EVMs tamper proof, no mismatch found: ECI
The Maharashtra C&V clean chit is in keeping with the trend so far as similar applications, filed after 2024 Lok Sabha elections and assembly polls thereafter, have found no tampering with the EVM microcontroller or burnt memory. Nearly 100 C&V applications were filed in Maharashtra, mainly by the INDIA bloc after tightly contested 2024 assembly elections.
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Last Updated: If allowed, machine-readable electoral rolls could be a crucial step towards greater transparency and trust in India's democratic process The demand for machine-readable electoral rolls is not new for the Election Commission of India (ECI). Congress made this demand in 2018, but the poll body rejected it, backed by the Supreme Court. The same demand is being raised again. But what exactly is a machine-readable file, and how could it help solve problems related to verifying fake voters? A machine-readable file is a digital data format that computer programs can easily process, analyse, and verify without human help—often in just a few minutes. These files are structured, with each piece of information clearly labelled and consistently organised within a dataset. This contrasts with unstructured formats like PDFs or scanned images, which typically require manual or error-prone optical character recognition (OCR) to extract usable information—the data currently shared by the ECI. In simpler terms, anyone with basic computer knowledge can upload a machine-readable file and run commands to analyse it. Machine-reading and mass scrutiny could significantly help the poll body clean the electoral roll faster and more efficiently—after proper verification, of course. What can machine-readable files do? If the voter list were machine-readable, even ordinary citizens could easily analyse patterns from any constituency in the country. For instance, if I am a voter from the New Delhi assembly seat and want to check how many Shanti Devi(s) are registered in the constituency, I could do so easily. I could also filter the details to see how many of them are, say, 55 years old and have Mukesh Yadav as the husband's name. If this person has multiple registrations, I could highlight that. If similar data were available for, say, Mumbai, I could check if the same combination is registered there as well. Of course, there can be valid voters with identical details, but that is where data with political parties and ECI—including images—can be used. Currently, all checks have to be done manually. The ECI does have sophisticated systems, but they are not available in the public domain or for political parties. Looking for a Shanti Devi among one booth, a few thousand voters, or an entire assembly can be done manually. But for the world's largest electorate, involving 96.88 crore voters as of February 2024, this becomes a monumental task. Rahul Gandhi, while sharing the claim of one lakh 'vote chori", highlighted that the poll body provides seven feet of paper for one assembly, and it took a team of about 40 people around six months to catch fake voters. Enrolment in the voter list is a statutory right. Claims or objections on draft rolls can be filed by citizens or parties using Form 7, submitted via booth-level agents. These requests are investigated by booth-level officers, with final decisions made by the Electoral Registration Officer. Typically, a month is allowed between the draft roll's publication and the final roll's release. Given Gandhi's claim on time and manpower constraints, raising objections against widespread fake voters appears difficult. Why are such files demanded, and why are they denied? The current data shared by the ECI does not allow automated comparison, validation, or auditing of electoral rolls because it lacks consistent formatting. This makes detecting duplicate entries difficult. Moreover, the demand is important because obscure anomalies can only be spotted through computational analysis. The ECI has rejected Congress's demands for a machine-readable voter list, citing the legal framework and past Supreme Court rulings. In 2018, senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath moved the Supreme Court, claiming electoral rolls showed multiple entries of the same individuals, up to 36 times, based on data sourced from a private website. The ECI's counteraffidavit acknowledged these discrepancies and agreed to delete or take corrective actions in the rolls. However, the court found no merit in the claim. The court ruled that Nath cannot claim a right to have the draft electoral roll published on the website in a 'searchable mode", and it is the ECI's prerogative to decide the format in which the draft roll is published. According to the ECI manual, the draft roll should be made public on the chief electoral officer's website in an image PDF format, text mode, with no photographs. Machine-readable files, the ECI fears, could lead to potential manipulation and a loss of voter confidence. Change in Bihar format raising eyebrows The Bihar draft roll issued on August 1 was mostly searchable and machine-readable but was replaced by a larger file unreadable by AI tools after the claims from Rahul Gandhi were made. The poll body has issued no statement about the change. Tests by News18 using ChatGPT and Perplexity showed the earlier file was searchable with no duplicate entries found, while the current file yielded no extractable text and was described as a 'text dump from a PDF scan". OCR on the Bagaha constituency PDF produced false duplicates due to unclear text. Why is AI struggling to analyse this data? B Sundaresan, a data expert from Bengaluru, explained that PDFs are often not machine-readable. 'When Rahul Gandhi says OCR can't be done, he means the PDF is of poor quality. For example, software can't easily convert a pay slip PDF to Excel because PDFs come in many formats, like newspapers or pay slips. Though the data format inside stays the same, computers find it hard to interpret," he said. He added that the type of PDF matters. 'There's no standard format, so you can't always extract the same information the same way. You can search a pay slip saved as a text PDF, but electoral rolls scanned as images can't be searched," said Sundaresan. Regarding artificial intelligence scanning voter lists, he said AI itself isn't the problem, but poor-quality scans limit effectiveness. 'Large Language Models like ChatGPT can't extract data accurately from PDFs without OCR, and OCR needs clear documents. Handwritten or low-quality scans, like village muster rolls, will fail." M Priyamvada, a Pune-based data analyst, noted PDFs aren't true documents like Word files but sets of instructions for painting pixels. 'Scanned PDFs have no actual text—just images—so machines rely on error-prone OCR," she said. What can change with machine-readable data? If allowed, machine-readable electoral rolls could be a crucial step towards greater transparency and trust in India's democratic process. top videos View all Allowing electoral rolls in a standardised machine-readable format would not only speed up the removal of fake or duplicate entries but also open the process to unprecedented public scrutiny. In a democracy of nearly a billion voters, that level of transparency could transform how citizens, parties, and watchdogs safeguard the ballot. The real question is whether the Election Commission and India's political system are ready to trust their people with that power by taking care of the legal, privacy, and technical challenges. About the Author Nivedita Singh Nivedita Singh is a data journalist and covers the Election Commission, Indian Railways and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. She has nearly seven years of experience in the news media. She tweets @ More Get Latest Updates on Movies, Breaking News On India, World, Live Cricket Scores, And Stock Market Updates. Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : ai bihar congress election commission electoral roll PDF tech Voter list view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: August 13, 2025, 08:30 IST News explainers Why India's Voter Lists Are Still Hard For Computers To Read—And What It Means For Democracy Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
