Inside The Election Commission: Investigation Finds ECs Split On Key Issues | Indian Express Special

India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has removed more than 13 crore names from draft voter lists, triggering intense political and legal scrutiny.

But an investigation by The Indian Express raises a different question: what was happening inside the Election Commission itself?

Read: https://indianexpress.com/arti....cle/express-exclusiv

Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions they said were taken without their knowledge or approval. Their concerns touched some of the most sensitive parts of the electoral-roll system, including voter deletions, additions, appeals and access to the digital databases used to maintain voter lists.

The investigation also examines the growing centralisation of the electoral-roll database, questions over access to ERONet and ECINet, the addition of SIR-related questions to Form 6, and what happened in Goa when election officials were reportedly unable to restore the names of 97 voters whom they had found eligible.

In West Bengal, 60 lakh voters were flagged for “logical discrepancies”, with 27 lakh subsequently deleted. The Election Commission later told the Supreme Court that 16 lakh appeals had also been filed against voters whose names had been restored by judicial officers. Questions remain over who authorised and filed those appeals.

The larger question is not whether electoral rolls should be cleaned up. They should.

The question is whether the process is lawful, decentralised, transparent and auditable — and whether the officials legally responsible for maintaining voter rolls actually have control over the systems they are expected to operate.

#SIR #ElectionCommission #VoterList #IndianPolitics #ElectionCommissionOfIndia #GyaneshKumar #SukhbirSinghSandhu #VivekJoshi #ElectoralRoll #VoterRights #IndiaElections #IndianExpress

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