the voter rolls in 12 states.
The Reporters’ Collective claimed that the algorithms were introduced at the eleventh hour, no clear protocols or checklists were established for reverification, leaving booth-level officers and electoral registration officers scrambling to resolve flagged errors.
As one district election official put it, “Each day (of the SIR), our BLO app was populated with new tech protocols and lists. It showed ECI had no clear plan while running these algorithmic checks.”
The voter roll registration from scratch, called Special Intensive Revision (SIR), has already led to 86.46 lakh people being marked ‘unmapped’ and 3.7 crore people removed from the draft voter list in 11 states. The draft voter list for Uttar Pradesh is pending. It will be published on 31 December.
The deduplication software is working on the phones of booth-level officers (BLOs). Lists of suspect duplicates (ECI calls them Demographically Similar Entries) began appearing on the BLO App, identifying voters with similar details either within the state or across the country.
On the app, the BLO is required to mark each entry as either ‘verified’ or ‘uncollectable’. According to multiple officials that we interviewed, operating without any written orders from the ECI, the BLO is allowed to use his own judgement to take such an action.
“A booth-level officer will have knowledge of voters in his own booth, and in case there are dual entries in his booth, he can automatically resolve that by removing one. In case one of the EPICs flagged is in the adjoining booth, he can coordinate with the booth-level officer there to see which EPIC must be included,” a district magistrate explained.
When asked if field verification and notifying voters of their duplicate entries were mandated in writing, the District Magistrate responded that BLOs would take these steps “as they see fit.” These procedures were not specifically outlined in the written instructions; consequently, the legal window for voters to respond to their potential deletion was also not codified.
These are the rules for suo-motu deletions, according Rule 21-A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. A notice is shared on the address of the duplicate voter IDs, the elector is given a 15-day window to respond after which the ERO can proceed with their deletion.
While the ongoing field verification and visits by booth-level officers during the enumeration phase of the SIR mean that these rules are at least provisionally followed. Their abrupt and hasty execution on the ground shows that several steps are being short-circuited.
“The ECI continues to add new features to the BLO App as the SIR enumeration phase progresses. It shows that it is inventing processes and protocols on the fly with no clear plan,” a DEO based in Uttar Pradesh said.
The ECI deployed yet another software mid-way into the second phase of SIR without documenting its use for citizens or putting out detailed instructions for even its own officials.
