Election Commission’s officers’ portal could hide voter-roll tools from West Bengal officials, audit finds

Access the official audit here:

A civic-tech initiative, Charchagram, has found that the code publicly served by ECINET, the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) portal for election officials, contains a restriction that could hide two voter-roll tools from officers in West Bengal. This restriction would affect Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), the audit found. No other state has a similar exclusion, Hindustan Times (HT) reported.

Under Section 13B of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, EROs are responsible for preparing and revising the electoral roll for each constituency. Limiting their access to tools on ECINET could therefore directly affect the exercise of these statutory functions. The ECI had said in a September 26 press note that these field officers, “as per their statutory powers”, have role-based access to ECINET, but it seems to have been impacted now.

What did the audit find?

Saurav Rajput, a data scientist at Charchagram, examined ECINET on October 2, 6, 7, and 9 to investigate the restriction. The exclusion was still present in the code Rajput retrieved on October 19, HT reported. Rajput told the newspaper, “West Bengal is separately hard-coded in the codebase and excluded from it.”

The Charchagram audit identifies a line of code that adds the roles “ero” and “aero” to a list of roles barred from accessing the two tools when the state code is set to “S25”. Charchagram identifies S25 as the code for West Bengal.

The two tools are:

1. View Enumeration Form Details: This tool provides access to a listing of individual electors, including their constituency, part and serial numbers, voter ID numbers, names, the person who submitted the form, uploaded documents, and the booth-level officer’s (BLO) recommendation. The documents accessible through this tool also include those labelled “ERO/AERO-Document” and “Hearing-Order”. A “Rollback” button allows a form to be sent back to the BLO.
2. Notice-and-hearing dashboard: Officers use this dashboard to track, process, and clear notices and hearings related to voter registration and electoral-roll revision.

According to the audit report, the first tool currently displays a review chain involving a Micro-Observer, Roll-Observer, and ERO only for West Bengal.

What else is in the code?

• The code contains a state-wise switch linked to a message stored under the key ENUM_NOT_ENABLED. The message reads, “View Enumeration Form Details is not enabled for selected state”. Charchagram says this suggests that access to the tool could be switched on or off on a state-by-state basis.
• The State Nodal Officer (SNO) module contains a disable button accompanied by a warning: “On disabling this State Nodal Officer, the user will no longer be able to access the application.”
• The code also contains a gold-coloured VIP marker labelled “Important”, represented by the identifier LEGEND_VIP. A menu item called “Imp Electors AC Wise – Excel” allows users to download a list of these electors grouped by assembly constituency. The list includes filters for state, district, constituency, and polling part. However, Charchagram said the code alone does not establish who created or assigned the marker.

How did the audit work, and what can it not show?

ECINET’s login page loads a large JavaScript file before users log in. According to the audit, the file contains labels, menu names, screen routes, and application programming interface (API) paths intended for officials.

Charchagram said it conducted the audit without using a password or calling any API. “We only read files the site serves to everyone,” the initiative said.

Earlier, Charchagram had flagged personal data in ECINET’s publicly served code. An earlier version of the code reportedly contained five mobile numbers, an email address, and three usernames used as login IDs in plain text. Charchagram published this finding in a video on October 7. The information was allegedly removed when the code was checked again 18 hours later.

Charchagram said it could not determine when the West Bengal-specific restriction was introduced. “We can only say it is currently there in the code,” the initiative said.

The audit also does not establish whether the restriction was ever applied to an officer’s account. MediaNama has not been able to independently verify this claim.

What has the ECI said?

HT sent a questionnaire to the ECI but has not received a response. In its September press note, the ECI said a committee headed by the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner would review ECINET’s compliance with relevant Acts and Rules and submit a report. The committee would include an independent expert from an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) or an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT). However, the press note did not specify whether the report would be made public.

According to the same press note, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 20 states had been concluded, including in West Bengal. The Indian Express had earlier reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised written objections 14 times over 10 months. The objections reportedly concerned inadequate access to ERONET, which is now part of ECINET, in some states, as well as issues related to the centralisation of the electoral-roll database.

What MediaNama has asked the ECI

• Whether the West Bengal-specific restriction was ever enabled, for which officers, between which dates, and on whose written approval
• What purpose the restriction and the state-wise setting serve, and which order or standard operating procedure governs their use
• Whether every change to officers’ access on ECINET is logged, and whether those logs form part of the review committee’s work
• What the VIP marker denotes, who can assign it, and who can download the list of voters marked with it
• Whether the review committee has been constituted, who the independent expert is, and whether its report will be made public
• What the review chain of Micro-Observer, Roll-Observer and ERO, which the code shows for West Bengal alone, is for, and under which order it was set up

This story will be updated with responses.

Also read:

• What the Election Commission needs to disclose about its AI use, and why
• What can India learn about regulating automated decisions?

The post Election Commission’s officers’ portal could hide voter-roll tools from West Bengal officials, audit finds appeared first on MEDIANAMA.