Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, in an exposé by The Indian Express, said the Election Commission’s ERONet system centralises too much authority, threatening the integrity of voter rolls—an issue that could undermine electoral credibility.
ERONet is the backend platform that Electoral Registration Officers use to process new registrations, migrations, corrections, and deletions across 28 states and 8 union territories. The platform’s architecture gives a handful of central officers the power to approve or reject changes, a feature the commissioners flagged as opaque.
The two commissioners cited a lack of transparency and the risk of state‑level manipulation, adding that the system’s “centralised control” could allow a single point of failure. They quoted a senior officer who said the current design “does not meet the democratic principles of decentralised oversight.”
In response, the Election Commission convened an emergency committee to audit ERONet’s governance structure. The committee will submit a report by the end of the month and will recommend whether the platform needs restructuring or additional checks.
A voter in Rajasthan, who used ERONet last week to correct his address, said he was frustrated by the delay and feared that the review would stall the process further.