The commissioners also raised concerns over the access of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to ECINET. EROs are the statutory authorities responsible for additions and deletions from electoral rolls. According to the report, they no longer had full access to the system to reverse incorrect entries or make corrections, with some additions and deletions instead being carried out centrally by the IT division.
Another point of contention concerned the 60 lakh voters in West Bengal flagged for logical discrepancies and subsequently scrutinised by judicial officers from the state and neighbouring states. The judicial process resulted in the deletion of 27 lakh names, according to the report.
The ECI subsequently told the Supreme Court that 16 lakh appeals were pending before 19 appellate tribunals against decisions restoring voters. The two commissioners, according to the report, questioned who had authorised the Election Commission to file those appeals.
Sandhu wrote that it was ‘strange’ that statutory authorities in the field were responsible for electoral rolls while ‘access control has been centralised by DG (IT)’, who, he said, had no legal authority to restrict the complete access and freedom to operate provided to statutory authorities under the law.
He directed that full access be restored to the statutory authorities and asked the DG (IT) to obtain confirmation from chief electoral officers that statutory authorities across states and Union Territories had unrestricted access to ERONet and were able to perform their duties without restrictions.
Khanna joined the Election Commission on deputation in 2025, according to the report. A former deputy director-general at the National Informatics Centre, she has worked in cyber security and has presented ECINET’s features to election officials, describing the system as one intended to improve efficiency and transparency.
The Election Commission’s 23 September response to the Indian Express investigation, however, did not address the specific concerns surrounding Khanna or the IT division raised in the report.
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