‘Still awaited… urgently required’: Goa staff sent 8 emails in 7 days, but EC shut out valid voters

Why in the News

Ninety seven electors in Goa whom the State’s own Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) heard, examined and found eligible were left off the final electoral roll, and all 97 are still missing from it. The EROs could not give effect to their own decision, because ECINet, the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) roll platform, carried no rollback option and the permission to enable one is controlled from Delhi. Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the ECI eight times in seven days seeking that facility. No reply is on record and none of the requests was acted on. The exclusions follow a Supreme Court order directing that electors flagged for a “logical discrepancy” be listed publicly, given ten days to submit documents or objections, and heard. The contested point is whether an electoral roll remains the statutory authority’s document when the software that records it answers to a central information technology division.

What is a “logical discrepancy”?

1. Not a finding of ineligibility: A logical discrepancy is not a finding that someone is not a voter. It is a mismatch the Commission’s software throws up when it tries to link an elector to a parent or grandparent on the roll from the last Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
2. What triggers the flag: The triggers include a parent’s name that does not match, an age gap between parent and child of under 15 or over 50 years, and an age that does not progress correctly between the old roll and the new.
3. Documentary triggers: A case where the elector submitted no document, or only Aadhaar, is also flagged.
4. Where the flag is recorded: The flagging decision is entered on ECINet, the platform on which every electoral roll in the country has sat since January.

What did the Supreme Court order, and what did Goa do?

1. The display direction: A Supreme Court Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India ordered on 29 January, in the SIR batch of petitions, that the names of those flagged for logical discrepancies be displayed publicly. The display was to carry “the brief reason of discrepancy”, at gram panchayat bhavans, public places, taluka and sub division offices and urban ward offices.
2. The hearing direction: Those affected were to be allowed ten days to submit documents or objections and to be heard.
3. Scope of the order: The order was about Tamil Nadu. The Court said it expected the Commission to ensure compliance with these procedural directions in every State where the SIR process was ongoing.
4. Implementation in Goa: The Commission issued a letter on 31 January to implement the order, and Goa put up the lists.
5. The hearings: 649 electors came forward with documents or objections. EROs and Assistant EROs examined them and concluded in 97 cases that the elector had “become eligible to be included in the final Electoral Roll”.

Why could the ERO not give effect to its own decision?

1. Where the law puts the power: The electoral roll of each Assembly constituency is prepared by its ERO, usually the sub divisional magistrate, who hears every claim and objection and decides every name.
2. Where the software puts it: What an ERO can do on ECINet and its roll management module ERONet is decided by permissions set in the Commission’s information technology division in Delhi.
3. The missing function: The decision to flag the 97 had already been entered on the system, and the system carried no rollback option that would let the EROs reverse it.
4. How long the field had been asking: Requests for a rollback facility had been coming from the field since 22 January.
5. The vendor was told too: Goa Electronics Limited, the State agency that supports the Chief Electoral Officer’s office on the software, wrote on 11 February to the Chief Electoral Officer and to Tata Consultancy Services, the Commission’s vendor. It recorded that the rollback and reversion functionality, including the document re-upload option, had still not been provided despite “multiple emails” from District Election Officers, EROs and Assistant EROs.

What does the email trail record?

1. The escalation: Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer forwarded that record to Delhi the same day, to the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of Goa, with the Commission’s Director General of Information Technology copied.
2. The repeated asks: Eight communications went from Goa to the Commission between 11 and 17 February. On 13 February the office recorded that a “response to any of the emails and letters sent from officer of the Chief Electoral Officer, Goa… is still awaited”, and on 15 February that “The Roll back option is urgently required”.
3. The formal letter: On 14 February the Chief Electoral Officer wrote formally to the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of Goa, recording that “no response has been received” to the emails of the previous two days.
4. The list: On 17 February, four days before the final roll was due, the Chief Electoral Officer sent the list of the 97 cases in which the earlier decisions “have to be reversed”.
5. The Commission’s own instruction: On 18 February the Deputy Election Commissioner holding the electoral roll charge in Delhi wrote to the Director General of Information Technology that EROs and Assistant EROs have powers under Sections 21 and 21A of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 to take corrective action. He recorded that the “IT system cannot block necessary action as per the directions of SC”.
6. The outcome: The final roll was published on 21 February without the 97. All 97 were still missing when the roll was checked on 20 September.

What does being off the roll cost a voter in Goa?

1. Where the 97 are: Sixty five of the 97 are from the Taleigao seat. The rest are from the St Cruz, Cumbarjua, Priol, Margao, Benaulim and Velim Assembly seats.
2. The roll as an eligibility document: Several Goa State schemes use the electoral roll to establish eligibility, so being off it costs more than a vote.
3. Health cover: The Goa Mediclaim Scheme funds super speciality treatment not available in government hospitals, covering dialysis, angioplasty, open heart surgery, transplants, chemotherapy and cochlear implants. It is open only to voters of the State.
4. What the 97 were told: When the names did not go in, the electoral officers on the ground told these voters to apply afresh on Form 6, the form for new voters.

How does the Goa case fit the two Election Commissioners’ recorded objections?

1. The record: Two of the Election Commission of India’s three Election Commissioners objected on record at least 14 times in 10 months to decisions taken without their knowledge. Their notes run from November to August.
2. Centralisation: One of them wrote in May of “the gradual centralisation” of the electoral roll database. Both recorded that centralised control of the software was taking the roll out of the EROs’ hands, where the law puts it.
3. Access: An August note recorded that EROs, District Election Officers and Chief Electoral Officers “don’t have proper and complete access to the ERONet portal”.
4. Authority: The same note recorded that the Director General of Information Technology “doesn’t have any legal authority to restrict proper and complete access and freedom to operate, as given by law, to the statutory authorities”.
5. The unanswered question: A questionnaire sent to the head of the Commission’s information technology division, asking why the rollback facility was not enabled for Goa before the final roll, drew no response.

Challenges to a centralised electoral roll platform

1. Vendor dependence on a statutory system: Core roll functionality sits with an external software vendor, so a missing feature becomes a change request question rather than a legal one. Eg. The Commission’s roll platform is built and maintained under contract by an external information technology firm.
   The Fix: Publish a service level agreement for statutory functions on the platform, with a fixed turnaround for any change request that a court order requires.
2. No independent audit trail of permissions: A roll database with centrally set permissions needs an external record of who changed what and when, or the system’s own logs become the only evidence of its own integrity. Eg. A proposal for an audit certifying that no one outside the statutory authorities can alter the database went unanswered.
   The Fix: Commission a third party security and access audit of the roll platform, with its findings placed before the full Commission.
3. A revision calendar compresses the citizen’s remedy: A roll built on software generated flags puts the burden of establishing eligibility on the elector, inside a window set by the revision timetable rather than by the elector’s circumstances. Eg. An elector who misses a revision window must return to the roll through the new voter route, starting the process again.
   The Fix: Provide a standing, year round correction route that does not depend on a revision cycle being open.
4. Roll membership is used far beyond voting: A welfare scheme that keys eligibility to the electoral roll converts a roll error into a loss of services, which electoral law never contemplated. Eg. Several State benefit schemes use voter identity or roll membership as a residence proxy.
   The Fix: Decouple welfare eligibility from the electoral roll by accepting alternative residence proof for scheme access.
5. Deletion before verification inverts the burden: A design that removes a name first and then asks the elector to establish eligibility places the cost of the system’s own uncertainty on the citizen. Eg. Over nine in 10 appeals against deletion decided so far in West Bengal have restored the elector.
   The Fix: Hold a flagged name on the roll until the hearing concludes, so an elector’s status changes only after a decision is taken.

Conclusion

The Commission’s standing answer to any allegation about the roll is that no one person can touch it, because thousands of Electoral Registration Officers prepare it constituency by constituency. Goa is the case where that answer stops holding. The officer decided, and the decision never reached the roll. What is unresolved is who is accountable when a statutory decision fails at the system layer, since the law names the officer and the software answers elsewhere. The marker to watch is whether a rollback facility is enabled at the ERO level before the next revision, and whether the 97 are restored without being routed through the new voter form.

Back2Basics: Special Intensive Revision

1. What it is: A Special Intensive Revision is a house to house exercise in which the electoral roll is prepared afresh rather than amended, with electors asked to establish eligibility.
2. Legal basis: The Election Commission may direct a special revision of the roll of any constituency at any time, under Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
3. How it differs from a summary revision: A summary revision updates the existing roll through additions, deletions and corrections. An intensive revision enumerates the electorate afresh.
4. Procedure: A draft roll is published, claims and objections are invited and heard by the Electoral Registration Officer, and a final roll is then published.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”