After two decades of silence on one of India’s most critical democratic processes, the Election Commission (EC) has finally revived the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls — beginning with Bihar, followed by West Bengal, and later the rest of the country.
Electoral rolls require continuous updating — removing those who have died or surrendered citizenship and transferring entries for individuals who shift residence to another constituency. A person must be an Indian citizen of at least 18 years of age and ordinarily resident in India to be included in the roll. However, concerns persist about including ineligible persons, especially those who may have entered from neighbouring countries, underscoring the need for transparent verification.
Although this long-awaited SIR aims to update the voter database, it became controversial due to procedural ambiguities and reliance on outdated and cumbersome Standard Operating Procedures (SoPs) instead of modern digital tools.
Reliance on outdated methods
The last full-fledged SIR of electoral rolls in most Indian States was conducted between 2002 and 2004, when voter data was entirely paper-based, fragmented, and manually verified. Two decades later, despite India’s sweeping digital transformation — from Aadhaar integration to the Digital India mission — the SIR 2025 framework remains rooted in outdated, paper-era procedures.
To mirror the 2002-04 model, 11 documents were mandated for voter verification, including birth certificate, passport, driving licence, domicile, caste certificate, and family register. However, the list excluded Aadhaar, India’s most widely used and digitally verifiable ID. The justification that Aadhaar is not fool-proof and can be manipulated is only partly valid, as the same limitations apply to most other accepted documents. More reliable documents such as passports and government service IDs cover only a small section of the population.
Relying on limited and often inaccessible proofs contradicts the spirit of Digital India — turning what was meant to be a modern transparency reform into a bureaucratic bottleneck. The exclusion of Aadhaar made verification cumbersome and eroded public trust, particularly among migrants, first-time voters, and marginalised groups. The deeper issue lies in the failure to adopt interoperable, technology-based systems. Most approved databases remain isolated and inaccessible, preventing real-time verification and automated consistency checks. As a result, the SIR of 2025 repeated the old cycle of manual errors, delays, and inconsistencies.
A credible and trustworthy SIR requires a nationally unified, technology-driven framework that ensures accuracy, accountability, and transparency across India’s billion-plus voters — not replicating the early 2000’s outdated methods in 2025’s digital era.
Aadhaar: a national digital ID
After extensive hearings and deliberation, Aadhaar was upheld as a valid and legitimate digital ID for electoral governance processes. Despite earlier concerns about privacy and misuse, the decision confirmed Aadhaar’s operational legitimacy, establishing it as the backbone of India’s digital ecosystem.
India has no comparable identity system. Aadhaar uniquely combines personalised details with biometric data, enabling reliable individual verification. It is the only centralised identity database accessible to multiple government and private agencies for authentication. Over time, Aadhaar verification has become routinely used for attendance systems, scholarship disbursement, welfare distribution, financial transactions, life certification, and educational institutions. In practice, it has emerged as India’s de facto national digital identity register.
Therefore, rather than sidelining it, India’s technical leadership must make the Aadhaar ecosystem more robust, tamper-proof, and transparent. It can securely integrate birth, death, and migration records with appropriate safeguards, ensuring that electoral rolls remain dynamically updated without compromising privacy. Integrating verified Aadhaar data into electoral roll management under strict data protection norms could eliminate duplication, automatically remove deceased voters, update residential shifts, and prevent fake or multiple registrations. Every addition, deletion, or correction would carry a digitally signed authorisation, create an unbroken digital audit trail, and ensure a transparent, verifiable, and accountable electoral database.
Data anomalies
The revised electoral roll of Bihar revealed significant inconsistencies, including deleting 3.66 lakh names without adequate clarity or traceable communication to those affected. The total number of electors was around 80 lakh (nearly 10%) lower than the estimated adult population of the State, with no verification trail explaining the reasons for such deletions or confirming that due notice had been given.
Further scrutiny exposed several irregularities such as centenarians being listed as new voters, and names re-included without supporting documents to maintain overall voter counts. There were also gross variations in demographic statistics, such as a decline in the gender ratio from 934 in September 2025 to 892 in the final roll, a statistically implausible shift, inconsistent with population trends. These anomalies suggest data entry errors or unverified mass revisions, raising serious questions about the integrity of the database.
Moreover, data transparency remained the primary concern. The lists of additions and deletions were not published in machine-readable formats, preventing independent audit or public scrutiny.
Collectively, these anomalies — from demographic distortions and manual errors to opaque data handling — expose the fragility of electoral roll management and underscore the urgent need for technology-driven verification and transparent data governance in revisions.
On ECI-Net
ECI-Net is among the world’s largest and most dynamic digital databases, housing records of nearly one billion voters. Continuously updated through additions, address changes, and profile modifications, it is searchable by Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) ID and voter-name and administered by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, India’s premier computing R&D institution. Globally, few systems match the scale, functionality, and democratic significance of this mission-critical database.
By design, ECI-Net can detect duplicates, flag inconsistencies, and facilitate corrections through authorised verification. Its architecture can instantly produce real-time demographic and statistical reports transparently and accurately. With the integration of data analytic APIs, the system can automatically identify and resolve most anomalies and demographic inconsistencies identified during recent revisions.
However, the lack of disclosure and system-level analytics raises serious concerns. If automated audit and analytical tools already exist — as expected in a database of this scale — they could have easily detected duplication, demographic distortions, and data irregularities without large-scale manual intervention. The failure to utilise these digital capabilities suggests institutional inertia or deliberate avoidance of technology-based transparency. Such practices weaken confidence in the integrity of existing SoPs. Despite strong technical expertise within its leadership, the reliance on manual verification over verifiable, software-driven protocols remains inexplicable. Until data-driven audits and system-level transparency are prioritised, claims of purification of electoral rolls will continue to invite public scepticism and institutional introspection.
The way ahead
Today, India has one of the world’s most advanced digital ecosystems — from Aadhaar-linked databases and UPI to data analytics and e-governance. Yet, the procedures guiding SIR 2025 show little reflection of this progress. The weaknesses are not merely administrative but structural, stemming from the absence of traceability, and database integration. Reforming the SoPs is therefore not optional; it is vital for safeguarding democratic credibility.
The electoral roll must be recognised as a living, dynamic national asset rather than a static, state-bound record. Its accuracy directly shapes the integrity of elections and public confidence in electoral governance.
Recent judicial observations have underscored the need to learn from the Bihar experience as preparations begin for a nationwide revision. Future SIR exercises must demonstrate procedural correctness, visible fairness, transparency, and accountability. The focus should shift to software-driven verification, digital audit trails, and real-time corrections. The ECI-Net should be made more user-friendly, technical glitches should be fixed promptly, and an efficient and quick grievance redressal mechanism should be incorporated.
The 2025 SIR must not become another verification ritual; it must transform into a trust revolution powered by technology based on transparency, verification, and integrity.
Rajeev Kumar is a former Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, BITS Pilani, and JNU, and a former scientist at DRDO and DST.
