The Election Commission's retreat on Form 6 marks repeated reversals that demand more than an administrative explanation. The issue is the removal of a question from an online form. It concerns how a constitutional authority changes the rules governing citizens' registration as voters.

Form 6 is the statutory application for inclusion in the electoral roll. In July, the commission's ECINet portal inserted a declaration linked to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Applicants had to state whether their names, or those of their parents or grandparents, appeared in an intensive revision.

Though not labelled mandatory, applicants could not submit the form without answering it. Two election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had objected in writing in May, arguing that the statutory form could not be altered without........

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