Four questions to Election Commission on ‘defective’ de-duplication software

In March 2023, the Election Commission of India (ECI) gave a ringing endorsement to its de-duplication software, and “ordered officials across the country to deploy the software in ‘campaign mode’ across 100 per cent of the electoral rolls to identify duplicate voters ahead of the 2024 Parliamentary elections”. The direction was part of the ECI’s manual on electoral rolls published in March 2023, states a report published by the Reporters’ Collective on Monday, 8 December.

Yet, by 2025, the ECI appears to have discovered that the software was suspect and defective. In a counter-affidavit to the Supreme Court filed on 24 November, the ECI claimed that it had stopped using the software in 2023 itself.

Curiously, the ECI’s 2023 manual, which is binding on election officials, remains in force and is yet to be withdrawn, reports Ayushi Kar for the Reporters’ Collective. Which means the software that was so wholeheartedly endorsed in March 2023 was discarded barely months later, ostensibly because it turned out to be very bad.

The ECI told the court, “The strength and accuracy of the results were variable and large numbers of suspected DSE (demographically similar) entries were not found to be duplicates. The said technology was last used in 2023,” the report states. No evidence was provided by the Commission to back its claims of the software being defective. 

The ECI also claimed before the court that its method for the Bihar SIR — to leave it to citizens not to register twice — was more reliable than its computer-based detection, which it termed as a “random search by software”.

“In 2018, ECI deployed a new software which used machine learning methods to identify duplicates. This software was in the hands of state election officials as well, incorporated into ECI’s IT interface for Electoral Officers, called ERONET. The Election Commission’s presentations on ERONET reveal that this application could identify suspect entries that are demographically similar.

"In other words, it detects similarities in names, names of relatives, addresses, and ages to identify suspect duplicates and fraud. It can also match photographs on Voter IDs (called EPIC) to detect potential fraud and duplicates,” the report reads.

The ECI told the court that voters would need to declare that they hold only one voter ID while filling out SIR enumeration form. In case of a false declaration, the individual would be held liable under the Representation of the People Act.

The Bihar experience has, however, shown that there are thousands of duplicate EPICs and voters which the SIR has failed to detect. The ECI, therefore, needs to answer the following questions:

1. How was the software — available since 2018 — endorsed in March 2023 and on what basis?

2. When did the ECI realise that the software was defective? Was there any audit carried out and is there any technical report in support of the claim?

3. Did the ECI take stakeholders into confidence and inform them that the software was being junked?

4. By all accounts, the ECI did not issue a press note to confirm its decision to abandon the software and the reasons for doing so. Did it take the people into confidence? If not, why not?