The Election Commission of India (ECI) shared voter data, including photographs, with the Telangana state government, which, under the then Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi), allegedly engaged private firms to work with this data, according to a Reporters’ Collective investigation.
According to the report, in November 2019, Telangana introduced the Pensioner Live Verification System to verify the demographic details and photographs of pension recipients, contracting private companies to develop, modify, and test the software, marking the first known instance of the ECI sharing its voter database with a state government for a project involving private firms.
It’s important to note that the voter roll, a centralised database overseen by the ECI, can only be accessed with its permission.
An RTI filed by privacy activist S.Q. Masood with Telangana’s Information and Technology Department revealed that in 2019, Hyderabad-based Posidex Technologies Private Limited was involved in developing the Pensioner Live Verification System.
Documents shared in response included an invoice from Posidex outlining work on several state government software projects, including the pension verification system, which confirms whether a citizen is alive to continue receiving a pension.
The invoice noted that Posidex had created “four web services under this module” and integrated them with T-App, the Election Department’s EPIC data (voter rolls maintained by the ECI), and the Pension Department database.
T-App, the Telangana government’s application, was used to verify pensioners’ identities in real time. The process was later renamed Real-Time Data Authentication (RTDAI), requiring beneficiaries to upload selfies as both proof of identity and proof of life.
G.T. Venkateshwar Rao, Posidex’s managing director and a former Indian Revenue Service officer, told Reporters’ Collective that “the project is designed and owned by the Government of Telangana. All datasets used for the application and approvals for use are decided by the Government of Telangana. The application is hosted by the Government in its data center. We have no data access.”
In contrast, Venkat Reddy, co-founder and CEO of Posidex, claimed that “to the extent I am aware, the application does not use ECI data.” He added that the app was owned by the Telangana government and not built by Posidex, but by another company, saying, “We only provided a small component to simplify authentication, and it does not interact with any database.”
However, the report observed that these statements are contradicted by Posidex’s own invoice, which explicitly mentions the integration of Amazon Web Services (AWS) into the state government’s app to compare live photos uploaded by pensioners with their voter ID photos, noting, “Integration done with AWS to compare live photo with EPIC card photo.”
Further contradictions appear in a 2023 Telangana government presentation, which detailed how the Real-Time Data Authentication Initiative (RTDAI), originally created for pension verification, was later expanded to other programs. In 2020, RTDAI was piloted during municipal elections at ten polling booths to conduct facial authentication of voters, using a database containing photographic and demographic details from ECI voter IDs.
That same year, the system was also extended to the Degree Online Services, Telangana (DOST) portal, where student identities were verified through facial recognition linked to EPIC ID data.
On August 28, 2025, privacy activist Srinivas Kodali submitted a complaint to Telangana’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), alleging the unlawful sharing and misuse of electoral roll photographs and names by the state government for its facial recognition applications under the Real-Time Data Authentication Initiative (RTDAI). He pointed out that RTDAI has evolved into a general-purpose tool now used by the Departments of Transport, Education, and for other state functions.
Kodali’s complaint raises questions about when the Election Commission of India (ECI) first granted Telangana access to the voter database and whether such access continues.
He suggested that the data sharing likely began with the ECI’s 2015 initiative to link EPIC IDs with Aadhaar. Supporting his claim, a letter dated April 25, 2018, from Telangana’s CEO to the Deputy Election Commissioner confirmed that the “CEO Office supplied/shared the Electoral Roll/EPIC database with the SRDH application.”
The State Resident Data Hub (SRDH) is a state-level portal storing demographic details such as names, ages, genders, photographs, and addresses.
According to Kodali, this transfer gave the Telangana government access to demographic and facial data originally collected for electoral purposes, which is now being repurposed for various administrative functions under T-App Folio, including the Pensioner Live Verification System.
The Reporters’ Collective reviewed the 2018 letter, confirming Telangana’s CEO acknowledged sharing EPIC data with SRDH.
In his complaint, Kodali demanded an audit by Telangana’s CEO and the immediate removal of all EPIC photographs from external agencies outside the CEO’s office.
He argued that “the Election Commission of India ignored the Supreme Court’s 2015 judgment on Aadhaar-voter ID linking, resulting in voter data being shared with the Telangana government. The actions of Telangana’s CEO have enabled the misuse of electoral photographs.”
Reacting to the revelations, TMC MP Mahua Moitra said, “The Election Commission and Gyanesh Kumar have been caught lying again, they refuse to share booth video recordings and CCTV footage citing privacy, yet the entire Telangana ECI database was handed over to Hyderabad-based private firm Posidex Technologies.”
The Election Commission of India (ECI) is already under intense scrutiny, with opposition leaders, led by Rahul Gandhi, accusing it of colluding with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to manipulate general elections with “vote theft,” and voter deletions.
The controversial Bihar Special Intensive Revision, which many allege is discriminatory and could lead to large-scale disenfranchisement, has also become a major source of criticism.
