Mismanagement or Manipulation?

 Over 13 crore names were left off the draft rolls by the ECI and the most revealing question is not “Why?” but “Who decided?” and “How were the names identified?”.

Who decided?

In the Indian Express’ investigation¹, the two election commissioners reportedly said they hadn’t been consulted on multiple occasions, including the changes to Form 6. However, Election Commission’s affidavit in the Supreme Court says every decision was unanimous². The thing is, both can be true, and that is the problem.

Election commission is a 3-membered body with each member having same roles, responsibilities, and powers to take decisions. By plain corporate logic – this effectively means nobody answers to anybody and everybody is the boss. Such an operating model is designed for failure – which is exactly what is widely seen as the intention of the Congress party in 1993³. This is when the Congress government led by PV Narasimha Rao not only added 2 more Election Commissioners to an erstwhile single-member body but also amended the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners (Conditions of Service) Act, 1991 to give equal decision-making powers to the ECs - bringing them in parity to the CEC. Reportedly, in an attempt to further curb the authority of the then CEC T N Seshan, the amendment inserted a brand-new chapter titled ‘Transaction of Business’⁴, which envisaged that the CEC and the ECs would act in such a manner that there was unanimity in their decision-making and, in case there was any difference of opinion on any issue, the majority view would prevail.

The larger point here isn’t to lay a finger on any specific leader or ruling party, but it is to highlight the dysfunctional organization that has been created as a result. Election Commission of today continues to be a 3-membered body, structured in a way where three equally competent Class A Gazetted Officers are expected to discharge overlapping duties and agree with each other on everything. Firstly, it is inefficient use of top-class resources, and secondly, it would be a surprise if dissent and disagreements didn’t happen in such a setup. And hence, dissent and unanimity can coexist. Objections can sit in the file while the final order is issued as unanimous. The affidavit therefore doesn't contradict the Express's report, but it doesn't tell us whether the unanimity was real.

While the Supreme Court evaluates how much truth is in these arguments, establishing an administrative order with clear accountability, either by taking election commission back to being a single-member body or establishing clear hierarchy and differentiated responsibilities, must be on its list of reform recommendations too.

How were the names identified?

While the administrative setup wasn’t ideal, how the names that were left off were identified is the part where things get even more complicated. ECI is accused of using the ECINet and the underlying algorithm to undertake politically affiliated cleansing or VOTE CHORI.

In reality, the algorithm is designed to flag logical discrepancies, for e.g., the West Bengal exercise⁵ flags anomalies like mismatches in fathers' names, unusually small or large age differences between parents and children, implausible grandparents-child relationships and multiple electors linked to the same parent. Now India’s electoral rolls are very old, names are in different languages, ages in older documents can be approximate, relationships could be entered inconsistently and many other things. Hence, a sensible algorithm might also catch many perfectly legitimate voters. But, if a majority of such flagged voters are eventually taken back, then is the algorithm even good enough? And even if it is not, this is exactly where the role of our ground officers becomes pivotal. An elector flagged by an algorithm is not an ineligible voter, his profile just merits a bit more examination – an examination by EROs and BLOs.

It’s simple - an algorithm selects a record. Officials investigate it. Judicial officers adjudicate it. Finally, the record is either retained or deleted. It could have been this simple, but unfortunately, on-ground reports suggest otherwise. It is widely alleged that access to the field officers was restricted⁶ due to which they were unable to exercise their legal right to decide who gets to be on the voter list and who doesn’t. Despite multiple objections on the matter by the two election commissioners and request to institute an audit of the ECINet, the audit wasn’t ordered until 26^th Sep 2026⁷, when the matter blew up into this large controversy – another administrative/ organizational failure.

It is always tempting in politics to regard a sufficiently spectacular administrative failure as evidence that somebody must have designed it – and there comes the VOTE CHORI narrative. I haven’t personally come across any conclusive evidence pointing to intentional political manipulation of the electoral roll, but that also doesn’t invalidate the questions upon the constitutionality of the procedure.

The facts of today do not establish manipulation, but the Commission owes the public a record of who decided what, and how. Until it publishes the criteria it used, how many names were flagged and how many were restored, getting back public trust won’t be easy.