Electoral roll revamp: the case for digital transformation, Pg9

Key Highlights:

• The Election Commission (EC) has revived the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, starting with Bihar and West Bengal.
• The SIR 2025 aims to update the voter database but has faced criticism for relying on outdated procedures.
• Aadhaar, India's widely used digital ID, was excluded from the voter verification process.
• The revised electoral roll of Bihar revealed inconsistencies, including the deletion of 3.66 lakh names without proper explanation.

Detailed Insights:

• The last full-fledged SIR was conducted between 2002 and 2004, when voter data was entirely paper-based, fragmented, and manually verified.
• The exclusion of Aadhaar from the SIR 2025 made verification cumbersome, especially for migrants and marginalized groups.
• ECI-Net, managed by C-DAC, Pune, is a large digital database of voters capable of detecting duplicates and inconsistencies.
• Integrating verified Aadhaar data into electoral roll management could eliminate duplication and prevent fake registrations.
• The Bihar electoral roll showed a decline in the gender ratio from 934 in September 2025 to 892 in the final roll, raising concerns about data integrity.
• Future SIR exercises must prioritize software-driven verification, digital audit trails, and real-time corrections to ensure transparency.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Electoral Roll: A list of persons eligible to vote in an election.
• Aadhaar: A 12-digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India.
• ECI-Net: A digital database managed by the Election Commission of India, containing records of nearly one billion voters.