The Election Commission has announced an expert review of ECINet following a meeting involving all three commissioners on Saturday. This decision comes in the wake of separate letters written by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan. The Commission clarified that these letters pertained to the performance of an officer on deputation and did not address any policy decisions made by the Election Commission.
The Election Commission gave a different account of what happened. “Field officers have role-based access to the ECINET system as per their statutory powers. ECINet was launched on January 22 as a single platform combining more than 40 Election Commission applications and portals.
The report said Sandhu and Joshi wrote separately to the Cabinet Secretary after the Election Commission changed the allocation of work. The two commissioners were concerned that the changes affected oversight of the IT systems used to manage electoral rolls, according to the report. It said the letters were linked to the functioning of an officer serving on deputation and were not about a policy matter of the Commission or its IT division. The poll body also said, “The work redistribution orders issued by the concerned officer were not actually implemented after the orders of the two Commissioners and the oversight over the IT division by the DEC was never actually withdrawn. A Committee headed by Sr Deputy Election Commissioner (DEC) and including an independent expert from IIT/IIIT will review the ECINET to double-check that it complies with the provisions of the Acts and Rules and submit report to the Commission,” the Election Commission said. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said at its launch that the platform had been built in accordance with the law. Director General (IT) Seema Khanna said it would “enhance transparency, credibility and public trust”. The Election Commission says the system works differently. Booth Level Officers, Assistant Electoral Registration Officers, Electoral Registration Officers, District Election Officers and Chief Electoral Officers carry out their respective statutory duties through their own IDs and passwords, according to the poll body.
