Election Commission vs Its Own Commissioners: Who Answers to Whom?

India’s Election Commission is facing an unusual internal controversy after two of its three Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, reportedly raised formal objections at least 14 times over a period of 10 months. Their concerns reportedly covered voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, changes to Form 6 and access to electoral-roll databases.

Who Has the Final Say?

The controversy raises a basic but important question: if the Election Commission has three members, can the Chief Election Commissioner take decisions independently? Under the 2023 law governing the Commission, its business is supposed to be conducted unanimously as far as possible. If the members disagree, the matter is decided by majority. The Chief Election Commissioner is therefore not described in law as having a general veto over the other two commissioners.

The reported objections become significant because Sandhu and Joshi allegedly questioned whether some decisions and communications were made without their knowledge. One concern involved changes to Form 6, the application used by citizens to register as voters. Another involved the centralisation of electoral-roll data and whether ground-level Electoral Registration Officers retained proper access to the system.

Dissent or Normal Decision-Making?

The Election Commission has rejected the suggestion that the objections demonstrate a breakdown inside the institution. Its position is that written objections, technical suggestions and differences during deliberations are normal internal checks, and that the final decisions on SIR and other matters were unanimous.

That leaves the bigger democratic question: how transparent should disagreements inside an institution responsible for elections be? Internal debate can be part of institutional decision-making, but when those disagreements concern voter rolls and the systems controlling them, the public naturally wants to know how objections were considered and how final decisions were reached.

The issue, therefore, is not simply about one CEC or two commissioners. It is about who answers to whom inside India’s constitutional election authority — and how much transparency voters deserve when the guardians of the electoral process disagree.