A voter trying to get his or her name added to the electoral roll may never know what happens behind the computer screen. But in Goa, 97 people who had submitted documents and were found eligible by Electoral Registration Officers still failed to make it into the final voter list.
The reason was not a rejection by the officers.
The software did not allow them to reverse the earlier deletion.
That episode is one of several cases examined in a new investigation, which has brought to light a series of disagreements inside the three-member Election Commission over how voter records are being handled.
Over the past 10 months, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally recorded objections at least 14 times to decisions and orders that they said were taken without their knowledge. Four of those objections were made on the same day.
The issues were not limited to one policy or one state. They involved the registration of new voters, deletion and restoration of names, the filing of appeals, access to the electoral-roll database and the way the Commission’s IT system was being managed.
The disagreements have surfaced during one of the largest electoral-roll exercises in recent years.
A huge voter-roll exercise in the background
The Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, began in Bihar in June 2025. The exercise was later extended to other parts of the country.
According to The Indian Express investigation, more than 13 crore names had been struck off draft electoral rolls across 30 States and Union Territories.
That number needs an important qualification: these were names removed from draft rolls. It does not mean that 13 crore people were permanently removed from the electoral system.
But the scale of the exercise has made the way voter names are added, deleted and restored an important public issue.
It is against this background that the objections of Sandhu and Joshi become significant.
The third member of the Commission is Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The objections raised by the two Commissioners were also copied to Kumar, according to the report.
When the software became part of the problem
The disagreement over technology was not simply about computers or access passwords. It went to the question of who has control over the electoral-roll database.
On January 22, the Election Commission launched ECINet, bringing more than 40 applications and portals under one platform. The system was presented by the Commission as a technology backbone intended to improve transparency and public trust.
But within months, concerns emerged from state-level officials who were legally responsible for preparing and updating electoral rolls.
The reports said that Joshi raised concerns in May about the “gradual centralisation” of the electoral-roll database. He proposed an audit to check whether only authorised statutory officials had the credentials needed to change voter records.
Sandhu later raised similar concerns.
State election officials reported that they did not have “proper and complete access” to ERONet, another system used for electoral-roll management. Sandhu questioned whether the Director General of IT had the legal authority to restrict the access available to statutory election officials.
The concern was straightforward: Electoral Registration Officers, or EROs, have a statutory role in adding, deleting and updating names. If they cannot access or change the system, questions arise over how much control remains with officials on the ground and how much has shifted to the Commission’s IT structure in Delhi.
Goa offered a real example of what that could mean
The Goa case gave this debate a human side.
During the SIR process, some voters were flagged for what were called “logical discrepancies”. These could include problems found when software tried to link a voter with a parent or relative in an older electoral roll.
The Supreme Court had directed that such voters should get an opportunity to submit documents and be heard before the final roll was prepared.
In Goa, EROs examined the cases.
After looking at the documents, they found 97 voters eligible to remain on the electoral roll.
But the officials could not record the decision in the system because the software did not provide the required option to reverse the earlier deletion.
The Goa Chief Electoral Officer’s office wrote eight times between February 11 and February 17 to the senior deputy election commissioner handling the state, seeking a rollback facility. The Director General of IT, Seema Khanna, was copied on the communications.
The required software facility was not enabled before the deadline.
As a result, the 97 voters found eligible by the EROs were left out of the final electoral roll.
The number itself is small compared with the country’s huge voter population. But the case raises a basic question about an increasingly digital election system: if a statutory officer is allowed to take a decision but the software does not allow that decision to be entered, where does the final authority actually lie?
The dispute moved beyond the Commission
The disagreement over the IT system eventually reached the Cabinet Secretary.
In late July, a change was made in the allocation of administrative work connected with the Commission’s IT division. According to the investigation, the move removed an existing layer of oversight.
Sandhu and Joshi objected to the change and separately wrote to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan.
They said the changes had been made without their knowledge.
The disputed work-allocation order was subsequently set aside, with the earlier arrangement directed to continue until the Commission reached a consensus.
It was an unusual step for two Election Commissioners to approach the country’s top bureaucrat over an internal administrative issue.
It also showed that the disagreement was no longer confined to exchanges within the Commission.
Form 6 brought the dispute closer to ordinary voters
Another disagreement involved the form used by people registering as new voters.
Form 6 was changed in July to include a question linking a new voter’s application to the last SIR. Applicants were asked whether their own name, or the name of a parent or grandparent, appeared in the electoral roll from that earlier revision.
Although the section itself was not marked mandatory, applicants could not complete the form without answering it.
The change had already been questioned internally.
According to the investigation, Joshi had raised concerns in May that the statutory form could not be altered in this way without amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. Sandhu supported the objection.
The change was nevertheless introduced.
On August 13, Sandhu formally described it as “unauthorised and illegal” and said it should be removed immediately.
The issue was particularly sensitive because Form 6 is the route through which eligible citizens, including first-time voters, enter the electoral roll.
West Bengal brought another question: who was filing the appeals?
The internal disagreement also reached the SIR process in West Bengal.
The state has 294 Assembly constituencies. The Indian Express investigation found that in 49 constituencies, the number of SIR deletions was greater than the eventual victory margin. Of these, 26 were won by the BJP and 21 by the TMC.
Those figures alone do not show that the SIR affected the result of any election. They only show the relationship between the number of deletions and the victory margin in those constituencies.
The bigger dispute concerned what happened after voters were examined during the SIR process.
The Supreme Court had intervened in the process involving voters flagged for “logical discrepancies”. Around 60 lakh voters were examined by judicial officers, after which about 27 lakh electors were deleted.
Appeals were then heard by tribunals headed by retired High Court judges.
The Election Commission told the Supreme Court that about 38 lakh appeals were pending. Of these, 22.21 lakh were filed by deleted voters seeking restoration, while 16.10 lakh sought deletion of voters who had been included.
It was the second category that raised questions from Sandhu.
He wanted to know who had authorised the appeals filed on behalf of the Election Commission, who had filed them and why the process had not been communicated to him, Joshi or the then Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal.
According to the investigation, Sandhu recorded that neither he nor Joshi had been informed about the basis or process behind these appeals.
It was also about how the three-member Commission makes decisions
Behind all these individual disputes lies a larger institutional question.
The Election Commission is a constitutional body under Article 324. It has a Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners.
The three are equal in rank, with the CEC described as “first among equals”.
The 2023 law governing the Commission says its business should, as far as possible, be conducted unanimously. If the Commissioners disagree, the matter is decided by majority. The law also says the Commission’s procedure and division of work should be settled by unanimous decision.
Sandhu and Joshi referred to these provisions in their objections.
There was another disagreement in April over communications issued in the name of the Election Commission.
On April 16, Sandhu told senior officials that communications were being issued in the name of the ECI without the Commission’s approval and said future communications should receive that approval.
Eight days later, Joshi raised a similar objection, saying communications were being issued without the required approval of “the Commission”.
That makes the dispute wider than SIR alone. The objections also concern who can speak for the Commission and how decisions of a three-member constitutional body should be recorded and communicated.
The disagreement has an unusual history
There have been disagreements inside the Election Commission before.
But the Indian Express investigation notes that the current episode is different because two Election Commissioners have repeatedly put their objections on record over issues directly connected with the electoral process.
One earlier example dates back to 2009, when then CEC N Gopalaswami recommended the removal of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, alleging partisan conduct. The recommendation was rejected by the then government, and Chawla later became CEC.
The present disagreement is different in another way: Sandhu and Joshi are both members of the current Commission and have repeatedly objected to decisions while the three-member body is functioning together.
All three were appointed under the 2023 law
The current Commission was appointed under the 2023 law.
The selection panel consists of the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister and Leader of Opposition.
When Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu were appointed Election Commissioners in March 2024, then Opposition member Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury recorded his dissent over the appointment process.
When Kumar became CEC and Vivek Joshi was appointed Election Commissioner in February 2025, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi also recorded dissent over the process.
These earlier disagreements concern the appointment process and, by themselves, do not establish anything about the conduct of the Commissioners in the present dispute.
Four months without a full meeting
The three Commissioners — Gyanesh Kumar, Sandhu and Joshi — eventually held a full meeting on September 9.
It was their first full meeting in four months, according to the investigation.
The meeting came after Sandhu and Joshi had separately approached the Cabinet Secretary over the changes involving the IT division.
By then, objections had already been recorded on voter registration, voter deletions, database access, appeals and administrative control of the IT system.
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