The Election Commission of India has reportedly violated its own guidelines and previous rules by not deploying the fraud-busting ERONET software.
Investigative news organization, the ‘Reporters Collective’ report found that the ECI didn’t deploy its specialized software program, which can identify potential fraud, duplications, and incorrect entries in the finalised Bihar voter list.
Reportedly, the ECI had not given access to the software to the Bihar state officials to detect the fraud and duplication on their own. The poll body had also not carried out this exercise at the central database level and had not shared list with state officials for manual verification, during the Special Intensive Revision of the voter roll in Bihar.
Notably, the ECI has used the software at its discretion over the years to remove the duplications. The software was also used during the 2024 Parliamentary elections to remove the duplications.
The final Bihar voter list released by ECI has 7.4 crore names during the SIR, 65 lakh voters were deleted in the draft voter list.
Subsequently, another 3.7 lakh names were deleted, and 21.5 lakh voters, mostly new one's were added. Many NGOs have repeatedly pointed out irregularities in the final Bihar voter list.
The Supreme Court has asked the EC to provide it with the details of the 3.7 lakh excluded voters.
According to the report, it would have been easy to detect the large-scale errors and possible fraud if ECI had used the software on the draft voter roll before finalising it.
The specialised software cross-checks similar names, names of relatives, addresses and ages to identify duplications and suspected fraud. It can also cross-check the photos on voter IDs.
