One Commission or One Commissioner? The Collegiality Test Behind the SIR Petition

The Silence in Article 324 That Makes This Petition Possible Article 324

says the Election Commission shall consist of a Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners as the President may fix. That is nearly all the text says about how the body is composed. It says nothing about how three commissioners are to decide anything together. That silence is the real subject of the petition the INDIA bloc filed on 12 October.

What the

petition is and what it is not The petition is careful to say what it is not. It does not ask the Court to strike down the Special Intensive Revision. The Court already upheld the SIR in its May 2026 ruling in ADR v. ECI, finding the exercise was not manifestly excessive or arbitrary.

The petition asks a narrower and sharper question. Did the Commission act as a commission? It wants the ECI's files, agendas, minutes, notings and objections placed on record for each disputed SIR decision. Its core allegation is that CEC Gyanesh Kumar exercised powers that belong to the whole Commission without the knowledge or concurrence of Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.

The trigger was an Indian Express investigation of 23 September 2026. It reported that two commissioners had recorded objections at least 14 times over ten months. The ECI's position is that differences of opinion are normal in deliberation and that its decisions, including the 24 June 2025 order that began the SIR, carried unanimous approval.

The rule as written versus the rule as practised The text of the Constitution does not create collegiality.

It was built by the courts and by Parliament. In T.N. Seshan v. Union of India (1995), a Constitution Bench upheld the multi-member Commission. It rejected the argument that the other commissioners were merely advisers to the CEC and held that the Commission decides by majority.

Parliament codified the principle in Section 18 of the 2023 Act: business is to be transacted unanimously where possible and otherwise by majority. In practice, the Constitution itself tilts the other way. Article 324(5) protects the CEC from removal except in the manner of a Supreme Court judge.

The other commissioners can be removed only on the CEC's recommendation. The document therefore guards one member more strongly than the institution he is meant to share power with.

Why this matters beyond one petition This is why the documents matter more than the rhetoric.

A majority rule means little if no one can see whether a majority was ever consulted. The petition's other grounds all point back to the same question of who decided and on what record:

• no recorded full-Commission decision authorising a nationwide SIR; - a statutory Form 6 allegedly altered without amending the governing Rules; - opaque functioning of the ECINET and ERONET databases; - large-scale exclusion of electors without notice, hearing or a way to be restored. There is also a separation-of-powers thread. CJI Surya Kant declined to meet the petitioners, saying the Court can act only judicially, including under Article 32. The question of internal collegiality will therefore be answered in a courtroom, through records, not through political contact. For the examiner, the lesson is that independence of a constitutional body has two faces. One is insulation from the executive. The other, often missed, is internal: no single office-holder should be able to exercise a power the Constitution gave to the institution as a whole.