SIR debate needs evidence before a ‘verdict’ upon Election Commission of India

SC seeks replies but declines immediate suspension of Gyanesh Kumar as Bengal voter appeals become a national flashpoint

The Supreme Court’s refusal on Monday to immediately suspend Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar provides an essential starting point for the national debate over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The Court sought responses to allegations of unilateral decision-making and indicated that the records must be examined before adverse orders are passed. That is neither an exoneration nor a finding of guilt. It is the process through which responsibility must be established.

The Indian Express investigation into objections recorded by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi has raised questions that deserve answers. Its account of at least 14 objections over ten months includes voter registration forms, software access, administrative oversight and appeals in West Bengal. But the newspaper’s portrayal of an unprecedented institutional rupture needs to be considered alongside the court record and the Commission’s formal response. The reported objections do not, by themselves, establish the legality or illegality of every disputed action.

For the public, three issues must be examined separately: whether electoral rolls require lawful revision; whether particular procedures protected eligible voters; and whether officials obtained the approvals required for their decisions. Evidence of a defect in one procedure cannot, without further examination, settle every allegation about the national exercise.

Electoral law provides for correcting entries and removing names where a person has died, ceased to be ordinarily resident in the constituency or is otherwise ineligible. It also requires verification and, for specified proposed changes and deletions, a reasonable opportunity to be heard. Maintaining an accurate roll and protecting an eligible citizen’s vote are obligations that must operate together. Headline deletion totals alone cannot establish either how many citizens were wrongly excluded or how many entries were fraudulent.

West Bengal illustrates why the sequence matters. In February, the Supreme Court assigned disputed voter claims to judicial officers following conflict between the state administration and election authorities. The Chief Electoral Officer’s official note of 28 February recorded 60,06,675 cases under adjudication and said names approved by judicial officers would enter supplementary lists. Approval therefore often concerned the eligibility of an existing elector whose record had been questioned, rather than a new registration.

On 10 March, the Court ordered appellate tribunals. The ECI subsequently constituted 19 tribunals, with former High Court judges, to consider challenges involving both inclusion and exclusion. An appeal against a judicial officer’s approval was therefore a remedy within the court-created framework. Describing every such appeal as an inherently unlawful attempt to remove voters would misrepresent that framework.

The Court’s 13 April order makes the position especially clear. It recorded over 34 lakh appeals already filed, including objections to voter inclusions. It required the tribunals to examine the full records and give parties a fair opportunity to be heard. A pending appeal did not automatically restore an excluded voter, and a pending objection did not by itself justify denying the vote to someone included. The existence of appeals against inclusion was thus known to the Court months before the September controversy.

The later numbers also require care. According to reporting on the ECI’s September submission, 22,21,118 appeals sought restoration of excluded voters, while 16,10,311 challenged inclusion. These are different categories of litigation. The latter figure cannot simply be presented as the number of people finally removed through those appeals, still less as a proven count of illegal voters.

There is, however, a separate question about authority. Sandhu reportedly asked in August who had authorised and filed appeals on the Commission’s behalf. In an interview published on 1 October, retired Justice Indrajit Chatterjee identified West Bengal’s Additional Chief Electoral Officer as the filer of approximately 2.54 lakh inclusion-challenging appeals before his Murshidabad tribunal. That account identifies the reported filer for those proceedings; it does not identify who approved the filings or establish responsibility for every appeal statewide.

The ECI’s 26 September statement did not specifically resolve that authorisation question, as The New Indian Express subsequently reported. The appropriate demand is publication of the relevant approval or delegation, the grounds for the appeals and their outcomes. Naming Gyanesh Kumar as the personal author of every filing without that evidence would go beyond what has been established. Equally, the existence of a lawful appeal mechanism cannot excuse an unauthorised or unsupported filing.

The Commission’s response also deserves accurate treatment. Its 26 September statement, published by the Press Information Bureau and carrying full Commission approval, said the nationwide SIR order and subsequent rollout schedules had been approved unanimously. It announced an ECINET review involving an independent IIT or IIIT expert, advance circulation of meeting agendas and issuance of minutes. It also directed doorstep collection of documents for specified notice recipients and a special enrolment drive for people left out.

These are relevant institutional responses. They should be measured by implementation, while the earlier contested decisions are examined on their own records. Fourteen reported objections cannot be converted automatically into fourteen established violations. Nor does unanimous approval of a broad programme answer every question about an individual software change or instruction. The decisive documents are the proposal, recorded views, approval and implementation trail for each disputed action.

The requirement of collective decision-making is central. Section 18 of the 2023 law governing the Commission provides for unanimity as far as possible and majority decisions where opinions differ. Internal disagreement is therefore contemplated by law. If a binding majority position was bypassed, that is a substantive issue; identifying it requires examination of the actual decision record.

A credible defence of the institution must also acknowledge adverse developments. On Monday, Chief Justice Surya Kant reportedly clarified that the Supreme Court had not approved the modified Form 6 and wanted to examine who changed it. This directly qualifies the ECI’s earlier claim of judicial approval. The appeal framework in Bengal cannot be used to settle the separate dispute about the registration form.

The Indian Express investigation itself acknowledged that there was no evidence of SIR’s role in the West Bengal election outcome. That qualification deserves as much attention as its account of internal objections. Allegations about electoral administration, findings about a particular voter and conclusions about who won an election require different evidence. Combining them into a single claim of a stolen mandate obscures what must actually be proved.

Citizens need accessible remedies while these questions are examined. They should verify their current entry in the official electoral roll, preserve application and appeal acknowledgements, and seek the reasons and applicable remedy if their name is missing. The Commission should publish clear progress figures distinguishing appeals seeking restoration from appeals challenging inclusion. Resolution times and implementation of tribunal orders matter directly to people waiting to exercise their franchise.

The Earth News supports rigorous scrutiny of electoral administration and rejects premature conclusions about personal guilt. The public deserves a debate anchored in the court orders, approval records and actual voter outcomes. Demands for resignation are political positions; the evidence needed to establish official misconduct must still be produced and tested. The immediate task is to obtain those records, correct proven errors and ensure that every eligible citizen has an effective route to registration.