To be a citizen of this country is to hold the privilege of deciding on our own destiny — I call this a privilege not because I don’t believe these are inalienable rights but because these were hard-fought rights that not all our forebearers got to enjoy. To be a citizen is to be able to question the government with impunity. To be able to, as a populace, be able to show your discontent through a protest is the most principal of rights and one that ought to be treated as immutable.
The current situation in Delhi exists in direct contradiction to this ideal. Opposition leaders, along with thousands of protestors, getting detained, the anticipatory detention of nearly a thousand individuals before the planned protest, and public protest sites like Jantar Mantar getting denotified and being moved to the likes of Ramlila Maidan, a paid site further away – and thus less of a bother and inconvenience – from the overlords at Lutyens’ Delhi do serve to show us that the democratic liberties that we have are a mere farce nowadays.
Let us go back to 2023, when in the case Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India, the Supreme Court noted that the previous process of nominating Election Commissioners by the President of India, who did it under the advice of the Prime Minister, went against the spirit of the Constitution. Though they provisionally set up a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of India, and the Leader of Opposition to advise the President on appointments, the Court also directed the Government to pass a concrete law to set up a committee designated with reviewing court nominees. The resultant 2023 Election Commissioners Act drew controversy for the following reasons:
- It retained a three-member panel but replaced the Chief Justice with a Union Minister, thereby giving the government of the day a 2-1 majority on the committee.
- It grants the CEC immunity from civil and criminal suits against any action deemed to be performed as part of their duties.
- No formal mechanism for expressing dissent was put forth, and the other two Election Commissioners risk getting removed at the recommendation of the CEC if they repeatedly expressed dissent against them
In essence the Act, which was a directive from the Supreme Court to make the process of appointing Election Commissioners fairer, ended up going against the spirit of Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India.
We now fast forward to 2025. The Election Commission announces that they will engage in a Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the voter rolls, starting in Bihar. This attracted a lot of criticism, with one of the reasons being that the exercise was suddenly thrust upon the state with less than six months before the elections – the SIR process was carried out between June and September 2025 in a state headed for elections in November 2025. The burden of proof of eligibility fell upon the people, requiring millions of people to scramble to find proof of citizenship extending to their parents/grandparents. Functionally, this had the effect of potentially disenfranchising socially and economically marginalized individuals – a lot of whom vote a certain way – who couldn’t afford the time and expense that comes with navigating the Indian bureaucracy; to obscure government services and benefits behind layers of opaque and borderline unnavigable bureaucracy is nothing short of violence inflicted on people. This continued into early 2026 for all the states going into the polls then, accompanied with the same haste and disregard for restraint. Over the first two phases, the ECI deleted nearly 6 crore names, with states like Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal being particularly affected. The Phase 3 of SIR is ongoing in many states, with final rolls expected to start rolling out in a few weeks time. Counting the progress made in Phase 3, nearly 13 crore names have been removed in this SIR.
That brings us to last month, when reports of formal objections set out by two of the Election Commissioners – Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi – with regards to decisions on how the SIR was being carried out were exposed by The Indian Express.
A good chunk of the notes were complaints made on how they were being kept in the dark about critical decisions that the Commission made, ranging from a new IT policy they only got to know from media reports to unauthorized communications and roster changes made in the name of the Commission. The fact that two of the premier election officials in our land are being kept in the dark about crucial policy changes is damning and ought to invite scrutiny into the operations of the Election Commission, and the actions of the Chief Election Commissioner specifically.
The Commissioners also seem to have made explicit their dissent against some of the decisions made by the Election Commission. How the Commission handled the deletion of voters brought dissent within the Commission, with the two Commissioners expressing their issues with the deletion of valid voters in electoral rolls in Goa and the appeal to remove 16 lakh voters in West Bengal. They also expressed concern that the electoral rolls, which were previously decentralized, are increasingly centralized and cannot be accessed by state and local-level election officials.
The ECI released a response claiming that all the decisions taken were the result of a unanimous vote by the Commissioners – a statement in direct contradiction to the notes passed by the other Commissioners – and that such differences in opinion were normal in an organization – a rather weak comeback at rather serious allegations.
This, rather obviously, is a terrible look for the Election Commission. The fact that two of the highest-level election officers are not privy to crucial decisions taken by the Commission is simply astounding and outrageous. The Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, seems to be acting independently of and in opposition to the wishes of the majority on the Commission. An organization whose reputation was already on thin ice after the 2023 Election Commissioners Act was passed, this bombshell serves to further delegitimize the Election Commission of India.
In response, a broad group of opposition forces, including the likes of the Indian National Congress, the All India Students’ Federation, and the Cockroach Janata Party, started protesting against Gyanesh Kumar’s leadership of the Election Commission and demanded that he resign. A temporary pause of the current SIR process and an audit and reform of its workings to make sure it is done fairly.
These protests have been marred by various attempts from the government to quell it and deny people the ability to demonstrate against the government. As mentioned previously, official protest sites are being moved away from sites like Jantar Mantar and to, at its closest to Lutyens’ Delhi, Ramlila Maidan. Massive swathes of the Delhi Metro were also closed, and trains that either headed to or passed by Hazrat Nizammudin station were cancelled, presumably to limit the number of people entering the city.
Preventative detention was also a common tactic used, with movement leaders like Neha Bora and Abhijeet Dipke facing detention along with, as per estimates, more than 1000 other individuals. The protestors are also having to brave police violence, with the many cases of assault and alleged refusal to provide medical care to injured protestors drawing condemnation from all corners; even the Chief Justice criticized the police response in his typically belittling manner, noting that “hammers shouldn’t be used to kill a fly”.
It was Benjamin Franklin who said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither.” All in the name of public order and national safety, the Government keeps getting enabled to curtail more and more of our rights and citizens, all while a good number of the people themselves jeer on with the Government at the protestors; there is nothing as ironic as branding those protesting for your rights as anti-national, but such is the state in our polarized country.
These protests have also brought to the forefront the farce that is the freedom of press in this country. These protests have seen the rise of countless reports of journalists getting detained and physically assaulted by the police come out despite assurances from the Solicitor General that journalists would not be impeded while doing their jobs during the protest. Reports have also emerged that their recordings and other data were forcibly erased and their equipment destroyed. In response to these actions, the Press Club of India held a silent march in protest, asserting that journalists needed to reclaim public spaces and not be forced to provide PIB IDs to ensure safety during these protests.
These protests are also proof that the youth of this country are serious when it comes to demanding what they are owed by the government and will serve to silence all those who questioned if Gen-Z in India would protest en masse like they have in other countries. The anti-CEC protests have also seen the rise in media prominence – though they played a major role in the NEET protests earlier this year – of current AISA President Neha Bora. They are, in essence, one of the big faces of these protests and was crucial in mobilizing students across the country behind the cause; they themselves were detained countless times during these protests.
These protests have also seen the consolidation of the Opposition behind one united goal, which matters a great deal in a country where they have historically been divided over petty differences. Following his detainment after trying to protest at Jantar Mantar, Abhijeet Dipke received a vocal show of support from Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi; he has also increasingly received overtures from the Congress to meet and discuss how to proceed. The AISA’s protests have also coordinated with the Opposition’s protest, with Bora present next to Rahul Gandhi during the Opposition march to the Supreme Court.
In short, the rather troubling news of Election Commission’s internal dysfunction seems to have provoked immense indignation among the populace at a time where people’s tolerance of the shenanigans of the establishment is hanging by a thread. They have also seen a channelled, united anger directed against both the EC and the Government, which is justly receiving some of the blame for this issue. Only time, however, will tell if this movement is successful at bringing about the change it desires, for the issues at hand are systemic in nature and require legislative remedies to be fixed.
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