7 min readMar 13, 2025 12:17 PM IST
First published on: Mar 13, 2025 at 07:03 AM IST
The Election Commission of India (EC) last week announced that it would take action to correct the disconcerting situation created by more than one voter carrying the same EPIC number. The EC’s press release last week says that it “has now decided to resolve this long pending issue after detailed discussions within the technical teams and concerned CEOs in the next three months”. The EC has acknowledged that duplicate entries in the roll, in one form or the other, is a “long pending issue” and could be addressed by the application of robust technology. The Commission has grappled with this intricate challenge for long and admitting this is the first necessary step to finding solutions even if its response was forced by vehement protests by the TMC.
Other than the criticism the EC faces for its “selective tolerance” of Model Code of Conduct violations, there are three things that have repeatedly drawn the EC into controversy in recent times and are seen to trouble the electoral process: EVM, electoral roll, and Form 17. Call it the infernal trinity, in a loose sense, just as the election commissioners could be referred to as the holy trinity responsible for managing them.
Both the trinities dominate the democratic discourse in India even as our democracy, like many others, is plagued by ills like the increasing grip of money power, declining probity in public life, and deteriorating trust in constitutional bodies. But let us focus on the infernal trinity in this article.
The preparation of electoral rolls has also been questioned for unusual deletions and additions of electors. Before the TMC chief raised the issue of duplicate Electors Photo Identification Card (EPIC) numbers, other political parties expressed their misgivings regarding the allegedly extraordinary number of voters added in Maharashtra within a few months between the general election in May and the Assembly election in November 2024, and the deletions/additions to the Delhi electoral roll. A satisfactory explanation from the EC is awaited.
The electoral roll is the heart of the electoral process, as without a voter’s name figuring in the roll, the right to vote cannot be exercised even if one has an EPIC. Sukumar Sen, the first CEC, didn’t hold the first Parliament election till he was satisfied with the integrity and veracity of the electoral rolls even though Nehru twice announced on the floor of the House that elections would be held soon. Sen, as a one-man commission, went around the country to counter-check the rolls. Now we have three and it should be their bounden duty to ensure that the rolls have minimum aberrations. The EC has laid out extremely elaborate instructions for booth-level officers, electoral registration officers (ERO) and electoral roll observers for preparing and checking the electoral rolls, including the verification of the strength of electors with reference to the ratio with the total population. Specially checking the rolls of 20 polling stations with maximum and minimum deletions/additions in a constituency is stipulated. Despite this, there are disturbing aberrations.
I think the EC should make it mandatory for the EROs to publish a list of the polling stations where the number of additions or deletions is more than 2 or 3 per cent of the previous electors’ list in addition to the existing mandatory disclosure of individual additions/objections/deletions for which separate forms are prescribed. The list identifying such polling stations should be placed on the respective CEO/EC website so that everyone can know the polling stations where there is an abnormal change in the list. This would alert the EC to such abnormalities, give the political parties and the people an opportunity to scrutinise the list thoroughly and evolve a more satisfactory process.
Earlier, the EC has faced allegations of not disclosing the details of the voter turnout data, especially when it matters most, immediately after the polling day. Form 17 became the talk of the town during the 2024 general elections and remains a “weapon of destruction” or “trust”, depending on the way it is handled. As per the current regulations, an attested copy of Form 17C is given to the polling agents of all the candidates. Form 17C is supposed to be the authentic account of votes polled in a booth unless the presiding officer makes a mistake in filling the details. In any case, its veracity is checked the following day during scrutiny by the returning officer and election observer. Once the EC has decided not to conduct any repoll based on the scrutiny, the details of votes polled as per the data available in Form 17C should be uploaded polling station wise for every assembly segment on the CEO/EC website. The controversy over these numbers is needless and can be easily quelled by this transparent process. Can you imagine a cricket match where the organisers do not display the score in full public view and ask the people to wait for it to announce the details at the end of the match?
That brings me to the much-maligned EVM, about which much has been said and written, including major pronouncements by the highest court of the land, which have more or less given it a clean chit. The courts have sometimes even questioned the motive of the petitioners. To my mind, the reliability of the EVM needs to be understood in terms of the technology used and the administrative procedure employed in the manufacture, management, mobility and use of these machines. Whether the EVM has been manipulated and whether it can be manipulated are two different questions and the EC needs to continuously engage with those raising these questions in order to keep finding convincing solutions.
Dismissing the questions as frivolous, irksome or mischievous would only strengthen those in doubt. I would go to the extent of saying that the EC should take the bold step of getting 100 per cent slips counted in a few random assembly constituencies so that the accusation of a fault or the charge of manipulation could be set at rest. Similarly, it must seriously consider divulging the source code of the EVM (something contemplated for long) and take effective countermeasures against possible mischief.
The EC should be seen as questioning its own systems and procedures and challenging them itself rather than merely responding to questions. That’s how organisations achieve excellence and keep themselves ahead of the curve.
It is time that the EC, which is so critical to a healthy democracy, drags itself out of the mire it finds itself in. How it landed there is another matter.
The writer is a former election commissioner
The electoral roll is the heart of the electoral process, as without a voter’s name figuring in the roll, the right to vote cannot be exercised even if one has an EPIC. 
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