What is so deeply unsettling about the latest controversy surrounding the Election Commission of India is not merely that the Commission is under attack. Institutions are criticised in democracies every day, and political parties often accuse election authorities of bias. What is unusual is that the questions now being raised about the Commission are no longer coming only from Opposition politicians or civil society activists. Two of the three Election Commissioners themselves formally objected to decisions on electoral rolls, voter registration, and the technology controlling the voter database. That changes the very nature of the argument.

The Indian Express investigation has revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi raised objections at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and administrative actions that, according to the report, were taken without their knowledge. Their objections concerned changes to Form 6, additions and deletions from electoral rolls and the increasing centralisation of the voter database and software in Delhi. In one instance, the Commissioners described a change to the application form for new voters as “illegal” and “unauthorised”.

The Election Commission's defence is that these were internal deliberations and that the three-member Commission's final decisions were unanimous. That is a legitimate position. Disagreement within a constitutional body is not evidence of dysfunction. Indeed, disagreement can reflect a healthy institution. But then the obvious question follows. What happened between the objections and the alleged unanimity? Where are the minutes or the file notings? Where are the authorisations, and where is the record showing how each objection was considered and disposed of? These are not political questions, but institutional ones.

The controversy also brings back Rahul Gandhi's much-discussed “vote chori” allegations. In August 2025, he presented what he said was an analysis of the Mahadevapura Assembly segment in Bengaluru, identifying more than one lakh allegedly problematic entries involving duplicate voters, questionable........

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