Overview
- The Election Commission told an RTI applicant that the name and version of the software used to flag errors in the Special Intensive Revision are exempt from disclosure as commercial confidence and trade secrets, a reply dated October 16 that became public last week.
- On Monday the ECI filed a joint counter-affidavit in the Supreme Court saying all three SIR orders were unanimous and defending its procedures while the top court issued notice on a Maharashtra challenge and listed further hearings for early November.
- The commission ordered a statewide reverification in Uttar Pradesh of every addition, deletion or correction entered by computer assistants after SIR and barred computer assistants from digitising Forms 6, 7 and 8 so that Booth Level Officers must now upload physical forms.
- Local probes found concrete irregularities: a Pilibhit district inquiry identified 13,779 Form 8 entries made by a single computer assistant and the Uttar Pradesh CEO reported 10,470 problematic entries in that constituency.
- The SIR has already produced very large net roll reductions nationally and in states such as Uttar Pradesh, raising worries that deletions could deny citizens services and voting rights and that the software secrecy, political protests and court action may affect how quickly those losses are reviewed and fixed.