Should the CEC Resign? Accountability and Protecting a Constitutional Office

Should the CEC Resign? The Case for Disclosure First The Election

Commission says all its decisions in the past year were unanimous. Two of its three members objected on record at least 14 times in that period. That contradiction is at the centre of the demand that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign.

The difficulty is that two valid principles point in different directions. Accountability says that an institution whose own members say it has acted unlawfully cannot carry on as though nothing happened. Protection of the office says that a constitutional post designed to withstand political pressure should not be vacated because of political pressure.

The Case for Resignation

The strongest argument does not depend on the Opposition's political claims. It depends on the Commission's own records. According to the reports, Vivek Joshi warned in May that Form 6 could not be changed without amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.

The change was made anyway and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu called it "unauthorised and illegal". The two Commissioners also recorded that field officers lacked full access to ERONet, the roll database that the law makes Electoral Registration Officers responsible for.

The CEC was selected by a panel that Justice Datta has said fails the perception test. If the office's independence is already in question and its colleagues say decisions bypassed them, trust in the Commission may require a new head.

The Case for Protecting the Office

The framers deliberately made the CEC hard to remove. Article 324(5) allows removal only in the manner of a Supreme Court judge, which means a demanding parliamentary process on grounds of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.

That protection exists to shield the CEC from political pressure. If a CEC resigns because of an expose and protests by political parties, a precedent is set that any future CEC who makes unpopular decisions can be pushed out the same way.

The Commission says its actions were lawful and the Supreme Court had earlier upheld the revision exercise. Resignation before facts are established could itself damage the office's independence.

TAN's Position

TAN's position is that transparency must come first. The CEC should not be forced out by political pressure alone and he also should not continue as though the questions have been answered. The Commission should:

• Publish the record: who authorised the Form 6 change, who approved appeals filed in the Commission's name and why the full Commission did not meet between May and August.
• Withdraw the disputed Form 6 question until the Rules are properly amended.
• Commission an independent audit of ERONet, as Joshi himself proposed. Removal should then follow the constitutional process, if the findings justify it.

What would change our view: if disclosure shows that decisions were deliberately taken to bypass the two Commissioners, who together form a majority under the 2023 Act, then resignation would be the minimum response, not an overreaction.