A lot has been written about how the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is excluding millions of voters from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal to Tamil Nadu. Yet, this form of voter exclusion is not new and is not recent with its origins to voter deletions in Telangana. The idea of cleaning up electoral rolls with digitisation and de-duplication using Aadhaar is an important exercise that has eventually led to the creation of the Electoral Registration Officer Network (ERO-NET). The way ERO-NET is designed is an important aspect why large scale deletions of voter rolls are occurring beyond the Election Commission’s arbitrary implementation of this process.To understand ERO-NET, one needs to look into the role of EROs in the process of making electoral rolls. The electoral registration officer is the sole authority responsible for maintenance of electoral rolls. When it comes to the electoral roll, they can add or remove anyone after due process is followed under the Representation of People’s Act, 1951. The ERO is the final authority on this matter – they need not be directed by the chief electoral officer or the chief election commissioner. The making of electoral rolls is designed to be a community exercise that has to be transparent, allowing anyone to inspect, audit electoral rolls, file requests for additions of voters, removal of voters who are dead, shifted away from the constituency. This was always a decentralised exercise, with the ERO only responsible for his constituency. However, modern trends of migration to cities led to most people being away from their constituency, leading to multiple electoral names across constituencies and incorrect electoral rolls. Thus, any process to correct the electoral roll of one constituency will require access to the electoral rolls of another constituency and entire state and country, where a potential duplicate might exist. Such a de-duplication exercise should then be carried through Aadhaar-voter card linking is what was proposed by the Election Commission of India and accepted with the amendments made to Representation of People’s Act, 1951. There is no guarantee that linking Aadhaar and voter card will address this issue, unless it is mandatorily carried out for every voter, which is not allowed under the judgment made in the Puttaswamy vs Union of India, thus limiting such possibilities. This is a demand that is also being made by the Congress to fix issues of fake voters in the electoral rolls, a demand that led to the SIR of electoral rolls. This brings us back to the question: how should voter rolls be cleaned? In an ideal democracy, the algorithm or architecture or the mathematical model or process that is adopted to maintain electoral rolls needs to be in public domain and there has to be verifiability if this is being followed in the electoral process. The algorithm that drives the SIR process is unknown. Had it been in the public domain, we could perhaps understand why so many million people are being excluded from electoral rolls. Is it an error with strict comparison of names, or just a bad model that is not recognising scanned pages of electoral rolls? The SIR algorithm, at the end, is a mathematical process being enforced through a physical engine of computers, networks and election officials.Yet, one can talk about the properties of mathematical methods and from information that is publicly available. To understand this further, let’s look at the Tata Consultancy Services’ 2024-2025 annual report, in which it has claimed to be behind the ERO-Net 2.0 suit of applications for the election commission. The ERO-NET 2.0 is a system that consists of a network of inter-connected computers/servers that links EROs with applications like the BLO app built on top of it. It is mathematically modeled, applying theories in cybernetics, systems thinking and complexity theory, as shared by the engineers at the TCS Systems Engineering and Cybernetics Centre, Hyderabad, in a 1993 paper. While discussing the various methodologies to be adopted, they Sri Aurobindo and Brahma Sutras. The early cyberneticians and systems thinkers in India often believed that certain principles of cybernetics and systems thinking had been realised in Hinduism.While discussing different advantages and challenges involved in the mathematical modelling of complex systems, the paper concludes how a bottom-up approach of mathematical modelling is better for an organisation level, while at societal scale a top-down approach would be better. Assuming that TCS has applied some of their earlier learnings while designing the ERO-NET, it appears to be the top down mathematical modelling. While the traditional process of electoral roll making was highly decentralised, what we have now is a highly centralised model where the election commission decides who needs to be verified under SIR.Moreover, the pre-filled voter deletion forms that are being generated using ERO-NET are being forced down on society as a top-down approach, unlike a non-digital scenario, where the voter deletion forms would have been filed more locally within a constituency. This is contrary to the de-centralised system that was imagined constitutionally for the making of electoral rolls. The centralisation of electoral roll management with the creation of ERO-NET has taken away the autonomy of the EROs and the general public at large. The outcome is visible in the deletions across states without any constitutional recourse as the constitutional body weaponises its authority.The Election Commission of India is the sole responsible authority when it comes to electoral matters in India, but its independence and capacity influence India’s electoral outcomes. Meanwhile, TCS can claim to be a mere private enterprise tasked with the instructions of its client – the election commission. Unfortunately, India’s information technology industry has actually pushed this model onto society with its proposals of imagining India without fraud, while they commit a fraud on the constitution.Srinivas Kodali is a hacktivist based in Hyderabad.