Unprecedented Turmoil at the Election Commission: Majority Commissioners Allege Centralised Control and Policy Breaches Over Massive Roll Deletion Drive

KalimNews, Sept 25, 2026, New Delhi : An unprecedented internal rift has emerged at the highest level of India’s constitutional poll watchdog, casting a significant shadow over the administration of the country’s electoral rolls. Investigations based on extensive official communications revealed by The Indian Express show that two out of the three members of the Election Commission of India (ECI)—Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi—formally recorded strong dissents on at least 14 separate occasions over a 10-month span. Their objections directly targeted unilateral decisions taken without panel approval, the unnotified restructuring of statutory voter registration rules, and an aggressive centralization of software architecture that systematically stripped ground-level field officers of their statutory authority.

The escalating dispute unfolded concurrently with the ECI's Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a cleanup operation launched in Bihar in June 2025 and subsequently extended across 30 States and Union Territories. While pitched as a standard verification drive, the exercise resulted in the striking of over 13 crore names from draft rolls nationwide. Rather than operating by consensus, as mandated by Section 18 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, the decision-making pipeline reportedly sidestepped the two Commissioners. This led both members to warn on official files that core administrative directives issued in the Commission’s name under Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar were fundamentally unauthorized and contrary to established law.

A central point of contention involves the unilateral modification of Form 6, the statutory application every adult citizen must submit to enrol as a voter. In mid-2025, the digital registration portal introduced a mandatory prerequisite compelling new applicants to declare whether they or their direct ascendants appeared on voter lists from the previous SIR conducted decades earlier. Both Joshi and Sandhu had recorded warnings in May 2025 stating that statutory application formats prescribed by the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 cannot be altered through internal administrative circulars, but only through formal legislative amendments notified by the Union government—mirroring the statutory process used in 2022 when provisions were introduced regarding voluntary Aadhaar linkage. Despite their formal non-concurrence, the questionnaire remained active online, prompting Sandhu to write on August 13 that the unauthorized hurdle must be immediately withdrawn to prevent arbitrary harassment of young, first-time voters.

The push toward centralized digital management through platforms like ERONet and its umbrella successor, ECINet, has also drawn sustained resistance from within the panel. For decades, the ECI’s primary defence against allegations of roll-tampering has rested on a decentralized architecture: independent, statutory field magistrates known as Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) maintain exclusive, legally protected jurisdiction over who enters or leaves their local register. Over the past year, both Commissioners repeatedly warned that central technical teams in New Delhi, operating under the Directorate General of Information Technology, had systematically restricted the permissions of these statutory ground officers, effectively preventing local administrations from modifying or restoring records on the ground.

This software rigidity led directly to the disenfranchisement of valid electors. In Goa, following Supreme Court directives to verify flagged discrepancies, local EROs formally held hearings, examined original documentation, and cleared 97 eligible citizens for inclusion on the final register. However, because central authorities in New Delhi failed to deploy the necessary technical override functions within the software, local administrators remained completely locked out, leaving all 97 eligible citizens off the final published list. Similar disputes arose in West Bengal, where tribunals headed by retired High Court judges were constituted to address millions of deletions. When the Commission moved to appeal cases where judicial officers had ordered voter restorations, Sandhu noted on record that neither he, nor Joshi, nor the state's Chief Electoral Officer had been appraised of who authorized the litigation or on what legal standing.

The organizational friction reached a boiling point in late July 2026. Following an administrative reshuffle that stripped senior oversight from the IT directorate without full Commission consultation, both Commissioners took the extraordinary step of writing directly to the Cabinet Secretary of India to report the breakdown in lawful procedure, before jointly issuing orders to formally overturn the unilateral postings. A subsequent full-bench meeting on September 9 failed to resolve the administrative stalemate, with the Commission maintaining complete silence on questionnaires seeking clarity on internal governance.

Following these disclosures, parliamentary opposition leaders announced preparations on Thursday to submit formal notices of motion in both Houses seeking the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Under Article 324(5) of the Constitution and Section 11(2) of the 2023 Act, a Chief Election Commissioner holds constitutional protections equivalent to a Supreme Court judge, requiring an admission backed by at least 100 members in the Lok Sabha or 50 in the Rajya Sabha, followed by an independent committee inquiry into proved misbehavior or incapacity and a two-thirds majority vote in both Houses of Parliament. The mounting dispute underscores profound institutional questions surrounding regulatory checks and balances, the integrity of centralized electoral tech, and the preservation of universal adult suffrage.