New Delhi: On October 9, The Reporters’ Collective published an investigation into how the Election Commission of India (ECI) forced election officers in Uttar Pradesh to sign forms to delete 85,854 voters without giving any reason during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state. 

Read the story here: In UP SIR, ECI Software Auto-generated 85,854 Forms to Delete Voters Without a Reason

Minutes after we published our story, the chief electoral officer (CEO) of Uttar Pradesh, Navdeep Rinwa, responded to our investigation on X, claiming that our report was riddled with “falsehoods and inaccuracies”. He said he would issue a rebuttal later that day. 

The same evening, Rinwa posted a recorded video addressing what he characterised as a “misleading report”. 

Yet, in his video, Rinwa confirmed our finding that the ECI software had forced election officers in UP to sign 85,854 forms to delete voters without stating a reason.

He did not explain why most of the auto-generated forms did not mention any reason for deleting the voters. He also did not address our finding that some of these forms had single letters, such as “A”, “N”, “H” or “E”, entered as the reason for removing voters.

Stating a proper reason for deletion is mandatory under the law and even the ECI’s tweaked rules for the SIR.

Rinwa also acknowledged The Collective’s investigation that more than 200 attempts had been made to delete Muslim voters en masse in Uttar Pradesh. He cited that as proof of how successfully the SIR was conducted in the state, claiming the numbers were insignificant.

“The total number of names against which [bulk] deletion complaints were made through these Form 7s was only about 4,700. In Uttar Pradesh, which has a population in crores and where we have 13.39 crore [voters]. They found only 4,700 such names where there were multiple Form 7s,” said Rinwa.

Caught Thrice, Admits to It Twice 

Assembly elections in UP are expected to be held in February-March. Therefore, as in West Bengal, any wrongful addition or deletion of voters so close to the polls carries urgent political consequences. 

Our scrutiny of the UP voter rolls has shown that dubious additions and deletions have been made in a manner not seen in any other state so far. 

Our first investigation revealed that the UP CEO had kept the details of 16.18 lakh voters added to the roll out of the public domain. This is illegal. 

When we approached him for that investigation, Rinwa responded curtly on the phone, and did not reply to emailed questions. But after our report was published, he acknowledged our findings, saying it had all been done in line with the law and the ECI’s internal instructions. 

We subsequently dug out those very internal instructions from the ECI to reveal he was lying. The UP chief electoral office had flouted the instructions. 

Explicitly stating a reason for deletion of voters is mandatory under the law.

Throughout our coverage of the SIR, we have come across several instances where the ECI bypassed existing provisions laid down for the regular updating of voter rolls. Even so, the ECI was clear in its own rules for the SIR that an election officer initiating a suo motu inquiry into a voter deemed doubtful on the draft roll must pass a ‘speaking order’, that is, the officer has to issue a written order specifying a reason for deleting that voter. 

The ECI headquarters has remained silent and has not come out in support of the UP CEO. Instead, on October 9, it ordered that no person would be allowed to file more than 30 objections in a month for deletion of voters. This new limit revised the protocol for the SIR yet again. The ECI had earlier removed the cap on filing bulk applications to delete voters from its SIR protocol.

In our investigation, apart from unearthing how the ECI’ software, ERONET, auto-generated forms to delete voters without mentioning a reason, we found that all these applications were filed after the claims and objections period was over. The law says that voters should know the reason to delete them.

In his response to the said story, the UP CEO claimed there was no “irregularity” in the process because every voter deleted through these Form 7 submissions was sent a notice citing the ground for their hearing, that they were either unmapped or had “logical discrepancies” in their records.

The UP CEO yet again evaded disclosing the number of voters deleted in each of the two categories, unmapped and logical discrepancies. He did not share the numbers at his last press conference, or in the press release issued after the final roll was published.