Less than a week after leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi alleged that wrongful additions and deletions in Karnataka’s Aland and Maharashtra’s Rajura were being facilitated in a centralised way through a software, the Election Commission of India has rolled out a new ‘e-sign’ feature on its ECINet portal and app, which uses Aadhaar-linked phone numbers as verification for those applying for addition or deletions.The e-sign feature was visible on the Election Commission’s ECINet portal on September 23, though it was not present earlier, reported The Indian Express. The new addition requires any applicant using Form 6 (for registration of new voters), Form 7 (for deletion or objection to inclusion of names in existing rolls), to now provide an e-sign.An applicant must ensure that the name on the voter card that is being used for the application is the same as the one on their Aadhaar as well as the phone number that is being provided is the same that it has been used to link their Aadhaar. After filing out the form, the applicant is taken to an external e-sign portal hosted by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Here the applicant is required to enter their Aadhaar number and then generate an “Aadhaar OTP”, where the OTP is sent on the phone number linked with that Aadhaar number.The new feature comes days after Gandhi had alleged in a press conference on September 18 that about 6,018 votes in Karnataka’s Aland constituency were deleted by impersonating voters, using mobile numbers outside the state, through a software to systematically target booths where the Congress was winning. Gandhi said that a software was used to use those voters who were numbered serial number 1 in their booths, to file applications for deletions.“So someone ran an automated programme that ensured the first voter of the booth was the applicant. That same person got cellphones from outside the state and used them to file their applications. And we are pretty certain that this was done in a centralised manner, and it was done at scale. This was not done at a worker level. This was done at a call centre level,” Gandhi had said.The Election Commission after terming his allegations as “incorrect and baseless” a day later, provided curious thrust to his allegations. While the poll body had denied that it was stalling the probe in Karnataka, it said FIRs were registered in both Aland and Rajura following “suspicions of the genuineness of large numbers” of deletion and addition applications respectively.