Why Does the Election Commission of India Fear Transparency?
Date: 12-08-2025
The Election Commission of India (ECI) claims to be the guardian of democracy, yet it withholds crucial election-related data from the very people it serves. If the elections are truly free and fair, why not open the books and cameras for all to see? Democracy thrives on sunlight, not secrecy.
These are the specific datasets that must be made fully public, in machine-readable English, and in easily downloadable formats. Machines don't process local languages well, so data must also be provided in English.
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Form 17C – Part 1 and Part 2
- Part 1 is filled out by the Presiding Officer on the day of polling and records the total number of votes cast, the total number of electors, the number of voters, the number of people not allowed to vote, and the number of test votes cast in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). A copy of Part 1 is provided to the polling agent of a candidate, and both the polling agent and the Presiding Officer must sign it before it is stored in a secure 'Strong Room'
- Part 2 comes into play during the result announcement and contains a detailed breakdown of the votes received by each candidate. It is filled out by the Returning Officer using the 'Result' button on the EVM's Control Unit and must be signed by the Returning Officer, the counting supervisor, and the candidates or their agents.
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Form 20 – Final Result Sheet
- Contains constituency-wise, polling station-wise data of votes polled and votes secured by each candidate. Making it public in a searchable, downloadable format allows independent verification of official results and statistical analysis for irregularities.
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Video Footage of the Strong Room and EVM Transport
- Footage of the storage and transport of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) must be released to ensure there is no tampering during the gap between polling and counting.
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100% VVPAT Counting Data
- Since public trust in EVMs is low, full VVPAT verification should be published for every booth to confirm that machine counts match the paper trail.
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Voter List Data in Bulk Downloadable Form
- The electoral roll should be available in machine-readable English format, without captcha or access barriers, to allow public audit of voter deletions, additions, and potential duplication.
By hiding these data points, the ECI creates an opaque process where citizens cannot verify the integrity of elections. Such secrecy not only breeds suspicion but also enables manipulation at every stage — from voting to counting.
Why doesn’t the ECI want the data to be analysed through programming or machines?
India has about 97 crore registered electors. If each record took 20 seconds to enter manually, it would take 1,940 crore seconds — that’s 19,400,000,000/(60×60×24×365) ≈ 615.2 years for a single person to analyse. A machine could do it in just a few weeks.
What is the point of collecting data if it cannot be analysed? The Supreme Court must take this seriously and direct that the data be provided in machine-readable, English format. Refusal to do so raises serious concerns about the integrity of both the ECI and the Supreme Court.
Transpareny is a Democractic Obligation
Transparency is not a favor the Election Commission grants; it is a fundamental democratic obligation. The Supreme Court must enforce complete transparency in every step of the election process if it wishes to protect free and fair elections. It must resist becoming a passive bystander — or worse, an obedient instrument of the ruling government.
Without openness, democracy rots from within. With openness, the people themselves become the watchdogs — and that is exactly what a healthy democracy requires.
OCR Demo code for electoral rolls
https://github.com/silicology/ollama-qwen-vl
English OCR achieves around 99% accuracy, while OCR for other languages ranges from 80–90% depending on the model used. The real question is: why is the ECI making analysis harder? Why not provide the data directly in English and in a machine-readable format?