The Election Commission’s second clarification in three days again stresses that SIR decisions were unanimous, but leaves several specific objections reportedly raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi unanswered.
BY Navin Upadhyay
NEW DELHI/ September 26 — The Election Commission’s second clarification in three days on the reported differences among Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi has done little to resolve the core questions raised by the two commissioners.
Like its first response, the latest statement is long on assertions that the Commission’s decisions were unanimous but short on answers to the specific objections reportedly recorded by Sandhu and Joshi.
The September 26 statement runs through a range of issues — from Special Intensive Revision (SIR) procedures and voter hearings to help desks, deadlines, ECINet upgrades and internal administrative arrangements. But several of the most consequential questions remain conspicuously unanswered.
Among them are the alteration of Form 6, restrictions on access to ECINet for Electoral Registration Officers and the reported filing of 16.10 lakh appeals in West Bengal against voters whose inclusion had been ordered by judicial officers.
These are not questions raised merely by opposition parties or outside critics. They relate to objections reportedly recorded internally by two members of the three-member Commission.
Form 6: the basic question remains
One of the reported objections concerned the change to Form 6, the statutory application used for inclusion of names in electoral rolls.
The online form was altered to include an additional declaration relating to whether an applicant, parent or grandparent appeared in an earlier electoral roll during SIR. Sandhu and Joshi reportedly questioned the legal basis for introducing the additional declaration without an amendment to the statutory rules.
The EC’s latest clarification says the SIR declaration attached to Form 6 has been “upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.”
But that does not answer the central administrative question:
Who authorised the alteration of the form in the first place, and under what statutory authority was it introduced?
Nor does it explain why a change of substance to a statutory form was made through the Commission’s digital platform rather than through an amendment to the relevant rules, if such an amendment was considered necessary.
Saying that the declaration has subsequently been upheld by the Supreme Court is not the same as explaining how and by whom the change was originally authorised.
ECINet: what happened to ERO access?
The same problem arises over ECINet, the Commission’s electoral-roll management platform.
The reported objections by Sandhu and Joshi concerned the access available to field-level electoral officials, including EROs.
The ERO is the statutory authority responsible for decisions concerning electoral-roll inclusion, deletion and correction. Any alteration in the technical ability of such officers to access or operate the system therefore has obvious implications for the exercise of their statutory functions.
The EC now says officers have “role-based access… as per their statutory powers” and has announced a committee, including an independent IIT/IIIT expert, to review ECINet.
Again, however, the statement does not answer the questions that triggered the controversy:
Was ERO access actually curtailed? If so, what functions were restricted, when were they restricted and who authorised the change?
And if access was never withdrawn or restricted, as the Commission appears to suggest, why did two Election Commissioners record objections on the issue?
An announcement of a future review cannot substitute for an explanation of what happened in the first place.
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The 16.10 lakh West Bengal appeals
The biggest unanswered question may concern West Bengal.
The Election Commission has disclosed that 16.10 lakh appeals were filed against voters whose inclusion had been ordered by judicial officers during the electoral-roll revision process.
The reported internal objection was not simply about the merits of those appeals.
It was about authority.
Who authorised the filing of more than 16 lakh appeals? Who instructed officials to file them? Who represented the Election Commission in those proceedings? And were the other members of the Commission informed before the appeals were initiated?
These questions become particularly important because the reported objections indicate that Sandhu had sought clarity on the matter.
Yet the latest EC statement does not provide a point-by-point explanation of the 16.10 lakh appeals.
There is no account of who took the decision, when the decision was taken, what approval was obtained or whether the full Commission considered the matter.
A meeting of the Election Commission of India was held today, 26 September 2026, at 3:00 PM at Nirvachan Sadan, New Delhi.
Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Dr. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Dr. Vivek Joshi were present in today’s meeting.… pic.twitter.com/WZoqEIXVJq
— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) September 26, 2026
‘Unanimous’ does not answer everything
The Election Commission’s repeated emphasis on unanimity is therefore only part of the issue.
There is a difference between saying that the final decision of the Commission was unanimous and explaining whether a particular action had already been taken before the matter came before the full Commission.
The controversy is about the latter as much as the former.
If an internal objection is raised over a change to a statutory form, the relevant question is not simply whether the Commission ultimately approved SIR.
If an objection is raised over access to a statutory officer’s digital system, the question is not merely whether ECINet continues to exist.
And if 16.10 lakh appeals are filed seeking deletion of voters whose inclusion had been ordered by judicial officers, the obvious question is who authorised that extraordinary legal action.
Those questions require documentary answers.
Second clarification, but no clear resolution
The latest statement does contain measures that could improve the SIR process. It says BLOs will visit the homes of voters facing notices over unmapped entries or logical discrepancies, hearings will generally be held only in exceptional cases, and special enrolment drives will be conducted for those left out of the rolls.
It also extends deadlines in Delhi and Maharashtra and announces an expert review of ECINet.
But these measures largely concern how the process will operate from now on.
They do not explain how the disputed decisions were taken over the past 10 months.
That is why the second clarification risks appearing as wishy-washy as the first — detailed in form, but evasive on the questions that matter most.
The EC has now issued two clarifications in four days. It has repeatedly said there was no institutional breakdown and that its final decisions were unanimous.
What it has not yet done, at least in its latest public statement, is provide a clear, issue-by-issue response to the objections reportedly raised by its own commissioners.
Until it does, the central questions remain:
Who changed Form 6? Who restricted or altered ECINet access, if it was altered? Who authorised the 16.10 lakh West Bengal appeals? And were these decisions placed before and approved by the full Commission before they were implemented?
Those are questions of institutional accountability, not merely political disagreement. And they remain unanswered.
