Digitising Disenfranchisement: ECINet and the Right to Vote

The Lift Line

“Asking the public to approach the courts to review such invisible measures is like asking them to catch the wind.”

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

This column in The Indian Express of 7 October 2026 is by Malavika Raghavan, Research Fellow in Law and Technology at University College London, whose doctoral research studies how technology systems such as Aadhaar change law and policy. Writing on the same day as a column by former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, she shifts the focus from the people at the top of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to its IT system, ECINet, and argues that code has quietly become law.

For the background, see the two Election Commissioners’ objections in a 24 September editorial and the forms used in the revision in the 4 October roundup.

GS Paper 2: Salient features of the Representation of the People Act; e-governance, transparency and accountability; constitutional bodies. GS Paper 3: Awareness in the field of IT and computers.

Background and Context

The legal design of the electoral roll

Three concerns the author raises

The Analysis

1. Digitisation is not the same as accountability. The author begins with a warning to everyone who has “equated digitisation with better accountability and transparency”. Recent revelations show that unilateral, unauthorised changes were made to the electoral process, and that ECINet enforced them “in ways that are invisible and not contestable by the public”. Left unchecked, she writes, this kind of “autocratic digitisation” appears “designed for disenfranchisement”.

2. When code becomes the rule. Officials can make changes through internal, informal orders keyed directly into IT systems, which then become the “de facto” rules. The example: new fields appeared in the digital Form 6, forcing first-time voters to give details of their parents or grandparents. “Why is a person’s right to vote dependent on their parent or grandparent’s identity?” Voters could not proceed without filling them in, though the fields departed from the form prescribed by the 1960 Rules and the RP Act, 1950. Demanding such information must be authorised by law, through amended rules that must be laid before Parliament under Section 28 of the 1950 Act.

3. A decentralised system, centralised by the back door. Electoral governance was “legally designed to be decentralised and transparent”, with constituency-level EROs responsible for the rolls. Yet, as the two Election Commissioners reportedly flagged, EROs struggled to get proper, complete access to the portal from central IT officials, while there is no audit certifying who within the ECI can access or modify the electoral database. The technology strategy, the author argues, runs “counter to the design of India’s electoral systems”.

4. Technology that cannot admit its mistakes. The starkest example comes from Goa: 97 voters were removed after the software flagged them for “discrepancies”. They proved their eligibility through a full legal process, but the system did not allow the deletions to be reversed. Despite repeated requests from State officials to the ECI’s Director General of IT, no rollback option was created, and all 97 were unable to vote. “Technology systems are often feted as being nimble, agile and responsive, with the law failing to keep up. The reality seems to be the reverse.”

5. A wider way of governing. The ECI’s dysfunction reflects “a new way in which many state institutions now operate”: officials implement changes “on the fly” through bureaucratic orders, hidden from public view, which become binding in practice once coded into the system.

6. Aadhaar’s precedent. The author’s own research finds the same pattern in Aadhaar. Many changes to its IT system came only through bureaucratic orders, even when they shifted legal and policy choices. Facial authentication was adopted in 2018 through the IT system and circulars, without public debate, reversing a 2010 decision not to use it because of its unreliability and privacy risks. Hence the closing image: asking people to challenge such invisible measures in court “is like asking them to catch the wind”.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

Electoral law:

• Article 324: ECI superintends rolls and elections; Article 326: adult suffrage at 18.
• RP Act, 1950: rolls (Section 21); rule-making power of the Centre (Section 28), rules laid before Parliament.
• Registration of Electors Rules, 1960: Form 6 enrolment; Form 7 objection or deletion; Form 8 correction or shifting.
• The ERO prepares the roll for each assembly constituency; appeals lie under the RP Act, 1950.
• The Supreme Court has described the right to vote as a statutory right (Jyoti Basu v. Debi Ghosal, 1982; Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India, 2006).
• PUCL v. Union of India (2003) treated the act of casting a vote as expression under Article 19(1)(a).
• It is exercised under the guarantee of adult suffrage in Article 326.

Aadhaar:

• Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016; administered by the UIDAI under the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
• K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2018): Aadhaar scheme upheld, with limits on its mandatory use.
• Facial authentication: adopted in 2018 (as the author notes), after a 2010 decision against it.

⚠️ Watch the trap: Electoral roll rules are made by the Central Government under Section 28 of the RP Act, 1950, after consulting the ECI, and are laid before Parliament; the prescribed forms are part of those rules, so a formal change to them means amending the rules. And rolls are prepared under the 1950 Act, while the conduct of elections falls under the 1951 Act.

The Debate

For the author’s view. The rule of law requires that rules be made by the authority the law names, through the process the law sets, and that people affected can see and challenge them. Changes coded directly into a system bypass Parliament, the courts and the public. When the system also blocks the reversal of proven errors, it takes away a constitutional entitlement without remedy.

The other side. A national electoral database serving nearly 100 crore electors needs central controls for security, de-duplication and uniform standards; giving every official full access could itself invite misuse. Automated flags catch duplicate and dead entries that manual checks miss. The Supreme Court’s judgment of May 2026 upholding the SIR, as the Lavasa column notes, recognised a bounded residual authority to adapt documentation for the SIR.

The balanced verdict. Central systems and legal accountability are compatible, but only if the system follows the law rather than leading it. Changes to forms should come through amended rules; access should be audited; and every automated decision affecting a citizen’s vote must be reviewable by a human and reversible on proof.

How to Think About This

Code is law, unless the law governs the code. This phrase, associated with the scholar Lawrence Lessig, captures the risk: choices built into software can regulate behaviour as effectively as statutes. In answers on e-governance, argue that digital systems need legal mandates, change logs and audit trails.

Algorithmic accountability. The Goa case is an example of an automated decision without an effective remedy. Use it in answers on AI and governance: the principles of human oversight, explainability and the right to appeal apply to welfare databases, credit and policing systems too.

Decentralisation as a safeguard. India’s electoral law places responsibility on thousands of EROs, so that no single point can corrupt the roll. Centralising control in one IT system removes that safeguard. Link to federalism and the principle of checks and balances.

Diagram-in-Words

Takeaway Box

• Thesis: ECINet turned unauthorised orders into binding rules: “autocratic digitisation” that endangers the right to vote.
• Form 6: new mandatory fields on parents and grandparents, not in the form prescribed by the 1960 Rules; changes need rules laid before Parliament under Section 28, RP Act 1950.
• Centralisation: EROs lacked full access; no audit of who can modify the database.
• Goa: 97 voters wrongly deleted; deletions could not be reversed; none could vote.
• Aadhaar parallel: facial authentication adopted in 2018 by circular, reversing a 2010 choice.

Sources: The Indian Express, column by Malavika Raghavan, 7 October 2026; background: Ujiyari, 24 September 2026

Source: Digitising Disenfranchisement: ECINet and the Right to Vote — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis