Ninety-seven voters may not matter in the world’s largest democracy of over 900 million voters but this story from Goa has national significance.On Wednesday, The Indian Express reported that two Election Commissioners in the three-member Election Commission of India objected on record 14 times in 10 months to steps taken by the ECI under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar — from keeping them in the dark to adding new voters and deleting names.What the two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, primarily warned against — the centralisation of ECINet and cutting out state ground-level officials — has played out in Goa, and its trail is recorded.Also Read | 14 times in 10 months, two Election Commissioners objected on record to poll panel stepsOn February 17, four days before Goa was due to publish its final electoral roll under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the state’s Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the ECI in Delhi. This was his eighth time in seven days. Attached was a list of 97 voters whom Goa’s own Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) had heard, examined and found eligible under a process laid down by the Supreme Court.The earlier decisions to strike them off “have to be reversed,” the email said. But the EROs could not reverse those decisions through the software (ECINet). Reason: the permission to do so was controlled from Delhi.The next day, the Commission’s own Deputy Election Commissioner wrote to the Director General of IT, Seema Khanna, “IT system cannot block necessary action as per the directions of SC. Please facilitate the desired action to publish… as per the decision taken by EROS/AEROs and conveyed to you in these emails.”Also Read | Thwarted 68 lakh cyber attacks on ECINET portal on counting day: Election CommissionOn February 21, the final roll was published. The Indian Express checked all 97 names against it. Until September 20, all 97 are still missing.Story continues below this adWhen asked why several voters remained missing from the final SIR roll despite being found eligible, Goa Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel told The Indian Express, “We apprised the ECI about the cases to be included wherein voters were flagged for logical discrepancies.” He added, “The call (to not include) was theirs. But there has to be some mechanism (in ECINET) to re-include voters at the ERO level.”Also Read | CEC must go, Supreme Court should act, pause SIR: Opposition after Election Commission divide out in openProof of the puddingThe 97 are a case study in what the two Election Commissioners have spent the past year warning about.By law, the electoral roll of each Assembly constituency is prepared by its ERO, usually the sub-divisional magistrate, who hears every claim and objection and decides every name. Since January, every electoral roll in the country has sat on ECINet, the platform the Commission launched to bring its systems together, and its roll-management module, ERONet. What an ERO can do on it is decided by permissions set in the Commission’s IT division in Delhi.Also Read | ‘Illegal, unauthorised’: Election Commissioners objected to Form 6 changeAn investigation by The Indian Express into the working of the Commission over the past year has found that Election Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi recorded, in notes from November to August, that the centralised control of the software was taking the roll out of the EROs’ hands, where the law puts it. Joshi wrote in May of “the gradual centralisation” of the electoral roll database.Story continues below this adSandhu wrote in August that EROs, DEOs and CEOs “don’t have proper and complete access to the ERONet portal”, and that “DG(IT) doesn’t have any legal authority to restrict proper and complete access and freedom to operate, as given by law, to the statutory authorities”.When ERO’s decision doesn’t countThe Commission’s answer to every allegation of a rigged roll has been that no one person can touch it: thousands of EROs prepare it, constituency by constituency. Goa shows what happens when that stops being true.In Goa, the ERO heard the voter, saw the document and decided in their favour, and it made no difference, because the system that records the roll answers to a division in Delhi, and the division did not act even when the Commission’s own Deputy Election Commissioner told it to.WATCH | Sukhbir Singh Sandhu & Vivek Joshi: Who Are The 2 ECs Who Objected To SIR?Story continues below this adThe Indian Express sent a questionnaire to Seema Khanna, who heads the division as EC’s DG IT, asking why the rollback facility was not enabled for Goa before the final roll. There was no response.Also Read | Express investigation: Uddhav Thackeray demands CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s arrest, fresh pollsWhat the SC ordered, and what Goa didA “logical discrepancy” is not a finding that someone is not a voter. It is a mismatch the Commission’s software throws up when it tries to link an elector to a parent or grandparent on the roll from the last SIR, such as a parent’s name that doesn’t match, an age gap between parent and child of under 15 or over 50 years, an age that doesn’t progress correctly between the old roll and the new, or a case where the elector submitted no document, or only Aadhaar.On January 29, in the SIR batch of petitions, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi ordered that the names of those flagged for logical discrepancies be displayed at gram panchayat bhavans, public places, taluka and sub-division offices and urban ward offices, with “the brief reason of discrepancy” — and that those affected be allowed ten days to submit documents or objections and be heard.Also read | What Election Commission rift reveals: Cloud over its conductThe order was about Tamil Nadu, but the court said it expected the Commission to “ensure compliance with these procedural directions in all the States wherever the SIR process is ongoing”. On January 31, the Commission issued a letter to implement it.Story continues below this adGoa did. The lists went up. According to the CEO’s emails, 649 electors came forward with documents or objections. EROs and Assistant EROs examined them. In 97 cases they concluded that the elector had, in the CEO’s words, “become eligible to be included in the final Electoral Roll”, and that the earlier decision “has to be reversed”.Seven days, eight pleas, no answerThe problem was that the decision to flag them had already been entered on ECINet, and the system had no rollback option that would let the EROs reverse it. Requests for the same had been coming from the field since January 22.On February 11, Goa Electronics Limited, the state agency that supports the CEO’s office on the software, wrote to the CEO and to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the Commission’s vendor, that “the required rollback/ reversion functionality, including the document re-upload option, has still not been provided in the system”, despite “multiple emails” from DEOs, EROs and AEROs and the matter having been “communicated to the concerned officials of ECI and TCS”. It maintained a spreadsheet of every request.The CEO forwarded it to Delhi the same day, to the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of Goa, Gyanesh Bharti, with Khanna copied.Story continues below this adAlso read | Election Commissioners knocked on Cabinet Secretary’s door over voter software integrityEvery email that followed went the same way. No reply is on record, and none was acted on.February 13: “response to any of the emails and letters sent from officer of the Chief Electoral Officer, Goa… is still awaited.” Of the electors who had come forward after the (logical discrepancy) lists went up, “there are 97 cases, in which the roll back option is required, as the decision taken earlier has to be reversed in view of documents/objections received from the concerned electors”.February 14 (2 emails, at 12.52pm and 6.11pm): “It is once again requested to kindly make available the provision for Roll back/revert back along with the document re-upload facility at the earliest.”February 14 (by letter): Goel wrote formally to Senior DEC Gyanesh Bharti (in charge of Goa) copying Khanna: “no response has been received” to the emails of the previous two days.Story continues below this adFebruary 15: “The Roll back option is urgently required… The matter is most urgent and requires immediate necessary action to be taken by the concerned ERO/AERO officers to facilitate timely compliance of the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s Order…”February 16: “response to any of the emails and letters sent from office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Goa, with respect to the above cited subject is still awaited.”February 17: The list of 97 logical discrepancy cases, “in which the decisions taken by the ERO/AERO earlier… have to be reversed as the concerned electors have become eligible to be included in the final Electoral Roll… it is requested that necessary action may be taken to include these electors in the Final Electoral Roll of SIR 2026.”February 18: Sanjay Kumar, the Deputy Election Commissioner who holds the electoral roll charge in Delhi, to Khanna: “EROs/AEROs have powers u/s 21/21A to take corrective action. In any case, IT system cannot block necessary action as per the directions of SC. please facilitate the desired action to publish ER as per the decision taken by EROs/AEROs and conveyed to you in these emails.”Story continues below this adFebruary 21: The final roll was published. The 97 were not on it.Also Read | ‘Act of treason’: Rahul Gandhi renews ‘vote chori’ charge after Express reportWho are the 97, why it’s a big deal for themSixty-five of the 97 are from Taleigao, the seat that was held by the BJP’s Jennifer Monserrate, who passed away in July this year. The rest are from St Cruz, Cumbarjua, Priol, Margao, Benaulim and Velim assembly seats.For a Goan, being off the roll costs more than a vote. Several state schemes use the electoral roll to establish eligibility. The Goa Mediclaim Scheme, which funds super-speciality treatment not available in government hospitals (dialysis, angioplasty, open-heart surgery, transplants, chemotherapy, cochlear implants) is open only to voters of the state.When the names did not go in, the electoral officers on the ground told these voters to apply afresh on Form 6, the form for new voters.