New Delhi: The Election Commission of India has directed that recognised political parties be supplied soft copies of draft and final electoral rolls in readable PDF format without photographs of electors, during the Special Summary Revision (SSR) exercise now ordered in 17 states and Union Territories. The move, announced on Thursday along with the SSR schedule with January 1, 2027, as the qualifying date, represents a clear departure from the Commission’s long-standing practice of providing only image-based PDFs and its earlier resistance to machine-readable or searchable formats.
Under the directive, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) shall, immediately after draft and final publication, supply free of cost two copies—one hard copy and one soft copy in readable PDF format—of the electoral roll for each separate polling station to every recognised political party. The digital copies will exclude photographs. Lists of additions, deletions and modifications will also be shared with parties at the draft stage. Earlier, such supplements were maintained only for record and not shared during the draft phase. At the time of the poll, contesting candidates will be able to obtain a readable PDF of the alphabetically arranged electoral roll on a pen drive or other electronic storage device, on demand and payment. Weekly lists of claims and objections, along with printed copies of previous weeks’ lists, will also be provided to parties.
This change applies to the SSR being conducted in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. Final rolls in these units are scheduled for publication on January 4, 2027. The SSR itself is an annual update of existing rolls under Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, distinct from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which involves fresh preparation of rolls through intensive enumeration.
The decision marks a notable shift. For years, the Election Commission resisted demands for machine-readable or searchable voter lists, citing privacy concerns, the risk of data mining or fudging, and Supreme Court observations. In the 2018 Kamal Nath versus Election Commission of India case (judgment in 2019), the Supreme Court held that no party could claim as a matter of right that draft rolls be placed on websites in searchable PDF format. The Court noted that the rolls needed only to be in “text mode” and that parties could themselves convert them into searchable form if desired. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had, as recently as August 2025, cited the judgment to state that machine-readable rolls could not be shared and were effectively prohibited, while distinguishing them from searchable formats available on the ECI website by EPIC number.
Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, have repeatedly demanded machine-readable digital copies. Senior leader Kamal Nath first raised the issue ahead of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. More recently, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge sought consolidated, digital and machine-readable rolls for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections, along with version histories, to enable detection of duplicates and other discrepancies. Similar demands were made during protests over the SIR exercise, which has seen large-scale deletions and allegations of irregularities.
The latest order fulfils a long-standing demand by providing readable PDFs that allow text to be selected, searched and analysed more easily than image-only PDFs. Political parties and analysts note that this will facilitate scrutiny of additions, deletions and possible duplicates at the polling-station level. While the Commission has not described the format as fully “machine-readable” in the technical sense of open data structures, the shift from image PDFs to readable PDFs is widely seen as a practical concession that improves transparency during the SSR.
The announcement comes amid ongoing controversy over the SIR, opposition marches, petitions in the Supreme Court, and internal debates within the Commission. By coupling the SSR resumption—after the annual exercise was skipped in 2026—with this format change, the Election Commission has addressed two key concerns raised by parties: enrolment of young and first-time voters and greater access to usable electoral data ahead of the early 2027 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa.
Observers say the practical impact will depend on the consistency of implementation across states and the usability of the PDFs provided. For now, the directive signals a measured response to sustained demands for greater transparency in electoral roll management.