Hyderabad/New Delhi: In a clear breach of the model code of conduct (MCC), political party agents have been caught distributing voter slips with candidate photos and party symbols on several occasions during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. But there is something that distinguishes this MCC violation from the rest – a digital ecosystem that enables voter profiling and micro-targeting through ‘booth management applications’.
The Wire found a network of data brokers and several booth management mobile apps that supply voter data to political parties under the garb of providing these unofficial voter slips. According to data accessed by The Wire, at least 4,000 candidates have used these apps over the last few years for local corporations, state assembly and the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
The pervasive use of such voter slips, across political parties, is a direct result of an increase in the private firms supplying voter data and printing services to political candidates.
While the Election Commission has no specific guidelines regarding the use of such apps, sporadic action has been taken against individuals selling ‘voter data management softwares’.
On the question of voter surveys, the commission has limited its instruction to parties to not register voters for post-election beneficiary-oriented schemes under the guise of surveys. While it acknowledged that candidates are using apps to collect voter data, the EC did not adequately address the issue of privacy and usage of this personal data in elections.
Where the EC fails, data brokers come in
Pre-printed voter slips used for campaigning. Photo: Special arrangement
The Election Commission tasks booth level officials (BLOs) with distributing voter slips in the presence of booth level agents or panna pramukhs of political parties.
However, BLOs often ignore this task and it is actually the agents of political parties who end up distributing unofficial voter slips during the 48-hour silence period before elections. These voter slips with candidate photos and party symbols being taken inside polling booths are considered an MCC violation.
Two types of unofficial voter slips were observed during elections: one printed ‘instantly’ via booth management apps using thermal printers near or at the polling station; and the other pre-printed in bulk. Both kinds carried candidate photos and party slogans. Both kinds also violate the MCC.
Voter slips printed through booth management apps allow booth agents to track who has voted and who hasn’t, while the pre-printed slips are only used to promote the candidate.
Voter slips printed using thermal printers by AIMIM in Telangana Assembly Elections 2023. Photo: Special arrangement.
‘Readily available at nominal rates’
A cursory search for voter slip printers on ‘Indiamart’, an e-commerce platform, will reveal dozens of companies willing to supply these services to any political party. Elections in India, often dubbed as one of the most expensive in the world, are marked by large amounts of money changing hands and every business trying to make political candidates purchase their services to woo voters.
A senior salesperson for one such app, named RajMarga, told us that the cost of these election management softwares can be accommodated in the parties’ budget for the large-scale printing of the voter list. “The cost varies election to election, it can range between Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. But the rates are nominal. The app can be bought in the costing of getting the voter list printed. It is a very small part of the different services being used in the election process,” he said on the condition of anonymity.
He also said that these applications have an option to ‘turn off’ printing of party and candidate photos on the voter slips. “The app has an option to print voter slips and it also has settings where you can choose to remove or keep the party/candidate details. Two days before the election in a constituency, the app’s timer can be modified and it’ll not print voting slips with party symbols [beyond a specific time].”
How these apps help parties profile voters
Printing voter slips is not the only function of these apps. A variety of services are offered by the companies involved in this trade.
The app allows booth level agents of political parties to search people by their phone numbers, names, locality and even their door number of their house to help identify all members of a family. The app also allows party agents or consultants hired by the candidates to conduct surveys on behalf of the candidate.
The questions in these surveys can range from the “voter’s profession, their demands [from the government], their opinion on government schemes and sometimes even their caste”, Bharat Kumar Boddu, a salesman who sold these apps to BJP candidates in Telangana told us.
“The app doesn’t have any data, other than voter details from the EC’s website, beforehand. The rest we collect through surveys for our clients. Sometimes people ask us on which party’s behest we have come to ask questions and if they are supporters of a different party then they don’t participate in our survey and give us any information. We don’t reveal which party we have come from on our own, but they ask on their own,” Boddu added.
To print voter slips at scale, parties need machine readable voter data of everyone in the constituency. However, the EC doesn’t provide electoral rolls in a machine readable format, making access to this data challenging for parties. These data brokers solve this problem. Every political party that is printing these voter slips is thus procuring information from one data broker or another.
The availability of voter data coupled with these mobile applications is allowing political parties and candidates to conduct large-scale profiling of voters using booth management apps. The BJP’s Saral app is a prime example of booth level mobile applications which are used by BJP’s panna pramukhs to profile voters.
Screengrabs from different booth management apps. Photo: Srinivas Kodali/The Wire
These applications help parties identify favourable voters, and those who may vote for the opposition, allowing them to target voters in different ways. Parties may attempt to bribe the voters or try to ensure that some of them do not cast their vote.
By aiding the ability of parties to profile voters, these apps are another threat to the integrity of the electoral process that is already in shambles in wake of a defanged EC and routine MCC violations going unchecked.
Parties were also seen using the app to reach out to their voter base, asking them to turn up to vote, to ensure that their candidate margins are high. The Wire analysed the source code of the app and found that it can be used for sending WhatsApp messages. Booth management is key to political parties’ success and these apps help them map every voter at the booth level.
The question of voter data privacy
These mobile applications are not widely available on the Google and Apple app stores and are distributed to political party agents offline or through WhatsApp groups. A number of these applications were found on third party websites which store and distribute android application package (APK) files. The Wire was able to procure some of these booth mobile applications that were used in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. We reverse engineered the application to investigate the kind of data being shared with booth agents of political candidates.
The Wire found that the mobile application was accessing an excel file with voter information that contained mobile numbers and unique ID’s for households to recognise the entire family. Political parties are allowed to use voter information for the purpose of campaigning, but the EC does not share voters’ phone numbers with candidates. Parties, therefore, resort to buying this data from data brokers instead.
The mobile numbers available on these apps allow booth level polling agents to promote the candidate on messaging platforms like WhatsApp. The same companies that provide booth management apps also provide WhatsApp marketing and social media management services. Those who are shocked to see political messages on WhatsApp, wondering how political parties got access to their numbers, can hold these data brokers responsible for that.
On questions related to data security and privacy of voters, the RajMarga sales person claimed,“The data is saved on servers and it is protected. We are small time operators, the big fish like WhatsApp and Facebook are the ones misusing data and causing leaks. We don’t leak any data.”
Pointing to the government and the EC’s inability to undertake the task of voter slip distribution, he claimed, the EC “is only able to distribute 30% of voter slips and the rest has to be done by political parties themselves”.
“The government should instead encourage such apps that help the electoral process. Not everyone uses the internet, not everyone is educated, how will they find out where they have to go to vote? You are educated so you will be able to find your booth online, but not everyone can,” he said.
Srinivas Kodali is a researcher on digitisation and a hacktivist.
This is part 1 of The Wire’s investigation into booth management apps used during elections. The second part looks at the network of companies behind these apps. Read it here.