MAHATMA GANDHI WROTE in Young India on June 18, 1931 that among the manifold aspects of Swaraj, adult suffrage constituted a key aspect which he interpreted as a form of direct action of people against powers that be. Manipulation of the electoral rolls leading to vote theft fatally impairs people’ ability to directly act against those wielding power.
While moving article 289 (now Article 324) of the draft Constitution on June 15, 1949, providing that superintendence, direction and control of elections to be vested in an Election Commission, B.R. Ambedkar warned that no injustice should be done by the Election Commission of India while preparing electoral roll and any thing contrary to it would “….cut at the very root of democratic government.”
Juxtapose the aforementioned vision of Gandhi and Ambedkar with the devastating expose of Indian Express concerning unilateral and unconstitutional action of the Chief Election Commissioner(CEC) Gyanesh Kumar regarding voter registration, deletion and restoration of names and access to electoral-roll data. The expose stunningly reveals that Gyanesh Kumar as CEC violated the constitutional mandate enshrined in Article 324 and law established by Supreme Court in T N Seshan v Union of India (1995) by not enlisting the participation of two other Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, in the decision making process. On crucial issues concerning SIR the two Election Commissioners registered their written objections 14 times in 10 months and yet CEC Kumar defiantly violated the prescribed mandate that the Commission would take decisions either on the basis of consensus or by majority principle.
All the Election Commissioners are equal in status with the Chief Election Commissioner who is first among equals. So decisions of the Commission are mandatorily to be taken either on the principle of consensus or by majority principle. It is shocking that the CEC Kumar trampled upon the Constitution and law by keeping away Commissioners from key decision making processes concerning preparation of electoral rolls and other related aspects. According to the Supreme Court in T N Seshan v Union of India (1995) Article 324 entrusts elections to the Election Commission, not to an individual. Its warning that “It would be wrong to project the individual and eclipse the Election Commission” resonates in the context of CEC Kumar taking all key decisions concerning SIR and pushing two Election Commissioners to oblivion.
Bold Stand by Two Election Commissioners
It is worth underlining the crucial and critical point that the two Commissioners were not filing dissenting notes with CEC Kumar. They who formed the majority of the Commission charged that they were wilfully kept out of the decision making process and CEC Gyanesh Kumar took all decisions as if he alone represented the Election Commission of India by excluding Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. Such egregious infractions of the Constitution and law with a view to preparing a curated electoral roll has very adverse consequences for our democracy the very foundation of which rests on the jurisprudence of adult franchise. It is a travesty of that jurisprudence if voters are deleted from the electoral roll on a mass scale and the burden of getting enrolled as a voter rests with the citizen by submitting documents to the ECI which are not easily available.
Bengal Issue
Take the example of West Bengal where SIR generated electoral rolls led to deletion of 2.7 million voters and they were asked to appeal for inclusion in the voter list by submitting their appeals to a judicial panel formed on the orders of the Supreme Court. Indian Express exposed that in Bengal appeals were filed for deletion of 16.10 lakh voters who were included in the voter list after their names were cleared. Very mysteriously the Commission is not forthcoming to bring to the public domain the authorities of ECI who filed those appeals for that deletion. Election Commissioner Sandhu asked, “Who was authorised to file these appeals on behalf of ECI, and by whom?” and “Who actually filed these appeals on behalf of ECI?” He wrote that “....neither he nor Joshi nor the current Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal had been informed about the basis or process of filing the appeals.” It is rather shocking that the ECI which has a glorious record of enrolling every Indian citizen as a voter is silent on the appeals filed on its behalf to delete 16.10 lakh voters cleared for inclusion in the voter list.
Ambedkar’s warning of 1949 that no injustice should be done by the Election Commission of India while preparing electoral roll and any thing contrary to it would “….cut at the very root of democratic government” is playing out in the context of the appeals for deletion of above mentioned voters whose numbers exceed more than a million.
Form -6 Issue
Take another outrageous violation of law and constitutional principle involving Form-6 which is filled up by persons who are adult citizens of eighteen years of age to enroll their names in the voter list. All those who wished to fill that form had to mention their parents/ grandparents names as it existed in the “electoral roll of last SIR.” This information regarding the names of parents and grandparents were never there in the original Form 16 and it was added by ECI. What was done was patently illegal because such additions could only be done by amending the law and the power of such amendment vested with the Parliament and not ECI. It is tragic that those adult citizens wishing to get enrolled as voters could not proceed to fill Form 6 without mentioning in the illegally inserted provision asking for the names of parents or grandparents . As early as May this year, according to Indian Express expose, “ Joshi had warned on file that Form 6 could not be changed in this manner without the government amending the rules, and Sandhu had agreed.” And it is utterly shocking that ECI under the leadership of Gyanesh Kuamr has stubbornly retained those illegal insertions which deserved to be deleted forthwith.
Issue of Software and Electoral Data Base
What is quite worrisome is the ECI’s highly centralised monopoly of ECINet, the electoral data base for almost a billion voters, is maintained by the Electoral Registration Officers of the States who are the statutory authority mandated for additions, deletions and corrections of the electoral rolls. Both Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi raised alarm bells that the electoral-roll database was being centralised in ECI without allowing Electoral Registration Officers to have access to it for its operation. They wanted an independent technical audit to ascertain the way in which ECINet is made functional. In Goa, 97 people were found eligible to be included in the electoral roll by their EROs but they could not add them because the operation of ECINet was entirely controlled by ECI without any opportunity to EROs to operate it.
When Maneesh Garg, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner in the ECI , was given the additional charge of administrative wing he allotted work afresh without the approval of the Commission. Two Election Commissioners perceived that such work allocation deepened concentration of power to operate electoral data base and so separately wrote to the Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan about it. Such actions of ECs approaching Cabinet Secretary brought out the fact ECI is not an independent body. Neither the CEC nor any of the ECs are beholden to any Government functionary including the top bureaucrat, Cabinet Secretary, except the Constitution of India.
ECI’s Anodyne Press Release
However, it is salutary to note that the grave lapses of CEC Gyanesh Kumar has been exposed not by opposition party leaders but by two election commissioners who gave in writing their valid and lawful objections. Their concerns that ECI as an independent body has to function on the basis of the law and Constitution inspires confidence to salvage democracy which has been imperilled by powers that be.
ECI’s press release in response to the Indian Express Expose never clarified on the issues uncovered by two Commissioners and stated in a matter of fact manner that it as a constitutional body functions under the strict mandate of Article 324 of the Constitution, statutory rules and established institutional conventions. Describing ECI as a “multi-member constitutional body,” it stated, “written notes, observations, technical suggestions and internal checks-and-balances are standard, ongoing practices designed to ensure complete transparency, legal compliance and operational rigour.”
“How Democracies Die”
In their book “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt observed that “Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.” “The electoral road to breakdown,” they cautioned, “is dangerously deceptive.” Expressing sharp feeling of sadness they remarked, “There are no tanks in the streets. Constitutions and other nominally democratic institutions remain in place. People still vote. Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are “legal,” in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy—making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process”.
SIR was started by CEC Gyanesh Kumar to clean up the electoral process. But the way in which Indian Express has brought to light the functioning of CEC to operationalise SIR has unmasked the malafide intent to subvert democracy and demolish the ideal of adult suffrage which sustained democracy in India and set a shining example for the rest of the world. Tragically that ideal is getting shattered through the way in which SIR processes are carried out.
Ambedkar on Adult Franchise
Over 107 years back, on January 27, 1919, Ambedkar while giving evidence before the Southborough Committee on Franchise, stated: “The chief significance of suffrage or a political right consists in a chance for active and direct participation in the regulation of the terms upon which associated life shall be sustained.”
He pleaded by saying, “it would be better to pitch the franchise so low as to educate into political life as many untouchables as possible.”
Because there was no universal adult franchise then in 1919, he argued for pitching franchise low so that underprivileged people could get a chance to be enrolled as voters and an inclusive voter list could be prepared.
With great deal of sadness it is noted that in 2026 the way CEC Kumar has functioned in violation of the Constitution and statutes to conduct SIR sadly demolishes that vision of Ambedkar.