17.6 million voters flagged in SIR as ERONET faces scrutiny

The brief

Context

The Election Commission of India is conducting a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, now in its third phase, in which current electors are matched against 2002 "base rolls". The matching is done by ERONET (Electoral Roll Officers' Network), software rolled out in 2017-18 and since January 2026 integrated into the ECI's unified ECINET platform. In Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi about 17.6 million voters have been served notices under a category called "logical discrepancy", often because 2002 rolls in Telugu, Kannada or Marathi were transcribed into English, or because of flawed parent-child age-gap calculations. Alongside this, an institutional dispute has broken out inside the Commission over who legally controls access to ERONET.

Key facts

• About 17.6 million voters in Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi have received notices under the 'logical discrepancy' category in SIR Phase 3.
• In West Bengal's earlier SIR, six million people were flagged for logical discrepancy and 2.71 million were eventually disenfranchised.
• Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Sandhu have formally objected at least 14 times in ten months since May, per an Indian Express investigation.
• The 2002 base rolls were in Telugu in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Kannada in Karnataka and Marathi in Maharashtra.
• In Hyderabad's Langer House area, at least 205 voters across six booths got notices for name-mismatch reasons; Qamer Fatima's notice cited a mismatch with 'Qemar Fatima'.
• At Joan Fathima's booth in Bengaluru, 87 of 332 notices cited an age gap of less than 15 years between elector and parent.
• In Goa, EROs cleared 97 voters for inclusion but could not change the database before the deadline, leaving all 97 off the final list; the CEO office wrote eight times in one week seeking a rollback facility.
• ECINET, launched in January 2026 with 22 built-in Indian languages, integrates ERONET and more than 40 other ECI applications.

Timeline

1. 2002Base electoral rolls prepared in regional languages - Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali - later used as reference for SIR matching.
2. 2017-18ERONET (Electoral Roll Officers' Network) rolled out by the ECI.
3. January 2026ECI launches ECINET, integrating ERONET and 40+ applications, one month before completion of SIR in West Bengal.
4. May (as reported)Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Sandhu begin formally objecting; Joshi flags 'gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database'.
5. AugustSandhu reiterates that state election officials lack 'proper and complete access' to the ERONet portal, and questions DG (IT) Seema Khanna's authority to restrict access.
6. September 8Qamer Fatima, 55, of Hyderabad receives a notice from the Telangana CEO over a name mismatch.
7. November 5Deadline for Fatima to establish the link, failing which she must file a fresh Form 6 as a first-time voter.

Who has a stake

• Flagged voters (about 17.6 million in four states/UTs) — Risk of deletion from rolls or having to reapply as first-time voters via Form 6 if they cannot prove links to 2002 entries.
• Election Commission of India — Credibility of SIR and of its technology; defends ERONET as not faulty and routinely updated.
• Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Sandhu — Objected at least 14 times, alleging centralisation of the electoral roll database beyond what law permits.
• Seema Khanna, ECI Director General (IT) — Her authority to restrict access to ERONET, which statutorily belongs to EROs, has been questioned by a Commissioner.
• Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) — Legal custodians of the roll under Section 13B, RP Act 1950; reportedly lack complete access to the portal they must use.
• Booth Level Officers (BLOs) — Front line of verification; must collect documents for errors they say originate in backend software calculations.
• State CEO offices (Telangana, Karnataka, Delhi, Goa) — Handle complaints and corrections; Goa's office sought a rollback facility that never came.

Why it matters

The right to vote turns on an accurate electoral roll, and here software transcription and age-gap errors are placing the burden of proof on individual citizens, many of whom lack documents such as an 80-year-old parent's age proof. The West Bengal precedent, where 2.71 million of six million flagged voters were eventually disenfranchised, suggests notices can translate into real loss of franchise. The parallel dispute over who controls ERONET raises the constitutional question of whether roll decisions are drifting from statutory officers to a centralised IT wing.