The Demand for Machine-Readable Voter Rolls: A Debate on Electoral Transparency
UPSC Relevance
Prelims: Indian Polity and Governance (Constitutional Bodies - ECI, Elections, Electoral Reforms); General issues on Science and Technology (IT & Computers - OCR).
Key Highlights from the News
The opposition demands that the Election Commission (EC) provide political parties with "machine-readable" (computer-readable and analyzable) electoral rolls.
Currently, the Election Commission provides electoral rolls mainly as 'image PDF' files or printouts, which cannot be easily checked by a computer.
The opposition argues that a machine-readable list would help in easily and quickly identifying duplicate entries and other irregularities in the electoral roll.
The EC has not been providing machine-readable lists since 2018, citing security reasons (the possibility of foreign countries misusing voters' information).
In the 2018 Kamal Nath vs. Election Commission of India case, the Supreme Court ruled that the EC cannot be compelled to provide the electoral roll in machine-readable format.
Although Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology can be used to convert 'image PDF' to machine-readable format, converting data for over 99 crore voters in India is a very expensive and complex process.
This issue has led to a significant discussion regarding transparency and credibility in the electoral process.
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