Thu Aug 21 03:00:00 UTC 2025: Here’s a summary of the text, followed by a rewritten news article suitable for “The Hindu”:
**Summary:**
The article discusses the ongoing controversy surrounding the accessibility of voter rolls in India. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is demanding the Election Commission (EC) provide “machine-readable” voter rolls to political parties, arguing that this is essential for identifying and addressing duplicate or fraudulent entries. Currently, the EC provides image PDF files, which are difficult and resource-intensive to analyze. While the EC previously offered machine-readable rolls, they stopped due to security concerns about foreign access. Transparency advocates argue that if parties can already use OCR technology to convert PDFs, making machine-readable rolls publicly available could improve transparency and accountability. The Supreme Court has previously declined to force the EC to provide machine-readable data, but the debate over accessibility continues.
**News Article:**
**Headline: Rahul Gandhi Demands Machine-Readable Voter Rolls Amid Concerns Over Electoral Integrity**
**New Delhi, August 21, 2025** – Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has intensified his call for the Election Commission (EC) to release “machine-readable” versions of India’s electoral rolls, alleging potential “vote theft” and the presence of duplicate entries. The demand comes after Gandhi, along with other leaders of the INDIA bloc, were briefly detained during a protest march to the Election Commission’s headquarters last week.
Currently, the EC provides voter roll data in the form of image PDF files, a format that is difficult and costly to analyze for irregularities. Gandhi argues that machine-readable formats, which allow for computer searching and indexing, are crucial for effectively scrutinizing the voter rolls and ensuring the integrity of the electoral process.
“Spotting duplicate entries is incredibly difficult with the current system,” Gandhi stated in a press conference following his release. “Searchable copies would empower parties to effectively identify and address potential fraud.”
The EC previously provided machine-readable rolls but discontinued the practice a year before the 2019 elections, citing concerns that foreign entities could access sensitive voter information. Former Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat explained at the time that the decision was made to prevent the exposure of Indian citizens’ full names and addresses.
In 2018, the Supreme Court declined to compel the EC to provide machine-readable data in the *Kamal Nath versus Election Commission of India* case, despite the EC’s own manual stating that draft rolls should be available in a text mode. The court suggested that parties could convert the existing PDFs themselves.
However, transparency advocates argue that the EC’s reluctance is unwarranted. Srinivas Kodali, an advocate and transparency activist, notes that political parties already possess the capability to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to convert the PDFs. “If the capability to OCR anyway exists with political parties, the question is whether we might as well make it public, ” he said.
While acknowledging potential security risks, Kodali argues that the EC’s current conduct necessitates greater transparency. Converting the vast number of PDF pages to machine-readable format would be a costly undertaking. Some have questioned whether the cost of such a project outweighs the potential benefits of greater access.
The debate highlights the ongoing tension between security concerns and the need for greater transparency in India’s electoral process. As the next general election approaches, the pressure on the Election Commission to address the issue of voter roll accessibility is likely to intensify.
First Piper 