Goa’s 97 missing voters have exposed a larger dispute inside the Election Commission over control of electoral rolls, after local officers cleared the electors but could not restore their names through the centrally controlled ECINet system.
BY PC Bureau
NEW DELHI, September 24: Ninety-seven voters in Goa were cleared for inclusion in the electoral roll by local election officials after they produced documents and were heard in accordance with a Supreme Court-mandated procedure. Yet when the final Special Intensive Revision (SIR) roll was published, none of their names appeared.
An investigation by The Indian Express has traced the episode to a dispute over who controlled the software through which electoral rolls were being updated. The newspaper found that Goa’s Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), who are legally responsible for deciding individual claims and objections, could not themselves reverse earlier deletions because the required “rollback” facility on the Election Commission’s centralised ECINet system had not been enabled.
The Goa Chief Electoral Officer’s office repeatedly sought the facility from the Election Commission headquarters in Delhi. Between February 11 and 17, it sent eight communications seeking the ability to restore the 97 names before publication of the final roll. On February 18, a Deputy Election Commissioner handling electoral rolls told the Commission’s IT division that the system could not prevent EROs and Assistant EROs from exercising their statutory powers or from complying with the Supreme Court’s directions.
The final roll was published on February 21. According to The Indian Express, all 97 names remained absent when the newspaper checked the roll and were still missing as of September 20.
The episode has become a concrete example of concerns separately raised inside the three-member Election Commission of India by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. The two Commissioners recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months on issues ranging from decisions allegedly taken without their knowledge to the centralisation of electoral-roll functions and changes to voter-registration procedures.
Eight requests in seven days
The Goa case began with voters who had been flagged by the Commission’s software for what it calls “logical discrepancies”.
Such a discrepancy does not by itself establish that a person is ineligible to vote. It is a software-generated mismatch arising when the system attempts to connect an elector with a parent or grandparent in an earlier SIR roll. The discrepancies can involve differences in names, implausible age gaps, inconsistencies in age progression or inadequate documentation.
On January 29, the Supreme Court directed that voters flagged for such discrepancies be publicly identified, given the reason for the discrepancy and allowed 10 days to submit documents or objections and be heard. Although the order arose from the Tamil Nadu SIR proceedings, the Court directed the Commission to follow the procedure in other states where SIR was under way. The Commission issued corresponding instructions on January 31.
Goa implemented the procedure.
According to communications from the Chief Electoral Officer’s office cited by The Indian Express, 649 electors came forward with documents or objections. EROs and Assistant EROs examined their cases. In 97 cases, they concluded that the electors had become eligible for inclusion in the final roll and that the earlier decisions removing their names had to be reversed.
But the local officials could not complete the reversal on ECINet.
The first of a series of urgent communications was sent on February 11. The Goa election authorities repeatedly requested a “rollback” or “revert back” facility and the ability to re-upload supporting documents.
The requests continued on February 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. On February 14, the Goa CEO formally wrote to the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner responsible for the state, copying the Commission’s Director General of IT, Seema Khanna.
On February 17, the Goa CEO again sent the list of 97 cases and requested that the necessary action be taken to include the electors in the final SIR roll.
There was still no functioning rollback facility.
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Deputy EC tells IT division to act
The matter reached a critical point on February 18, just three days before the final roll was scheduled to be published.
Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar wrote to DG IT Seema Khanna, stating that EROs and AEROs had statutory powers to take corrective action. He added that the IT system could not block action required to comply with the Supreme Court’s directions and asked the IT division to facilitate publication of the electoral roll in accordance with the decisions already taken by the field officers.
Despite that instruction, the final roll was published on February 21 without the 97 names.
Goa Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel told The Indian Express that his office had informed the Commission about cases that needed to be included after the logical-discrepancy process. He said the decision not to include them was taken at the Commission level and added that ECINet should have a mechanism allowing EROs to re-include voters.
The larger ECINet question
The Goa episode assumes wider significance because of concerns recorded by Election Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi about the centralisation of electoral-roll management.
The Commission launched ECINet in January as a centralised technological platform bringing together more than 40 applications and portals. Its electoral-roll management component, ERONet, is now used for roll-related work. According to The Indian Express investigation, however, the permissions determining what individual election officials can do on the system are controlled by the Commission’s IT division in Delhi.
Under the statutory framework, the Electoral Registration Officer for an Assembly constituency is responsible for preparing and revising the roll, hearing claims and objections and deciding individual cases.
The newspaper reported that Joshi referred in an internal note to the “gradual centralisation” of the electoral-roll database. Sandhu separately recorded concerns that EROs, District Election Officers and Chief Electoral Officers did not have full access to the portal and that the IT division could not legally curtail powers assigned to statutory election officials.
The two Commissioners subsequently approached Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan over concerns about further concentration of administrative and technical powers within the Commission.
Who are the 97?
The 97 affected electors are spread across several constituencies, but 65 are from Taleigao. Others are from St Cruz, Cumbarjua, Priol, Margao, Benaulim and Velim.
Their exclusion also has consequences beyond participation in elections.
According to The Indian Express, several Goa government welfare schemes use electoral-roll status to establish eligibility. The Goa Mediclaim Scheme, for example, provides financial support for specialised treatment unavailable in government hospitals, including dialysis, angioplasty, open-heart surgery, organ transplants, chemotherapy and cochlear implants, and is available to eligible voters of the state.
After the 97 names were not restored, electoral staff on the ground reportedly advised the affected people to submit fresh applications through Form 6, the application used for registration as new voters.
That leaves an unusual administrative outcome: voters whose cases were examined by the competent field officers and found eligible for inclusion were nevertheless absent from the final roll because the software did not provide those officers with the technical means to record their decisions.
Questions over accountability
The Indian Express investigation said its questionnaire to DG IT Seema Khanna, seeking an explanation for why the rollback facility was not enabled before the final roll was published, received no response.
The Election Commission has not publicly explained, in the material cited by the newspaper, why the 97 names were not restored despite the repeated requests from Goa and the February 18 instruction from the Deputy Election Commissioner.
The Goa case therefore raises a question extending beyond the 97 individual voters: when a statutory election officer decides that a voter is eligible, can a centrally controlled software system prevent that decision from being reflected in the electoral roll?
The answer has implications for the division of authority between field-level election officials and the Commission’s central IT infrastructure, particularly as ECINet becomes the technological backbone of electoral-roll management across the country.
The episode also provides a specific, documented case against which the broader concerns raised internally by Election Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi about the centralisation of electoral-roll powers can be examined.
