ECI Allows Searchable Voter Rolls Amid SIR Row, But Offers No New Safeguards Against Data Misuse

The Election Commission of India (ECI) last week decided to provide recognised political parties with machine-readable draft and final electoral rolls, but introduced no new safeguards against the risks of data misuse it had cited earlier to reject similar demands.

The decision marks a shift in the poll body's position. The ECI had previously argued that searchable, machine-readable electoral rolls could expose voter data to mining, privacy violations and digital tampering. However, its latest decision does not introduce any additional safeguards beyond excluding electors' photographs from the files.

In a statement on Thursday, the commission said electoral registration officers would provide a hard copy and a readable PDF of the electoral roll for each polling station to every recognised political party after the publication of draft and final rolls. “For this purpose, readable PDF format shall not have the electors’ photographs,” the commission said.

Opposition's Earlier Demand

The demand for machine-readable electoral rolls is not new. In June 2025, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi sought consolidated, digital and machine-readable voter rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections.

They also sought version histories and timestamps to track changes to the rolls, including additions, deletions and revisions.

The ECI rejected the demand at the time, arguing that sharing searchable, machine-readable data could expose electoral rolls to data mining, privacy violations and digital tampering.

What Prompted The Shift?

ECI officials have acknowledged the limitations of the latest safeguard. Senior officials said excluding electors' photographs was the only protection against the risks of misuse that the commission had cited earlier.

However, voter rolls in their current format do not carry electors' photographs. The latest decision, therefore, does not introduce a new safeguard beyond retaining the existing practice.

Explaining the change, an ECI official said complaints received during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls had prompted the decision.

“The decision was made keeping in mind the complaints ECI received during SIR about using scanned digital copies, which made mapping difficult. Common people and BLOs could have searched their names in voter rolls easily and at a faster pace if machine-readable PDFs were available,” the official told Hindustan Times.

A second official said the commission's earlier resistance stemmed from concerns that electoral-roll data could be misused to allege manipulation.

“People could use that information to create voter rolls to post on social media to show that rolls are manipulated or compromised. That would affect people’s trust in the poll body. But keeping in mind the mapping issues, along with demands of political parties, ECI took the call in the spirit of transparency,” the official told Hindustan Times.

The change also addresses practical difficulties in scrutinising electoral rolls. The commission had previously provided political parties with image-based PDFs, which are harder to search and analyse. Machine-readable files allow users to find names more quickly and make it easier to examine voter lists.

Decision Amid Wider Scrutiny

The decision comes amid mounting scrutiny of the commission's functioning. It followed a series of developments after The Indian Express reported that two of the ECI's three members, election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had raised at least 14 objections over 10 months to decisions they said were taken without their knowledge or approval.

The objections concerned key electoral-roll processes, including changes to the management of the electoral-roll database and the handling of voter additions, deletions and restorations.

The controversy has also triggered public protests, with demonstrators demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation and the scrapping of the electoral-roll SIR.

Former Rajya Sabha MP and Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale also questioned why the commission had withheld searchable files despite repeated requests.

“The ECI should first explain why they were giving out scanned copies of documents until now despite repeated requests for machine-readable files. These documents are all created online and aren’t handwritten. Therefore, it’d have been a lot less effort to provide machine-readable and searchable copies. The fact that they went the extra mile until now to turn them into scanned electronically-unreadable copies proves why its conduct is under scrutiny,” he told Hindustan Times.