Who Audits the Auditor? Rebuilding Trust in India's Election Commission

Mass protests, deleted voters and rows inside the Commission show why trust, not just rules, keeps elections credible.

On the morning of 2 October, police ringed Jantar Mantar in central Delhi. A Section 163 order was in force. Metro stations nearby were shut. By evening, more than 700 people had been detained, among them a former Delhi chief minister, a student union president and,, several journalists. Amnesty International called it a blatant attack on the right to assemble. In Mumbai, a smaller crowd gathered at Shivaji Park. Their demand was the same in both cities: the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, should go.

It is easy to read this as one more street fight between the government and its opponents. That reading misses the point. The real question is older and bigger. In a democracy, who checks the body that runs the elections? And what happens when large numbers of citizens stop believing that body is neutral?

Why trust is the Commission's only real asset

An election is a strange thing. Millions of people queue up, press a button, and go home. They do not see the count. They cannot verify the roll. They accept the result because they trust the institution that ran the process. The losing side, which has the most reason to doubt, must still believe the count was fair.

India has been good at this for a long time. The Election Commission is among the few Indian institutions that most citizens, across parties, once treated as above politics. Many people still remember the 1990s, when T. N. Seshan used the Constitution's wide powers to enforce the Model Code of Conduct and made even powerful ministers listen. That reputation was earned over decades. It can be lost much faster.

The Commission has no army and no police force of its own. It borrows staff from the state governments and the Centre during polls. Its authority rests on one thing only: people's belief that it will act fairly. When that belief weakens, no amount of legal power can replace it.

How the umpire is chosen

Article 324 of the Constitution gives the Commission the job of superintending and directing elections. For decades, the President appointed the Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners on the advice of the government. The Constitution said Parliament could make a law on appointments. For more than seventy years, Parliament did not.

In 2023, the Supreme Court stepped in. In the Anoop Baranwal case, it ruled that appointments should be made by a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India, until Parliament passed a law. Later that year, Parliament did pass one. It replaced the Chief Justice with a Union Cabinet minister chosen by the Prime Minister.

The government's argument is fair on one point: choosing the selection process is Parliament's job, and the Court had asked for a law. Critics make a fair point too. The new panel has two members from the government and one from the opposition. The government can always outvote the opposition. If the aim is an umpire that both teams accept, a panel that one team controls does not look like the best design.

This is not a charge against any one person. It is a design problem. Even if every appointee is honest and capable, the process does not give the opposition confidence that the umpire is neutral. In an election system, that lack of confidence is itself a harm.

How the umpire can be removed

The rules on removal are just as important. The Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only in the way a Supreme Court judge is removed. That needs a motion in both Houses of Parliament, passed by a special majority, on grounds of proven misbehaviour or incapacity. This protection is strong, and it should be. A CEC who can be removed at will would be afraid of the government.

The other election commissioners have a weaker shield. Under Article 324(5), they can be removed only on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner. So a commissioner who disagrees with the CEC depends on the CEC's goodwill for job security. This matters now, because a recent media report says the two commissioners beside Mr Kumar raised concerns at least 14 times in ten months. The reported concerns involved voter-list revisions, registration steps and digital systems.

In April, opposition members submitted impeachment notices against Mr Kumar in both Houses, the first time this had happened. The Rajya Sabha Chairman and the Lok Sabha Speaker did not admit them. That was within their powers. But it meant the inquiry that the Constitution describes never began. If the formal route to examine a complaint is closed at the door, people will look for other routes. This week, they found the street.

The voter-list fight at the centre

The protests are tied to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The exercise was announced in October 2025 and has since covered many states. Figures compiled from Commission data and reported in the media suggest around 91 lakh names were removed in West Bengal and about 2.04 crore in Uttar Pradesh. These are very large numbers.

Large numbers do not prove wrongdoing. India's rolls have long carried duplicate names, dead voters and people who moved away. A cleaner roll is good for everyone, and the Commission says that is what the exercise has done. Its position is that it removed duplicate, deceased and ineligible entries.

Opponents say that many real voters were struck off, especially poor, migrant and minority voters who found it hard to produce documents. They say the exercise helps the ruling party. The Commission denies this.

Here is the difficulty. Both sides are making claims, and neither side can prove them using what is publicly available. The Commission holds the data. Without that data, outsiders cannot tell how many deleted voters were truly ineligible. This is the real gap, and it is why the argument keeps growing.

When an institution holds all the evidence and shares little of it, even honest work looks suspicious.

What the protests get right, and where they go wrong

The protesters are right that the questions are serious. A report that two senior commissioners raised repeated concerns deserves an answer. So do the deletion figures. A democracy should not treat these as unreasonable demands.

But the movement is weaker when it moves from questions to verdicts. Slogans about stolen votes run ahead of public evidence. Removing one officer will not bring back a deleted voter, and it will not fix a flawed procedure. Parties also have a duty. They had booth-level agents and the chance to file claims and objections during the revision. If large numbers of real voters were struck off without challenge, parties must say where their own machinery was.

The government's response also deserves a hard look. Section 163 orders are common in Delhi, and the police are right to manage crowds. But a blanket ban on speeches and slogans at the one place set aside for protest, along with metro closures and the detention of a former chief minister and journalists, looks more like fear than confidence. Earlier protests by the same movement in July led to a minister's resignation. A government sure of its process has no need to treat every question as a threat.

What a trusted election authority needs

Trust can be rebuilt, but not with speeches. It needs structure. Four things would help most.

1. A selection process both sides accept. The simplest fix is to restore a neutral member, such as the Chief Justice, to the selection panel, or to use a broader committee with a clear cross-party role. Canada, for example, appoints its Chief Electoral Officer by a resolution of the House of Commons, which requires wide support. India can design its own model, but it should aim for the same result: an umpire that the opposition can accept.

2. Equal protection for all commissioners. If commissioners are to work independently, each must be safe from pressure. The removal rule in Article 324(5) could be changed so that all commissioners have the same protection as the Chief Election Commissioner.

3. Open data by default. The Commission should publish, in a form that anyone can analyse, the list of deletions by constituency and booth, the stated reason for each, and the number of claims and objections filed and decided. Names can be protected where privacy requires it, but the numbers must be open.

4. An independent audit. A retired judge or a statutory auditor should check a random sample of deletions in each state. If the sample shows the Commission acted properly, the Commission is cleared in a way no press note can achieve. If it shows errors, they can be corrected before the next election.

None of these steps weakens the Commission. They are the price of trust, and trust is what the Commission needs most.

The commissioners' concerns

One more step is worth taking. If two commissioners raised concerns 14 times, the public should know what those concerns were and how the Commission answered. Some matters may need to stay private. Most do not. Publishing the substance, with limited redactions, would show whether the disagreements were routine or serious. It would also protect the Commission. Today, silence leaves the story to rumour.

A fair verdict for now

It is possible that Mr Kumar and the Commission acted in good faith, and that the revision cleaned the rolls in a way that will help future elections. It is also possible that real mistakes were made, and that real voters were hurt. The evidence available to the public cannot yet tell us which is true.

That is exactly the problem. A system where citizens cannot check the count, cannot trust the panel that picks the umpire, and cannot get a formal hearing for complaints, will keep producing crises like this one, whoever holds office.

The answer to "who audits the auditor" should not be "the street". It should be Parliament, the courts, independent experts and the public, all working with open data. India built a proud election system. Keeping it requires the same care that built it.