The Gyanesh Kumar Controversy and the Modi Government: When Things Go Wrong, the Crises Keep Coming
The Election Commission’s latest internal controversy has brought Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Narendra Modi government back into a difficult political and institutional debate. An investigation by The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders concerning electoral rolls, voter registration, deletions and the handling of electoral data. The objections were copied to Kumar.
The significance of the allegations lies not simply in the number 14, but in the fact that the reported objections came from two of the three members of the constitutional poll panel. According to the investigation, Sandhu and Joshi questioned decisions involving the addition, deletion and restoration of voters, appeals against electoral-roll decisions, changes to Form 6 and control over the electoral-roll database.
The Election Commission has presented a different interpretation. It says individual commissioners can raise concerns during deliberations, but such views do not themselves constitute decisions of the Commission. The ECI has maintained that its final decisions, including those relating to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, were unanimous and had the approval of all three commissioners.
That response addresses one part of the controversy, but leaves another question at the centre of the debate: how were decisions reached when two commissioners had apparently recorded objections to particular steps? The answer requires examining the actual files, the nature of each objection and the subsequent formal decisions rather than treating every internal disagreement as proof of illegality.
The political sensitivity is heightened because all three current members of the Commission were appointed under the 2023 law governing the selection of Election Commissioners. The law changed the composition of the selection committee by replacing the Chief Justice of India with a Union Cabinet minister, giving the government two members on the three-member selection panel alongside the Leader of the Opposition.
Gyanesh Kumar was the first Chief Election Commissioner appointed under that new framework. Before joining the Election Commission, the 1988-batch Kerala-cadre IAS officer served as Secretary in the Ministry of Cooperation. He became an Election Commissioner in March 2024 and assumed charge as CEC in February 2025.
His appointment had already become politically contentious. Opposition representatives had objected to the selection process, and Rahul Gandhi, as Leader of the Opposition, sought a delay in Kumar’s elevation while petitions challenging the 2023 selection law were pending before the Supreme Court. On September 23, 2026, a two-judge Supreme Court bench delivered split opinions on challenges to the law, leaving the matter to be considered by a larger bench.
The timing of the latest controversy is particularly important. The reported internal objections emerged during the Election Commission’s nationwide Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, of electoral rolls. The exercise has become one of the most contentious electoral-administration issues in India, with political parties disputing how voters are being included, excluded and required to establish their eligibility.
The West Bengal experience illustrates the scale of the issue. The Election Commission told the Supreme Court that 27.16 lakh voters were removed during the SIR process and that more than 22 lakh of those voters subsequently filed appeals seeking reinstatement. The Commission attributed deletions to categories including absentee, shifted, dead and duplicate voters and defended the process before the Court.
The judiciary has also continued to scrutinise aspects of SIR. In Delhi, the Supreme Court recently asked the Election Commission to explain the basis for notices issued to voters under the category of “logical discrepancies”. The Court’s questions add another layer of institutional scrutiny at a time when the ECI is already defending its electoral-roll procedures.
For the Modi government, the controversy is politically difficult because the Election Commission is constitutionally independent, even though the current appointment framework was enacted by Parliament during the present government’s tenure. Consequently, allegations concerning the functioning of the ECI inevitably feed into the wider political argument over whether the institutional safeguards surrounding elections are sufficiently independent and transparent.
The government and the BJP have rejected allegations that the Election Commission is being used to manipulate electoral rolls. The ECI itself has rejected claims that the reported objections establish a breakdown of its decision-making, insisting that its final SIR decisions were unanimous.
Opposition parties, however, have connected the latest revelations with their broader allegations concerning electoral rolls and what they describe as “vote chori”. Congress has demanded action against Kumar, while protests and political attacks have intensified following the publication of the report. Those allegations remain political claims and should be distinguished from findings established by a court or an independent investigation.
The controversy has now acquired a legal dimension as well. A petition filed in the Supreme Court on September 25 seeks prosecution of Kumar and a Special Investigation Team inquiry into alleged violations connected with SIR. It also asks the Court to invalidate decisions, guidelines and software modifications that the petitioner alleges were undertaken without concurrence from the other commissioners. The allegations in the petition have not been judicially established.
This is where the controversy becomes bigger than one individual. The underlying issue is the credibility of the institution that administers India’s elections. When disputes concern voter registration, deletion of names, electoral databases and the authority of election officials, even procedural disagreements can acquire major constitutional and political significance.
There is also an important distinction between political accountability and legal accountability. Demands for Kumar’s resignation are political demands. Whether any action is legally warranted depends on the statutory framework, documentary evidence and, where challenged, judicial findings. The same distinction applies to claims that the Modi government is responsible for individual decisions made by the Election Commission.
The present crisis therefore has several interconnected strands: the reported 14 objections by two Election Commissioners, the ECI’s assertion that its final decisions remained unanimous, continuing judicial scrutiny of SIR, political attacks on Kumar, and renewed debate over the 2023 law governing appointments to the Commission.
For the Modi government, the immediate challenge is not simply another Opposition attack. It is that questions about the Election Commission’s internal functioning now intersect with an already contested appointment system and a nationwide voter-roll exercise. For the ECI, the challenge is equally institutional: demonstrating through documents and transparent procedures how internal objections were handled and how final decisions were reached.
The most consequential part of the controversy may be what the official records show. If the objections were part of ordinary deliberation followed by unanimous lawful decisions, the ECI’s defence gains weight. If evidence establishes that substantive decisions were implemented without the participation or knowledge required by law, the issue becomes considerably more serious. At this stage, those questions remain contested and subject to further scrutiny rather than settled conclusions.
