TODAY, I HOLD TWO EPIC NUMBERS after Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (‘SIR’) exercise. A friend is registered in both Delhi and Patna. Another acquaintance found his entire family’s names missing. These are not isolated mishaps. Multiply them by millions and the scale of the problem becomes clearer.
This is not a column about whether elections are “rigged” or whether the Election Commission acts under political pressure. That debate has its own space. My concern as a student of public policy is more fundamental: our electoral database is broken. It is not merely a technical glitch. It is a governance failure. And unless addressed, it risks hollowing out the credibility of the world’s largest democracy.
In her book Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India (2015), anthropologist Nayanika Mathur uses the phrase “paper tiger” to capture a very Indian paradox. The state looks fearsome and efficient on paper, with laws, schemes and official circulars that roar with authority. But when these promises meet everyday practice, the system often falters. Files get stuck, capacity is weak, and the outcomes rarely match the proclamations. Mathur shows how this gap between the image of the state and its everyday functioning is not accidental but deeply baked into how governance works in India.
Our electoral system reflects this same problem. On paper, India has one of the most detailed and ambitious election management frameworks in the world, with rules, revisions, and claims of near-universal coverage. Yet in practice, the foundations are shaky. Even if we assume there is no deliberate manipulation, the machinery itself struggles to deliver accuracy. Bihar’s recent Special Intensive Revision exercise exposed the scale of the problem: 7 lakh voters were registered in two places, 26 lakh had shifted, 18 lakh were deceased and over 11,000 were missing. The total number of voters in the state shrank by 65.6 lakh from 7.9 crore to 7.24 crore. It is this disjuncture—between the roaring claims of order and the everyday reality of error—that makes our electoral rolls a textbook example of Mathur’s “paper tiger.”
The Election Commission insists duplicate EPIC numbers are legacy issues and do not necessarily translate into duplicate voting. That may be technically correct but the scale of the problem, 7 lakh dual registrations in a single state, shows the gap between appearance and reality. Scholars call this isomorphic mimicry: reforms and systems that look robust on paper but fail in practice. India is also stuck in a capability trap. The state keeps producing new rules, committees and revisions but avoids the harder work of building real capacity on the ground.
The global mirror
Other democracies have faced similar challenges but responded with stronger design. In the United States, where each state runs its own elections, the problem of duplication across jurisdictions is common. To address it, states created the Electronic Registration Information Center (‘ERIC’), a cooperative that allows them to share data, detect duplicate or outdated registrations and maintain cleaner lists without waiting for major overhauls. Estonia, a country of just over a million voters, has gone even further. It relies on a single national population register that links seamlessly to the electoral database, so that eligibility updates automatically when citizens move, marry, or change status. This integration ensures accuracy and allows Estonia to confidently run internet voting on top of it.
Mexico offers another lesson. Its electoral authority, the Instituto Nacional Electoral (‘INE’), maintains one of the most trusted rolls in the world by issuing biometric voter IDs, conducting routine audits and ensuring that the list itself is a living public record rather than a bureaucratic file. Australia, too, has built a proactive model. Instead of periodic clean-ups, the electoral commission continuously updates the rolls by cross-checking with tax filings, driver’s licence data and citizenship records. As a result, voter registration in Australia is nearly universal and largely unquestioned.
The common thread across these examples is that credible electoral rolls are not beyond reach. They require political will, investments in technology and a commitment to transparency. Where other democracies have treated voter list integrity as a foundation of democracy, India still treats it as a clerical task.
The lesson is clear. Voter list integrity is not an impossible dream. It is a matter of design, investment and political will.
What India must do
First, the human machinery needs urgent strengthening. Booth level officers and election staff cannot be treated as temporary stopgaps for a task as fundamental as electoral credibility. Continuous training, accountability and professional support must replace the current ad hoc system.
Second, technology must be used with real teeth. The Electoral Roll Management System, known as ‘ERONET’, was first introduced to replace the patchwork of state-level voter registration systems with one digital process. Its upgraded version, ERONET 2.0, is intended to go much further. It is designed as a single national platform where every new registration, deletion or correction is processed in a uniform way. In principle, this means that if a citizen updates her address in one state, the system can automatically detect and remove her older entry elsewhere, preventing duplication. It also aims to reduce the dependence on paper files and local discretion, both of which have historically created delays and errors.
The idea is simple. Just as Aadhaar created a single ID system and UPI created a single payment interface, ERONET 2.0 is supposed to create one trusted electoral register for the entire country. Done properly, it could automatically flag duplicate or ghost entries, make it easier for voters to update their details online, and allow officials to run independent audits at scale. But the reform has been stuck halfway. Some states use it actively, others only partially, and the system is not yet integrated with other national databases. Very few citizens even know of its existence.
This halfway adoption is why the promise of ERONET 2.0 is yet to be realised. A truly unified national database that assigns every voter a unique identifier, supported by biometric verification and subject to independent audits, is essential. Such a system would not only clean the rolls but also open the door to innovations like portable or remote voting for millions of migrant workers and students who are currently left out of the process.
Third, transparency and independent oversight must become the norm. Voter rolls should be cleaned on a rolling basis rather than only before elections. Independent audits focused on high migration constituencies can act as safeguards. Every deletion and correction should be published online and available at booth level offices, making the entire process open to public scrutiny.
A democracy at risk
India rightly takes pride in being the world’s largest democracy. But the strength of that democracy depends not just on the number of booths or the efficiency of EVMs but on the integrity of the voter list itself. Without reform, millions risk disenfranchisement, duplication will feed suspicion and faith in elections will erode further.
On paper, we roar. The rituals of democracy, inked fingers, long queues, tallies announced, will continue. But unless India invests in the hard reforms of capacity, technology and transparency, the roar will remain hollow. As Mathur warns, we risk becoming a paper tiger: majestic in form, toothless in substance.