Two Election Commissioners Record 14 Objections in 10 Months, Call Form 6 Change ‘Unauthorised and Illegal’

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New Delhi. Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi objected in writing at least 14 times over 10 months, four times on a single day, to decisions and orders they say were issued in the Commission’s name without their knowledge. So reports the first part of an Indian Express investigation. Five notes were copied to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The first note, on October 28, 2025, said orders were going out without Commission approval. On April 16, 2026, Mr. Sandhu wrote he learnt of new IT modules “from media only”. Mr. Joshi recorded the same day that for over a year he had received no agenda or minutes of Commission meetings. On July 28, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg changed the allocation of work and removed Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar’s oversight of the IT division. On July 29 both wrote separately to Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan calling this a “clear violation” of the law, and on July 30 jointly set the order aside. Since July, Form 6, the form a new voter fills, has asked whether the applicant, a parent or a grandparent “exist” in the roll of the last Special Intensive Revision (SIR), held in the early 2000s. The question is not marked mandatory, but the form cannot be submitted without it. On May 16, Mr. Joshi wrote that Form 6 is prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 and “cannot be altered” without amending those Rules; Mr. Sandhu agreed on May 19. On August 13, Mr. Sandhu called the change “unauthorised and illegal”, and the question was still on the form on Monday morning. On August 14 he wrote that IT Director General Seema Khanna “doesn’t have any legal authority” to restrict access for Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), the statutory officers who prepare each roll. In Goa, 97 voters found eligible by EROs were left off the final roll because the software could not reverse earlier deletions. The first full meeting of all three in four months came on September 9. The Commission and both Commissioners did not respond. Separately, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday that notices sent to over 33 lakh Delhi voters for “logical discrepancies” (mismatches the software finds when linking a voter to relatives on an older roll) look “machine-generated”. It sought a status report from the Commission. The syllabus link is GS2: constitutional bodies and electoral law.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Article 324 gives electoral power to a Commission, not to its Chairperson alone. Article 324(1) gives the Election Commission the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections to Parliament, the State legislatures, and the offices of President and Vice-President. Article 324(2) provides for a Chief Election Commissioner and as many other Election Commissioners as the President may fix. Under Article 324(5), the CEC can be removed only in the manner and on the grounds of a Supreme Court judge, and an Election Commissioner only on the CEC’s recommendation. The Commission was briefly multi-member in 1989–90 and has been so continuously since 1993. In T.N. Seshan v. Union of India (1995), the Supreme Court upheld this design and held that the CEC and the Election Commissioners are equal, with differences settled by majority.
2. The 2023 Act fixes both who appoints and how the Commission decides. The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 followed Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India (2023). In that case, a Constitution Bench had put the Chief Justice of India on the selection committee until Parliament made a law. The Act instead provides a selection committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha (or the leader of the largest opposition party), and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister. A search committee headed by the Law Minister prepares a panel of five names. Section 18 says all business shall, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously, and otherwise by majority. The Commission may settle its procedure and the division of its work only by unanimous decision.
3. Electoral rolls are prepared by a decentralised statutory process. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, every Assembly constituency has an Electoral Registration Officer (Section 13B), usually the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, who prepares and revises the roll. A person is entitled to be registered if they are 18 on the qualifying date and ordinarily resident in the constituency (Section 19). A person is disqualified only if they are not a citizen, have been declared of unsound mind by a court, or are barred under election law (Section 16). Section 21 provides for preparing and revising rolls, and Section 21(3) allows a special revision at any time for reasons to be recorded. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 are made by the Central Government after consulting the Commission (Section 28). These Rules prescribe Form 6 for inclusion, Form 7 for objection or deletion, and Form 8 for correction or shifting.
4. The Commission’s plenary power works within the law, not above it. In Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner (1978), the Supreme Court described Article 324 as a reservoir of power for situations the law does not cover, to be used fairly. In A.C. Jose v. Sivan Pillai (1984), it held that the Commission cannot issue directions contrary to statute. That case set aside an election conducted with electronic voting machines that no law yet authorised, which is why Section 61A was added to the Representation of the People Act, 1951 in 1988. In Lal Babu Hussein v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995), the Court held that names already on the roll cannot be deleted merely on suspicion, without notice and a hearing. The Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 allowed Aadhaar to be collected voluntarily, and the Rules and Form 6 were amended by government notification to give effect to it.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS2 names constitutional bodies and their appointments directly. The syllabus asks about appointment to constitutional posts and the powers and functions of constitutional bodies. Questions on the Election Commission have asked about its independence, the mode of appointment and removal, and its role in free and fair elections. The 2023 Act and Anoop Baranwal are now the minimum background; this story adds how the Commission functions internally, which is fresher ground.
2. The SIR has made electoral rolls a live topic for Prelims and Mains. Prelims has asked about the composition of the Commission, removal of Election Commissioners and the Representation of the People Acts. The SIR adds questions on Section 21(3), the ERO’s role, and the forms under the 1960 Rules. In Mains, a question on the right to vote and exclusion from rolls is likely, and the Form 6 change is a precise example of delegated legislation being bypassed.
3. E-governance questions now include algorithmic decision-making. GS2 includes e-governance, transparency and accountability. ECINet and the Delhi ‘machine-generated’ notices show how software can quietly move statutory power from an officer to an IT division. Answers on digital governance can use this as an example of why audit trails and human override matter.

Analysis

1. The charge is not dissent but exclusion, and exclusion is more serious. In 2009 CEC N. Gopalaswami recommended that Navin Chawla be removed, and in 2019 Ashok Lavasa wanted his dissent recorded in the orders. Both were individuals disagreeing with a decision. Here, two members who together form a majority say decisions were taken without them at all. Section 18 requires business to be transacted by the Commission, and requires the division of work to be unanimous. So an order changing work allocation without the full Commission, if the account is accurate, lacked authority rather than merely being a decision they disagreed with. The counter-view is that no three-member body can approve every letter, and the secretariat must act under delegation. That is a fair point, but it only moves the question: was the delegation itself approved unanimously, as the Act requires?
2. The Form 6 change is a textbook case of bypassing delegated legislation. Form 6 sits in the 1960 Rules, which the Central Government frames after consulting the Commission. The 2022 Aadhaar change shows the lawful route: Parliament amended the Act and the Legislative Department notified new Rules. A.C. Jose had already held that the Commission cannot act contrary to statute simply because Article 324 is broad. The substance matters too. Entitlement to vote depends on age, citizenship and ordinary residence, not on whether one’s parents survived the last revision. A question that is ‘not mandatory’ but blocks submission is mandatory in practice. The Commission may argue that it is only collecting information to verify rolls, but a form fixed by law cannot be changed by a software update.
3. Central software quietly moves statutory power to people the law never named. In law, the ERO decides every name. In practice, according to the notes, what the ERO can do depends on permissions set by the IT division in Delhi. Goa is the clearest example. Officers found 97 voters eligible after hearings ordered by the Supreme Court, and the software could not record their decision. The Delhi notices, which the Bench called “machine-generated”, show the same problem from the other side: an algorithm raises suspicion and the citizen has to disprove it. The honest counter-view is that central control helps remove duplicates, secures the data and prevents local manipulation. The answer is not to decentralise the code but to audit it, which is what Mr. Joshi proposed in May with an outside IIT expert.
4. This is one newspaper’s reading of internal files, and fairness requires saying so. The Indian Express says it has seen the notes and interviewed officials. The Commission and both Commissioners did not respond to its questionnaire and calls, so the CEC’s reasons are not on record. There may be explanations the paper did not receive, such as urgency under SIR timelines or delegations approved earlier. It also matters that all three Commissioners were appointed by the same government, so this is not a split along party lines, which makes the account harder to dismiss as political. The remedy is disclosure. The Commission could publish its work allocation orders and the minutes of its meetings, which would settle the factual dispute either way.
5. Writing to the Cabinet Secretary shows how weak the internal remedies are. Two constitutional functionaries writing to the country’s senior-most civil servant about their own secretariat is without precedent, as the paper notes. It shows that the Commission has no internal mechanism for its members to enforce Section 18 against the CEC or senior officers. Yet the Commission’s independence, stressed in Anoop Baranwal, is independence from the executive, and inviting the executive into internal disputes is uncomfortable. A better design would be rules of business, adopted under Section 18, that require every order issued in the Commission’s name to carry a record of approval. Such rules would be open to scrutiny by courts and Parliament.
6. The courts are already filling the gap the Commission has left. In West Bengal, according to the Express, the Supreme Court handed the last stage of the SIR to judicial officers in February 2026, and tribunals of retired High Court judges now hear appeals. Of the 38 lakh pending appeals, 16.10 lakh seek to delete voters those officers had included, and Mr. Sandhu asked who authorised them. The SIR, begun in Bihar in June 2025, has struck more than 13 crore names off draft rolls in 30 States and Union Territories, per the Express. In Delhi, the Bench asked for filters and standard replies for the “15-20 types” of queries, Justice Mohana noted that BLOs are often unavailable, and the Commission assured the Court that no name would be deleted and that its October 29 deadline could be extended. An op-ed by Nikhil Dey and Koninika Ray in the same paper reports that in 95 houses in Mangolpuri one spouse had been marked as having shifted. The counter-view is that courts cannot manage rolls for a country of voters. That is true, and it is exactly why the Commission’s own collegial checks need to work.

Administrator's brainstorm