SUPREME COURT: ELECTION COMMISSION HOLDS VOTER DATA IN TRUST AND HAS A DUTY TO SAFEGUARD PRIVACY:

During the recent hearing in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) matter, the Supreme Court expressed concerns over the proposal to make the voters’ list available in a machine-readable format, observing that such a step could potentially compromise voters’ privacy. The bench, comprising Justices Surya Kant and K. V. Viswanathan Bagchi, underscored that the Election Commission of India (ECI) holds the voters’ data in trust and therefore has a duty to ensure its protection through adequate layers of privacy. The Court suggested that the ECI could consider introducing password-protected access to enable individuals to verify their details while preventing unauthorised access by third parties.

The bench was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the ECI’s special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and West Bengal. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing on behalf of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), submitted that the NGO had filed an interlocutory application seeking a direction to the ECI to provide the 2002 electoral rolls in a machine-readable format. According to him, making the data searchable would enable citizens to easily check whether their or their relatives’ names had been included in the voters’ list. Bhushan argued that such access would not cause any prejudice or harm, as the data was already public and merely being made more accessible through digital means.

However, the bench was not convinced by the argument. Justice Bagchi expressed particular concern over the privacy implications of providing voter data in a machine-readable or searchable form. Referring to the 2018 Supreme Court order in Kamal Nath v. Election Commission of India, the judge observed that the Court had previously taken a similar position, holding that electoral rolls need not be furnished in a machine-readable format. He pointed out that such digital formats could enable large-scale “data mining” by third parties, thereby posing serious threats to the privacy and data protection of Indian citizens.

Justice Kant agreed that the issue required careful consideration and suggested that the matter should not be treated as adversarial but rather as one involving multiple dimensions of public interest. The Court noted that beyond the individual right to vote, the larger concern was the collective protection of sensitive citizen data. It stressed that the ECI, as the custodian of this information, was holding it in trust for the public and was therefore entitled to impose privacy safeguards. The bench suggested that one possible solution could involve allowing individuals to access their information using password-protected credentials from an encrypted database maintained by the ECI. Such an approach, the Court said, could balance the need for transparency with the imperative of protecting privacy.

While the Court issued notice on ADR’s application seeking machine-readable electoral roll data and directed the ECI to respond, it also acknowledged a separate suggestion from ADR regarding the use of de-duplication software already available with the ECI. The software, ADR argued, could help eliminate multiple or duplicate entries of the same individual in the rolls. The bench described this as a “good suggestion” and directed the ECI to consider it in its response. The matter has been scheduled for further hearing on November 26, with the Court awaiting the ECI’s detailed position on both the privacy implications and technical feasibility of the proposed measures.