Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa has ordered the reverification of all electoral roll entries made by computer operators since the publication of the post-revision final rolls on April 10, in the wake of major irregularities uncovered in Pilibhit and Azamgarh districts.
The order, announced on Sunday, also bars computer assistants from entering any future digital applications related to the electoral rolls. Henceforth, physical forms received from voters must be digitised exclusively by Booth Level Officers through the BLO App, a move aimed at closing the loophole through which the irregularities are believed to have occurred.
Rinwa issued the directions during a virtual meeting with Divisional Commissioners, District Election Officers, Electoral Registration Officers, Assistant Electoral Registration Officers and computer assistants, called to review preparations for the Special Summary Revision of the electoral rolls. The meeting also took stock of complaints about the rolls received from political parties and circulating on social media.
"Under no circumstances should the feeding of physical application forms be handled by computer assistants. It must also be ensured that all physical forms received are digitised exclusively by the BLO through the BLO App," an official statement said. Electoral Registration Officers must review all pending Form 6, Form 7 and Form 8 applications on a daily basis and ensure their prompt disposal strictly as per the rules, it added.
Form 6 is used for the inclusion of a person's name in the electoral roll, Form 7 for objecting to an inclusion or seeking a deletion, and Form 8 for correcting or updating details in an existing entry. Together, the three forms are the basic instruments through which the voter list is built and maintained, which is why irregularities in their handling strike at the credibility of the entire roll.
The immediate trigger for the statewide order was Pilibhit Sadar Assembly constituency, where the Congress alleged on October 21 that the names of more than 13,000 voters had been replaced with those of other persons after the final rolls were published, while their serial numbers and voter identity card numbers remained unchanged.
An investigation by the Pilibhit district election officer found that a computer assistant had entered 13,779 Form 8 applications between May 31 and August 29, months after the April 10 final roll. Of these, 10,470 were approved and 3,309 rejected. Crucially, no supporting application forms or documents were found in official records for any of the 13,779 entries, and all 10,470 approved entries were found to be irregular.
The scale of the alleged manipulation is politically significant. In the 2022 Assembly elections, BJP leader Sanjay Gangwar won the Pilibhit Sadar seat by a margin of less than 7,000 votes, smaller than the number of entries now found irregular. That fact has fuelled opposition claims that the manipulation could have altered the character of the constituency's roll.
On October 22, an FIR was lodged at Kotwali police station against two electoral registration officers and the computer assistant. The officers named were Mayank Goswami, then Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Amaria, and Hemant Kumar, then Sub-Divisional Magistrate, along with computer assistant Anil Kumar. They were booked under Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and Section 201 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
Rinwa himself has described the Pilibhit episode in stark terms, telling one newspaper that it was not a case of error or negligence but a crime done deliberately. The computer assistant's services were terminated, and departmental proceedings were ordered against the officers involved.
Similar discrepancies were also reported in Azamgarh, where the CEO removed the computer assistants concerned after errors emerged. The statewide reverification order is designed to establish whether the problem extends beyond the two districts that have come to light so far.
Under the new directions, responsibility for irregularities will be fixed on Electoral Registration Officers, Assistant Electoral Registration Officers and computer assistants, while District Election Officers will also be held accountable for lax supervision. Officials were directed to study Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, which deals with breaches of official duty in connection with the preparation, revision and correction of electoral rolls.
Divisional Commissioners, designated as Roll Observers, have been directed to monitor electoral roll-related work intensively in their districts. Officials were also told not to share their ERONET login IDs or passwords, a basic security precaution that appears to have been flouted in the past.
The CEO's office also emphasised the proper custody and preservation of all physically received forms, a point that goes to the heart of the Pilibhit case, where the absence of supporting documents made it impossible to verify the entries. If the paper trail is preserved, future audits will be able to trace every change back to a voter's own application.
The episode has wider resonance because Uttar Pradesh was part of the second phase of the voter roll revision exercise, and because the Special Intensive Revision has already become one of the most contested issues in Indian politics. Opposition parties have alleged large-scale deletions and manipulations, while the Election Commission has maintained that the exercise is necessary to clean the rolls.
For voters, the practical question is whether their names, addresses and details are correctly recorded. The reverification drive is meant to answer that question for every entry touched by a computer operator since April 10, a potentially enormous exercise across all 403 Assembly constituencies of India's most populous state.
The coming weeks will show whether the audit uncovers further irregularities or confines the problem to Pilibhit and Azamgarh. Either way, the order marks a significant tightening of the rules governing who can touch the voter list, and it signals that the election machinery is under intense pressure to demonstrate that the rolls can be trusted.
The order also arrives at a sensitive moment for the state's election machinery. With the Special Summary Revision under way, officials are under instruction to dispose of pending applications promptly, and any hint of further manipulation would deepen the controversy already surrounding the rolls.
The CEO's emphasis on daily review of pending forms is meant to prevent backlogs from becoming an excuse for shortcuts, and to ensure that every addition, deletion or correction can withstand scrutiny.
Voter groups and political parties will be watching the audit closely. A clean audit would help restore confidence in a process that has been battered by allegations, while fresh discoveries would raise difficult questions about how far the problem spread and who benefited. For now, the administration's message is unambiguous: the rules have been tightened, responsibility has been fixed, and negligence will carry consequences.
(Reporting based on The Hindu and The Indian Express.)