The Election Commission has also added to the ECINet portal and app an Aadhaar-based e-sign step. Henceforth, any person filling in Form 6 (new voter), Form 7 (object or deletion) or Form 8 (correction) will be required to check via their mobile number associated with their Aadhaar. The modification is to decrease the use of identity misuse in online voter applications.
Once an applicant completes a form on ECINet, the portal will take the applicant to an external e-sign page that is hosted by Centre of Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC). It is there that the individual has to insert his/her Aadhaar number, demand Aadhaar OTP and consent Aadhaar-based authentication. The one time password is dispatched to the phone number already associated with that Aadhaar. Another caution ECINet gives to the users is to make sure that the name on the voter card matches the name on the Aadhaar and the mobile number is linked with Aadhaar.
It is the next move after allegations by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who in a press conference on September 18 alleged that someone had attempted to have approximately 6,000 voters names removed off the rolls in the Assembly constituency of Aland in Karnataka by the year 2023. Gandhi indicated that a lot of the deletion forms abused the identity of real voters and that the phone numbers that were utilized to receive OTPs were not associated with the elector.
The poll panel stated that it is impossible to accomplish deletions over the web without any local verification and the opportunity of the impacted individual to respond. No online deletion of any vote can be done by any member of the public as it is wrongly perceived by Shri Rahul Gandhi. It is not possible to make any deletion without allowing the affected individual the chance of hearing what it is all about. The EC announced in 2023 that there were some failed deletions in Aland Assembly constituency and the authority of the EC itself filed an FIR to investigate the case.
As the officials physically checked the 6,018 deletion applications in Aland, only 24 application was valid; the remaining applications were not accepted due to the fact the named voters were still residing at the same addresses.
ECINet, which was introduced earlier this year, is a unification of approximately 40 previous portals and apps of both voter and official, one of them being ERONet. Although the Form 7 textual meaning is no longer altered, a new Aadhaar e-sign has an extra security layer before any online form is filled. BLOs and EROs will still perform enquiries and physical inspections after the submission and these local checks will be the only means to guard the right of the voters.
