Why Citizens Are Losing Trust in India’s Election Commission and Judiciary: A Growing Crisis of Institutional Confidence
India’s democratic institutions are facing a difficult question in 2026: not whether citizens still participate in elections or approach courts, but whether they increasingly believe that these institutions are functioning with sufficient independence, transparency and fairness.
Recent public-opinion findings suggest that confidence in the electoral process has weakened. The India Today-CVoter Mood of the Nation survey reported that the share of respondents who believed Indian elections were free and fair fell from 64.4% in August 2025 to 56.5% in January 2026 and then to 51.9% in August 2026. Those who said elections were not free and fair rose to 40.9%.
The numbers do not mean that citizens have uniformly lost faith in the Election Commission of India. The same survey found that 43.3% said their trust in the Election Commission had increased over the previous year, while 38% said it had decreased. A majority, 60.2%, also considered the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls necessary for removing bogus or duplicate voters. The picture, therefore, is one of divided confidence rather than a simple collapse of trust.
But the controversy surrounding the voter-roll revision has made the question of institutional neutrality particularly prominent. An Indian Express investigation published this week reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected on record 14 times over 10 months to various decisions associated with the Special Intensive Revision. The objections reportedly concerned issues including changes to voter-registration procedures and control over electoral-roll data. The Election Commission has rejected the suggestion of an institutional breakdown and said its final decisions were unanimous.
The scale of the voter-roll controversy has also brought the practical meaning of electoral participation into focus. In West Bengal, the Election Commission told the Supreme Court that 27.16 lakh names had been removed during the revision process and that more than 22 lakh of those affected had subsequently filed appeals for reinstatement. Only 1,607 voters had been reinstated in time to vote in the 2026 Assembly elections, according to the figures presented to the court.
The Supreme Court itself has questioned aspects of the implementation. During proceedings concerning Delhi’s revision exercise, the court recently described notices issued to more than 33 lakh voters as appearing “mechanical” and asked the Election Commission whether additional safeguards or filters were necessary. Such judicial scrutiny does not establish that the EC acted unlawfully, but it illustrates why questions about transparency and procedural fairness have become central to the public debate.
Another source of distrust is the debate over how Election Commissioners are appointed. The 2023 law changed the selection arrangement so that the committee includes the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet minister and the Leader of the Opposition, rather than the earlier Supreme Court-directed arrangement that included the Chief Justice of India. In 2026, the Supreme Court questioned whether the present structure provides sufficient institutional independence and whether the Election Commission must not only be neutral but also appear neutral in its functioning.
The judiciary is facing a different, but related, trust problem: citizens often judge justice not simply by the eventual verdict but by whether justice arrives in time, whether the process is understandable and whether accountability appears credible.
Official figures placed before Parliament showed that, as of March 16, 2026, 92,876 cases were pending in the Supreme Court and 63,98,686 cases were pending across the High Courts. The government has attributed delays to multiple factors, including vacancies, infrastructure, complexity of cases, evidence, investigations and the participation of different stakeholders.
The deeper problem becomes visible in long-pending cases. Government data showed that more than 11.73 lakh cases across India’s courts had been pending for over 20 years as of July 16, 2026. That includes cases in the Supreme Court, High Courts and district and subordinate courts.
For an ordinary litigant, such delays can transform a legal right into a distant promise. A person may technically win a case but still wait years to obtain its practical benefit. Analysis based on National Judicial Data Grid figures has found that an average civil suit takes about 4.91 years to dispose of, while execution proceedings can add another 3.97 years.
Vacancies further reinforce that perception. In Maharashtra, for example, nearly 60% of sanctioned judicial posts were vacant in 2026, while district courts in the state were dealing with more than 61 lakh pending cases. The Bombay High Court Chief Justice described the level of vacancies as a “glaring” situation.
There is also an accountability and transparency dimension. At a recent memorial lecture, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant directly addressed the question of public confidence, arguing that public trust should not be confused with public approval. His formulation was that courts build legitimacy when even a person who loses a case believes the process was fair. He also said judicial institutions should remain open to examination, questioning and criticism.
The concern is measurable. At the same event, senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani cited an India Today-CVoter survey in which 48% of respondents said they had no trust in the judiciary. The discussion also touched on judicial accountability and the controversy surrounding Justice Yashwant Varma, with calls for greater transparency in complaints against judges. These are concerns raised by participants in the debate, rather than proof that the judiciary as a whole lacks integrity.
The Election Commission and judiciary therefore face different versions of the same institutional challenge. For the EC, citizens want confidence that the rules determining who can vote are transparent, consistently applied and insulated from political influence. For the judiciary, citizens want confidence that justice is accessible, timely, understandable and subject to credible accountability.
Trust is particularly fragile when institutions communicate defensively rather than transparently. A disputed decision can survive public scrutiny when citizens can see the evidence, understand the reasoning and know how to challenge it. Conversely, even a legally defensible decision can generate suspicion when the underlying process is difficult for ordinary citizens to understand.
That is why the current debate goes beyond individual controversies involving Gyanesh Kumar, particular judges or individual court judgments. The larger issue is whether constitutional institutions can demonstrate their independence through their procedures, records, reasoning and willingness to face scrutiny.
India’s institutional trust problem is therefore not adequately described as citizens simply “losing faith” in democracy. The available evidence is more complicated. Many citizens continue to support electoral participation and institutional mechanisms such as voter-roll revision, while simultaneously expressing growing doubts about whether those mechanisms are being administered fairly.
The central test for both institutions is consequently procedural: can the Election Commission demonstrate that every eligible voter can reasonably protect their right to vote, and can the judiciary demonstrate that every litigant can reasonably expect a fair and timely process? The answer to those questions may ultimately matter more for public confidence than any individual controversy or political argument.
