The following is an appeal made by the Citizens for Democracy to the President of India to restore the independence of the Election Commission of India.

A public appeal to the Hon’ble President of India

The apex court is seized of the matter of Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls in Bihar, which the Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered. The matter being sub judice, the Citizens for Democracy, as a responsible organisation, a defender of people’s democratic rights, would abide by the rules and traditions and refrain from commenting on the matter. In any case, several organisations, political parties and individuals have, as petitioners, already presented their point of view before the highest court of the land.   Needless to say, we are with the petitioners.

We, however, do not hesitate to do our duty to expose the sins of omission and commission of the ECI ever since the BJP government came to power in 2014. ECI, an independent constitutional body, has surrendered its autonomy to the ruling party and has become a willing tool in the party’s efforts to crush democracy in India. Things have taken many turns for the worse with every succeeding incumbent to the exalted position of Chief Election Commissioner.

EC – now a Government Department

In 2023 the Supreme Court suggested the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and other commissioners by a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India and asked the government to amend the Act of 1991 suitably.  The government promptly amended the Act and, as if to mock the Supreme Court, did not include the CJI in the committee. Instead, it made a minister appointed by the Prime Minister as one of its three members. With the Prime Minister leading the Committee, and one of his appointees at his beck and call, the government effectively reduced the existence of the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Parliament, the third member of the Committee, to a permanent minority. This has brought down the ECI’s status to that of a government department. One cannot expect fairness from such a body.

While we do not question the right of the parliament to amend an Act in a manner prescribed by the Constitution, there is something above the written words of the Constitution, and it is Constitutional morality.  Taking only a legalistic view of the government action, in fact, goes against the spirit of democracy. It showed that the government did not want an independent ECI. The architects of the Indian Constitution could not have imagined such a turn of events in which the words of the Constitution would take precedence over its spirit.

Failure of Civil Service Members

There is another aspect to it which is hardly discussed in the public domain. All appointees as Chief Election Commissioners and other commissioners come from the select group of top-ranking civil service officers. Usually, they are secretaries on the verge of retirement. Civil Service officers are expected to serve the people according to the Constitution. They have to keep the administration free from undemocratic influences. Unfortunately, they are seen to be toeing the political line of the incumbent government.  In the discharge of their duty the Indian Civil Service members are supposedly required to tell the government what is fair and what is unfair. The new recruits to the service are intellectually brilliant and meritorious who come through three levels of a rigorous selection process, and less than 10 percent are able to make it. If they mortgage their talent to unscrupulous politicians and serve their narrow interests in violation of the Constitution it is not difficult to predict what will happen to the country in the next five years.

Admittedly, the BJP government is adept in violating Constitutional morality without violating the words of the Constitution. They rejoice in their cleverness and mistake pettiness for smartness. They are very smart and able to shut the mouths of their opponents, including political parties. Their actions are an affront to the democratic values of the country.  One can say, they know more ways to crush democracy than ways their opponents know to defend it.

Lack of transparency

Free and fair elections are tools of robust representative democracy; transparency is its first and foremost character. But, in December last year, when the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the EC to share all poll-related documents including CCTV footage as a permissible document for disclosure, the Centre immediately amended the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 to restrict access to the CCTV footage on the plea that it would reveal voters’ identity. The EC’s stand was that ‘election papers’ do not include electronic records which are not papers. This was done with an intent to block any effort to expose suspected booth level malpractices.  If elections are sabotaged by various means with a pliant ECI, it is time for the people to come out of their comfort zones and speak for the country. No further erosion of democratic principles should be tolerated.

Our long history shows that people of different social groups and religious practices lived together, and lived peacefully. Our Prime Minster has claimed, more often than not, that India is the mother of democracy but every step of his government directly goes against the democratic life of the country. A couple of years ago, it was the ED and the IT departments that was let loose on the people, and since then the ruling party has found a new way. Now ED and IT raids, for a change, have dried up but more fundamental changes are being introduced through the mechanism of the EC.

Partisan EC

The EC under the BJP’s rule has been flagrantly partisan. It enforces the Code of Conduct before every election and promises the nation that the sanctity and credibility of elections will be maintained. The Prime Minister and his minions openly flout the Code of Conduct and make the crudest communal statements. Despite complaints, EC would take no action. The BJP does not hide its intention to communalise the elections and Chief Election Commissioners and other commissioners, once highly placed bureaucrats, do not even notice. On the other hand, the slightest violation by any opposition party is taken note of and a ban imposed.

During the UP Assembly polls in 2017, Modi referred to kabristaan (graveyard), shamshaan (cremation ground), Ramzan, and Diwali. In the 2019 Jharkhand polls, Modi described anti- CAA protestors as “People who are setting fire to property can be seen on TV. They can be identified by the clothes they are wearing.” Again, Modi’s public speech in 2019 referred to Rahul Gandhi’s candidature from Wayanad, Kerala as a place where “the majority is the minority.” In March 2024, in a speech in Salem, Tamil Nadu, Modi said: “INDIA alliance is repeatedly and deliberately insulting Hinduism. They are planting thoughts against Hinduism. They don’t speak against other religions. But whenever they get a chance, they insult Hinduism without waiting for a second. How can we tolerate this? How can we allow this?” In 2022, during the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Yogi Adityanath referred to the election as a game of “80% vs 20%” referring to religious communities. All these were violations of the Model Code of Conduct and the Representation of People Act that forbids references to religion during election campaigns. The Election Commission remained conspicuously silent in each case. The one aberration was in 2019, when then Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa expressed his dissent on the way the EC was repeatedly giving clean chits to Modi’s allegedly divisive speeches. His dissent was not accepted on record. He was forced to resign and opt for a deputation to the ADB.^[1]

The ECI draws the election schedule to suit the Prime Minister’s preference for his election tours. So, as soon as the campaigning ends in a Constituency, the Prime Minister reaches the neighbouring constituency and continues his communal agenda to influence the Constituency he just left. Elections in UP are spread over a month or six weeks in the name of security but all previous election commissions have conducted elections in UP in a lesser period. Have security condition so worsened that the voting process in UP needs to be stretched to this extent? Elongated election schedules benefit the BJP which has garnered the maximum amounts from corporates through electoral bonds.  A 5- phase election for peaceful Maharashtra in 2024 was inexplicable. A 7-phase election for Bengal facilitated repeated trips by Modi and was an attempt to exhaust the opposition parties in the state.^[2]

And this coming from an EC which argues before the Supreme Court that counting of all VVPATS would delay results. Results under the post-2014 ECs are delayed by months!  There has been no dialogue between the EC and the Opposition, whose demand was to install VVPAT machines (which allow the voter to see if his/her vote has registered correctly) across all polling booths. EC unashamedly behaves like a government department.

Whenever the EC acts, it is mostly against the Opposition parties. Notices were sent to Rahul Gandhi alone over the use of certain words in speeches, never to Modi and rarely to other BJP leaders. In Bengal, the EC changed 3 DGPs in 24 hours. It is only Opposition-ruled states that are considered ‘violence prone.’ The opposition is kept on tenterhooks and finds itself regularly caught in the EC’s crosshairs, even as the BJP remains blithely immune from the EC’s scrutiny. 

It is for the first time that the leader of the Opposition party has publicly criticised the Election Commission for bias, as Rahul Gandhi did through a newspaper article. His allegations included voter lists that were inflated with fake voters, inflated voter turnout figures, and targeted bogus voting in places where the BJP needed to win. Even a long-time respected political analyst like Sanjay Kumar of CSDS has commented, “Spikes in voter numbers over short periods of time raise doubts and are grounds for valid questions to be asked by political analysts and political leaders, which the Election Commission must answer.”^[3] Similarly, when the Aam Aadmi Party examined the updated voters’ lists closely after its shock defeat in Delhi, it found that the names added and deleted in 17 out of its 70 constituencies using Form 7 of the Election Commission’s registration forms had shifted an average of 3% of the vote to the BJP. The impact of these additions and deletions can be judged from the fact that the BJP’s winning margin of the vote in Delhi was just 1.99%.^[4] To this day, there has been no answer to Rahul Gandhi’s question on how the number of voters in Maharashtra is higher than its adult population.

Recently, the Opposition parties went to the Election Commission’s office to register their protest to the SIR exercise in Bihar. The Opposition leaders, came out complaining that the meeting was not amicable. The EC was not even willing to hear them, just out of courtesy, if for nothing else. This is the only and the first ever example to show what level EC has stooped to. While ED and IT raids affected individuals, EC’s action affect the nation itself.

Reforming EC, a major electoral Reform

Our country is in the dire need of electoral reforms. It was the Supreme Court which spoke for the people when it ruled the electoral bonds illegal, even though it did not harm BJP retrospectively. No money received through bonds was recovered. However, there are many other reforms like reconfiguring Electronic Voting System, effectiveness of NOTA, Right to Recall, re-evaluation of the First Past the Post system, politician-criminal nexus, preventing use of black money, democratising the internal structure of political parties etc. All democratic people who support these reforms have to add one more to the list of desirable reforms, and that is, independence of the Election Commission.

Nothing will work if the autonomy and independence of the ECI is not restored. It is, therefore, necessary to demand repeal of the latest amendment to the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961.  Barring a brief period when the ECI was headed by T. N. Seshan, the Constitutional body was never vocal and worked in tandem with the governments of the day mainly in view of the demands on armed forces for security reasons. Political parties were left untouched. But Seshan’s ECI directly confronted political parties and restored faith in the election process. The golden period of the ECI pointed to the malice that gripped our democracy.  Today, things are much worse. The entire Opposition is decimated. While we do not assess political parties highly for their democratic credentials, we believe, any undemocratic action by a Constitutional body is more harmful to the country than anything else.

Depriving the poor of their voting right

The latest action of the EC in Bihar is aimed at curtailing the right of the poor to choose their government. This is an indirect attack on adult franchise. India was the first to introduce adult franchise irrespective of class, caste or religion and economic status. The government through the EC, in a way attacks the freedom of the poor, attempts to deprive them of their voting right and shows disrespect to the principle of equality. All democratic forces should come together and demand of the President to act. In democracy, a person as high as the head of the State, after all, derives his or her stature by standing with the people.  This gives them special authority to act on behalf of the people.

Appeal to the Hon’ble President

We, therefore, appeal to the honourable President of India to use her powers under the Article 53 of the Constitution of India to act independently of the government to defend the most important tool of our democracy, the Election Commission of India, from political manipulations.  Saving our democracy cannot be left to the whims and political expediencies of the ruling party that controls the Executive branch of our system as at present. The Government is a small entity in the face of the major issue of defending democracy, and we genuinely believe that the President can, and should, act independently in such cases. The President is certainly empowered to act independently to uphold the spirit of the Constitution which enjoins upon the Head of the State to act at her discretion in case of vital issues like the independence of the EC.

We are well aware that Smt Droupadi Murmu, has risen to the highest position of the country from humble beginnings. We, therefore, appeal to her conscience, to her direct experience of people’s life, to act in favour of democracy. As Mahatma Gandhi said: “There are moments in your life when you must act, even though you cannot carry your best friends with you. The ‘still small voice’ within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.” (YI, 4-8-1920, p3).

Anand Kumar                                                                   Shashi Shekhar Prasad Singh

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^[1] All instances cited from https://www.theweek.in/voices/columns/sagarika-ghose/2024/03/24/biased-umpiring-indias-election-commission-faces-a-credibility-crisis.html

^[2] From https://www.theweek.in/voices/columns/sagarika-ghose/2024/03/24/biased-umpiring-indias-election-commission-faces-a-credibility-crisis.html

^[3] https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/rahul-gandhi-calls-out-bias-of-indias-election-commission/

^[4] https://thewire.in/rights/rahul-gandhi-election-commission-response-falls-short