The Hindu: Published on 21 August 2025.
Why in News?
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has demanded that the Election Commission (EC) provide machine-readable voter rolls to all political parties.
This comes amid allegations of “vote theft” and duplicate entries in voter lists, with Congress citing Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura constituency where nearly 11,965 duplicate entries were found.
Background:
Electoral rolls are official lists of eligible voters in India, updated continuously.
They are prepared by district officials using ERONET, a digital application under the EC.
Currently, the EC makes these rolls available only as image PDFs or physical printouts.
Image PDFs are not easily searchable or analysable by computers, making the process of detecting fraud and duplication resource-intensive.
What are Machine-Readable Electoral Rolls?
These are text-based PDFs or digital formats where voter details (like names, addresses, and constituency data) can be indexed and searched by computers.
Unlike image PDFs (essentially scanned documents), machine-readable rolls allow quick search, analysis, and detection of irregularities like duplicate or fake entries.
Earlier, before 2019, some states uploaded such text rolls, and activists like P.G. Bhat used them to highlight irregularities.
Why is the EC not Providing them?
In 2018, the Supreme Court refused to direct the EC to provide text-based rolls (Kamal Nath vs EC case).
The EC stopped uploading machine-readable rolls citing security concerns — risk of foreign countries or third parties misusing citizens’ full names and addresses.
The then CEC, O.P. Rawat, argued that data exposure could compromise privacy and national security.
The EC manual itself had earlier mandated publishing text rolls, but later reversed this practice.
Practical Challenges:
Converting image PDFs into text (via OCR – Optical Character Recognition) is possible but costly and resource-intensive.
India has 99 crore voters, spread across 6+ crore pages of electoral rolls.
OCR conversion for one revision could cost around $40,000, besides requiring significant computational resources.
Additionally, the rolls are split into hundreds of parts per constituency, making large-scale analysis difficult.
Key Issues:
Transparency vs Privacy: Opposition parties argue machine-readable rolls would expose electoral fraud, while EC fears misuse of voter data.
Duplicate entries: Harder to spot without searchable rolls, raising concerns of bogus voting.
Legal ambiguity: SC ruling allows parties to convert PDFs themselves, but does not compel EC to provide them in text form.
Resource burden: OCR conversion requires time, money, and expertise — limiting access only to well-funded parties.
Impact:
On Elections: Without machine-readable rolls, chances of duplicate voters, fake entries, or irregular deletions may persist, undermining electoral integrity.
On Political Parties: Larger parties may still afford OCR conversion, but smaller parties are disadvantaged.
On Citizens: Voter confidence in the EC’s impartiality may weaken if allegations of “vote theft” continue.
On Policy: Raises debate on whether India needs a balance between data transparency and voter privacy, perhaps through anonymised or masked data formats.
Way Forward:
Masked Machine-Readable Rolls: Provide text-based rolls with sensitive details (like full addresses) partially hidden.
Secure Access Systems: Allow parties access via authorised logins with audit trails to prevent misuse.
Legislative clarity: A clear law balancing privacy & electoral transparency could prevent recurring disputes.
Technological Solutions: Use AI-based tools within EC itself to detect and remove duplicates before publishing.
Conclusion:
- The demand for machine-readable electoral rolls highlights the tension between electoral transparency and data privacy.
- While the Opposition views them as essential for fair elections, the EC remains cautious due to security risks.
- A middle-ground solution — like providing anonymised, searchable voter lists under strict safeguards — could enhance both trust and integrity in India’s democratic process.
