Deep Rot: On the Election Commission of India’s Functioning During Its SIR
With the SIR thoroughly vitiated, CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign
The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls – this big clean-up drive they call SIR – was supposed to be about making the voter lists pure and accurate. No eligible person left out, no ineligible one kept in. That’s the line. But the way it’s been run under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has left a sour taste that just won’t go away. And now, with reports of deep internal rifts coming out, it’s hard to see how this exercise hasn’t been thoroughly compromised.
Back in 2025, they kicked off SIR in Bihar ahead of the assembly polls. House-to-house checks by booth-level officers, forms to fill, draft rolls, claims and objections – the works. Then it spread. Phase after phase across states and union territories. By the time it reached places like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and beyond, the numbers of deletions started looking huge. Crores of names struck off – some dead, some shifted, some just not matching up. Opposition parties cried foul from day one, saying genuine voters, especially those who might lean their way, were being pushed off the rolls. The Commission kept insisting everything was transparent, multi-party agents were watching, courts had given the go-ahead. Fair enough on paper. But then the cracks inside Nirvachan Sadan itself started showing.
Just this week an investigation laid it out. The other two election commissioners – Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi – had put their objections on record at least fourteen times over ten months. Decisions and orders going out without them even knowing, they said. Changes to Form 6, the basic application for new voters. Centralised control over the database that field officers use. Questions on how names were being added, deleted, restored. Appeals processes. One report even mentioned four objections on a single day. That’s not normal difference of opinion over tea. That’s a full-blown signal that the three-member body wasn’t functioning as a collegium the way the Constitution expects under Article 324.
The Commission’s response? Differing views are part of healthy discussion, final decisions were unanimous. Okay. But when two of the three keep flagging that things are happening behind their backs, the claim of unanimity starts sounding thin. And Gyanesh Kumar sits right at the top of this. He’s the first CEC appointed after the 2023 law that tilted the selection panel towards the government – no Chief Justice in the mix anymore. Came in as Election Commissioner in March 2024, right before the Lok Sabha schedule, then took over as CEC in February 2025.
Background is solid IAS, Kerala cadre, important central postings including cooperation ministry. But the manner of functioning during SIR has raised the same old questions about independence that have dogged the institution for years.
Think about the scale. Over a crore names removed in some phases, more than five crore in twelve states and UTs alone by one count, and still going in others. In West Bengal the deletions ran into millions; in Delhi notices went out in large numbers. People on the ground – ordinary voters, opposition workers – kept saying the process felt rushed, the verification uneven, the appeals window too tight in places. The Commission points to record turnout in some polls held on revised rolls and says no major court challenges stuck after the Supreme Court upheld the legality. Yet the political temperature never cooled. Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” charges, the public back-and-forth, the earlier notices in Parliament seeking the CEC’s removal – all of it kept piling up. Those notices were rejected, but the underlying unease didn’t vanish.
What makes this different is that the dissent is no longer just from outside. It’s internal. When the two other commissioners feel the need to formally object to how the SIR is being steered – access to data, form changes, the very process of revision – the exercise loses the moral authority it claims. A clean electoral roll is the foundation. Everyone agrees on that. But if the body preparing it is seen as operating with one person calling most of the shots while the others scramble to catch up, the foundation starts looking shaky. Voters notice. Parties notice. And once trust erodes, it is devilishly hard to rebuild.
Gyanesh Kumar has defended the SIR robustly. He’s spoken of unparalleled transparency, of BLOs and BLAs keeping watch, of purest rolls in the world. Fine. But leadership also means ensuring the institution itself doesn’t look fractured. The reported centralisation of database control, the alleged bypassing of colleagues on key orders – these aren’t minor process notes. They go to the heart of collective decision-making that the Commission is supposed to embody.
At this point the SIR stands vitiated in the public eye. Too many deletions without enough confidence that every eligible citizen was properly heard. Too many questions about how decisions were taken. The only clean way out is for the man heading it to step aside. CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign. Not as some political scalp, but because the institution needs to recover its credibility before the next round of polls. Let a full three-member body, functioning without these internal shadows, take charge of whatever remains of the revision and of future ones. Democracy runs on trust more than on perfect lists. Right now that trust is fraying, and the deep rot has to be cut out before it spreads further.
Sources: Reports from The Indian Express investigation (September 2026), The Hindu, Economic Times, Tribune, Scroll.in, and Election Commission of India press notes and statements on the Special Intensive Revision process.
Deep Rot: On the Election Commission of India’s Functioning During Its SIR
With the SIR thoroughly vitiated, CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign
The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls – this big clean-up drive they call SIR – was supposed to be about making the voter lists pure and accurate. No eligible person left out, no ineligible one kept in. That’s the line. But the way it’s been run under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has left a sour taste that just won’t go away. And now, with reports of deep internal rifts coming out, it’s hard to see how this exercise hasn’t been thoroughly compromised.
Back in 2025, they kicked off SIR in Bihar ahead of the assembly polls. House-to-house checks by booth-level officers, forms to fill, draft rolls, claims and objections – the works. Then it spread. Phase after phase across states and union territories. By the time it reached places like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and beyond, the numbers of deletions started looking huge. Crores of names struck off – some dead, some shifted, some just not matching up. Opposition parties cried foul from day one, saying genuine voters, especially those who might lean their way, were being pushed off the rolls. The Commission kept insisting everything was transparent, multi-party agents were watching, courts had given the go-ahead. Fair enough on paper. But then the cracks inside Nirvachan Sadan itself started showing.
Just this week an investigation laid it out. The other two election commissioners – Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi – had put their objections on record at least fourteen times over ten months. Decisions and orders going out without them even knowing, they said. Changes to Form 6, the basic application for new voters. Centralised control over the database that field officers use. Questions on how names were being added, deleted, restored. Appeals processes. One report even mentioned four objections on a single day. That’s not normal difference of opinion over tea. That’s a full-blown signal that the three-member body wasn’t functioning as a collegium the way the Constitution expects under Article 324.
The Commission’s response? Differing views are part of healthy discussion, final decisions were unanimous. Okay. But when two of the three keep flagging that things are happening behind their backs, the claim of unanimity starts sounding thin. And Gyanesh Kumar sits right at the top of this. He’s the first CEC appointed after the 2023 law that tilted the selection panel towards the government – no Chief Justice in the mix anymore. Came in as Election Commissioner in March 2024, right before the Lok Sabha schedule, then took over as CEC in February 2025.
Background is solid IAS, Kerala cadre, important central postings including cooperation ministry. But the manner of functioning during SIR has raised the same old questions about independence that have dogged the institution for years.
Think about the scale. Over a crore names removed in some phases, more than five crore in twelve states and UTs alone by one count, and still going in others. In West Bengal the deletions ran into millions; in Delhi notices went out in large numbers. People on the ground – ordinary voters, opposition workers – kept saying the process felt rushed, the verification uneven, the appeals window too tight in places. The Commission points to record turnout in some polls held on revised rolls and says no major court challenges stuck after the Supreme Court upheld the legality. Yet the political temperature never cooled. Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” charges, the public back-and-forth, the earlier notices in Parliament seeking the CEC’s removal – all of it kept piling up. Those notices were rejected, but the underlying unease didn’t vanish.
What makes this different is that the dissent is no longer just from outside. It’s internal. When the two other commissioners feel the need to formally object to how the SIR is being steered – access to data, form changes, the very process of revision – the exercise loses the moral authority it claims. A clean electoral roll is the foundation. Everyone agrees on that. But if the body preparing it is seen as operating with one person calling most of the shots while the others scramble to catch up, the foundation starts looking shaky. Voters notice. Parties notice. And once trust erodes, it is devilishly hard to rebuild.
Gyanesh Kumar has defended the SIR robustly. He’s spoken of unparalleled transparency, of BLOs and BLAs keeping watch, of purest rolls in the world. Fine. But leadership also means ensuring the institution itself doesn’t look fractured. The reported centralisation of database control, the alleged bypassing of colleagues on key orders – these aren’t minor process notes. They go to the heart of collective decision-making that the Commission is supposed to embody.
At this point the SIR stands vitiated in the public eye. Too many deletions without enough confidence that every eligible citizen was properly heard. Too many questions about how decisions were taken. The only clean way out is for the man heading it to step aside. CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign. Not as some political scalp, but because the institution needs to recover its credibility before the next round of polls. Let a full three-member body, functioning without these internal shadows, take charge of whatever remains of the revision and of future ones. Democracy runs on trust more than on perfect lists. Right now that trust is fraying, and the deep rot has to be cut out before it spreads further.
Sources: Reports from The Indian Express investigation (September 2026), The Hindu, Economic Times, Tribune, Scroll.in, and Election Commission of India press notes and statements on the Special Intensive Revision process.
@Rohit Manral
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