If you were to judge the SIR and the conduct of the Election Commission of India and its chief Gyanesh Kumar by any reasonable yardstick of transparency, how would you rate them? Take a moment to recall what the many previous exposés about the SIR have revealed. Take just another moment to consider, dear friends and erstwhile colleagues in big media, if you could honestly tell your children how you looked away from all the evidence of wrongdoing. And now decide if it’s time to tell the story as you really see it. — Ed

If there was even a smidgen of doubt that India’s electoral rolls were being manipulated at scale, the latest investigation by Ritika Chopra of Indian Express should settle it. But let’s first track back to the most recent election in West Bengal, held after SIR, Phase 2.

Administrative and electoral officers in West Bengal remember the briefings with chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar before the Assembly polls in April 2026. “How is the josh?” the CEC was reported to have mockingly asked. Readers will remember that he was riffing on the 2019 Bollywood war drama Uri: The Surgical Strike, which made the line famous.

It was a surgical strike alright. He had ordered the replacement of all senior officers who would supervise the election and replaced them with officers of his choice. Over 500 officials were reportedly replaced in the state, down to the level of police inspectors in some constituencies. Officers were brought in from outside the state and there was unprecedented deployment of Central security forces.

The man, it was heard at the time, was an authoritarian who demanded nothing less than unquestioning obedience. Turns out, as the Express investigation reveals, he didn’t even listen to fellow election commissioners — Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.

Also Read: 'Internal bulldozing': Cong on Gyanesh Kumar vs election commissioners

For four months this year, in the midst of a controversial SIR that has seen the deletion of ~13 crore Indian voters, the........

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