India’s democratic edifice rests on the constitutional independence and procedural transparency of the Election Commission of India. Recent revelations from an investigative report published by The Indian Express on 23 September 2026 have laid bare deep institutional fractures, arbitrary decision-making under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and systemic flaws in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. These disclosures, corroborated by internal notes, RTI responses and data placed before the Supreme Court, raise fundamental questions about whether the machinery of free and fair elections continues to operate with the integrity the Constitution demands.
The Unprecedented Scale of the Special Intensive Revision
The Special Intensive Revision, launched in Bihar in June 2025 and subsequently extended across the country, was presented as a long-overdue purification of electoral rolls that had not undergone intensive scrutiny for nearly two decades. Official figures show that more than 13 crore names were struck off draft electoral rolls across 30 States and Union Territories. In some regions, the reduction approached 30 per cent of the existing electorate. While the Commission maintains that the exercise removed deceased, shifted, duplicate and ineligible entries, the sheer magnitude and the manner of its execution have fuelled widespread concern.
Transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj’s RTI applications revealed a striking absence of institutional documentation. The Election Commission stated that it possessed no files, minutes or notings recording the definitive decision to initiate the nationwide SIR. The exercise was attributed to an “independent appraisal,” yet no record of that appraisal exists in the Commission’s possession. When asked for the guidelines of the comparable 2003 revision in Bihar, the Commission simply furnished its own 2025 order. For a constitutional body charged with safeguarding the franchise, the absence of a documented, traceable decision-making trail is not a bureaucratic oversight; it is a fundamental breach of accountability.
Unauthorised Alterations and the Form 6 Controversy
One of the most serious charges concerns Form 6, the statutory application for inclusion of new electors. Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi recorded in writing that a new mandatory question had been inserted on the ECINet portal asking applicants whether they, their parents or grandparents appeared in the electoral roll of the previous intensive revision. Both Commissioners had earlier advised that Form 6, prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, could not be altered without a formal amendment of the Rules. Sandhu later described the change as “unauthorised and illegal” and demanded its immediate removal. The question nevertheless remained on the form for months.
This unilateral modification effectively shifted the burden of proof onto citizens in a manner not contemplated by statute. It transformed a routine registration process into an exercise that many voters, particularly first-time electors and those from historically marginalised communities, found onerous and exclusionary. When statutory forms can be rewritten by administrative fiat, the rule of law yields to executive convenience.
West Bengal: 16 Lakh Deletion Appeals from Unknown Sources
Nowhere were the consequences of opacity more stark than in West Bengal. After the draft rolls were published, judicial officers placed roughly 60 lakh electors under adjudication for “logical discrepancies.” Of these, approximately 27 lakh names were ultimately deleted. Data submitted by the Election Commission to the Supreme Court showed that of 38.31 lakh appeals pending before appellate tribunals, 22.21 lakh were filed by deleted voters seeking restoration of their names. A further 16.10 lakh appeals, however, sought the deletion of voters whom judicial officers had already found eligible.
Who authorised these 16.10 lakh deletion petitions? Neither Election Commissioner Sandhu nor Joshi, nor the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, knew the answer. Sandhu formally asked the question in writing and received no satisfactory reply. The Commission has not disclosed the identity of the filers. In a process designed to protect the franchise, the appearance of mass objections filed by unidentified parties against already-verified electors raises the spectre of institutional capture of the revision machinery itself.
Decisions already rendered by the tribunals offer a sobering counterpoint: over 90 per cent of decided appeals against deletion have resulted in restoration of the electors. The pattern suggests that large numbers of genuine voters were removed first and required to fight their way back onto the rolls—an inversion of the principle that the franchise is a fundamental right, not a privilege to be reclaimed.
Collegiality Abandoned: Fourteen Objections, Four Months of Silence
The Indian Express investigation documented that Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi recorded formal objections on at least fourteen occasions between October 2025 and August 2026. Several objections were filed on the same day. The concerns spanned the unauthorised change to Form 6, the centralisation of the electoral-roll database under the Commission’s IT division in Delhi (cutting local Electoral Registration Officers out of operational control), the filing of appeals in West Bengal, and the issuance of work-allocation orders without the Commission’s approval.
For four consecutive months—from May to August 2026—the full three-member Commission did not meet even once. Only after the two Commissioners wrote separately to the Cabinet Secretary did a meeting finally take place on 9 September. The law requires the Commission’s business to be transacted, as far as possible, unanimously or by majority. When two of three equal Commissioners are systematically kept in the dark and their recorded dissent is disregarded, the body ceases to function as a collegial constitutional institution and begins to resemble a single-member executive.
Restoring the Constitutional Mandate
The Election Commission’s response—that all orders carry full legal sanction and that internal notes form part of normal deliberative process—fails to address the core issue. Deliberation that is ignored is not deliberation. Decisions taken without the knowledge of a majority of the Commission are not the decisions of the Commission. The centralisation of critical software systems, the alteration of statutory forms without legal amendment, and the filing of mass deletion appeals by unidentified actors collectively erode the institutional legitimacy on which electoral outcomes depend.
Democracy does not survive on the mere holding of elections. It survives on the unyielding public confidence that the machinery overseeing those elections operates with verifiable procedure, documented consensus and absolute transparency. The Special Intensive Revision, whatever its stated intentions, has been conducted in a manner that has deleted tens of millions of names from draft rolls, altered the rules of voter registration without legislative authority, and allowed 16 lakh deletion petitions in West Bengal to proceed without accountability. The recorded objections of two Election Commissioners, left unanswered for months, stand as an internal indictment of the process.
The path forward is clear. Every file, every appraisal, every note of dissent and every authorisation related to the SIR must be placed in the public domain. The Supreme Court, already seized of related matters, must insist on full disclosure and institutional reform. Only radical transparency can begin to restore the trust that has been so severely damaged. Without it, the shadow over the ballot will lengthen, and the foundational claim of Indian democracy—that every eligible citizen’s vote counts equally—will remain under a cloud of legitimate doubt.
~Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai….
The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.
