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The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday has unveiled an enhanced digital authentication mechanism on its ECINet portal. The new e-sign feature mandates that individuals submitting requests for voter registration, deletions, or modifications must authenticate their identity through an OTP sent to an Aadhaar-linked mobile number, aiming to eliminate fraudulent interventions in the voter database.
The upgrade, rolled out just days ago, comes at a time when the ECI faces intensifying accusations of bias and procedural lapses in managing voter lists. Officials described the system as a "robust safeguard" against unauthorised alterations, ensuring that only verified citizens can influence electoral records. "This step aligns with our commitment to transparent and tamper-proof elections," an ECI spokesperson noted, emphasising that the portal's user-friendly interface will now incorporate this mandatory verification layer for all form submissions.
The timing of the announcement appears closely tied to a fresh wave of criticism from opposition leaders, particularly Congress MP Rahul Gandhi. On September 18, Gandhi held a press conference, spotlighting what he termed a "systematic theft" of votes in the Aland Assembly constituency in Karnataka. He alleged that over 15,000 deletion requests had been filed en masse using fabricated identities, targeting voters from Congress-stronghold booths ahead of local polls. "We have caught the theft red-handed - the ECI's central software is being used to erase opposition supporters," Gandhi charged, directly implicating Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in shielding such irregularities.
Gandhi's salvo was not isolated. It built on a series of broader indictments against the ECI throughout 2025, where he accused the body of selectively purging names from voter rolls to favour the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In August, he claimed that "fake logins" had led to the removal of thousands of voters from Congress-leaning areas, dubbing the poll panel as enablers of "vote thieves”. He had also released cases where voter multiplication, duplication and alleged misuse of unverified credentials had happened in Karnataka’s Mahadevpura assembly segment in Karnataka during Lok Sabha Election 2024. The ECI had rebutted these claims as "baseless," asserting that deletions follow strict legal protocols and cannot be executed online without due verification. Yet, the Aland episode prompted an internal review, culminating in the e-sign rollout as a proactive measure to "check misuse of identity," according to officials familiar with the decision.
The controversies in Aland echo deeper along with concerns that surfaced earlier in the past few months, during the ECI's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar, a state gearing up for Assembly elections. Launched in June 2025, the SIR was intended to purge inaccuracies from the electoral rolls, incorporating technologies for identity checks. However, the process quickly unraveled into a quagmire of discrepancies, drawing sharp rebukes from the opposition and judicial intervention.
Draft rolls published on August 1 revealed glaring errors: photographs of deceased individuals persisted on the lists, while living voters found their details mismatched or entirely omitted. An ECI analysis later identified nearly 60 lakh people were removed from the draft voter list, asking affected people to prove their credentials in order to return to the voter role. Particularly alarming were the deletion patterns - over 50% more women than men were struck off, with disproportionate impacts on younger demographics, fuelling suspicions of targeted exclusions that could disenfranchise marginalised groups.
The Supreme Court stepped in amid petitions from affected parties, issuing an interim order on August 14 directing the ECI to publicly disclose details of all deleted names and adhere to principles of natural justice, such as issuing prior notices. Justices remarked that while revisions are essential, "bound to have defects" does not excuse procedural shortcuts, and mandated including of Aadhaar as identity conclusive proof if not proof of citizenship.
