Election Commission's SIR response faces pushback from Opposition parties

Parties plan nationwide protests, seek to form a unified front to reject EC's statement on SIR, escalating their demands for CEC's resignation

The Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) Press note, issued on Saturday evening, failed to address issues regarding its functioning and the lack of transparency in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls flagged in recent disclosures, especially the centralisation of the poll panel’s information technology network, Opposition parties on Sunday said.

 

Under the SIR, the names of more than 130 million voters have been struck off the electoral rolls.

 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said those who had benefited from spurious rolls were now crying foul, and the ECI’s statement exposed the Congress’ frustration over its electoral defeats. The BJP said over 10 million duplicate entries, and 28 million names of deceased voters were removed from electoral rolls during the SIR, and 94.3 million absent and shifted names were identified and removed from the rolls.

 

The Congress said there was “widespread evidence of targeted deletions of marginalised voters to benefit the BJP and the ECI has not addressed this charge” in its Saturday’s statement.

 

Constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, including Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, welcomed the ECI’s “unanimous clarification” by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. They said the clarification has put to rest all misconceptions around the decisions taken on the SIR.

 

The Opposition reiterated its demand that Gyanesh Kumar must resign. The Congress Working Committee will meet in New Delhi on Tuesday, and the leadership of the INDIA (Indian National Inclusive Development Alliance) is slated to meet on Wednesday.

 

They will discuss the nationwide protests they plan to demand the CEC’s resignation. The parties will draw up their plans to mount an effective mass campaign on the issue. Their challenge remains to ensure the participation of the educated middle-class youth, the Gen Z.

 

The Left parties have urged their INDIA bloc allies to make the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and the civil society equal stakeholders in the campaign. The Opposition is slated to submit a motion to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats for the removal of the CEC. But the Opposition lacks the numbers in the two Houses to ensure its passage.

 

The Cockroach Janta Party has announced an agitation from October 2 on the resignation matter. On Sunday, Rajya Sabha Member and Supreme Court Advocate Kapil Sibal demanded that the apex court consider nullifying the elections conducted recently. He said that while Kumar had been given immunity from criminal prosecution through the 2023 law, Seema Khanna, who managed the operations ECINet, the poll panel’s tech backbone, did not possess statutory immunity, and legal action must be taken against her. Sibal called on the Supreme Court to examine the ECI’s records, dissent notes, and unilateral orders.

 

Opposition leaders, such as Congress General Secretary (in charge of communications) Jairam Ramesh, said the ECI’s Press note was “a desperate attempt at damage control that hides all and reveals nothing”. The Left parties also said that the statement was silent on key issues flagged by The Indian Express reports.

 

In its press note, the ECI announced a series of decisions on issues that Sandhu and Joshi had raised on at least 14 occasions in internal communications over the past 10 months. Some of those, they said, were issued without their knowledge, ranging from changes in voter-registration forms to access to electoral-roll databases and the functioning of its infor­mation-technology systems.

 

The ECI’s decisions were taken at a meeting of Kumar, Sandhu and Joshi on Saturday. The ECI also issued a photograph of the three together.

 

On changes to Form 6, which Sandhu had termed “unauthorised/illegal”, the ECI said on Saturday that the additional declaration, which required new voters to provide details of their parents’ or grandparents’ entries in the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR, had been upheld by the Supreme Court. It said the declaration was specific to the SIR exercise. It said that outside an SIR, the regular forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, would be used.

 

However, Ramesh said that the “illegal change” to Form 6 has not been denied, and the weak attempt to defend it only raised more questions. He said the ECI had attempted to use a Supreme Court judgment on May 27, 2026, permitting the addition of a new declaration in Form 6 to defend the change, but this fell flat since the change to the online Form 6 was made in July for all voters, not just for SIR. “The same judgment also states that the ECI on its own cannot depart from the statutory procedure without a rational basis,” Ramesh said. He pointed out that the non-SIR Form 6 pathway being offered was also deceptive because the Special Summary Revision (SSR) had been frozen since 2024, and there is no non-SIR voter roll being published where voters can have their name added through non-SIR Form 6.

 

Joshi and Sandhu had also flagged the centralisation of the electoral-roll database and its access to statutory election authorities in states.

 

The ECI on Saturday said a committee headed by a senior deputy election commissioner and including an independent expert from an Indian Institute of Technology or Indian Institute of Information Technology expert would review the ECINet to “double-check” its compliance with election laws and rules. Any further flexibility required by field officers will be made operational, it said.

 

The Congress said the ECI had not been transparent about who was operating ECINet. “It is only from TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) disclosures that it was revealed they were involved,” Ramesh said. “Why this lack of transparency? Does the ongoing struggle to control the Tata group have anything to do with this?” he asked.

 

The Congress leader said the ECI’s clarification on the letter by Sandhu and Joshi to the Cabinet secretary hid more than it revealed. He said the ECI had downplayed the letter as concerning “the working of an officer on deputation” and unrelated to “any policy matter of the IT (information technology) division”. However, the letter was prompted by an order that removed oversight from the IT division, and it stemmed from concerns repeatedly raised around the opaque and non-compliant operation of the IT division, Ramesh said. He said the core issue was that the IT division was overriding "statutory safeguards” through the ECINet. Ramesh also flagged the lack of transparency around the widespread use of artificial intelligence in preparing electoral rolls.

 

In its Press note, the ECI said it had decided that during the SIR, booth-level officers (BLOs) would visit voters issued notices for being unmapped or having logical discrepancies, collect their documents and upload them on the ECINet for a decision by the electoral registration officer. The ECI’s Press note did not directly address the concern of Sandhu and Joshi that communications were being issued in the ECI’s name without approval of the full ECI. It, however, said agendas for all Commission meetings would be circulated in advance and minutes issued. It also said all directions issued by Commissioners to EC officers “shall be meticulously complied with”.

 

Sandhu had also asked who authorised filing appeals against the restoration of voters whom judicial officers had included in the electoral rolls in West Bengal. Opposition leaders said the ECI’s September 26 Press note did not specifically address this issue.