On ECINet platform, access for States can be switched off and on centrally: report

An audit conducted by the civic technology initiative Charchagram reveals that the Election Commission of India’s digital platform, ECINet, allows central authorities to switch off access for State Nodal Officers on a state-by-state basis. The report, authored by data scientist Saurav Rajput, identifies a specific feature within the system that enables the centralization of control over voter enumeration details. This finding gains immediate political weight given recent objections raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi regarding the centralization of the electoral roll database and the ECINet platform itself. Rajput, an alumnus of the Indian Institutes of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, stated that he located the feature on September 28. He noted that while the exact duration of the feature's availability is unclear, the broader ECINet portal was launched in January 2026. The platform serves as a unified interface for election officials, consolidating previously separate applications such as user management, ERONET, the Right to Information module, and the Enumeration Form Tracker for Special Investigation Reports into a single login environment. According to the audit, the ECINet architecture includes a dedicated management area for State Nodal Officers. Within this module, each officer entry contains a built-in disable function. When activated, a pop-up window informs the administrator that disabling the officer will prevent the user from accessing the application entirely. Rajput described this mechanism as a full account-level block, noting that the confirmation text does not suggest any partial restrictions or role downgrades. Additionally, the system code contains a specific error message stating that viewing enumeration form details is not enabled for the selected state. This indicates that access to these records can be toggled on or off individually for different states. For states where the feature is inactive, officials encounter this blocking message instead of the required form data. The audit further highlights that certain functionalities are accessible via front-end code files loaded on the public login page. These JavaScript files contain labels, menu names, and API paths intended for authenticated users, yet they remain readable by anyone who opens them. Rajput explained that his team only examined files served publicly by the site, though some features behind the login credentials were visible in this code. The report also notes a specific restriction affecting West Bengal, where Electoral Registration Officers and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers can be barred from reviewing voter enumeration forms and accessing the notice-and-hearing dashboard. Political reactions have been sharp. The Congress party accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of implementing ECINet to centralize power, alleging he acted on instructions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. Opposition leader Jairam Ramesh asserted that vote manipulation is a proven reality and criticized the CEC for using the platform to consolidate control. The controversy follows earlier accusations by the Congress that the Election Commission lied regarding the nature of ECINet, demanding accountability for the changes made to the electoral infrastructure.