Overview
- The minutes from a meeting of 11 former High Court judges on August 11 record that the ECI’s portal cannot serve notices, collect extra documents, hold virtual hearings, restore closed cases, provide downloadable certified orders, or digitise paper appeals.
- The Election Commission told the Supreme Court that 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed and only 1.26 lakh were disposed by September 10, leaving more than 37 lakh appeals pending and creating a massive backlog.
- A tribunal judge warned in a May 22 letter that lack of a notice mechanism was slowing disposals and that ECI disposal data was inaccurate, and it remains unclear whether the Calcutta High Court forwarded the August minutes to the Supreme Court or the ECI.
- The portal failures put appellants at real risk of losing notice of hearings or certified reasons for decisions and mean appeals filed physically at district offices may never be uploaded or processed.
- The public reporting of the judges’ minutes has intensified scrutiny of the ECI’s IT leadership and could prompt technical fixes, an institutional review of ECINET, more tribunals, and legal challenges from affected voters and political parties.