Two Election Commissioners Objected 14 Times in 10 Months, and the Commission Calls It Routine

Internal notes show two of India’s three election commissioners repeatedly objected to decisions taken during the voter-roll revision. The EC says every decision was unanimous.

On **23 September 2026**, internal records of the Election Commission of India became public in a way the institution has rarely experienced. They showed that two of its three members, Election Commissioners **Sukhbir Singh Sandhu** and **Vivek Joshi**, had formally objected on record at least **14 times over ten months**, four times on a single day, to decisions and orders issued in the Commission’s name.

Their complaint, repeated across those notes, was simple and serious. Orders touching voter registration, deletions, restorations and the custody of the electoral roll itself had, they said, gone out without their knowledge or approval. Every objection was copied to Chief Election Commissioner **Gyanesh Kumar**.

The backdrop is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the door-to-door re-verification of voter lists that began in Bihar in June 2025 and has since been extended across the country. More than **13 crore names** have been struck off draft rolls in 30 states and Union Territories during the exercise. An institution taking decisions at that scale is expected to speak with one voice. For ten months, the record now shows, it did not.

The objections fall into four clusters.

**The new-voter form.** Form 6 is the application every first-time voter fills in. During the SIR, a new declaration was added asking whether the applicant, or a parent or grandparent, appeared on the roll of the last intensive revision. In May, Joshi recorded that the form is part of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and cannot be changed unless the government amends those rules. Sandhu later agreed, and in an August note called the change “unauthorised and illegal”.

**Control of the voter database.** ERONet is the software on which electoral registration officers in every constituency maintain their rolls; it sits inside the Commission’s wider ECINet platform. The two commissioners objected to what they described as the “gradual centralisation” of that system in Delhi, and to field officials being denied full access to it.

**Appeals against cleared voters.** In West Bengal, lakhs of appeals were filed before tribunals seeking the removal of voters whom judicial officers had allowed to stay on the roll. Sandhu asked in writing who had authorised those appeals on the Commission’s behalf, and who had actually filed them.

**A software gap in Goa.** In Goa, 97 voters whom local officers had heard and found eligible, as the Supreme Court had directed, were left off the final roll because the software had no way to record the decision.

Two further notes widen the frame. On **16 April**, Sandhu told the Commission’s senior officers that many communications were going out in the Commission’s name without its approval, and that every one must carry it from then on. Eight days later, Joshi issued a similar instruction. Most unusually, both commissioners wrote separately to the Cabinet Secretary about a change in work allocation that had removed a layer of oversight over the IT backbone of the rolls, saying it had been made without their knowledge. Only after that, on **9 September**, did the three members hold their first full meeting in four months.

For most of its history, the Election Commission was a one-man body. Two additional commissioners were appointed briefly in 1989, and the Commission became permanently multi-member in 1993. When that change was challenged, a five-judge Constitution Bench ruled in **T.N. Seshan vs Union of India (1995)** that the Commission must function collectively. The CEC is first among equals, not a superior who can overrule colleagues.

The 2023 law that now governs the Commission writes this down. Section 18 says its business shall, “as far as possible”, be transacted unanimously, and that when members differ, the majority view prevails. With three members, any two can outvote the third, including the Chief Election Commissioner.

This is the crux. If two commissioners objected to an action and it went ahead anyway, then one of two things happened. Either the full Commission later approved it, as the EC now says, or it was taken in the Commission’s name without a Commission decision behind it, which is what the notes allege in several instances. Those are very different situations, and the material public so far does not settle which one applies to each of the 14 objections.

The Commission responded the same day. Its statement said written notes, observations and technical suggestions are “standard, ongoing practices” in a multi-member body, that queries raised by members at the draft stage are routine, and that all its orders carry full legal sanction. It said it had introduced around **40 new initiatives** in recent months and that all its decisions over the past year, including the SIR, were “an outcome of the unanimous decisions of the full Commission”. Highlighting a handful of notes from ten months, it argued, “gives only one part of the picture”.

On 24 September, the Commission added that its statement had been issued with the approval of the full Commission, which means Sandhu and Joshi signed off on it too. Commission sources have also said that the two commissioners, after raising the Form 6 issue, joined the CEC in approving the SIR orders for Bihar and for the next dozen states, which carried the revised form. On the Bengal appeals, sources pointed to a Supreme Court order of 1 April 2026 that allowed Commission authorities aggrieved by inclusions to appeal.

The BJP took the same line. Party spokesperson **Sambit Patra** said deliberation among commissioners was a “sign of a vibrant democracy” and that the SIR was ultimately an exercise in unanimity. If the three simply said yes to everything, he argued, the opposition would call it a dictatorship. He also dared the opposition to bring an impeachment motion.

Both sides can be partly right. Disagreement inside a deliberative body is normal and even healthy. A commissioner who never objects is not doing the job.

But the notes do not read like ordinary drafting comments. A commissioner calling an action “unauthorised and illegal” is not routine. Nor is it routine for two members to instruct senior staff that communications must carry the Commission’s approval, or for both to write to the Cabinet Secretary, the country’s top civil servant, about their own institution’s internal allocation of work. A four-month gap between full meetings of a three-person body, in the middle of the largest roll revision in its history, is also hard to call ordinary.

The Commission’s defence rests on a claim that can be checked: that every contested action was eventually ratified by the full Commission. If that is true, the file trail will show dates, signatures and the order in which decisions were taken and orders issued. Publishing that trail, with voters’ personal data removed, would answer the question more convincingly than any press note.

There is a historical echo. In 2019, Election Commissioner **Ashok Lavasa** dissented on several Model Code of Conduct complaints involving the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, and asked that his dissent be recorded in the final orders. The Commission decided minority views would stay in its files rather than in published orders. Lavasa left in 2020 to join the Asian Development Bank. That episode ended without the dissent ever being tested in public. This one has already gone further.

The political reaction was swift, loud and largely united.

**Arvind Kejriwal (AAP)** demanded Kumar’s arrest, called the SIR “completely illegal” on the ground that it lacked the full Commission’s approval, and said elections held in recent years should be cancelled and held again.

**Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (Congress)** said that if the CEC knew of rigging and allowed it, that was “treachery” and “an act of treason”, and questioned the legal protection the office enjoys.

**Tejashwi Yadav (RJD)** questioned the Commission’s silence and demanded fresh elections in Bihar and West Bengal.

**Omar Abdullah (National Conference)**, Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, called for corrective action and tied the episode to his long-standing complaint that the delimitation of J&K’s constituencies was opaque and flawed. The Commission’s statement, he said, was “even more damning”.

**Rahul Gandhi**, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, told a press conference on 24 September that Kumar should resign and “turn approver”, and accused the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of being behind what the Congress calls “vote chori”.

Leaders including M.K. Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray and Supriya Sule joined calls to halt the SIR. The opposition’s shared demands are Kumar’s removal, an inquiry monitored by the Supreme Court and a pause in the revision. Former West Bengal Chief Minister **Mamata Banerjee** went furthest, seeking his arrest and a fresh election in her state.

The loudest language (treason, arrest, “deshdrohi”) is also the least likely to lead anywhere. The narrower demands, for the documents and an independent review of specific decisions, are the ones institutions can actually act on.

The Constitution protects the CEC the way it protects a Supreme Court judge. Under Article 324(5), he can be removed only through a motion passed by both Houses of Parliament on grounds of proven misbehaviour or incapacity.

The opposition has already tried once. On **12 March 2026**, it submitted removal notices signed by **130 Lok Sabha MPs** and **63 Rajya Sabha MPs**, above the thresholds of 100 and 50. On **6 April**, Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan refused to admit them. The Chairman’s 17-page order said the charges were “relevant for political debate” but lacked the proof needed to show misbehaviour. It was the first attempt in Parliament to remove a CEC. Opposition leaders now say they will move fresh motions when Parliament next meets, arguing that the commissioners’ notes supply what the first attempt lacked.

Criminal action faces a separate wall. Section 16 of the 2023 Act bars courts from entertaining civil or criminal proceedings against a serving or former CEC or Election Commissioner for anything done in the course of official duty. The Supreme Court has issued notice on a petition challenging that immunity but has refused to stay it.

Article 324(5) also contains a quieter asymmetry. An Election Commissioner can be removed only on the CEC’s recommendation. The rule was meant to shield commissioners from the government, but it also means the two dissenting members serve alongside the one person whose recommendation would be needed to remove them. The provision was last invoked in 2009, when CEC N. Gopalaswami recommended the removal of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla; the government rejected it.

On the same day the notes became public, the Supreme Court moved on the deeper structural question. A two-judge bench of Justices **Dipankar Datta** and **Satish Chandra Sharma** split on whether challenges to the 2023 appointment law need a larger bench, but jointly asked Chief Justice Surya Kant to set up a Constitution Bench.

The background matters. In **March 2023**, in Anoop Baranwal vs Union of India, a Constitution Bench ruled that until Parliament legislated, commissioners should be picked by a panel of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India. In **December 2023**, Parliament passed a law replacing the Chief Justice with a Union Cabinet minister nominated by the Prime Minister, giving the government two of the three votes. The court refused to stay the law in March 2024.

Justice Datta wrote that the change prima facie gives the government an “effective veto” and fails the “perception test”. All three current members were chosen under this law. The opposition member on the panel recorded dissent both times: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in March 2024, when Kumar and Sandhu were named, and Rahul Gandhi in February 2025, when Kumar was elevated and Joshi appointed.

That fact cuts in an interesting direction. The two commissioners now seen as a check on the CEC were picked by the same government-majority process. Whatever else the notes show, they show that appointees under this law have been willing to object. What the law cannot do is give the public confidence that those objections were acted on.

**Can two commissioners overrule the CEC?**

Yes. Under Section 18 of the 2023 Act and the 1995 Seshan ruling, the majority prevails when members disagree. The CEC has no veto.

**Did the SIR itself lack approval?**

The Commission says every SIR decision was unanimous, and its sources say the two commissioners signed the SIR orders. The notes dispute specific actions taken in the Commission’s name, not necessarily the decision to hold the revision.

**Are the notes public?**

Not officially. The Commission has not denied that they exist, but it has not released them.

**Do 13 crore deletions prove wrongdoing?**

No. Rolls carry dead, shifted and duplicate entries, and some deletions are expected. The real questions are how many genuine voters were removed, and how quickly they can get back on.

**The file trail.** Whether the Commission, a court or Parliament obtains the dated records showing when each contested order was issued and when, if ever, the full Commission approved it.

**The Constitution Bench.** Whether the Chief Justice constitutes a five-judge bench on the 2023 appointment law, and how soon hearings begin.

**Supreme Court SIR hearings.** On 22 September, the court said notices sent to more than 33 lakh Delhi voters looked “machine-generated”, sought a status report and listed the case again after two weeks. Watch whether petitioners bring the commissioners’ notes into that record.

**Form 6.** Whether the declaration about parents and grandparents stays on the form, or the government notifies an amendment to the 1960 rules to regularise it.

**A second removal motion.** Whether the opposition files fresh notices, and whether presiding officers again reject them at the admission stage.

**Sandhu and Joshi.** Neither has spoken publicly. Whether either does, or whether both keep standing behind the Commission’s joint statement, will shape how this story is read.

**Note on perspective**: {{Based on Election Commission statements, Supreme Court proceedings, parliamentary bulletins and on-record remarks by political leaders as of 25 September 2026. The piece treats the commissioners’ objections as established and their legal consequences as unresolved, and argues that the Commission’s own file record, not rhetoric from either side, should settle the question.}}