Election Commission of India Faces Controversy Over Control of ERONet System

NEW DELHI: At the centre of the controversy is ERONet, or the Electoral Roll Officers’ Network, the system used by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to process enumeration forms and match current voters with entries in older electoral rolls. The ERONet has since been integrated into ECINet, the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) umbrella technology platform launched in January that brings together more than 40 applications and portals used for election-related work. The software is now at the heart of a wider institutional dispute within the Commission over ‘who controls the electoral-roll database’ and ‘how much authority technology should have over decisions’ which are legally assigned to election officials. According to a media report, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised concerns internally over access to ERONet and the centralisation of control over the system. They later, reportedly, wrote separately to Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan over an administrative order, which they said could further concentrate these powers. The concerns within the Commission predate ECINet’s launch. The reported internal communications cited show officials had warned that technology systems should not restrict the statutory powers of EROs, District Election Officers (DEOs) and Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs). ERONet’s role is particularly significant because the current SIR involves matching voters against older “base” rolls. “In several states, those records date to 2002 and were prepared in regional scripts: Telugu in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Kannada in Karnataka and Marathi in Maharashtra. Differences in spelling, transliteration, age, family details and other records can consequently produce mismatches between old and current entries,” a source said.