Around 17.6 million voters across Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi have received notices under the “logical discrepancy” category as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls moves through its third phase.
At the centre of the issue is ERONET, the Election Commission of India’s electoral-roll software, which is now integrated into the broader ECINET platform. The system is used to process enumeration forms and match voters with entries in older electoral rolls.
Why are voters being flagged?
ERONET has flagged large numbers of voters where details in current rolls do not match those in the 2002 base rolls. In Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the older rolls were in Telugu, while Karnataka and Maharashtra had records in Kannada and Marathi respectively.
Officials and booth-level workers have pointed to translation and transcription issues as one source of mismatches. Similar concerns had surfaced during the SIR exercise in West Bengal, where around six million voters were flagged for logical discrepancies.
An ECI official told Hindustan Times, “We do not think that the software was faulty in the first place. It is routinely updated and that is what happened after West Bengal too. We are always working to make it more efficient.”
Questions over control of ERONET
The software has also become part of a larger disagreement within the ECI over access and control of electoral-roll data.
According to an Indian Express investigation, Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Sandhu have raised objections over decisions concerning the management of electoral-roll systems. Joshi reportedly flagged what he described as a “gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database”.
Sandhu also raised concerns that state election officials did not have “proper and complete access” to the ERONET portal, which is used by statutory officers to maintain electoral rolls.
Questions were also raised over the role of ECI Director General of IT Seema Khanna in controlling access to the system.
Software errors add to concerns
In Hyderabad, voters have received notices because names in the 2002 rolls did not match their current spellings. A booth-level officer described one such mismatch as a “transcription error” after Telugu names were rendered in English.
Similar discrepancies have been reported in Karnataka. In Bengaluru, Joan Fathima received a notice over an alleged age gap between her and her father in the 2002 records.
“This information is wrong. The age difference between my father and me is 27 years. The BLO wants me to bring the age proof of my 80+ year old father,” she told HT.
In Udupi, Nirmala B received a similar notice.
“This is absolutely incorrect. My father is 87 years old. The age gap is 24. The BLO has asked for his age proof and I will submit that,” she said.
Who has the final say?
Article 324 of the Constitution gives the Election Commission control over electoral-roll preparation. Under Section 13B of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) are appointed for constituencies and are responsible for maintaining the rolls.
ERONET was rolled out in 2017-18. ECINET, launched in January 2026, integrates ERONET with more than 40 other ECI applications into a unified platform.