Disclose the full details of the software applications used in the ongoing SIR and the criteria for inclusion/ deletion of voters’ names, to all political parties and the public

Disclose the full details of the software applications used in the ongoing SIR and the criteria for inclusion/ deletion of voters’ names, to all political parties and the public, state whether those software applications are tested for authenticity and provide machine-readable Electoral Rolls in the public domain, for India’s electoral system to be truly transparent, inclusive and authentic

To
Shri Gyanesh Kumar
Chief Election Commissioner

Dr Sukhbir Singh Sandhu
Election Commissioner

Dr Vivek Joshi
Election Commissioner

Dear S/Shri Gyanesh Kumar, Sandhu and Joshi,

I understand that the Election Commission is conducting an International Conference on Democracy and Election Management (IICDEM) to discuss “Democracy for an inclusive, peaceful, resilient, and sustainable world” .

Is it not the right time for the Commission to do some serious introspection on whether the practices adopted by itself are inclusive and transparent enough to elicit public trust in the electoral system in India?

In this connection, I invite your attention to my appeal addressed to the Rashtrapati-ji on December 9, 2025 in which I had raised concerns about the reluctance on the part of the Commission to address the shortcomings in the Electoral Rolls used in both the Parliament and the Assembly elections conducted in recent times and the duubts expressed on the independence of the Commission itself and the integrity of the electoral process in India (

The Commission has overnight undertaken a hurried nation-wide Special Intensive Revision(SIR), even without resolving the problems  encountered in the SIR conducted for the recent Bihar elections. 

Does the Commission have a well-tested software to scan Electoral Rolls and filter out duplicate voters’ names within a constituency, across constituencies and across States?

ECI’s Manual on Electoral Rolls of 2023, valid till date, requires the election machinery to use its de-duplication software in a “campaign mode” in conjunction with spot verification following it, in order to “purify” the Electoral Rolls. The importance of that ECI-prescribed software has been mentioned in six different paras in the Manual, signifying its perceived importance. However, in an affidavit filed by the ECI before the apex court on November 24, 2025, the ECI casually stated that it had discontinued using the software since 2023 itself, as it was found unsatisfactory. 

In the absence of a deduplication software, the ECI would not be able to detect duplicate voters within and across constituencies and across the States. It is equally important to note that since the 2023 Manual came into force, Assembly elections including bye-elections in almost all the States and Parliament elections including bye-elections across the country, have been held and, by ECI’s own admission, it did not deploy the deduplication software, which in turn meant that the ECI was not in a position to detect and delete duplicate voters’ names from the Electoral Rolls across constituencies and States in all those elections. In the absence of deployment of the deduplication software, the ECI seems to have left it entirely to voters to self-declare having only one EPIC and BLOs to verify, a process that cannot evidently address the problem in its totality. That clearly suggests the possibility of deficient, fraudulent Electoral Rolls having been used in all those elections, which is a matter of serious concern. That gives the impression that the ECI has consciously allowed itself to become a party to such a possible fraud.

In the ongoing SIR, I understand that 13.6 crore voters’ names have got deleted, constituting 13% of the total number of voters (

While any Electoral Roll revision would involve both inclusions and deletions, such a large number of deletions in the ongoing SIR raises several questions, as follows:

1. How could the Commission detect duplicate voters’ names within and across constituencies and across the States, when, by its own admission, the Commission does not trust its de-duplication software? Has the Commission left it entirely to voters to self-declare?
2. From a news report that I have just now come across ( it appears that “eight days after informing SC that its de-duplication software is defective, ECI abruptly reactivated it for 12 states. But scrapped the established protocol for its safe use. It also deployed a second undocumented algorithm without a written protocol” Does it not imply that what the Commission is doing with the de-duplication software is inconsistent with it has said before the apex court? Unless the Commission comes clean on this, the credibility of the ongoing SIR will stand diminished.
3. The above investigative report shows that the “ECI has also activated a second algorithm-based software midway into the revision of voter lists in 12 states….This too has been done without any written instructions, manual, standard operating procedures on record, or with information to citizens…The use of uncodified algorithms without protocols in place to use has led to yet another layer of opaqueness and chaos, our investigation found. We wrote to the ECI seeking copies of all written instructions and protocols for the use of these softwares. It did not reply….. ECI changed the rules for the revision of voter rolls in the next 12 states. Voters who could trace themselves or their ‘relatives’ back to the two-decade-old list were exempted from producing any documents. Others would be termed ‘unmapped’, and these would be issued notices to produce one of the 12 documentary proofs of their voting rights…Who could this relative be (besides parents), and how would one have to prove they are relatives?  ….ECI also introduced certain conditional checks. The difference in age between the voter and his claimed parent must be between 18-45 years. For grandparents, the age difference must be over 50 years”
4. Should not have the Commission, instead of engaging itself in knee-jerk responses in a highly non-transparent manner, taken the political parties and the public at large into confidence before introducing such new algorithms based on new criteria to screen the Electoral Rolls? In all fairness, the Commission should have made available machine-readable Electoral Rolls and the new software itself to all political parties and the public to enable them to appreciate the criteria being applied to screen the Electoral Rolls and the technique by which it is being done. The criteria for inclusion or deletion of a voter’s name cannot be arbitrary, as for example, the difference in age between the voter and his/her claimed parent, being stipulated as 18-45 years!
5. Why does the Commission refuse to make available machine-readable Electoral Rolls to all political parties and the public at large, unless it has something to hide?

S/Shri Gyanesh Kumar, Sandhu and Joshi, you may confidently describe how inclusive and transparent India’s electoral system is for the benefit of an overseas audience at the ensuing International Conference on Democracy and Election Management (IICDEM) 2026 from January 21 to 23. 

Before you do that, should you not ponder over the above questions carefully and come up with answers that will elicit public trust in our own country?

Regards,

Yourssincerely,

E A S Sarma

Former Secretary to the Government of India

Visakhapatnam