In October 1993, TN Seshan was away in Pune when Delhi altered the institution he had come to personify. A former Cabinet Secretary, TN Seshan had taken over as Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in December 1990. The President, on October 1, appointed two Election Commissioners alongside him: MS Gill, a senior IAS officer who would later succeed Seshan as CEC, and GVG Krishnamurty. An ordinance issued the same day laid down that the business of the commission would, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously and, where its members disagreed, by majority.

Three years into office, Seshan had brought the Election Commission into public consciousness by taking on governments over the conduct of elections and forcing politicians accustomed to a relatively unobtrusive poll body to reckon with an increasingly assertive one.

The Constitution, however, had never confined the Election Commission to a single member. Article 324 provided for a Chief Election Commissioner and “such number of other Election Commissioners, if any”, as the President might from time to time fix. For much of independent India, the commission had functioned with only the CEC. But it briefly had a multi-member body, when, in October 1989, weeks before the general election, the Rajiv Gandhi government appointed SS Dhanoa and VS Seigell as Election Commissioners alongside........

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