The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) ECINET platform contains features that allow access to enumeration form details to be enabled or disabled State by State. Its publicly available code also identifies a separate restriction that could prevent Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) in West Bengal from viewing enumeration forms and accessing the notice-and-hearing dashboard.
The findings emerge from an audit reported by The Hindu that Charchagram, a civic technology initiative, conducted by Saurav Rajput, a data scientist and alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta. The audit examined JavaScript code made publicly available by the ECINET website.
The findings assume significance amid objections raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi over the centralisation of ECINET and the electoral roll database.
The audit identifies two forms of access control that State-wise settings governing access to enumeration forms and State Nodal Officers’ accounts, and a separate restriction concerning electoral officers in West Bengal. However, it does not establish whether these controls were enforced by the platform’s backend, whether they were used in practice or which officials, if any, were affected.
State Nodal Officers’ accounts can be disabled
The Hindustan Times reported that ECINET has a dedicated management section for State Nodal Officers (SNOs), with options to create, manage, update and disable their accounts. The section includes a disable button against each officer’s entry. The confirmation message states: “On disabling this State Nodal Officer, the user will no longer be able to access the application.”
Rajput observed that this wording indicates an account-level restriction that could prevent the officer from accessing the application, rather than merely reducing the officer’s permissions.
The publicly available code also contains the message: “View enumeration form details is not enabled for selected State”.
This indicates that the option to view enumeration form details can be enabled or disabled separately for each State. Where the feature is not enabled, officials receive this message instead of being shown the forms.
The audit therefore points to a system in which access to a particular function can be controlled State by State, while an SNO’s account can also be disabled. It does not establish whether either option was exercised against any State or officer.
Separate restriction identified for West Bengal
The audit also found a separate restriction in the code that specifically identifies West Bengal.
The SIR Phase II landing page generally provides an option for officials to view enumeration form details. However, the code examined by Rajput contained a separate exclusion for West Bengal’s EROs and AEROs, potentially preventing them from accessing these forms.
The same restriction extended to the notice-and-hearing dashboard used to track, process and dispose of notices and hearing-related actions concerning voter registration and electoral roll revision.
The audit found no equivalent State-specific exclusion for EROs and AEROs in other States.
Rajput examined the publicly served code on October 2, 6, 7 and 9. The West Bengal-specific exclusion was still present in the code retrieved on October 19.
The presence of this restriction in the code does not, by itself, establish that West Bengal’s electoral officers were actually denied access. The audit did not test the application after login or examine whether the server enforced the restriction.
The information electoral officers use for scrutiny
The enumeration form page contains information relevant to the scrutiny of voters’ records. This includes the constituency, part and serial number, the elector’s voter ID and name, details of the person who submitted the form, uploaded documents and the Booth Level Officer’s (BLO) recommendation.
The page also contains documents labelled “ERO/AERO-Document” and “Hearing-Order”. Officials can use the available options to return a form to the BLO or identify an elector as belonging to a previous SIR electoral roll.
The notice-and-hearing dashboard supports the processing of cases involving notices, hearings and electoral roll revision.
If the restrictions identified in the code were enforced, they could limit the ability of the affected officers to view information required for their work. Whether any such limitation occurred remains unverified.
How the audit examined the platform
ECINET was launched in January 2026 as the ECI’s unified digital platform for officials. It brings several services under a single login, including user management, ERONET, the Right to Information module and the Enumeration Form Tracker used during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Officials access these services through the platform’s official login. However, the login page also loads a large JavaScript file that is publicly accessible. The file contains interface labels, menu names, screen routes and application programming interface (API) paths, including information relating to functions intended for officials.
Rajput said he examined files that the website made available to the public. He did not use login credentials, access an official account or make calls to the application’s backend endpoints.
He said he first located the relevant feature on September 28. The current build was introduced on October 16, but he did not have access to earlier versions and could not establish when the features were first introduced or whether they had changed.
The audit establishes that the relevant restrictions appear in the publicly served code. It does not establish whether corresponding controls operated on the server, whether the features were activated or how they affected the functioning of the platform.
The findings have not been independently verified by the reporting newspaper, and the ECI did not respond to its questionnaire.
West Bengal’s SIR and the dispute over voter records
The access restrictions identified in the code concern functions central to West Bengal’s contested SIR exercise, which began on November 4, 2025.
The draft electoral roll, published on December 16, excluded 7.8% of the electorate recorded before the revision, according to the report. The ECI subsequently flagged another 1.36 crore electors for what it described as “logical discrepancies”.
Hearings were delayed amid a dispute between the ECI and the West Bengal government over the rank of officials appointed as EROs.
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court invoked Article 142 of the Constitution and entrusted the hearings to judicial officers. It asked the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to make serving and former judicial officers available to examine pending claims.
On February 24, the Court noted that approximately 250 judicial officers had been assigned around 50 lakh cases, a workload that could take up to 80 days. It expanded the pool of judicial officers and directed that only documents submitted on or before February 14 would be considered.
The Court also placed responsibility on EROs and AEROs to satisfy the presiding judicial officers regarding the specified documents.
The judicial officers completed their work on April 6. Of the 1.36 crore cases involving logical discrepancies, approximately 22 lakh names were removed, according to the report.
Millions of appeals remained pending
The final electoral roll was published on February 28, with approximately 10% of the pre-SIR electorate removed. Supplementary lists continued to be issued until a day before the April Assembly elections because cases involving logical discrepancies were still being processed.
According to the report, 27.1 lakh people were ultimately disenfranchised. Around 38 lakh appeals remained pending before 19 appellate tribunals as the elections approached. These included challenges by people whose names had been excluded and objections to the inclusion of other electors.
The tribunals were not yet fully established at that stage. During the preceding two months, several tribunal judges had also complained that the ECI’s portal and backend processes were obstructing their work.
The audit does not establish that the access restrictions it identified caused voter exclusions, delayed the hearings or contributed to the pending appeals. Its findings concern the presence of controls in the website’s code, rather than their actual use or impact.
Questions over EROs’ statutory responsibilities
On February 21, Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee alleged that EROs in West Bengal could no longer monitor AEROs’ progress on ECINET during the revision.
He argued that this violated Sections 13B and 13C of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which deal with the appointment and responsibilities of EROs and AEROs, including the preparation of electoral rolls and the placement of AEROs under EROs’ control.
Supreme Court advocate Harshit Anand said that, if implemented, the reported restriction could conflict with the Supreme Court’s directions.
He explained that the Court’s February orders placed primary responsibility for document verification on EROs and AEROs, with judicial officers subsequently examining their reports. If electoral officers were denied access to forms and claims, this could also obstruct the judicial scrutiny of the cases.
These concerns depend on whether the reported restrictions were actually applied and whether they affected the work of electoral officers.
What the findings establish
The audit identifies State-wise controls over enumeration form access and SNO accounts, alongside a separate restriction in the code concerning West Bengal’s EROs and AEROs. It raises questions about how access to ECINET’s functions is configured and administered during electoral roll revision.
However, the audit does not establish when the restrictions originated, whether they were activated, whether the platform’s backend enforced them, which officers may have been affected or whether they altered the processing of voter records.
Further information about the platform’s backend operations and the permissions assigned to electoral officials would be needed to establish whether the restrictions were applied in practice and what consequences, if any, followed.
The central question remains whether the access controls identified in the code were merely present as system features or were actually used during West Bengal’s SIR process.
Auto-generated Form 7s used for deletions without written ECI guidelines
Moreover, thousands of names have been deleted from electoral rolls during Phases II and III of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) using Form 7s automatically generated by the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) ERONet software and digitally signed by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs). However, no written communication or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) explaining this process has been shared with State election authorities, according to officials cited by The Hindu.
The practice has been reported in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal, including cases involving voters flagged for unresolved “logical discrepancies” or “no mapping”. More than 87,000 names in Uttar Pradesh and over 95,000 in Uttarakhand were reportedly deleted through this method. Under the ECI’s Manual on Electoral Rolls, 2024, there is no provision for an ERO to file Form 7. The form is intended for an eligible elector to object to an entry or seek deletion of a name. In cases of death, it may also be submitted by a family member, a local elector or a Booth Level Officer (BLO). The rules prescribe procedures for receiving, checking and displaying Form 7 applications, as well as cross-verification in specified cases. Although the ERO has the authority to delete a name found ineligible after the prescribed process, the manual does not provide a general procedure for auto-generating Form 7s in this manner.
The manual mentions auto-generated Form 7s only in the context of verifying Photo Similar Entries, where field verification by the BLO and the required signature are necessary before the forms can be processed. The ECI had not responded to the query on the absence of written instructions, raising questions about the procedure followed for these deletions and the guidelines under which State election authorities were operating.
The TCS connection and VFD’s questions
The relationship between ECINet and Tata Consultancy Services is raised in Vote for Democracy’s statement on the “ECINet-TCS nexus”. The statement says TCS has operated ERONet 2.0 since 2023 and describes its role in the electoral software and database framework. It also raises allegations concerning changes to Form 6 and electoral officers’ access rights. These remain claims requiring responses from the ECI and TCS.
VFD says questions sent to TCS in October–November 2025 received no reply. Its present statement asks who proposes, reviews and approves access changes; whether TCS administers permissions; what access Bengal’s judicial officers received; when independent audits occurred; and what oversight the Election Commissioners exercise. It also seeks information about external database connections and their monitoring.
The VFD’s statement titled “Vote for Democracy Statement on the ECINET-TCS Nexus: Asking Some Questions” can be accessed from here
The unanswered question of authority
However, reports of repeated objections by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, the ECI ordered a review of ECINet by a committee headed by the senior deputy election commissioner, with an independent IIT/IIIT expert, to check compliance with electoral laws and rules. The commissioners had also objected to a work-allocation change affecting oversight of the electoral IT system. The ECI said that change was never implemented and maintained that field officers’ access to ECINet matched their statutory powers.
The questions placed the findings alongside objections by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to the centralisation of ECINet and the electoral roll database.
In September 26, 2026 statement, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said that the ECI’s response did not directly deny the reported findings. He questioned ECINet’s centralisation, changes to Form 6 and voter deletions, and said a technical review would not address these concerns. He demanded suspension of SIR and the CEC’s resignation or prosecution.
STATEMENT OF SHRI JAIRAM RAMESH, MP, GENERAL SECRETARY (COMMUNICATIONS), ALL INDIA CONGRESS COMMITTEE
September 8, 2026 https://t.co/aABG0evy0o
— INC Sandesh (@INCSandesh) September 8, 2026
The immediate questions are concrete. Who authorised the Bengal exception? Was it used during verification or appeals? Who can disable State-level access? Are such decisions recorded, reviewed and communicated to the officers concerned?
The continuing presence of these controls after public objections makes a documented explanation necessary. Electoral officers’ responsibilities depend on access to the records they must examine. The ECI must explain how ECINet’s permissions support those responsibilities, who controls changes and whether any restriction prevented officers from carrying out their work.
Related:
Vote for Democracy seeks answers from ECI and TCS on ECI’s electoral database access and security
Barricades and detentions fail to stop Delhi protesters marching against CEC
Protest Denied, Dissent Policed: India’s crackdown on those challenging the Election Commission
Karnataka Form 7 Row: 91,278 deletion requests and bulk filing complaints—where was the ECI’s check?
September 26 ECI Press Note: Does it not render SIR redundant?