The Reporters’ Collective Investigation: ECI Reactivates De-Duplication Software Midway Through SIR, Defying Its Own Supreme Court Stand

Key Points

Barely eight days after informing the Supreme Court (24 November 2025) that its voter de-duplication software – ERONET – was defective and unreliable, the Election Commission of India (ECI) quietly reactivated the same algorithm midway through the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across 12 states. The move, uncovered through an investigation by The Reporters’ Collective, an indepedent group of investigative journalists, was accompanied by the scrapping of established verification protocols and the parallel deployment of a second undocumented software, deepening concerns about  procedural breakdown and voter disenfranchisement.

According to the investigation published on 28 December 2025, the ECI not only resumed use of the de-duplication software but did so without issuing any written instructions, manuals, or standard operating procedures to its field officials. The software was reintroduced during the fourth week of the Special Intensive Revision, a process that has already seen 86.46 lakh voters marked as “unmapped” and 3.7 crore names removed from draft rolls across 11 states. Uttar Pradesh’s draft roll is due to be published on 31 December 2025.

The findings stand in sharp contrast to the ECI’s sworn submission before the SC in November 2025. In that affidavit, the Commission had acknowledged that its de-duplication software produced “variable” and unreliable results, describing it as a system that made “random searches” and was last used in 2023. The ECI told the court that many demographically similar entries flagged by the software were not duplicates and that the technology had limitations serious enough to warrant discontinuation.

Yet, the same software was switched back on just eight days later, without reinstating the safeguards that once governed its use.

See Also: Nationwide SIR: 97 Lakh Voters Removed in Tamil Nadu, 73 Lakh in Gujarat—Highest State-Wise Deletions Yet

ERONET with No Protocols

Since 2018, the ECI’s de-duplication software has been designed to identify potential duplicate voter entries by matching demographic details and photographs. The Commission’s own manual mandated a rigorous process once such entries were flagged: field verification by Booth Level Officers (BLOs), a quasi judicial hearing before the Electoral Registration Officer and a legally guaranteed opportunity for voters to respond before any deletion. The investigation found that these safeguards have now been effectively abandoned. District officials and BLOs in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal told The Reporters’ Collective that no written protocol exists to guide them in resolving cases flagged by the reactivated software. Instead, BLOs are instructed to use personal judgement to mark entries as “verified” or “uncollectable” on the BLO App.

“We are applying common sense and logic to resolve these errors,” one District Election Officer told the investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another official said the BLO app was updated daily with new technical features, creating confusion and signalling the absence of a clear plan.

This approach appears to short circuit Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which requires that voters be given notice and a 15 day window to respond before their names are deleted. While officials claimed that field visits during enumeration may have provisionally met this requirement, the investigation documents multiple instances where verification steps were rushed or inconsistently applied.

ECI’s Second Secret Software

Even as the de-duplication software was quietly revived, the ECI introduced a second algorithm based system, midway through the second phase of the SIR. This software, also undocumented, is intended to “map” voters to electoral rolls from 2002–2004, which the Commission is treating as a baseline. Voters who cannot trace themselves or a relative to these decades old rolls are categorised as “unmapped” and issued notices to produce documentary proof of their voting rights.

Crucially, the ECI has not issued any written clarification on who qualifies as a “relative” for this purpose. The only guidance came through an oral media statement by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on 27 October 2025, where he said the term could include “father, uncle or anyone of that generation.” Investigators note that such oral statements carry no legal standing.

On the ground, BLOs have interpreted “relative” narrowly, often limiting it to parents or grandparents. Voters unable to establish such links are marked “unmapped,” triggering further scrutiny.

The second software flags what the ECI internally calls “logical discrepancies.” These include mismatches in names between old and new rolls, or age gaps between voters and their claimed parents or grandparents that fall outside algorithmically determined ranges. According to interviews conducted by The Reporters’ Collective with over 20 BLOs and senior officials, lists of voters flagged for such discrepancies began appearing abruptly on the BLO App between December 18 and 20 in states such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Gujarat. This was just days before the initial December 26 deadline for publishing draft rolls.

“We’d completed the whole process, now we have to start over,” a booth-level officer in Ghaziabad told the investigators. “We haven’t gotten any proper training. We were only told in a meeting how this shall be dealt with.”

In Uttar Pradesh, the sudden introduction of this step forced the ECI to extend the deadline for publishing draft rolls to 31 December 2025. Officials said oral instructions from the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO’s) office required BLOs to conduct field verification, submit signed undertakings, and collect one of 12 prescribed documents from flagged voters. No written SOP accompanied these directions.

In West Bengal, the situation became more fraught after the ECI made a rare public admission of a technical glitch. As reported by National Herald, the Commission acknowledged that an error in converting PDF voter rolls from 2002 into CSV format caused voters to be wrongly flagged as unmapped despite successful ground-level mapping. The system auto generated hearing notices, which were sent to voters before the error was identified. The ECI later instructed officials to withhold notices that had not yet been served. The glitch contributed to 1.36 crore voters in West Bengal being flagged with “logical inconsistencies.”

See Also: CCTV Footage Destroyed: ECI on 2024 Lok Sabha Election in Delhi

Transparency in Electoral Revision

This admission coincided with the publication of The Reporters’ Collective’s investigation, which highlighted how uncodified algorithms were being used without transparency or legal safeguards. The report quoted officials describing the process as chaotic and opaque, with protocols being invented “on the fly.” Taken together, the findings paint a picture of a constitutional authority deploying powerful algorithmic tools without written rules, public disclosure, or consistent safeguards. The ECI did not respond to requests from The Reporters’ Collective seeking copies of instructions or protocols governing the software.

As the SIR continues, millions of voters remain subject to algorithmic scrutiny whose logic, scope, and error rates are undocumented. The Commission’s contradictory positions before the Supreme Court and on the ground raise serious questions about accountability, due process, and the integrity of electoral administration.

(DS)

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