Muslims disproportionately flagged in Delhi SIR
An analysis of Delhi's draft electoral rolls reveals that the Election Commission's software disproportionately flags Muslim voters for 'logical discrepancies'. The data suggests that Muslim electors are 60% more likely to be marked for verification than non-Muslims.
Why it matters
This highlights potential algorithmic bias in administrative processes that could impact the democratic rights of minority communities.
An analysis of Delhi’s draft electoral rolls released as part of the special intensive revision (SIR) process showed that the software-driven check for “logical discrepancies” in their records is flagging a disproportionately higher number of Muslims.
Muslims, who form 13.6% of electors on Delhi’s draft roll, made up 20.3% of those flagged for “logical discrepancies”, and 30% of those flagged under five reasons indicative of family size. Who got flagged was decided not by the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), the statutory custodians of the rolls, but by the Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) centralised ERONET software.
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