AI-enabled oversight layer for continuous electoral roll monitoring

📌 Summary:

• ECI's ECINet — digital electoral platform launched January 2026 — produced detailed reports within 72 hours of Assembly elections, but transparency was missing during Special Intensive Revision (SIR) 2.0 in West Bengal

• During SIR 2.0, the ECI did NOT disclose status of nearly 34 lakh appeals — including 7 lakh deletion appeals — pending before 19 SC-appointed tribunals

• Reports: one tribunal headed by former Calcutta HC Chief Justice disposed 1,777 appeals — allowed all 1,717 citizen inclusion appeals and rejected all 60 ECI deletion appeals

• Causal chain of SIR 2.0 failures: relied on inaccurate, incomplete, non-searchable legacy SIR 2002-04 databases → ad hoc and ever-changing SOPs → millions of genuine voters excluded → arbitrary, biased, discriminatory outcomes

• Authors propose AI-watchdog framework — foundational model achievable in months, with continuous enhancement

• Watchdog would address neutrality, consistency, procedural arbitrariness in electoral roll revision

• Broader concern: SIR meant to remove ASDD entries (absentee, shifted, duplicate, dead) and add new voters, but instead produced chaos, repeated verifications, prolonged appeals

• Constitutional concern: arbitrary deletions threaten Article 326 (universal adult franchise) and voters' fundamental electoral rights

• Solution: Continuous AI-driven monitoring of electoral rolls and tribunal disposals; mandatory ECI disclosure of rolls revision data; independent audit

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS Paper 2 — Election Commission, Electoral Reform, RPA; Role of AI in governance and accountability

📝 Prelims Facts:

• ECINet — ECI's digital electoral platform; launched January 2026

• SIR 2.0 — Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls

• ASDD voters — Absentee, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead

• 34 lakh appeals pending; 7 lakh deletion appeals

• 19 SC-appointed tribunals for SIR appeals

• Article 326 — Universal Adult Suffrage

🔑 Key Term: Special Intensive Revision (SIR) — periodic ECI exercise to thoroughly clean and update electoral rolls, removing ineligible voters and adding new ones