Overview

• Feature went live on ECINet this week, with a senior official saying rollout began in the second week of September after development that sources say started in July–August, and applicants now complete Aadhaar OTP verification via a CDAC-hosted portal before submitting forms.
• The Election Commission maintains that public online submissions cannot delete names and says only 24 of 6,018 Form 7 requests in Karnataka’s Aland were accepted after physical verification.
• Karnataka CID probing the Aland case reports nearly 100 SIM cards, many registered with fake IDs across the country, were used to create logins and file deletion requests from what appears to be a central facility.
• CID investigators say they still need destination IP and port logs and any OTP or multi-factor authentication trails from the EC to conclusively trace who filed the applications.
• Rahul Gandhi claims the safeguard was added only after his ‘vote theft’ allegations and presses CEC Gyanesh Kumar to give evidence to the CID, while EC officials reject that characterization and cite ongoing, pre-planned work on the update.