Congress general secretary for communications Jairam Ramesh said the measures for voters deleted from, or considered at risk of deletion from, electoral rolls were far too limited to address what the party described as “mass disenfranchisement”. His criticism followed a full Election Commission meeting on Saturday that produced several changes intended to ease difficulties faced by voters during the SIR.
Ramesh said 5.43 crore voters considered at risk of deletion would now receive visits from Booth Level Officers, but argued that house-to-house verification was already supposed to have occurred during the enumeration stage. He questioned whether another round of visits would correct shortcomings alleged by the Congress in the earlier exercise.
The Election Commission said BLOs would visit people issued notices because they were unmapped or had “logical discrepancies”, collect their documents and upload them to the ECINet system for decisions by Electoral Registration Officers. Such voters would generally not be required to attend hearings personally, except in exceptional circumstances.
Ramesh also challenged the remedy available to people whose names had already been removed. He said nearly 14 crore voters had been deleted during the three phases of SIR so far and criticised the requirement that eligible people left out of the rolls apply to their EROs for inclusion.
The Commission has said people omitted during SIR or afterwards, including young and first-time voters, can seek enrolment through the continuous updation process. It directed chief electoral officers, district election officers and EROs to undertake special enrolment drives, including assistance for marginalised groups.
Another focus of the Congress criticism was ECINet, the technology platform used in electoral-roll management. Ramesh alleged that the system had overridden ERO decisions and resulted in eligible voters being deleted, an allegation the Election Commission has not accepted.
The poll panel announced that a committee headed by a senior Deputy Election Commissioner and including an independent technology expert from an IIT or IIIT would review ECINet and examine whether it complies with applicable laws and rules. Future IT modules and portal initiatives will also be considered by a committee of officers before being placed before the full Commission.
Ramesh argued that ordering a compliance review after ECINet had already been deployed raised further questions. He cited Goa and West Bengal while asking whether statutory ERO authority had been overridden elsewhere, and called on the Commission to state unequivocally that EROs remain the final authority over electoral rolls under the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
The Commission, meanwhile, maintained that all SIR orders had been approved unanimously by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. It said the nationwide SIR order issued on June 24, 2025, and subsequent schedules had the approval of the full Commission, and noted that the Supreme Court upheld the SIR order in May.
It also said the declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR had been upheld by the Supreme Court. The Commission rejected suggestions that letters sent by Sandhu and Joshi to the Cabinet Secretary concerned policy or the IT division, saying they related to the functioning of an officer on deputation.
The Commission said differing views and observations were normal features of institutional deliberation. It nevertheless announced procedural steps after Saturday’s meeting, including advance circulation of agendas for Commission meetings, issuance of minutes and compliance by officials with directions from the commissioners.
Ramesh said those commitments themselves raised questions about how procedures had previously operated. The Congress has been pressing its broader campaign against the Commission and Chief Election Commissioner, while the BJP has rejected the opposition’s allegations and defended the poll body’s constitutional independence.
