Asserting the statutory requirement of majority decision-making within the commission, ex-officials demand detailed documentary proof of how the disputed decisions were taken.
After an investigation by The Indian Express on Wednesday (September 23) revealed that two of three election commissioners formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to various decisions taken in the name of the Election Commission of India (ECI) without their knowledge, former election commissioners have come forward to question the reported malfunctioning of the poll panel and the legal procedures followed during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral polls.
As reported by The Wire earlier, former chief election commissioner O.P. Rawat described the reported revelations as “very serious” and “unfortunate”, particularly pointing to the changes to statutory voter-registration Form 6, saying they were “absolutely wrong and illegal”.
“This is an unfortunate situation. Such a thing has perhaps rarely happened in the Election Commission. I have also been there, but I saw that decisions were always taken unanimously,” he told PTI.
He also said that the SIR had created a “kind of Frankenstein” and stressed that software used for maintaining electoral rolls should not supersede decisions taken by officials. “Through SIR (Special Intensive Revision), it has created a kind of Frankenstein which has created fear in the minds of voters everywhere. This is not good. It is very unfortunate for our democracy,” he said.
Former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, meanwhile, in an opinion piece for The Indian Express, said the latest disclosures raise questions beyond the merits of the SIR itself, calling attention to whether decisions attributed to the ECI were in fact taken through the commission’s collective decision-making code of conduct.
Quraishi pointed to the 2023 law governing the functioning of the commission, under which its decisions are to be made unanimously as far as possible and, when commissioners disagree, according to the majority law. He observed that the present allegations involve two of the three election commissions raising objections instead of a single commissioner dissenting against a decision made by the other two.
Former election commissioner backs concerns over form six
Former election commissioner Ashoka Lavasa, in an interview with Hindustan Times, said the concerns highlighted by serving commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi were “legal in nature.” He specifically pointed to the reported alteration of form six, as per which new voters undergoing the SIR were required to provide information regarding whether they, their parents or grandparents had appeared on an earlier SIR electoral roll.
Lavasa questioned the authority under which the statutory form was altered. In case the allegations were proven to be correct, he said, the matter would be highly consequential. Lavasa also distinguished between integrating electoral rolls through technology and allowing software to hinder powers that the law assigns to electoral registration officers (EROs), reported HT.
Referring to the reported case in Goa where 97 voters were found eligible by ground-level election officials but could not be included in the rolls as the software did not permit the update, he added that an ERO who has considered a petition and decided that a voter should be added should be able to implement that decision without having to depend on a third party.
Calls for documentary proof of how the disputed decisions were taken by the ECI
Lavasa also mentioned the ECI’s reported denial of internal disagreement, saying that the nature of the allegations necessitated the commission to provide adequate documentary proof of how the disputed decisions were taken. He also cited at RTI matter in which the ECI had claimed that it did not maintain records of meetings concerns the decision to conduct the SIR, according to HT.
Lavasa demanded that the ECI disclose when the relevant decisions were taken, along with details about whether all three commissioners equally participated in the said decisions. He called for an independent inquiry into the objections raised by the two commissioners to determine if any legal procedures had indeed been breached.
Quraishi similarly argued that the current objections cannot be treated merely as a disagreement within the commission. Also invoking the statutory requirement of majority decision-making where unanimity is not possible, he questioned how decisions could have been approved if two of the three commissioners were not involved.
“A letterhead cannot supply authority that the statute withholds. The Commission is a three-member constitutional body. It is not another name for its Chairman,” wrote Quraishi.
The ECI, however, has maintained that its decisions, including those pertaining to the SIR, were unanimous. As reported by The Wire earlier, in a press note issued by the commission, it claimed, without going into particulars of the current objections, that “all actions of ECI have been in accordance of laws and instructions of the Commission.”
