'Cancel This Disastrous Software': Shashi Tharoor To Poll Body On Its ECINet App

A day after Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar faced heat for allegedly keeping his two Election Commissioners "in the dark to adding new voters and deleting names", another row has opened up over the poll body's software, ECINet, with Congress MP Shashi Tharoor calling for its cancellation.

During the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which is publicised as a cleaning-up exercise of poll rolls, started by the Election Commission last year, electors submitted forms and documents through ECINet, which was then used by officials to process the same.

Read: Huge Row After Report Flags 2 Election Commissioners Objected To Poll Panel Steps

The poll body had launched the ECINet app in January this year. A beta version of the same was tested during Bihar polls last November. While the ECINet website and app is used for disseminating real-time updates on the poll results for the public, the portal is also used by election officials.

A report in The Indian Express on Thursday claimed that what "two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, primarily warned against - the centralisation of ECINet and cutting out state ground-level officials - has played out in Goa, and its trail is recorded".

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar

What makes the case even more acute in Goa is that being off the electoral roll here costs more than a vote.

Several state schemes in Goa use the electoral roll to establish eligibility. The Goa Mediclaim Scheme, which funds super-speciality treatment not available in government hospitals (dialysis, angioplasty, open-heart surgery, transplants, chemotherapy, cochlear implants) is open only to voters of the state, the report notes.

The Express report says that four days before Goa was due to publish its final electoral roll under the Special Intensive Revision, the state's Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the poll body in Delhi, his eighth time in seven days.

"Attached was a list of 97 voters whom Goa's own Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) had heard, examined and found eligible under a process laid down by the Supreme Court. The earlier decisions to strike them off "have to be reversed," the email said. But the EROs could not reverse those decisions through the software (ECINet). Reason: the permission to do so was controlled from Delhi," the Express reported.

This is extremely serious and involves depriving Indian citizens of their constitutional rights, as well as withholding essential humanitarian benefits, from dialysis treatments to transplants. Political chicanery is bad enough, but inhumane conduct is unconscionable. @ECISVEEP… https://t.co/IlgyH5s2ef

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 24, 2026

Taking note of the report, Tharoor called it "extremely serious".

"This is extremely serious and involves depriving Indian citizens of their constitutional rights, as well as withholding essential humanitarian benefits, from dialysis treatments to transplants. Political chicanery is bad enough, but inhumane conduct is unconscionable," Tharoor posted on X.

"@ECISVEEP owes an apology to the affected citizens and indeed to the nation. Resignation is a minimal demand; rescinding this disastrous software and undoing the harm it has caused is now indispensable," he added.