Inside The Election Commission Controversy: What We Know So Far

For months, the Election Commission of India has faced questions over its Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, with many appealing their removal. But the latest controversy is different: some of the sharpest objections to how the exercise was being conducted did not come from Opposition parties or civil society. They came from inside the Election Commission itself.

An investigation by The Indian Express has revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders issued by the poll panel, including on voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, changes to the voter-registration process and the centralisation of electoral data. While the report didn’t quote either Sandhu or Joshi, the newspaper said it examined at least 14 written objections recorded by Sandhu and Joshi over 10 months. 

The disclosures have now triggered a political fight over Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, with Rahul Gandhi demanding his resignation and the Opposition preparing a parliamentary motion seeking his removal. The BJP, meanwhile, says the existence of internal objections does not mean that the Commission’s final decisions were divided or that elections were manipulated.

The Pattern Reported

The significance of the investigation is the pattern. Sandhu and Joshi did not raise one isolated objection. According to the report, they recorded objections at least 14 times over approximately 10 months, including four objections on a single day.

They complained about decisions being taken without their knowledge and raised concerns about the process through which voters were being added and removed.

In one case, the two commissioners objected to a change in Form 6, the form used by people registering as new voters. The revised form asked applicants to establish a connection with an electoral roll from the previous SIR conducted in the early 2000s, either through their own name or that of a parent or grandparent.

The two commissioners described the change as “illegal” and “unauthorised” and said it should be removed. The change nevertheless continued.

That dispute matters because Form 6 is not an obscure administrative document. It is one of the principal entry points into the electoral roll for a new voter.

The Issue Was Also About Software And Data

The objections went beyond individual forms. The commissioners also raised concerns about the increasing centralisation of electoral-roll data and software at the ECI headquarters in Delhi.

The report stated that they warned against state-level officials being bypassed and questioned aspects of the system controlling the electoral database.

In one particularly striking episode, the two commissioners separately approached Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan over concerns surrounding the integrity and administration of the voter software.

The issue was illustrated by a case in Goa, where 97 people had reportedly satisfied their Electoral Registration Officers’ requirements, but the software controlled from the ECI headquarters did not allow the EROs’ decisions to be recorded. 

This is why the dispute is larger than a disagreement over SIR methodology. At its heart is a question about who controls the machinery through which India’s electoral rolls are created, altered and corrected.

The Scale Of SIR Makes This Significant

The controversy comes against the backdrop of an enormous electoral-roll exercise.

The SIR, which began in Bihar in June 2025, has since been extended across the country.  More than 13 crore names were struck off draft electoral rolls across 30 States and Union Territories during the process.

The Election Commission’s position is that SIR is intended to clean up electoral rolls by identifying voters who have died, shifted residence, are duplicated or otherwise do not meet eligibility requirements.

But when the process itself becomes the subject of disagreement within the body conducting it, questions about transparency and accountability become much more consequential.

What does the ECI say?

The Commission has pushed back against the interpretation that the disclosures demonstrate a breakdown within the institution.

Its argument is an important one: internal objections are not the same thing as divided final decisions. The ECI says commissioners can raise questions and express differences during deliberations. It maintains that the Commission ultimately took its final decisions unanimously.

That means the central factual dispute is not really whether Sandhu and Joshi objected. They have been documented in the report.

The question is what happened after those objections were made, and whether the final decisions adequately addressed them.

Rahul Gandhi Takes The Controversy Much Further

The political response moved rapidly beyond the specific findings of the investigation. First, Rahul Gandhi’s social media accounts started having posts calling out Gyanesh Kumar and saying that there will be a press conference on September 24. 

On September 24, Rahul Gandhi demanded Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation and said “elections are fundamentally broken.” He began his press conference by showing clips of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah speaking about the BJP remaining in power for a long period.

Gandhi then connected the Election Commission controversy to his broader argument about “vote chori”.

His argument was essentially that India’s electoral system has historically been affected by anti-incumbency. Governments and political leaders have faced electoral reversals even after major political or military successes, including after the 1971 Indo-Pak war, a few years after which Indira Gandhi was removed from PM post. 

So, Gandhi asked, why does that pattern appear different in the case of Modi and the BJP, arguing that the reported irregularities in electoral rolls provide an explanation.

But this is where an important distinction needs to be made. The Indian Express investigation establishes internal objections within the Election Commission. It does not establish that elections were rigged or that votes were stolen.

Those are separate allegations made by Rahul Gandhi and the Opposition.

And The BJP’s Answer?

The BJP has attacked Rahul Gandhi’s claims.

Its response has essentially been: showing disagreement inside the Commission is not the same as showing that the electoral process was manipulated. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra argued that deliberations can involve disagreement before a final decision is reached.

Another BJP spokesperson, Sudhanshu Trivedi, questioned why the Indian Express report did not contain an on-record statement from Sandhu or Joshi saying that the Commission’s final decisions were not unanimous. He questioned the basis of the report.

That is the BJP’s central defence: there may have been objections, but the Commission ultimately operated collectively and its decisions were unanimous. 

So What Do We Clearly And Objectively Know So Far?

There are different layers to this controversy.

What is documented: two of the three Election Commissioners recorded at least 14 objections over 10 months on issues involving voter registration, electoral-roll changes, SIR, data access and software.

What the ECI says: these were part of internal deliberations and the Commission’s final decisions remained unanimous.

What Rahul Gandhi and the Opposition allege: that the internal objections point to a deeper failure of the electoral system and support their existing allegations of “vote chori”.

What the BJP says: the Commission’s decisions were unanimous despite objections.

Gandhi’s claim does not automatically follow from the first. But the first fact has been documented and reported.

This is not simply a political party alleging that the Election Commission is biased. And that leaves the most important question at the centre of the controversy: if two of India’s three election commissioners say they were kept out of decisions affecting voter registration, deletion and the technology controlling the electoral rolls, what happened to those objections and who ultimately has the power to act on them?

That is the question the political fight over Gyanesh Kumar is now increasingly about. As to where the BJP or the Congress/Opposition take this political fight remains to be seen.