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The controversy in Kerala over an Election Commission of India (ECI) letter bearing a political party’s seal has been officially dismissed as “clerical error.” An official has been suspended, explanations have been offered, and, we are told, the system has corrected itself. On the surface, the matter appears closed. But the unease it has generated refuses to settle. And rightly so.

In democracies, institutions rarely lose credibility overnight. The erosion is gradual, almost imperceptible. An accumulation of small lapses, questionable decisions, and defensively worded clarifications. Each episode, taken in isolation, may seem trivial or explainable. Together, they begin to tell a different story. The Kerala incident is best understood not as an aberration but as part of a growing pattern that has steadily eroded public confidence in the ECI’s functioning. For an institution entrusted with safeguarding the integrity of elections, perception is as important as procedure.

The ECI does not derive its authority from force or fear, but from trust that it stands above partisan considerations, that it enforces rules uniformly, and that it protects the sanctity of the electoral process. When that trust begins to weaken, even routine actions invite suspicion. The benefit of the doubt, once lost, is not easily restored.

The present moment is marked precisely by this loss of confidence. Concerns about selective enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, questions surrounding electoral roll revisions, and allegations of uneven responses to political actors have created a climate of unease. None of these, individually, may constitute definitive proof of institutional bias. But taken together, they point to a deeper problem: a widening gap between institutional intent and public perception. It is in this context that the call to impeach the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) must be examined. The move has been criticised in some quarters as excessive, premature, or merely symbolic. However, such criticisms often fail to engage with the underlying issue, the extent to which confidence in the institution has been compromised.

Impeachment, an extraordinary measure

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