Цифровизация выборов: как технологии могут обеспечить справедливость при пересмотре избирательных списков в Индии

How can India's digital infrastructure ensure fairness in SIR?Comments AA Text Size Small Medium Large The ECI should use ECINet to enable digital verification, reduce paperwork and delays, and ensure uniform, time-bound decisions. The credibility of SIR will depend not merely on how many names are removed, but on whether every disputed deletion is examined fairly and promptly—while ensuring that no ineligible person remains on the electoral roll. Use technology to enable online verification, reduce paperwork, and minimize delays. Simple, digitized, single-window verification — no queues, no harassment. Same rules, same standards everywhere — with timely disposal and no disruption to public services. Every decision must be reasoned, reviewable, and accountable. No genuine voter should be left out or made to feel harassed. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is intended to ensure that only eligible voters remain on the rolls—an important objective. Equally important, however, is ensuring that genuine electors are not wrongly excluded and that any erroneous exclusion is corrected before they lose their opportunity to vote. The exercise has reportedly left millions of apparently genuine voters out of the draft rolls, largely because of errors in legacy records and so-called "logical discrepancies." But a logical discrepancy is not proof of ineligibility, nor does absence from a legacy roll establish that a long-standing elector is ineligible. Indeed, a "logical discrepancy" notice does not, by itself, mean deletion.The question has again become crucial as SIR 3.0 expands across 16 States and three Union Territories, covering about 360 million electors. So far, around 17% have been excluded from the draft rolls, with the draft lists of Nagaland and Tripura yet to be published. The scale varies sharply: Maharashtra reportedly has about 20 million exclusions, Karnataka about 11 million, Telangana about 7 million, and Delhi about 4.8 million—nearly one in three electors in the National Capital. In Karnataka alone, about 4.5 million electors have been identified for notices: around 2.4 million could not be mapped to the 2002 electoral roll, while another 2 million were flagged for "logical discrepancies" involving names, parentage, and age relationships.Importantly, these are draft-roll exclusions, not necessarily final deletions. Electors may file claims and objections, while eligible new voters may use Form 6 to be included. The process therefore moves through several stages—draft exclusion, claims and objections, final determination, and, where necessary, appeal. A person missing from the draft roll is not necessarily a voter who has been finally deleted. The real test of SIR is whether fairness is maintained throughout this entire chain.When verification becomes a burden—and deletion a penaltyFor a citizen who has voted for decades, being asked to establish identity, residence, family linkage, or other particulars may be reasonable once, provided the process is simple, uniform, and respectful. The problem begins when verification becomes repetitive, and the burden shifts disproportionately to the voter.For millions of long-standing electors, the process can be painful and undignified. Many have exercised their franchise for decades; some have themselves served the government and the public in various capacities, contributing to policymaking, administration, and governance. Being repeatedly asked to verify their credentials due to inconsistencies in old records can be deeply distressing.A concerned elector may have to respond to notices, produce documents, answer queries, and attend hearings before Electoral Officers (EOs). If the name is subsequently excluded, substantially the same evidence may have to be produced again before the Electoral Appellate Authority (EAA). This is especially difficult for senior citizens, those with limited digital access, and citizens whose decades-old records contain spelling variations, digitization errors, or inconsistent entries.Most importantly, a data discrepancy is not evidence of ineligibility. Missing legacy records, variations in names, or unusual age relationships may warrant verification but should not, by themselves, become grounds for exclusion. The process must clearly distinguish between a defect in the data and a defect in the voter's eligibility. The Real Danger: Non-Uniformity and Delayed DisposalThe greatest institutional concern is not that every official will act unfairly, but that a process involving millions of cases may produce different outcomes for similar facts. If one EO accepts a particular set of documents while another demands additional proof, or if a "logical discrepancy"; is interpreted differently across regions, the principle of equal treatment is compromised.The sheer workload compounds the problem. EO handling enormous caseloads within tight timelines cannot reasonably be expected to examine every case with the depth of a conventional quasi-judicial proceeding. The answer cannot simply be to ask officials to work harder; the process itself must ensure uniform standards, reasoned decisions, and timely review.West Bengal illustrates the consequences of delay. During SIR 2.0, about 2.7 million voters were excluded through the adjudication process, of whom only around seven lakh subsequently appealed. Of 82 thousand appeals disposed of by the tribunals, seventy-five thousand resulted in inclusion and only a little above seven thousand in exclusion—about 91% of decided appeals restoring voters to the rolls. Meanwhile, a much larger number of appeals remained pending.These figures do not, by themselves, establish that the original exclusions were wrongful. But they raise an important institutional question: when such a high proportion of appeals decided result in restoration, are genuine exclusions being accurately identified at the first stage? More fundamentally, a delayed remedy can become ineffective. If an elector is restored only after an election, the right to vote cannot be recovered retrospectively. In an electoral process, therefore, timeliness is not merely administrative efficiency; it is an essential component of fairness.When electoral deletion becomes a burden on everyday lifeThe consequences of electoral-roll deletion can extend well beyond the loss of the right to vote. For some citizens, removal from the roll may create difficulties in accessing welfare schemes, subsidies, and other government benefits that use electoral or related identity records for verification. It can also complicate routine dealings with the State, including passport issuance or renewal, where discrepancies in voter records may invite additional scrutiny and documentation.For economically vulnerable citizens, such hurdles can mean repeated visits to government offices, additional expenses, and prolonged uncertainty. What begins as a discrepancy in an electoral database can thus become a wider burden on access to public services and legitimate entitlements.Importantly, such consequences may arise from a missing legacy record, a spelling variation or another "logical discrepancy"—none of which, by itself, establishes ineligibility. An electoral-roll correction should never inadvertently become a gateway to exclusion from legitimate government services and benefits.Who will ensure fairness?The primary responsibility must rest with the ECI. Fairness cannot be left to individual voters, political parties or the courts to restore after an erroneous deletion. The ECI should therefore harness the full digital power of ECINet and minimize dependence on manual, paper-based processing.ECINet already integrates most electoral services and maintains voter records, supporting documents, verification histories, transaction logs, and verification gateways, as well as interfaces to relevant external databases and authorities. The bottleneck is therefore not data availability, but the largely manual and time-consuming disposal of deletion cases and appeals. Authorized EOs and EAAs should be able to access and verify records remotely, subject to appropriate authentication and access controls. In many cases, the task is essentially the verification of documents and records through authorized digital interfaces, rather than a proceeding that requires the elector's physical presence. This can reduce delays, paperwork, travel, and scope for inconsistent handling, while leaving the statutory decision firmly with the EO/EAA.The ECI should, at a minimum, ensure uniform and publicly accessible criteria for every category of proposed exclusion; clear, individualized notices specifying the reason and evidence required; a genuine opportunity for the concerned elector to respond digitally, without unnecessary personal appearances; reasoned written orders, particularly for final exclusion; and time-bound disposal of claims, objections and appeals, with public disclosure of pendency and disposal. It should also maintain consistent standards across officers, districts, and States, provide special assistance to senior citizens and digitally disadvantaged voters, and undertake periodic independent reviews to identify unusual patterns of rejection, restoration, or delay.The objective is to make the existing digital infrastructure, with some editions, serve the constitutional process—not replace it. Technology should reduce the burden on citizens and officials, while the ECI and its authorized officers remain accountable for every decision.The way forward with harnessing digital powerIndia has the opportunity to demonstrate how digital infrastructure can strengthen the fairness and credibility of the electoral process at an unprecedented scale. The ECI should harness ECINet to make SIR processes increasingly objective, consistent, traceable, and time-bound, while keeping constitutional and human accountability firmly in place.The larger message should be clear: Indian democracy cannot depend on the discretion, preferences, or efficiency of a few individuals. It must be supported by systems that apply the same rules, evidence, and standards to every citizen, without bias or discrimination. A clean electoral roll is essential—but a fair, transparent, and accountable process for creating it is indispensable to a credible democracy. India should seize this opportunity to show the world that its electoral institutions can combine constitutional authority with the power of digital infrastructure to deliver fairness at scale. Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author's own. End of Article Follow Us On Social Media