Much has been written about the numerous discrepancies in voting lists, including inaccurate details, duplication, ineligible entries, ghost voters, and how these slips aid electoral fraud, such as impersonation and multiple voting. Almost everyone agrees that flawed electoral rolls erode public trust and will ultimately undermine representative democracy. While much of the erosion of public trust rightly falls on the Election Commission of India (ECI), we must also examine the complicity of political parties in enabling this institutional decay.
ECI’s credibility, changes in parties
The ECI has the primary duty to maintain clean electoral rolls. Not surprisingly, the ECI has faced sharp criticism. The ECI, it appears, believed that greater opacity would shield it from scrutiny and accountability. Therefore, instead of addressing the inconsistencies, the ECI attempted to make inspection more difficult and raise a fog over its failures, only to face further questions and deepening suspicion about its functioning and institutional integrity.
For the ECI, it has been a mighty fall. In the 1990s, during the tenure of T.N. Seshan as Chief Election Commissioner, the ECI acquired greater teeth to curb electoral malpractices and transformed itself into one of the most powerful electoral regulatory bodies in the world. The ECI proactively implemented the model code of conduct, monitored poll expenses, and mandated issuing the Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) to prevent bogus voting. Not surprisingly, numerous citizen surveys in the subsequent decades showed that the ECI was among the country’s most credible and trustworthy institutions. Today, that credibility stands eroded, and its legacy is in question.
While the ECI has steadily eroded its own credibility, political parties, in their race to become more efficient electoral machines, have weakened their role as democratic counterweights. Traditional local level campaigning, which was labour-intensive, included house visits and street corner meetings. However, it is increasingly being supplemented and may even be replaced by digital communication, which includes social media campaigns, phone calls and even Artificial Intelligence-driven chatbots. Newer technological advances have pushed parties to rely less on the party on the ground.
These newer forms of communication are more intrusive, allowing parties to appear to be engaging with the voters personally and not constrained by time or space. So, it is possible for a Prime Minister, Chief Minister or the top party leader to connect with a voter. These forms of communication have also encouraged parties to trade enduring political linkages built by local organisations for the illusion of connection, leading to the neglect of local party infrastructure.
Simultaneously, parties have also begun to rely on professional consultants, who shape their campaign strategy, messaging, and sometimes even the choice of candidates. These professional agents rely on local party workers, if at all, only to gather information to feed their data analytic models. Professional campaign consultants work best when there is a clear chain of command. Consequently, this has only aided the centralisation of power in parties and drastically reduced the role of local workers, once at the heart of the political party on the ground.
While technology and consultants have enhanced or appear to have enabled parties to use resources more efficiently, they also have weakened the party’s foundations at the local level. This neglect of the local level may help explain why systemic failures such as electoral roll mismatches go unchecked.
Close interaction is the key
The ECI manual on electoral rolls states that during the electoral roll revision period, or when there is a modification and rationalisation of polling stations, the local election officers and the electoral registration officer should meet and consult recognised political parties. Further, parties are supposed to scrutinise draft rolls and point out discrepancies. Therefore, the integrity of the electoral roll hinges on the close working of the local-level party organisation with the ECI.
To enhance the participation of parties at the local level, the ECI had introduced the concept of Booth Level Agents (BLA). These representatives of recognised political parties were tasked with assisting the Booth-level officers. To qualify as BLAs, they had to be registered voters in the same electoral roll where they had been appointed. Their primary task was in scrutinising draft rolls during the revision period and aiding corrections, including deletion, inclusion and transposition of voters. Therefore, the BLA is the key link between the party, voters, and the ECI at the local level.
The ECI manual has numerous provisions that prevent the bending of rules and to ensure that the electoral field is not manipulated. For instance, it prohibits bulk applications unless they are from the same family, restricting mass enrolment. Likewise, BLAs can only file a maximum of 10 applications (corrections, deletions, additions) every day. If they submit more than 30 applications during the revision period, the Electoral Registration Officer must personally cross-verify such applications. On paper, these mechanisms establish a robust system of checks and balances that is designed to ensure transparency and prevent fraudulent manipulations. In theory, these safeguards make widespread electoral fraud impossible or at least difficult.
The reported large-scale irregularities in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency in Karnataka push us to ask uncomfortable questions. Are some BLAs more influential than others? Has the ECI ignored BLAs manipulating the system? Is there a systematic institutional bias favouring the incumbent? At the same time, it is fair to ask whether some BLAs were asleep at the wheel during the revision period. Why was the local party organisation not vigilant? Did they not participate in the exercise to keep the “electoral roll healthy”?
An opportunity to revive
This controversy has presented an unexpected opportunity. Political parties can redeem themselves. They have a chance to revitalise their dormant local units, which have been sidelined by the increased use of technology and professional consultants. It is a wake-up call telling parties that they need to look beyond elections if they want to remain relevant and meaningful.
The politics between elections often shape electoral outcomes. The task of electoral roll revisions may appear to be a mundane task, but they show how local organisations are crucial for a healthy democratic functioning.
We already see parties waking up. The heightened awareness around accurate voter lists, for instance, in Kerala has prompted parties to scrutinise the draft rolls for local body elections more diligently. Parties are now actively flagging issues such as duplicate voters on the same ID card or individuals holding multiple voter IDs. Although parties argue that these concerns were raised earlier, their current efforts appear more consistent and determined.
History warns us how weak local organisations can distort democracy’s promise. Immediately after Independence, the Congress party units and local officials allied with the dominant sections to subvert land reforms, leaving no chance for the institutional strategy for agrarian reform to succeed. Today, parties without vigilant local organisations risk more than electoral losses. They may be surrendering democracy. And there may be no fair electoral arena left to contest.
We have seen above that a robust democracy-saving system is in place. There are adequate mechanisms to ensure electoral integrity and prevent rule manipulation in favour of the incumbent. However, when institutional leaders prioritise short-term goals over constitutional norms (not all written), abandon self-restraint and violate neutrality, they erode citizen trust and hollow out institutions from within.
K.K. Kailash is with the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. The views expressed are personal
Published – August 22, 2025 12:16 am IST