By Pankaj Rasgania
The debate around the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Election Commission of India (ECI) has drawn nationwide legal and public scrutiny. And at its roots, it appears that the ECI is having a tech problem.
The controversy revolves around four core elements: Form 6, Form 8, the SIR, and the digital backend known as ECINET.
Form 6 under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 is a form for new voter registration. Form 8 is a form used by an already registered voter to update an address (intra- or inter-constituency), fix spelling errors, or request a replacement EPIC (Voter ID) card. SIR is a process to purify the electoral roll by creating the electoral de novo (afresh) through door to door enumeration. ECINET is the technical backbone used by ECI for all electoral processes. It is used by officials to process additions, deletions, modifications, and publish electoral rolls.
What is happening in SIR?
Under SIR, ECI has undertaken the process of verification and creating fresh electoral rolls, and updating the same in the ECINET. The efficiency of the process is not the topic of this article, but the scope for human errors cannot be eliminated. If a voter could not be verified as eligible by the Booth Level Officers (BLOs), it is marked as “Deleted” or “Ineligible”. This may happen because of the several genuine reasons like death, shifted, absent (during the physical verification), or duplication. As per the software design, the moment a voter is marked as deleted or ineligible, the voter is soft deleted from the system, and its details cannot be accessed for any purpose of electoral process.
Technically, a person who is marked deleted or ineligible in one constituency due to the reason of “shifted”, should exist in the database and could have been verified during the SIR in her new constituency where one is eligible. But the software design did not account for this, and instead soft deletes the voter immediately, pushing the non verified voter in a limbo of technicalities. This shows the narrow focus of the software design, focusing only on one constituency at a time.
When a voter has been deleted from the system, it does not allow her to change their details like address using Form 8, as the software cannot access the voter’s old details. To overcome this challenge, ECI has instructed such deleted voters to submit Form 6 to once again become part of the electoral roll. The highlight here is that this decision solely appears to have been taken because of the software design constraints.
In Form 6 lies another controversy. Because the Form 6 is designed for a new user, it includes the following declarations by the applicant –
“I am applying for inclusion in Electoral Roll for the first time and my name is not included in any Assembly Constituency/Parliamentary Constituency.”
“I am aware that making the above statement or declaration in relation to this application which is false and which I know or believe to be false or do not believe to be true, is punishable under Section 31 of Representation of the People Act,1950 (43 of 1950) with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year or with fine or with both.”
For a person who was already deleted from the ECINET for the reason of shifting, the above mentioned first declaration is factually untrue. And making a false declaration is a criminal offence, and also forms the part of a second declaration. Therefore, by filling the Form 6, the shifted voter is compelled to sign a factually false declaration, placing them in direct legal jeopardy under Section 31 of RPA, 1950.
Here the ECI has no solution to offer, and hence the legal resolution of the problem is being awaited from the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India (SCI). At its core, the problem lies in the software design, and its flaws cannot be compensated by the change in electoral processes without an amendment in the Statute. The obvious solution to the problem is to correct the software design. But it requires a massive investment and the time consuming re-engineering of the entire system. Here lies the dilemma of speed vs efficiency for the Election Commission of India.
(The author is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the 2020 batch of the Assam-Meghalaya Cadre)
