When the Election Watchdog Stops Watching

The greatest danger to a democracy is not merely a stolen election. It is an election system in which citizens can no longer be certain that the referee is independent.

India's democracy rests on a simple principle: the people choose their government, and an independent Election Commission protects that choice.

But what happens when questions arise not merely from political parties or outside critics, but from inside the Election Commission itself?

That is the question India must now confront.

A recent investigation by The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected at least 14 times over ten months to decisions taken by the Election Commission under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The reported objections concerned changes to voter-registration forms, voter deletions and additions, the handling of electoral databases, and decisions allegedly taken without informing the other commissioners.

This is not a small administrative disagreement.

This goes to the heart of institutional trust.

The referee cannot become more controversial than the match

In any democracy, political parties are expected to fight.

Candidates are expected to accuse each other.

Governments are expected to defend themselves.

Oppositions are expected to question them.

But the Election Commission occupies a different position.

It is supposed to be the referee.

The referee does not have to be loved by either side. But the referee must be trusted to apply the rules consistently.

Once the referee becomes the subject of persistent questions about transparency, procedure and impartiality, democracy enters dangerous territory.

And that danger becomes considerably greater when those questions are reportedly coming from the referee's own colleagues.

According to The Indian Express, Sandhu and Joshi objected to decisions on multiple occasions, including what they described on record as “unauthorised” or “illegal” actions. One dispute concerned changes to Form 6, the statutory form used by new voters. Joshi reportedly argued that the form could not simply be changed through an internal order and that the appropriate legal process required government approval. Sandhu subsequently agreed with that position.

The question is therefore not simply:

“Who won the election?”

The deeper question is:

“Can citizens independently verify that the system which produced the result was administered fairly?”

Allegation is not proof—but lack of proof is not proof of innocence either

There is an important distinction that public debate frequently loses.

An allegation is not evidence.

But the absence of publicly established evidence is also not the same thing as proof that nothing improper happened.

That principle applies in every serious investigation.

If someone says an election was manipulated, the responsible response is neither:

“It definitely happened.”

nor:

“There is no publicly established proof, therefore nothing happened.”

The correct democratic response is:

Investigate. Preserve the evidence. Open the process to scrutiny. Publish the methodology. Allow independent verification.

If the institution is confident that the election was conducted properly, transparency should strengthen it—not weaken it.

The extraordinary power of electoral data

Modern elections are no longer conducted only with ballot boxes and paper registers.

They depend upon databases, software, electoral rolls, digital forms, algorithms, authentication systems and administrative decisions.

That creates a new democratic vulnerability.

A person does not necessarily have to manipulate a ballot.

If the wrong person is removed from the electoral roll, that citizen may never reach the ballot box.

If the right person is prevented from registering, the result is the same.

If an electoral database is altered without adequate transparency, citizens may have no practical way of knowing what changed.

That is why the integrity of the electoral roll itself is fundamental.

The recent controversy over the Special Intensive Revision makes this especially important. The Indian Express reported that the SIR process had resulted in more than 13 crore names being struck from draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union Territories, while also reporting that the Supreme Court had intervened in aspects of the process.

The Supreme Court has not declared the entire SIR exercise unlawful; indeed, the Court has upheld its legality while separately scrutinising aspects of its implementation. That distinction matters.

But legality is only one part of democratic legitimacy.

A process can be legally authorised and still require intense scrutiny over accuracy, transparency, proportionality and implementation.

What is happening inside the Commission matters

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the recent reporting is not an accusation made by an opposition leader.

It is the reported disagreement inside the institution itself.

According to The Indian Express, the two other commissioners raised concerns repeatedly and, on some matters, said they had not been informed about decisions or processes. One reported dispute involved appeals concerning voters who had been included by judicial officers; Sandhu reportedly asked who had authorised those appeals and who had filed them, stating that neither he, Joshi nor the relevant West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer had been informed about the basis or process.

If accurately reported, this raises an extraordinarily important institutional question:

How can an institution designed around collective constitutional responsibility function properly if its own members do not know what decisions are being taken in its name?

That question deserves an answer independent of party politics.

Democracy does not survive on faith

There is a dangerous temptation to tell citizens:

“Trust the institution.”

But democracy was never designed around blind trust.

Democracy is designed around accountability.

Trust should be the consequence of transparency—not its substitute.

When an Election Commission says an election was fair, citizens should be able to examine the procedures that support that conclusion.

When voter names are deleted, there should be a transparent mechanism to understand why.

When new voters are added, the process should be auditable.

When software is used, appropriate safeguards should permit independent verification.

When constitutional commissioners disagree, their objections should not disappear into administrative darkness.

And when serious allegations arise, the institution should welcome an independent examination rather than treat every question as an attack.

The rich and powerful do not always leave obvious fingerprints

There is another uncomfortable lesson from history.

Powerful wrongdoing, when it occurs, does not necessarily look like someone stuffing ballot papers into a box.

Modern institutional wrongdoing can be much more sophisticated.

It can occur through:

• administrative discretion;

• selective enforcement;

• opaque databases;

• procedural changes;

• selective interpretation of rules;

• timing;

• access to information;

• bureaucratic decisions;

• institutional appointments;

• or simply making scrutiny extraordinarily difficult.

That is why the question cannot be limited to:

“Show me the smoking gun.”

A mature democracy asks a broader question:

“Are the safeguards strong enough that manipulation would be difficult, detectable and punishable?”

That is the real test.

But intuition is not evidence

This is where citizens—and especially journalists—must be careful.

It is understandable for people to look at political power, wealth, electoral victories, changes in assets or the behaviour of governments and conclude that something must have been manipulated.

But intuition cannot establish that an election was stolen.

Nor can a politician's wealth, poverty, post-election assets or personal lifestyle by itself prove electoral wrongdoing.

Those things may justify questions.

They do not constitute proof.

The democratic answer is therefore not to replace one form of blind faith with another.

It is to demand evidence that can survive hostile examination.

If an election was clean, the evidence should withstand scrutiny.

If an election was manipulated, a genuinely independent investigation should be capable of discovering it.

That is how democracy protects itself.

The most dangerous sentence in a democracy

Perhaps the most dangerous sentence is:

“You cannot prove it, so stop asking questions.”

That sentence can protect wrongdoing.

But its opposite is equally dangerous:

“I believe it happened, therefore it happened.”

That can destroy trust without evidence.

Democracy needs something harder:

“We do not know yet. Therefore, investigate.”

That is the position of a mature constitutional system.

What must India demand?

The answer is not another political slogan.

India needs institutional safeguards strong enough to make electoral manipulation difficult regardless of which party is in power.

That means asking for:

1. Full transparency of electoral-roll changes

Citizens should be able to understand why names were added, deleted, restored or challenged.

2. Independent technical audits

Electoral databases and software systems should be subject to credible independent auditing, with appropriate protection for genuinely sensitive security information.

3. Transparent decision-making inside the Commission

If three constitutional commissioners are responsible for an institution, significant decisions should not appear to emerge from an opaque process.

4. Publicly documented dissent

Where commissioners disagree on matters affecting voting rights, the nature and resolution of those disagreements should be recorded and, where legally appropriate, made available for public scrutiny.

5. Effective mechanisms for restoring wrongly deleted voters

A citizen should not have to fight an enormous bureaucracy merely to prove that he or she exists.

6. Parliamentary and judicial oversight where appropriate

Electoral integrity should not depend upon the goodwill of whichever individuals happen to occupy constitutional offices.

The Election Commission belongs to the voter

The Election Commission does not belong to the government.

It does not belong to the opposition.

It does not belong to the BJP.

It does not belong to Congress.

It does not belong to any political party.

It belongs constitutionally to the Indian voter.

That means every voter—whether BJP, Congress, TMC, DMK, AAP, Left, regional party, independent or politically unaffiliated—has the same fundamental interest:

My vote must be counted fairly.

The question before India therefore should not be:

“Which party do you support?”

It should be:

“Can you trust the process by which every party wins or loses?”

Because once citizens lose confidence in that process, the damage does not stop with one election.

It damages the legitimacy of every subsequent government.

Democracy does not require blind trust

The recent Indian Express investigation does not by itself prove that India's elections were stolen.

That claim requires evidence and independent investigation.

But the reported internal objections within the Election Commission are sufficiently serious to justify questions about transparency, institutional functioning and electoral safeguards.

And perhaps that is the most important point.

We should not demand that citizens believe either side.

We should demand that the institutions responsible for elections make it possible for citizens to know.

Because democracy cannot ultimately survive on:

“Trust us.”

It survives on:

“Check us.”

And if an institution responsible for protecting the people's vote is confident in its integrity, there should be nothing frightening about being checked.

The strongest Election Commission is not the one that silences every accusation.

It is the one whose procedures are so transparent, whose evidence is so accessible, and whose safeguards are so strong that even its harshest critics can independently test the system—and reach their own conclusions.

That is how a democracy proves that the vote belongs to the people.