Reform or Reassurance: What the ECI's Press Note Can and Cannot Fix

Reform or Reassurance? The

ECI's press note does three things. Agendas will be circulated before meetings and minutes shared afterwards. Officers' foreign trips will need the Commission's approval. EROs will run a special drive to enrol voters whose names were left out after the Special Intensive Revision.

These are real changes. The question is whether they touch the problem that produced 14 recorded objections from two of the Commission's three members.

The Case That Internal Reform Is Enough

This argument deserves more credit than it usually gets. Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi were both appointed under the 2023 Act's procedure, the same procedure critics say gives the government control over who sits on the Commission.

Yet they dissented, on the record, 14 times. If the selection method guaranteed compliant commissioners, those objections would not exist. The multi-member design worked as intended: it produced internal disagreement. On this view, the failure is procedural.

The 2023 Act already says the Commission's business should be transacted unanimously where possible and by majority where members differ. If two commissioners disagreed with the CEC, the real question is whether decisions were taken without them.

Circulated agendas and shared minutes create the paper trail that makes such bypassing visible and difficult. Rewriting the selection law, by contrast, changes nothing for the commissioners now in office.

The Case for Reconstituting the Selection Committee

The counter-argument starts from the reasoning in Anoop Baranwal (2023). A body that decides how the contest for power is run should not be chosen only by those who currently hold power. The Supreme Court set an interim panel of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice.

Parliament replaced the Chief Justice with a Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister, so the government holds two of the three votes. Courteous meeting procedure does not change who holds the majority. The stakes are not administrative.

The Special Intensive Revision removed more than 13 crore names from draft rolls. Commissioner Sandhu has asked who authorised 16.1 lakh appeals to remove voters in West Bengal whom judicial officers had restored. The press note does not answer that question.

A Commission that cannot say who took such a decision has an accountability problem that agendas and minutes will not solve.

Where TAN Stands

TAN's position is that the press note is reassurance, not reform and that the selection committee must be reconstituted so the government does not hold an overriding majority. Internal procedure matters and the dissents show the multi-member design can function.

But procedure only protects the dissenting member. It does not change the incentives of whoever is appointed next. The fact that two dissenters emerged from the current system shows that individuals can resist. Institutions should not depend on that.

Our view would change if the Commission published the 14 objections with reasoned responses to each and named who authorised the West Bengal appeals. A Commission able to correct itself that openly would show internal reform can do the work.

Until then, the question of who appoints remains the one that matters.