A troubling chronology of EC

A series of bad faith moves has eroded credibility of election process

Alok Tiwari

It appears Bengal elections will go ahead with over 20 lakh voters who were in 2002 list excluded from the rolls this time. This is not a small number. Across the state, it can influence the outcome. Many close contests are decided by margins of less than a few thousand votes. This is being done on mere doubt raised by the election commission under the hotly contested Special Intensive Revision of rolls undertaken in the state just before the assembly elections.

It is astounding that the supreme court has okayed this exclusion citing lack of time to decide on the voters’ appeals for inclusion. In doing so, the court has placed convenience of EC, the constitutional body most under suspicion, over constitutional right of the citizens. What happened to the principle of innocent until proved guilty principle? Court could have just as easily allowed them to vote in the election pending adjudication of their cases. Apparently, neither the EC nor the court trust their own earlier processes that saw the names of these voters included in the rolls.

The lack of time was fully anticipated. Indeed, this factor was argued before the supreme court by West Bengal while challenging the SIR process. At that time, the EC had assured the court that there was ample time to complete the entire process well ahead of the elections. So basically, EC is hiding behind a crisis of its own making to disenfranchise lakhs of citizens after asserting that it had the means to carry out the task it had undertaken.

This cannot be explained away as ineptitude. There are good reasons to believe that this was the intended outcome of the SIR undertaken at this specific time. There is a troubling pattern to the actions that have led us to this pass. Even if it is plain incompetence then the brunt of that should be borne by the incompetent party, that is the EC, rather than the people. Since it has not been done, it can only be seen as another of EC acts to help the ruling party in the centre cross the winning line in Bengal.

In the last three years, every action by the BJP government indicates a desire to increase control over the election body. That control was challenged by 2023 Supreme Court judgment that provided for a panel of PM, CJI, and leader of opposition in Lok Sabha to appoint the election commission. The court then ruled that the executive-led appointments hitherto had failed to safeguard the independence of the EC. It also called for independent funding of the EC.

The government was so rattled by this that it brought a law nullifying the judgment within months. It replaced the CJI with a cabinet minister effectively giving itself an unbeatable majority in the selection panel. The same law also provided lifetime immunity from prosecution to ECs for their actions while in office. This exceeds protection available to President and PM. While the provisions of the act have been challenged before the SC, the cases have conveniently not been taken up.

Neither of these steps can be justified being in public interest in any manner. But the bad faith decisions do not stop there. In late 2024, the government amended Rule 93 of Conduct of Election Rules 1961 significantly restricting public access to election related information. The EC then launched SIR in very states where the ruling party needed a leg up. Moreover, it did so in a manner that allowed it maximum leeway in excluding or including names at will. From being a right, voting in new India suddenly became a privilege.

When citizens’ group and opposition challenged this process, the EC’s response was to put up maximum hurdles in the way of releasing information. Instead of having information in machine readable form that could be analysed by computers, it began putting scanned photos of voter rolls on the website. It also started adding watermarks that further reduced ability to digitally analyse the list. In many cases, the voter’s name cannot be read even by human eye. The website has been made deliberately difficult to access. Simply put, there has not been one step taken by the government that increased independence of the election body and not one step by the EC that increased transparency and accountability for its action.

When an opposition frustrated by this brought motions to impeach the CEC, the LS speaker and RS chairman summarily dismissed those. Given the arithmetic in the parliament, those motions would have failed anyway but discussions on them would have allowed members to put the issues on record and an opportunity for the government to respond. That the government does not want even that is telling.

In any democracy, this is a dangerous direction to take. The ruling party always enjoys a little advantage in elections. It is one thing to enjoy that advantage and another to try to subvert the election process itself. Despite all failings, elections in India so far have managed to reflect the will of the people. Even the election held under the shadow of emergency ousted the government in power. With its chaotic diversity, India remains governable only as long as this remains true.

A glimpse of what can happen if this is no longer true was seen in Malda district last week when seven judicial officers were gheraoed for hours by voters whose names had gone missing from rolls. Both EC and the supreme court are seeing the incident as failure of law and order. Actually, it is sign of failure of trust in the system. For Indians, right to vote is precious. It is one thing that gives ordinary people some power to push back against a thousand injustices. If this small chance at justice too is denied, there will be desperation. And desperate people do desperate things.

This column appeared in Lokmat Times on Apr 10, 2026