SIR And ERONET: How Electoral Roll Software Is Flagging Millions Of Voters

Around 17.6 million voters across Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi have received notices under a controversial category called “logical discrepancy” as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls enters its third phase. At the centre of the process is ERONET, the Election Commission’s electoral-roll software, now integrated into its larger ECINET platform.

The software is designed to match current voters with corresponding entries in older “base” electoral rolls. According to a Hindustan Times report, mismatches in names, ages and other details have triggered notices to millions of voters, raising questions about how accurately the system handles historical electoral data and how much control election officials have over the database.

The issue has also exposed an institutional dispute within the Election Commission. According to an Indian Express investigation, Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Sandhu have formally objected at least 14 times to decisions they said were concentrating control over electoral-roll data. The concerns have involved the Commission’s Director General of IT, Seema Khanna, and access to ERONET by state-level election officials.

Why Are Millions Of Voters Being Flagged?

ERONET, or Electoral Roll Officers’ Network, was rolled out in 2017-18 to help election officials prepare, update and maintain electoral rolls. It processes enumeration forms and attempts to match voters in current rolls with corresponding entries in older base rolls.

The problem becomes more complicated when historical rolls were maintained in regional scripts. The 2002 base rolls in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were in Telugu, those in Karnataka were in Kannada, and Maharashtra's were in Marathi.

In Hyderabad, 55-year-old Qamer Fatima received a notice because her name did not match an older entry recorded as “Qemar Fatima”. Fatima told Hindustan Times that her current documents carry the same spelling as her voter ID and that she was unsure how to establish that the older entry referred to her.

A booth-level officer reportedly described the mismatch as a transcription error arising when Telugu names were rendered in English. At least 205 voters across six booths in Hyderabad's Langer House area reportedly received notices for similar reasons.

A Telangana CEO office official confirmed that the earlier rolls were in Telugu and said translation errors had produced anomalies, the report said.

The software has also flagged discrepancies unrelated to names. According to the report, Joan Fathima of Bengaluru received a notice because the system calculated that the age difference between her and her father in the 2002 rolls was less than 15 years. She said the actual age difference was 27 years.

What Happened During The West Bengal SIR?

Similar concerns had surfaced during the SIR in West Bengal, where around six million voters were reportedly flagged for logical discrepancies and 2.71 million were eventually left off the electoral rolls, according to Hindustan Times' reporting.

The category is not being reported uniformly across all states in the third phase. States and Union territories including Odisha, Jharkhand, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab have either not published separate figures for logical discrepancies or have included such cases within broader categories such as ASDD — Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate.

Why Did Election Commissioners Raise Concerns?

Election Commissioner Joshi reportedly raised concerns about what he described as the “gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database”. His compatriot, Sandhu, subsequently questioned whether state election officials had “proper and complete access” to ERONET, despite their statutory responsibility for maintaining electoral rolls.

The report also raised questions about the role of ECI Director General of IT Seema Khanna in controlling access to the system. Khanna is the Commission's senior technology official and has publicly discussed the architecture of ECINET and the importance of cybersecurity.

What Happened In Goa?

The concerns are not limited to access. In Goa, according to the Indian Express report, Electoral Registration Officers cleared 97 voters for inclusion in the electoral rolls but were unable to make the changes in the database before the deadline.

The Goa CEO's office reportedly wrote eight times in one week seeking a rollback facility, but the changes were not made in time.

This raises a larger question: Can a software platform override, delay or effectively prevent a decision taken by a statutory Electoral Registration Officer?

From ERONET To ECINET: How The System Has Expanded

ERONET was rolled out in 2017-18, while ECINET was launched in January 2026 as a unified platform integrating ERONET and more than 40 other ECI applications.

The stated purpose is to bring voter services, electoral-roll management and other election functions onto a common technological platform.

But the scale of the logical-discrepancy notices means the debate is no longer simply about whether technology can make electoral-roll revision faster.

It is also about how historical data is interpreted, how voters can correct errors, and whether statutory election officials have effective control over the final database.

For voters receiving notices, the immediate issue is whether they can establish their identity and connection to the older electoral record before the prescribed deadline.

For the Election Commission, the larger challenge is ensuring that automation assists the statutory process without allowing errors in digitisation, translation or database matching to determine who remains on the electoral roll.