Election Commission conflict : In the last few years, questions have been raised on the impartiality of the Election Commission of India. The opposition has many times alleged that the Election Commission has been working at the behest of the BJP. Especially these allegations have been made against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Meanwhile, a report has claimed that the other two election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi have filed objections 14 times in 10 months. He kept stating in writing that many decisions were taken without his knowledge.
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Actually, the Election Commission of India is made up of three people in which apart from the Chief Election Commissioner, there are also two Election Commissioners and all three together take decisions. An investigation by 'The Indian Express' has revealed that two of the three election commissioners have lodged 14 formal objections against the decisions of the Election Commission taken under the leadership of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in the last 10 months. Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi allege that important decisions were taken without their knowledge or approval. The internal differences center on the 'Special Intensive Revision' (SIR), which is impacting the names of 13 crore voters. Election commissioners challenged 'unauthorised and illegal' changes made to 'Form 6' for new voter registration and raised concerns over “gradual centralisation” of the voter list database through IT divisions.
An investigation by 'The Indian Express' has revealed that during this period, questions were raised several times within the three-member Election Commission (EC). These questions were raised by two of the three election commissioners of the commission — Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. The work of implementing SIR across the country has been done under the supervision of the three commissioners. But Sandhu and Joshi have formally objected (on record) at least 14 times in the last 10 months — four times in a single day — to decisions and orders that they say were taken or issued without their knowledge. This matter is very important.
The newspaper's investigation revealed that because, these objections are related to the main work of the Election Commission: registration of new voters, deletion and re-addition of names from the voter list; Appealing against orders to restore voters' names in the SIR process; And custody and security of the complete voter list. Copies of all the objections related to these were also sent to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Some objections were also sent to the Deputy Election Commissioners working under him.
In one such written objection, Sandhu has complained that the Election Commission acted against the written advice of the two commissioners and claimed that its action was “unauthorized and illegal”. Recently, in a complete departure from the norm, Joshi and Sandhu wrote separate letters to the Cabinet Secretary complaining about the change in work allocation which, in effect, removed a layer of monitoring of the IT backbone for the voter list. He made it clear: these changes were made without his knowledge and he canceled them. Subsequently, on 9 September, the CEC and the two ECs met, their first full meeting in four months.
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The newspaper has witnessed each of these exchanges, and interviewed multiple officials in New Delhi, Kolkata, Goa and Mumbai, to reconstruct the unease on a scale of unprecedented scale and significance within the constitutional authority entrusted with the free and fair conduct of the country's elections. This is also because these three were selected by the NDA government itself and under the 2023 Act, they were appointed by the selection committee comprising the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister and Leader of the Opposition. When Sandhu and Gyanesh Kumar were made election commissioners in March 2024, opposition member and Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had expressed disagreement over the appointment process. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi had also expressed dissent when Kumar was made CEC and Joshi was appointed in February 2025.