ECI’s Credibility Crisis: Chickens Have Come Home to Roost
THIS was waiting to happen. The tumultuous events of the last fortnight have brought into sharp focus a concerted assault on democracy – an assault unfolding at multiple levels. At the most basic, the very foundation of democracy and of the representative government – the constitutional right of citizens to vote – has been threatened through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in Bihar. The second dimension has been the sabotage of a constitutional body – the Election Commission of India (ECI) – which is mandated to act independently and ensure a level playing field. At a third level, accountability itself has been undermined through subterfuge.
The assault on the principle of universal adult suffrage began with the ECI’s public announcement on June 24 of an SIR. We have already kept our readers informed about the various aspects of the SIR. What is heartening, however, is the prompt and united response of democratic and secular opposition parties, both in Bihar and nationally. After a long lull in joint opposition action, the SIR process has galvanised unity. The compressed timeline chosen by the ECI for completing the entire process was far too short for any meaningful or comprehensive revision. It was easy to see the intent and to respond appropriately – hence, protests began in Bihar as early as June 25 and quickly spread across the country.
The decline in the ECI’s independent functioning was evident from the very beginning. Before launching such a massive exercise, the Commission made no effort to consult political parties, either individually or collectively, in blatant violation of long-established convention. This omission was inevitably seen as not merely unusual but partisan. While opposition parties lodged their protests, even directly before the ECI, the BJP leapt to defend the Commission’s decision.
The choice of any one of the 11 documents prescribed by the ECI to accompany a citizen’s application form made it clear that the process was perhaps the most difficult for poor citizens, particularly migrant workers who travel frequently in search of livelihood. The ECI’s refusal to accept Ration Cards, EPICs, or Aadhaar – documents most commonly available to ordinary people – made it clear that the SIR exercise was designed less as a meaningful revision and more as an exercise in mass disenfranchisement.
The contours of the SIR represented a fundamental departure from the voter registration process followed since the inception of the Election Commission. The franchise had always been universal for adult citizens and operationalised by the ECI machinery itself, without burdening individual citizens with proving their citizenship. When questioned, the ECI only referred to Article 326 of the Constitution whose main import was to ensure universal right to vote and the reference to citizenship was not central to the provision. Under no circumstances did this provision of the Constitution suggest that the determination of citizenship will be vested with the ECI itself. On the contrary, over the years a well-established procedure has existed under which deletions could take place only on the basis of specific objections and with verification from the Home Ministry – the competent authority in such matters.
In the first week of July, the opposition met the ECI to raise these concerns. The Commission summarily refused to look at the efforts of the opposition political parties for correction, leaving the parties no option but to approach the Supreme Court as a last resort – both to safeguard citizens’ constitutional right to vote and to challenge the very constitutionality of the ECI’s SIR process.
The urgency of the matter intensified after the publication of the Draft Electoral Rolls (DER) in Bihar, which revealed the deletion of 65 lakh names that had existed prior to the SIR exercise. Large numbers of deletions were attributed to deaths as well as to “untraceable” voters – a category that, in common parlance, largely refers to migrant workers.
The biggest question that has now arisen concerns the massively large number of deletions after the summary revision in January 2025, notified in April-May. It was not a revision at all but, in effect, the de novo creation of a fresh roll, with the clear aim of ensuring mass deletions. Not a single addition was made to the electoral rolls, laying bare the ECI’s intent. In this process, the Commission not only deleted six and a half million voters but also refused to publish the names of those deleted along with the specific reasons. The obnoxious nature of this exercise was evident, and the Supreme Court, in its interim order, has directed the Commission to publish the deletion list with reasons in a machine-readable format. The Court also ordered the acceptance of Aadhaar as a valid proof of residence. Yet, serious issues remain – above all, the question of whether the ECI even has the constitutional authority to initiate citizenship determination processes.
There is a widespread belief that, in the name of the SIR, the ECI was attempting to bring in the NRC process through the backdoor. The link to the Hindutva-driven redefinition of Indian citizenship – anchored in religious identity – is obvious. That this would be a central campaign plank in the coming elections was underscored by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself in his Independence Day address from the Red Fort, where he launched a fresh crusade against so-called ‘ghuspetias’.
The underlying goals of the SIR have been laid bare by surveys and data points –even in the mainstream media. A Lokniti-CSDS study established the abysmally low access of Bihar’s population to the 11 prescribed documents, largely because of the state’s inadequate infrastructure for issuing such certificates. Another study showed that Muslims and women were disproportionately affected by deletions, a reflection of deep-rooted social inequalities and differential levels of empowerment.
Meanwhile, a devastating exposé – based on documentary evidence culled from the ECI itself and available in the public domain – revealed unprecedented levels of voter manipulation in one Bengaluru assembly segment. This revelation has driven the final nail into the ECI’s credibility. A subsequent Lokniti-CSDS study confirmed this, which has led to a precipitous decline in public trust in the ECI.
If anything still remained of the ECI’s institutional credibility, the Chief Election Commissioner himself, Gyanesh Kumar, delivered the final blow on August 17. In a combatively partisan intervention against the opposition, he dished out a tissue of lies. The brazen complicity between the Commission and the BJP could not have been more plainly exposed.
The battle is now in the people’s court. The ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’, launched on August 17 to defend the voting rights of Bihar’s citizens, will culminate in Patna on September 1. In the meantime, people across the country must unite against both the dismantling of an independent constitutional authority and the attempted extinguishing of the citizen’s most precious constitutional right – the right to vote.
(August 20, 2025)
