Eight days after admitting before the Supreme Court that its de-duplication software was defective, the Election Commission of India (ECI) which is under fire for alleged collusion with the ruling party in election management, secretly reactivated the same algorithm midway through the revision of electoral rolls in 12 states—discarding its own manual, protocols and due process, said an exclusive report.

In a stunning reversal, the ECI has also introduced a second, undocumented algorithm to “map” voters, again without issuing any written instructions, standard operating procedures or citizen notifications. The move has left district and booth-level officers floundering amid a chaotic revision process known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The SIR process has already caused many lives of foot soldiers who are engaged in the enumeration process.

The Reporters’ Collective’s investigation, which included attending ECI training sessions, interviews with more than a dozen election officials across Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and video evidence, reveals how the commission has effectively replaced rule-based procedures with ad-hoc algorithmic decisions.

On 24 November, the ECI told the Supreme Court that its de-duplication software was unreliable as it made “random searches” and produced “variable results”, leading to the wrongful identification of duplicate voters. The Commission assured the court it would rely instead on human verification via booth-level officers (BLOs).

Yet, within just eight days, the same software was quietly reactivated, said the report. It was deployed to run duplicate checks across 12 states, even as the ECI abandoned its own voter verification manual—which prescribes field verification, quasi-judicial hearings and written notices before any deletion.

Officials confirmed that no written guidelines or SOPs were issued for the operation of the revived software. “We are applying common sense and logic to resolve these errors,” one district election officer told the Reporters’ Collective, adding that in the absence of direction, booth-level staff were determining on their own whether to delete, retain or verify names flagged by the algorithm.

So far, the SIR has marked 86.46 lakh voters as “unmapped” and removed 3.7 crore names from draft rolls across 11 states, with the final roll for Uttar Pradesh set for publication on 31 December.

The sudden activation of the algorithm has led to daily updates on BLO apps, with officials scrambling to adapt to new features. “Each day our app was populated with new protocols and lists. The ECI had no clear plan,” a UP-based officer said.

Under normal rules, deletions can only occur after a written notice and 15-day response window under Rule 21-A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. But oral instructions at the local level have effectively replaced these safeguards, leaving decisions to the discretion of lower officials.

The report found that the ECI continues to adjust its digital systems on the fly, adding untested tools during a sensitive voter verification exercise—raising widespread concern about transparency and data integrity.

While officers were still grappling with the first software, the ECI introduced yet another tool —intended to “map” current voters to old electoral rolls from 2002–04. Those who could not prove familial connections to voters in that list were labelled “unmapped” and asked to produce citizenship documents.

The definition of “relative”, critical to the verification process, was never codified. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s offhand media remark that it could mean “father, uncle or anyone of that generation” carries no legal standing.

On the ground, BLOs and district officials were left to interpret the criteria themselves. A second software was then deployed to check for “logical discrepancies”, such as improbable age gaps between generations or mismatched name spellings.

Officials interviewed said they received the new lists of “suspect voters” on their apps barely a week before draft roll publication deadlines. Many were ordered to restart verification from scratch. With no manuals or written instructions, oral directions from state CEOs now dictate the verification process.

Both algorithms are now running simultaneously without written documentation or citizen transparency. What was supposed to be a cautious, quasi-judicial verification has transformed into a technology-driven, rule-bending exercise conducted through untested software.