NEW YORK – Last January, while I was in Kerala, I received a notice that surprised and disturbed me. I was informed that unless I appeared at the village office with the necessary documents to establish my eligibility, my name could be removed from the electoral roll. It was rather strange because I had voted in the previous three or four consecutive elections without any problem. Suddenly, I was being asked to prove all over again that I was entitled to remain a voter!
Being an NRI, my immediate concern was about thousands of others who might not have been present in Kerala when these notices were issued. Many NRIs return home specifically to exercise their franchise, and many may not even know their names have been flagged until it is too late. My own experience cannot establish deliberate political targeting. However, it certainly made me wonder whether such an exercise, unless carried out with great care and transparency, could easily result in legitimate voters losing their fundamental right to participate in an election.
That personal experience feels even more significant today because of what is unfolding around the Election Commission of India and its Special Intensive Revision, commonly known as SIR.
According to The Indian Express, more than 13 crore names have already been struck off from draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union Territories during the SIR process, which began in Bihar in June 2025. It is important to emphasize that these are deletions from draft rolls and the process includes opportunities for claims and corrections. Nevertheless, the sheer magnitude of the numbers should concern anyone interested in preserving confidence in the electoral process.
Dr. Shashi Tharoor, in a recent article, pointed out the extraordinary situation in Delhi: out of approximately 1.45 crore registered voters, around 47.5 lakh were marked for deletion under categories such as absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate, while another 33.13 lakh were flagged for various discrepancies. Altogether, more than half of Delhi’s existing electorate was either removed from the draft roll or called upon to establish or correct their status.
Nobody can reasonably argue against cleaning up voter lists. Dead voters should be removed. Duplicate registrations have no place in an honest election. Those who have permanently shifted must be properly recorded. However, cleaning up the rolls and placing millions of legitimate citizens at risk of disenfranchisement are two entirely different matters. The Election Commission has an enormous responsibility to ensure that the cure does not become worse than the disease.
West Bengal provides a striking example of the problem. The Election Commission recently informed the Supreme Court that 27.16 lakh voters had been removed during the SIR process and more than 22 lakh of them had filed appeals seeking reinstatement. Only 1,607 had been restored in time to vote before the state election, according to the Commission’s submission.
Tharoor also cited RTI disclosures showing that, among approximately 82,000 West Bengal cases involving so-called “logical discrepancies” that had already been adjudicated, about 91 percent were restored. Whether that percentage ultimately proves representative of the entire SIR exercise or not, it illustrates the danger of relying too heavily on computer-generated discrepancies and old databases in deciding something as precious as a citizen’s right to vote.
Another concern is the reliance upon electoral rolls dating back to 2002 or the early 2000s as an important reference point in the SIR process. Anyone who knows how records were maintained in India twenty-five years ago would understand the problem. Names could be misspelled, initials omitted, addresses incomplete, and relationships recorded inaccurately. Families moved, women married and changed residences, and millions migrated within India and overseas.
Former Chief Election Commissioner S. Y. Quraishi has also questioned the wisdom of relying so heavily on the old rolls, reportedly noting that even his own father’s name was misspelled in the 2002 rolls.
Therefore, the problem isn’t just whether voter rolls should be revised. Of course they should be. The issue is how the revision is carried out and where the burden of proof is placed. A citizen who has been voting in election after election should not suddenly find himself caught in a bureaucratic maze because a twenty-five-year-old database contains a spelling error.
That is exactly why my own experience in Kerala bothered me. I had voted repeatedly, and yet I was asked once again to establish my voter eligibility. I was fortunate to be physically present in Kerala and able to respond. Many NRIs may not have that opportunity.
The controversy has now taken an even more serious turn with revelations from inside the Election Commission itself.
An investigation by The Indian Express found that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi recorded objections at least 14 times over approximately ten months concerning decisions and orders that they said had been issued without their knowledge. Their concerns involved new voter registrations, deletions from electoral rolls, changes to Form 6, and the increasing centralization of electoral roll databases. They described certain changes in their internal objections as “unauthorized” and “illegal.”
This development cannot easily be dismissed as another dispute between the government and the Opposition. These concerns came from two of the Election Commission’s three members.
Moreover, one of the issues raised by the Commissioners involved the centralization of control over voter databases. Traditionally, Electoral Registration Officers at the local level have statutory authority over electoral rolls. According to the Indian Express investigation, concerns were raised that centralized software could restrict those officers’ ability to implement decisions even after they had found voters eligible.
Whether such centralization was intended merely to improve efficiency or not, electoral systems require checks and balances precisely because enormous power is involved. An error affecting a bank account can be corrected later. An error that prevents someone from voting on election day may never be corrected in time.
Another issue affecting public faith in the Election Commission is how Election Commissioners are appointed. In March 2023, the Supreme Court prescribed an interim selection committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India, pending legislation by Parliament. Parliament subsequently enacted a law replacing the Chief Justice on that committee with a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister. Therefore, under the new statutory arrangement, two of the three members of the selection committee are from the government of the day.
The constitutionality of that arrangement remains under challenge. On September 23, 2026, the Supreme Court referred the matter to a larger bench after two judges differed on aspects of the challenge. One judge observed that it is not enough for the Election Commission to be independent; it must also appear to be independent.
That observation goes to the very heart of the present controversy. Election Commissioners may act with complete personal integrity. Still, the institution must be structured so that both the ruling party and the Opposition, as well as an ordinary voter in a village in Kerala, can believe the referee is truly independent of the players.
Then there is the continuing controversy surrounding Electronic Voting Machines. My concern over the reliability and verifiability of EVMs is nothing new. As far back as 2019, before the General Election, I wrote an article titled “Will The EVMs Decide The Elections Of 2019?” pointing out concerns over a system that depends heavily on the physical security of the machines and the integrity of those who handle them.
I am not suggesting that every allegation made against EVMs has been proven. In fact, the Supreme Court examined the EVM-VVPAT system again in April 2024 and declined demands to return to paper ballots or to 100 percent counting of VVPAT slips. The Court nevertheless provided additional safeguards for verifying the machines.
The Election Commission maintains that its EVMs are stand-alone machines that cannot be accessed through wired or wireless networks and says that 67,750 randomly selected VVPATs have been tallied against electronic counts without finding a case in which a vote intended for one candidate was transferred to another. Those are significant facts and should be acknowledged in any honest discussion.
However, the fundamental concern I raised in 2019 is still pertinent today. Elections are not only about assuring citizens that a machine is secure. The process must be sufficiently transparent and verifiable to command the confidence of the voting public. We live in an age when sophisticated electronic systems with extraordinary security safeguards remain subject to technological vulnerabilities. Whether India’s EVMs are vulnerable to any of the theories periodically advanced by critics or not, the Election Commission should never treat genuine demands for transparency as an attack upon the institution. Greater verification and independent auditing can only strengthen public confidence.
More importantly, the present controversy demonstrates that the integrity of an election does not begin or end with an EVM. It begins with the electoral roll.
Even a perfectly functioning voting machine cannot protect the rights of a genuine citizen whose name has already been removed from the voter list. Similarly, the existence of an erroneous or duplicate name on an electoral roll does not establish that an improper vote was actually cast in that name. These are two separate questions that require evidence and investigation, not assumptions.
Rahul Gandhi raised this issue dramatically in August 2025 when he presented an analysis of Election Commission data from the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of Bangalore Central. He alleged that his team’s examination had identified 1,00,250 questionable entries, including alleged duplicate registrations, invalid addresses, bulk registrations at common addresses, invalid photographs, and alleged misuse of Form 6.
The Election Commission disputed those allegations and demanded evidence of actual multiple voting. At the same time, subsequent reporting found that some of the allegedly suspicious common addresses had explanations related to migrant accommodation and shared residences. Therefore, it would be wrong to automatically equate every questionable entry with a fraudulent vote.
Nevertheless, Gandhi’s disclosures raised a legitimate, larger issue concerning the accuracy and accessibility of electoral roll data. On the one hand, we now see millions of names disappearing during revision exercises. On the other hand, questions continue to be raised about duplicate, erroneous, and questionable entries that remain on electoral rolls.
Both situations should concern the Election Commission. Wrongful exclusion denies a citizen his vote. Wrongful inclusion can compromise the value of another citizen’s vote if it results in an illegal ballot being cast. Therefore, allegations of irregularities should neither be accepted blindly nor dismissed summarily. They should be examined transparently, and the findings should be made available in a manner that ordinary citizens can understand.
The Election Commission of India is one of the pillars upon which Indian democracy has rested since Independence. Successive governments have been defeated and replaced through elections it has supervised. That history deserves respect. However, past reputation alone cannot answer present questions. Democracy ultimately depends upon confidence. If voters lose faith in the electoral rolls, confidence suffers. If they distrust the appointment process of those supervising elections, confidence suffers. If serious internal objections from Election Commissioners remain unexplained, confidence suffers.
And if questions about EVM verification are answered primarily with assurances rather than maximum transparency, doubts will persist about whether those doubts are justified or not. It is time, therefore, for the Election Commission to meet this crisis of confidence not with defensiveness but with openness. Every legitimate voter who has been removed should have a practical and timely opportunity to be restored. Every questionable addition should be examined. Every significant objection raised within the Election Commission should receive a documented resolution. Electoral data should be made available in a form that permits meaningful scrutiny consistent with voter privacy and election law. The safeguards around EVMs and VVPAT verification should continue to be strengthened wherever greater transparency can reasonably be provided.
When I received that notice in Kerala last January, I initially considered it a personal inconvenience. Looking at the events unfolding today, I no longer see it that way. I see it as part of a much larger issue confronting Indian democracy. I have lived long enough to see governments come and go in India. Political parties have enjoyed enormous victories only to suffer defeats a few years later. That is the nature and beauty of a democratic system. No political party should expect permanent power, and no opposition party should assume it is entitled to replace the government merely by making allegations.
One constant must remain in this changing political landscape: the credibility of the election itself. When millions of names are removed or questioned from voter rolls, when serious concerns arise over the Election Commission’s conduct and independence, and when doubts over EVM verification linger, public faith in the entire voting process begins to erode. Whether every allegation is ultimately proven or not, democracy cannot survive on assurances alone; it requires transparency, accountability and institutions that command trust. Indian democracy today appears dangerously short of breath. Unless we resuscitate it by restoring confidence in the voter rolls, the Election Commission and the voting process itself, we may lose something much more precious than an election: the very faith that keeps democracy alive.
George Abraham
George Abraham is Vice-Chairman of Indian Overseas Congress, USA.
