Huge Row After Report Flags 2 Election Commissioners Objected To Poll Panel Steps

Leaders of Opposition parties have launched a massive offensive against the Election Commission of India (ECI) after a report by the Indian Express newspaper said two election commissioners "objected on record" several decisions taken by the poll body allegedly without their knowledge.

However, people with direct knowledge of the matter told NDTV no election commissioner gave any dissent. They had only made some observations which the poll body looked into, sources said.

All decisions taken by the ECI have the signatures of the three officers - Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, people familiar with the matter said.

The ECI rules have a provision of majority decision prevailing if two out of the three election commissioners agree on a matter, sources said.

"All decisions of the Election Commission of India, including SIR, have been unanimous and with the approval of both the election commissioners and the chief election commissioner," an official familiar with the matter said.

The report said Sandhu and Joshi had raised formal objections at least 14 times over 10 months, including concerns about changes to Form 6 and the centralisation of electoral roll data. According to the report, the two election commissioners had also objected to changes in Form 6, calling them "illegal" and "unauthorised" and arguing that the statutory form could not be altered without amendments to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. Sandhu subsequently recorded that the changes had not been removed despite the objections, the report said.

This issue has opened a new and much more volatile front in the long battle between the Opposition and the ruling BJP over the ECI's voter roll cleanup exercise, Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which the Opposition alleged was a sophisticated process to exclude voters for the BJP's gain.

Shiv Sena (UT) leader Sanjay Raut, Congress's Manish Tewari, Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav and DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai led the charge this morning after the report came out.

"On behalf of BJP, he is doing the biggest crime ever a chief election commissioner can do to democracy. The BJP has given him immunity, but he doesn't know his name would be written in bold, black letters in history. No free and fair election is possible as long as this man is sitting on this chair if the reported allegations are true," Raut told NDTV, referring to the chief election commissioner.

"The way the BJP won elections in Maharashtra, West Bengal and other states itself raises questions," he said.

Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien in a post on X recalled the bid by over 60 MPs in the Rajya Sabha asking the Chairman to move a motion for removing Gyanesh Kumar.

"After the big news break today that the two election commissioners objected to many of CEC's actions, it's time to bring out the RS motion today. Impeach CEC to save democracy," he said.

Manish Tewari in a post on X called for impeachment of the CEC. "This is perhaps a fit case for seriously considering an impeachment proceeding but more importantly the fundamental question is as to how will the credibility of the Election Commission be ever resurrected?" he wrote, sharing the report with the headline '14 Times in 10 Months, Two Election Commissioners Objected On Record To Poll Panel Steps'.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in a post on X took a swipe at the ECI, calling it a "puppet". "For some people to betray democracy by becoming puppets of those in power is a grave constitutional crime. This is nothing less than a conspiracy to wipe out democracy," he said.

The DMK's national spokesperson told NDTV the ECI has made a mockery of the SIR exercise. "It has become a joke now because everywhere people are questioning because their names are being deleted. Their names are in the draft roll, but they're still being called to question why their names are not there in 2002," Annadurai said.

In the national capital, over 97 lakh names figure in the draft electoral roll published on August 31, while 33.13 lakh electors have been identified for notices over discrepancies in their enumeration forms. A large number of the cases are about details not matched with the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR in 2002.

Among those whose names figured in the notice list are External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, former deputy prime minister LK Advani, former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar and Election Commissioner SS Sandhu. The notices have cited different discrepancies, including cases where voters could not be mapped to the previous SIR roll.