New Delhi: The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Telangana has confirmed that the Telangana state government had access to voter data, including demographic details and photographs, and that it was illegally used for government schemes. 

A CEO is the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) top official at the state level. His confirmation came in the form of a letter to the ECI headquarters, copied to The Reporters’ Collective.

The CEO, C Sudarshan Reddy, confirmed that the Telangana and Andhra state governments were given access to voter data with the approval of the ECI headquarters. The approval was to link citizens’ voter IDs with Aadhaar, the government’s unique IDs for all Indian residents.

Oddly, the business of connecting these two IDs of citizens was conducted on data management systems maintained by the state government, and not on the ECI servers. This is when the data passed into the hands of the state government. 

While the permission to link the two was soon revoked, Reddy’s letter suggests that the data remained in the possession of the state government, which then used it illegally without informing the state CEO.

Effectively, the Andhra CEO has lobbed the responsibility back at the ECI headquarters for sharing the voter data with the state government in the first place. 

The ECI has not responded to date to explain how voter data in the state ended up in the hands of the state government, which then gave private companies access to work on it to build a software application for the pension scheme. 

{{cta-block}}

How it Unravelled

On August 17, rejecting demands by the opposition party, the Indian National Congress, the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, claimed that the ECI would not share video recordings of polling with citizens to protect the privacy of women voters.

Just days later, on August 28, 2025, privacy activist Srinivas Kodali filed a complaint with Telangana’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) alleging unlawful sharing and misuse of electoral roll photographs and names by the Telangana government for its facial recognition applications. Kodali noted that the tool the data was being used for had become a general-purpose tool used by Telangana’s Departments of Transport, Education, and other purposes deemed necessary by the state.

We got a copy of the complaint. The complaint came with hard documentary evidence of the Andhra government officials proudly discussing the use of the voter database for their purposes.

The complaint included a response to an RTI application by another privacy activist, S.Q. Masood, filed with Telangana’s Information and Technology Department, revealing that, in 2019, Hyderabad-based tech firm Posidex Technologies Private Limited worked on the Pensioner Live Verification System. Documents provided in response to Masood’s query included an invoice from Posidex detailing work on various state government software projects, including the pension verification system, which confirms whether a citizen is alive to receive a pension.

The invoice specified that Posidex developed “Four web services under this module and integrated them with T-App, Election Department (EPIC data), and Pension Department Data.” EPIC data refers to the Election Photo Identity Card data, or the voter roll maintained by the ECI. T-App is the application used by the Telangana government to verify pensioners’ identities in real time.

Two Posidex officials, replying to our queries, contradicted each other. One claimed they had worked on the Telangana government’s software applications, but they did not have access to the voter database. The other one claimed, “To the extent I am aware, the application does not use ECI data.”

Documentary evidence suggested they had been economical with the truth. 

We also sent detailed queries to the ECI and the CEO Telangana on September 9. 

The ECI did not respond. After giving due time to the two, we published our story.

Unknown to us, while the ECI had kept quiet, the Telangana CEO had acted upon the queries and Kodali’s complaint. He asked the Telangana government to explain. He then compiled a report based on his office records and the replies of the Telangana government. These were sent to the ECI Headquarters on September 23. If the ECI needed a reconfirmation, it had got one now, from its officials: The voter data had been provided to the state government with its permission in the first place. 

The ECI did not respond even at this stage to the published story. But a copy of the Telangana CEO was provided to The Reporters’ Collective as well. This is what it reveals.

Confirmation and Some Details

In a letter to the ECI, which was also marked to The Reporters’ Collective, Reddy confirmed that the linking of Aadhar with the voter database for Andhra and Telangana was approved by the ECI in 2015. 

The data matching was done on the government’s State Resident Data Hub, a portal containing key demographic information of citizens from different sources, including names, ages, genders, photographs, and addresses at the state level.

This use was discontinued the same year after a Supreme Court order. But, by now, the Telangana government had the voter data in its possession and the ECI did not expressly ask it to destroy the data, Reddy’s report suggests. 

By 2019, the state government was using it. The state government, “During March 2019 — July 2021, Voter data (EPIC) accessed via API provided by CEO, Telangana (originally approved for EPIC card printing at MeeSeva centres) was used as base data for demographic / photo comparison in Pensioner's Life Certificate Service (PLCS),” Reddy reports. 

Data of 2,16,488 voters was actively utilised by the government, which included voter IDs, photographs, and names of citizens. 

But Reddy has said that his office was not informed by the Telangana government of this misuse of voter data. He wrote, “The above information is not communicated or in the knowledge of the CEO office.” 

Reddy asked the state government to also explain if private companies got access to the data as well. The state government, in its reply, skipped responding to this fact.

This report from the state’s top official is now with the ECI. We are making the report public. It can be accessed here.