Discuss the challenges that algorithmic or software-driven administrative decisions pose to the principles of natural justice, with reference to electoral roll management.

Natural justice requires that a person is heard before an adverse decision (audi alteram partem) and is given reasons for it. In October 2026, the Bombay High Court (Goa Bench) held that a draft electoral roll cannot be the basis for deleting names without a hearing. It also flagged automated deletions through ECI's ERONET software [1]. The case shows that software can remove these safeguards without anyone noticing.

Challenges to natural justice

• No hearing by design: a family in Santa Cruz (Goa) filed Form 8 to change their address. ERONET could not find their EPIC and offered officials only a "reject" option, so six voters were deleted without notice [1]. This conflicts with Lal Babu Hussein (1995), which bars deletion without notice and a hearing [3].
• Statutory procedure bypassed: the RP Act, 1950 requires that the person concerned be heard before an entry is deleted [2]. In this case, an address-change request worked as a deletion.
• Burden of proof reversed: the software treats a data mismatch as proof of ineligibility. Lal Babu Hussein placed the burden on the objector or the officer, not on the elector [3].
• No reasons given: a voter cannot see why the system rejected them, so they cannot challenge the decision properly.
• Unequal exclusion: migrants, tenants and the urban poor have weaker records, so mismatches hit them hardest. This undermines Articles 325–326 (one general roll and adult suffrage) [4].
• Unclear responsibility and permanent loss: officials defer to the software instead of the statutory officer (ERO) deciding. A wrongly deleted name cannot be fixed on polling day, so that vote is lost.

Technology is not the problem in itself

• Software helps find duplicate and dead voters, which serves the ECI's Article 324 duty to keep clean rolls [4]. The problem is a design that sends every mismatch straight to rejection.

Way forward

• Replace "reject" with "refer to ERO", so a human decides every case.
• Require written notice and time to reply before the final roll is published.
• Audit deletion logic independently, and publish deletion lists with reasons.
• Let BLOs collect proof on the spot.

Software can make roll management more efficient, but only humans can make it fair. As the High Court stressed, the ECI's core mandate is to keep as many eligible voters as possible on the roll [1]. Building hearings and reasons into the software would protect both clean rolls and the constitutional promise of universal adult franchise.