However, as soon as The Indian Express, September 23, reported on the dissent of the other two Election Commissioners (Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi), who had raised objections to decisions of the Commission over the past ten months on the ground that they were legally untenable, the Election Commission suddenly convened a meeting on Saturday, September 26. Within just two hours, it took a series of decisions and immediately made them public.

What prevented the Commission from finding these same two hours at any point during the last ten months? 

The reality is that every decision taken “unanimously” at this belated meeting reads like an acknowledgement of the serious wrongs committed by the Commission since the SIR process began.

The Commission has now decided that electors flagged for “logical discrepancies” need not be summoned to its offices and made to stand in queues; officials will instead visit their homes and collect the necessary documents. 

It has also decided that, henceforth, agendas must be circulated in advance for all Commission meetings and minutes of the proceedings must be shared afterwards. Any changes to the Commission’s IT modules will now require the Commission’s approval. It has further directed that all officials must implement the Commission’s decisions strictly and without deviation.

These decisions are welcome. But are these not the most elementary procedural safeguards expected of any public institution that is accountable to the people? And does not the content of the September 26, 2026, press release of the ECI admit to a not so tacit admission of the ECI’s guilt?

By announcing that such basic institutional discipline will be followed from now on, is the Commission not effectively acknowledging that these procedures were not being followed by the Chief Election Commissioner until now?

Therefore, are not the Gyanesh Kumar’s ‘unilateral decisions’ illegal?

Under the 1995 law enacted by Parliament governing the functioning of the Election Commission, and the amendments made to it in 2023, the three-member Election Commission is required to take its decisions, as far as possible, unanimously and, where unanimity is not possible, by majority.

The Commission’s own decisions of September 26 indirectly make it clear that agendas of previously held meetings were not being provided to the other two Election Commissioners. Does this not amount to a violation of the law? Is Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar Gupta not accountable for such a violation? And can decisions taken without the unanimity or majority required by law be considered legally valid?

Seen in this context, the Commission’s September 26 decisions appear aimed primarily at containing the damage to its institutional credibility after allegations emerged that decisions were being taken unilaterally and in compliance with the Modi government’s directions. They contain no apparent mechanism for examining Gyanesh Kumar’s alleged violations or for remedying the serious consequences created by the SIR process.

That is not all.

The Commission has also failed to answer several crucial questions raised by the other two Election Commissioners and subsequently brought into the public domain by The Indian Express.

Questions left unanswered by the Commission’s “Unanimous Silence”

For instance, under the law, the final authority to decide whether a person should be included in or removed from the electoral roll rests with the local Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). But, as revealed by the other two Election Commissioners, ECINET, which is centrally controlled, was not even recording some of the decisions taken by these EROs.

Similarly, in West Bengal, a staggering 1.4 crore “logical discrepancy” notices were centrally generated without even bringing them to the attention of the local EROs. In Goa, despite the ERO repeatedly directing that 97 electors be included in the rolls—and despite the matter reportedly being brought to the Central Election Commission’s attention seven or eight times—their names were still not included.

These actions raise serious questions of legality, procedural and substantive. Such practices have already resulted in the disenfranchisement of crores of electors.

Yet the Commission’s unanimous statement of September 26 accepts no responsibility for what happened. In the Goa case, it merely says that BLOs will visit the homes of the 97 excluded electors and get the necessary forms filled. But it offers no comparable remedy for those affected in West Bengal.

Second, consider those excluded in West Bengal on the ground of “logical discrepancies.” Decisions concerning 38 lakh cases, after scrutiny of documents by lower-level adjudicatory authorities, have been challenged before tribunals. Of these, 22 lakh appeals were filed by affected electors who had been excluded from the rolls.

But what about the remaining 16 lakh cases in which, inexplicably the ECI has appealed inclusion of all these voters by officers at the district and constituency level? These were cases filed by the Election Commission itself against electors whose claims had been accepted at the lower-level proceedings and whose names had consequently been included in the electoral rolls!

And there is another crucial question: How is it that nearly 90 per cent of the cases filed by the Commission in West Bengal were against Muslims? Most importantly, The Indian Express has reported that neither the West Bengal CEO nor the other two Election Commissioners at the Centre were aware that the Commission itself had initiated these cases before the tribunals.

Yet the Commission’s September 26 statement provides no explanation whatsoever on this issue. Nor does it subject these actions to any review.

If that is so, what do the people gain from the Commission’s newly proclaimed “unanimous” decisions? The more fundamental question is this: Do the unanimous decisions of the three Election Commissioners protect people from the consequences of the SIR exercise—or are the decisions themselves riddled with contradictions?

Let us examine two of the Commission’s most important decisions:

What is the Remedy for States where the SIR has already been completed?

In an attempt to address the differential treatment that the Commission had been extending to VIPs and ordinary electors in cases involving “Logical Discrepancy” notices, the Commission has now decided that BLOs should visit the homes of electors who have received such notices and collect the required documents from them.

This is a welcome decision. But several fundamental questions remain.

a) The problem was never merely the distance between an elector’s home and the government office, or the time and expense involved in making that journey. The much deeper problem is that crores of Dalits, oppressed and marginalised people in this country simply do not possess the documents made mandatory under SIR.

The Commission’s newly declared “unanimous decisions” offer no remedy whatsoever for this fundamental problem.

b) What about electors in West Bengal and other states who have already lost their voting rights because they were not given such an opportunity within the prescribed deadline? Would extending this facility only now not amount to unequal treatment of those electors?

If this discrimination is genuinely to be remedied, should not the final electoral rolls in those states be kept in abeyance and affected electors be given the same opportunity to secure their voting rights?

And should elections already conducted based on such a discriminatory SIR process not also be annulled?

c) The September 26 statement similarly says that special assistance campaigns should be conducted in areas inhabited by the poor, homeless people and workers. But without extending the duration of the process, how can people in Karnataka and the other thirteen states currently undergoing the exercise benefit from this decision?

The Form 6 Trap!

One of the most important questions raised by the other two Election Commissioners concerns Form 6. Form 6 is the prescribed form for enrolment of new electors. Under Sections 22 and 23 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the relevant requirements concern eligibility for registration, including citizenship, age and ordinary residence.

Under the SIR process, however, not only electors excluded from the existing rolls but even new applicants seeking enrolment have been required to submit, along with Form 6, a separate declaration and one of the 11 documents prescribed under SIR. For electors seeking ‘re-entry’ into the electoral roll following acts of exclusion committed by the ECI, are—in this controversial exercise—being asked to give declarations that they are first time voters, on oath. This declaration, in law is considered a false declaration because voters who have voted in previous polls have no other method provided for re-entry into the electoral roll! New applicants have also been required to establish that their parents were included in the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR, where applicable. Applications not accompanied by the prescribed supporting documents were not being processed through ECINET.

This raises a fundamental question of legality.

Although the Election Commission is an autonomous constitutional body, its rule-making and electoral procedures operate within the framework of laws enacted by Parliament under Article 327 of the Constitution. Neither the Representation of the People Act, 1950 nor the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 prescribed these SIR-specific requirements for filing Form 6. Nor was the law amended to incorporate these additional conditions.

The contention, therefore, is that imposing such additional SIR-driven requirements through internal, administrative/bureaucratic directions, without corresponding statutory amendments, is legally untenable.

Silent on these contradictions, in the September 26 press note, the Commission has now unanimously offered a different justification. According to the Commission, the requirement under the SIR process to submit a declaration and supporting documents along with Form 6 cannot be considered unlawful because the Supreme Court, in its judgment of May 27, 2026, upheld this procedure.

That is the Commission’s defence.

Is this factually correct? Did the SC judgement rubber stamp the SIR Form 6 process?

The Commission’s claim is half true and half false.

a) The Election Commission introduced the above-mentioned SIR-related changes to Form 6 in July 2026. The Supreme Court delivered its judgment in May 2026. It is therefore incorrect to interpret the judgment as the Supreme Court having approved the amendments to the Form 6 that were introduced only later.

b) However, in paragraphs 152–153 of that judgment, the Supreme Court made it clear that any modifications to Form 6 must bear a rational nexus to the purpose for which SIR is being undertaken. In other words, such modifications can be justified only insofar as they contribute to ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the electoral rolls. The Election Commission, however, has so far provided no such rational justification for these changes.

Therefore, the Commission’s claim that the Form 6 changes already carry the Supreme Court’s approval is not entirely correct. Equally however, the Supreme Court did not categorically say that the Election Commission had no authority to make such modifications either. 

In paragraphs 152–161 of its judgment, the Court accepted the Commission’s justification for the documents, modifications and procedures adopted for implementing the SIR exercise in Bihar. It upheld the Commission’s authority to structure the SIR exercise and sustained the measures adopted in Bihar.

The fresh issue, however, is materially different: the allegation now is that the decision to modify Form 6 was taken unilaterally by the Commission, in violation of the statutory decision-making process.

Has the Commission’s September 26 note rendered the SIR process redundant?

There are, however, elements in the Election Commission’s new unanimous order of September 26 that indirectly render the very logic of SIR questionable, if not self-contradictory.

Neither the opposition parties nor the media appear to have paid sufficient attention to this aspect.

On Form 6, the September 26 order states:

“The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court. For non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used.”

It further states:

“SIR has already been completed in 20 States/UTs including Bihar and West Bengal. Any person whose name has got left out during SIR or thereafter, and any person including young/ first-time voter, may apply to the concerned ERO, for inclusion of their names in the electoral rolls under the process of continuous updation. Chief Election Officers (CEOs) have been directed to facilitate the same. The CEOs, DEOs, EROs will immediately launch a special drive for enrolment of these electors.”

This has three important implications:

1) The additional documents and mapping requirements imposed along with Form 6 under SIR apply only during the SIR period.

2) During the non-SIR period—that is, after the SIR exercise ends—the ordinary requirements under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 will once again apply.

3) Even in the 20 States and Union Territories where SIR has already been completed, people whose names were excluded from the final SIR rolls, as well as new electors, can seek enrolment again through the ordinary “process of continuous updation.”

What is the “Process of Continuous Updation”?

According to the Election Commission’s Manual on Electoral Rolls, 2023, continuous updation is the regular statutory process through which applications for inclusion, deletion, correction and related changes in electoral rolls are dealt with using Forms 6, 7 and 8 under the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.

What documents are required under this process?

They are not the special SIR documents.

Under the ordinary enrolment framework, an applicant makes the prescribed declaration and provides the applicable proof of age and ordinary residence. Documents ordinarily available to people—including Aadhaar and other prescribed or acceptable documents relating to age and residence—can be used in accordance with the applicable rules and Form 6 requirements.

And such enrolment can take place during the non-SIR period.

As already noted, the Commission’s September 26 decision itself says that during the non-SIR period, the forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 will apply.

This produces an extraordinary situation, a duality:

A person excluded from the electoral roll during SIR can, after SIR ends, seek to return to the electoral roll through the ordinary continuous-updation process—without being subjected to the same SIR-specific documentary regime.

If that is so, what purpose does SIR serve? Does the Commission’s own unanimous order not expose a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the entire SIR exercise?

If electors who fail to satisfy the special SIR requirements can subsequently seek enrolment through the ordinary statutory process, why subject them to the more onerous SIR process in the first place?

And that leads to an even more serious question:

Was the SIR introduced in selected states, with its heavier documentary requirements, without adequately considering these contradictions and its disparate impact on particular communities?

And what happens now to the 13 crore electors who have already been excluded?

Ten People’s Demands:

Therefore, even in the wake of the Election Commission’s new order, a powerful movement must be built around these ten people’s demands to defend the Indian Republic from the Modi establishment.

1) SIR must be scrapped with immediate effect.

2) CEC Gyanesh Kumar, accused of acting as ‘an agent of the executive’, must resign.

3) The Supreme Court must invoke Article 142 of the Constitution and initiate proceedings against CEC Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of betrayal of the constitutional order.

4) All decisions and processes undertaken by the Election Commission during Gyanesh Kumar’s tenure must be subjected to public scrutiny.

5) All elections conducted under the leadership of Gyanesh Kumar must be annulled.

6) The 2023 law governing the appointment of Election Commissioners—which gives the Union government a decisive role in their appointment and provides legal protection for acts performed in official capacity—must be repealed.

7) The Election Commission and the electoral process must be democratised.

8) The Sangh Parivar and the BJP, which continue to defend the Election Commission and the Modi government despite these alleged anti-people actions, must face a nationwide political boycott.

9) The Opposition parties must unanimously boycott elections conducted based on SIR and launch a complete non-cooperation movement against the Modi–RSS government.

10) For these demands to be realised, a massive nationwide people’s movement of the deprived and disenfranchised must be built.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Related:

The post September 26 ECI Press Note: Does it not render SIR redundant? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

We were disheartened to see media outlets amplify his post without context or critique, so we have unpacked his argument in depth here. His post is merely an illustrative case. In our time in so-called elite institutions, we have seen many professors share similar attitudes, and this analysis draws on that lived experience of the system as much as on his words. With this critique of a public argument, we hope to prompt reflection on the individual and institutional biases that harm students from marginalised groups in elite institutions.

I am disturbed to see Prof. Suryanarayana Doola being vilified over the recent controversy at IIT Bombay. I know Surya personally. He is one of the finest faculty members I have known in the IIT system, and a gentleman of the highest integrity. Whatever concerns have been raised… pic.twitter.com/PwlAWQWvW9

— V. Ramgopal Rao, Ph.D. (@ramgopal_rao) September 23, 2026

This post is veiled but vile. It is hard to spot unless one recognises casteism not merely in visceral acts but as structural and systemic, deeply embedded in elite institutions as much as in society at large. The post invokes casteist prejudices within the reader without saying the quiet part aloud, leaving room for deniability. The argument leans on this prejudice so heavily that it doesn’t even bother hiding its own contradictions. 

He says “With students coming through an intensive coaching culture, and classrooms bringing together students whose JEE Advanced ranks range from single digits to five digits (in the same class -for example CSE in IIT Delhi), we now have highly heterogeneous classrooms across the IIT system. Language also further adds to the challenge.

The question to ask therefore is, with such heterogeneity, can we expect every student to learn at the same pace?”

He invokes two kinds of heterogeneity, ability and background, and seamlessly equates them, which is itself casteist. He further laments that a teacher cannot teach effectively to such a heterogenous class properly. 

What heterogeneity in ability could he possibly be referring to at IITs, which are defined above all, by their exclusivity? IIT intake is about 1% of those who appear for the JEE, and JEE aspirants themselves are only about a tenth of those who sit the Class 12 boards. 

The question to ask, therefore, is this: what does it say about your competence as a teacher if you cannot cater to the brightest 1% of the country, by your own institute’s standard? Why shouldn’t we question the merit of a teacher who makes excuses about supposed heterogeneity in the country’s most exclusive and selective classrooms?

JEE Advanced is scored out of 360 marks, yet those few hundred points are stretched into ranks running into the tens of thousands. A difference of a handful of marks, often within the margin of error of any exam, can separate ranks by hundreds or thousands of places. 

As Pierre Bourdieu argued, competitive exams do not measure pre-existing differences in ability so much as manufacture them, forcing a largely undifferentiated pool into an ordinal hierarchy where marginal, often arbitrary gaps in marks are treated as real, stable differences in ‘ability’.

The heterogeneity in ability that the professor describes is not a fact, but an artifact manufactured by the ranking system. When educators talk about ability solely in terms of these ranks, as if they were an absolute, hierarchical measure of ability across the cohort, this serves a narrative that justifies discrimination and shields educators from scrutiny.

He claims, “We now have highly heterogenous classrooms across the IIT system.” What does he mean by “now”? Does he mean after the implementation of reservations? He never says so outright, but he implies it to any reader who already carries that prejudice.

He says “There is nothing wrong with opening the doors of our best institutions to students from different backgrounds. The question is whether we have addressed this heterogeneity in our teaching-learning methods.”

This statement, by itself, is a valid goal if the question is an invitation to introspect whether the pedagogy in IIT classrooms is sensitive to the diversity of students in it. 

However, he follows it up with, “A faculty member cannot pitch every class at several levels at once. Move too slowly, and some students lose interest. Move too quickly, and others are left behind.”, where he is talking about heterogeneity in learning achievement levels or ability. 

He seamlessly jumps from heterogeneity in (caste) backgrounds to heterogeneity in ability, equating the two. This sleight of hand lets him imply, to a prejudiced audience, that students who enter through reservation lack ability, without saying it openly.

He contradicts himself: he says those with lower JEE Advanced ranks cannot learn at the same pace as top rankers yet also claims that even top rankers struggle because coaching trained them for familiar questions and not independent thinking.

If JEE rank is such an accurate arbiter of merit and ranks people by ability so precisely that a difference of a few thousand ranks makes them incompatible in ability to share a classroom, and by those very standards, the toppers are struggling too. 

The top rankers struggle and the bottom rankers struggle, In other words, the ‘less meritorious’ struggle and the ‘more meritorious’ struggle. Perhaps, then, the problem is not the students. Perhaps it is the teaching.

If you reject that explanation, the alternative is that the JEE selection system itself is biased toward coachability rather than independent thinking, so much so that even top rankers struggle once they enter college. The skills required to win a filtering system are not directly relevant to college, nor is rank an absolute arbiter of merit. That would mean the system was never a ‘pure selector’ of ability whose function is ‘compromised’ by reservation; it did not select for merit in the first place. 

Despite this glaring contradiction and the casteism underlying it, people still fail to consider the obvious possibility that the teacher is incompetent, or the system is. This lazy, contradictory narrative stokes anti-reservation prejudice only because a prejudiced reader is blind to the holes in it.

He assumes throughout that the teacher is competent, and that the only real difficulty is the heterogeneity in ability among students. What about the heterogeneity in the ability of teachers? Or is that assumed not to exist, because of the lack of heterogeneity in the backgrounds of IIT faculty, by his logic? 

In reality, many professors at elite institutes like IITs are not selected for their ability to teach, but for their research record. Many take pride in identifying primarily as researchers and openly detest teaching. Not every good researcher is a good teacher. But because teaching is systematically undervalued, the hierarchy between research and teaching lets the system excuse its own failure to prioritise teaching skills in the selection and appointment of these faculty. Teaching skill includes sensitivity to students, something fundamentally incompatible with the meritocratic logic that reduces them to their ranks. 

Hence, unless these issues are addressed, extending the programme from four to five years only prolongs students’ time under a system that fails them.

Notably, Prof. Rao, who now defends a colleague accused of casteism by a deceased student’s parents, chaired the 2020 committee that recommended IITs be exempt from reservation in faculty recruitment.

“A public campaign against an individual serves no one” he says. Except, that’s precisely what IIT Bombay and the media did to Sahil, and he shows no comparable concern for that trial of a student who can no longer defend himself.

Any real solution to the crisis of student deaths in elite institutions like IITs must begin with confronting and dismantling the prejudices that kill. Diversifying the faculty by effectively implementing reservation norms is one concrete way forward. It further requires faculty and institutions to introspect on their biases and unlearn them, with a commitment to equality, and to recognise that equality is not at odds with excellence but a condition of it. 

(Authors: Sulochana R is a research scholar in Science Education in Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR Mumbai; Pranav Jeevan P holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from IIT Bombay. He has earlier studied quantum computing in IIT Madras and Robotics at IIT Kanpur.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Related:

Three years after Darshan Solanki, Sahil Wakode’s death shows IIT Bombay still has no answer on caste, power and student deaths

Mumbai Dharna for Darshan Solanki makes calls for law against caste discrimination

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

A Long Battle, A Swift Stay: The Fight for Equitable Campuses

The Anatomy of Humiliation: Defining caste violence in the Constitutional era

Another student lost to suicide at IIT-Delhi

The post Unpacking a Coded Defence: What an IIT Professor’s post reveals about attitudes in elite institutions appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The demands were raised at a press conference held at the Guwahati Press Club on September 25, following the Nagarik Abhibartan (Citizens’ Convention) organised on September 20 at Lakshiram Baruah Sadan, Guwahati. The press conference was addressed by Harkumar Goswami, Dr. Ghanashyam Nath, Prof. Taizuddin Ahmed and Manoram Gogoi on behalf of the convention convenors.

At the September 20 convention, the Forum had opposed the implementation of SIR in Assam and called for the completion of the pending National Register of Citizens (NRC). The convention had taken the position that the 2014 voter list should be treated as the base or “freeze” for completing the NRC.

The concerns raised at the convention have assumed renewed significance following an investigation published by The Indian Express on September 23, which reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections at least 14 times over ten months to decisions and orders issued in the name of the Election Commission. The objections reportedly concerned matters including voter registration and deletion, changes to Form 6 and the management and centralisation of the electoral database. The investigation also reported that the two Commissioners had described certain changes as “unauthorised” and “illegal”.

The Election Commission, however, has maintained that decisions relating to SIR and other matters were taken with the approval of all three Election Commissioners and described the reported differences as part of the institutional deliberative process.

Against this backdrop, the Forum has said that the contents of the objections recorded by the two Election Commissioners, the action taken on them and the way the issues were resolved must be made public. “This is not a question of any individual or any political party. This is a question of every citizen’s right to vote and the credibility of Indian democracy,” the Forum said.

The organisation placed four demands before the authorities:

• Scrap the SIR process and restore genuine voters’ names: The entire SIR process must be scrapped and all genuine voters whose names have been deleted because of the exercise must be restored to the electoral rolls.

• Stop the process of disenfranchisement and guarantee an effective right of appeal: No voter should be deleted from the electoral roll without a transparent, fair and effective opportunity to challenge the proposed deletion. The Forum has demanded that no election be conducted based on a process that, in its view, risks excluding eligible voters from the electoral rolls.

• Ensure transparency and accountability within the Election Commission: The Forum has called for complete transparency in the Election Commission’s internal decision-making process. It has demanded independent audits and scrutiny wherever there are large-scale deletions of voter names, along with individual and institutional accountability wherever the rights of genuine voters are infringed.

The Forum has also demanded the removal of the Chief Election Commissioner through due process if he does not resign voluntarily, citing what it describes as concerns over the credibility of the Commission arising from the SIR process and allegations of voter exclusion.

• Restructure the Election Commission to strengthen its independence and transparency: The Forum has demanded restructuring of the Election Commission to make it a more independent, transparent and democratic institution. It has called for the Chief Justice of India to be included in the body responsible for selecting Election Commissioners, arguing that the selection process should not rest solely with holders of political office such as the Prime Minister.

The Forum has further proposed that, after a selection body identifies credible candidates, Election Commissioners should ultimately be elected by the general electorate to strengthen their democratic legitimacy and public confidence.

The Forum said the right to vote cannot be reduced to the presence of a citizen’s name on an electoral roll. It described voting as a fundamental means through which citizens participate in the democratic process and said that ensuring that eligible citizens are not deprived of this right in the name of electoral-roll revision is a constitutional responsibility of the Election Commission and the State.

‘What we said on September 20 was proved by the Indian Express on September 23’

Speaking at the press conference, Harkumar Goswami linked the Forum’s concerns over SIR to the issues discussed at the September 20 Nagarik Abhibartan. “What we said at the Nagarik Abhibartan on 20th September was proved by the Indian Express on 23rd September!” Goswami said.

He said the statewide citizens’ convention had been organised in Guwahati at the call of 150 distinguished citizens of Assam and in cooperation with the Forum for Social Harmony, with discussions covering land, eviction, destruction of nature, workers’ rights, economic inequality and citizenship.

Goswami said the convention had adopted two significant resolutions: that the incomplete NRC in Assam should be completed using the 2014 voter list as the base or “freeze”, and that the SIR process being undertaken across the country should be strongly opposed. “Our apprehension and opposition on the 20th [of September] was exposed before the entire country by the front-page news of the Indian Express on 23rd September. Today, the whole of India has understood how dangerous SIR is,” he said.

Prof. Taizuddin Ahmed said the concerns surrounding citizenship verification in Assam could not be viewed in isolation from the proposed nationwide electoral-roll revision. “Atrocities have been going on in Assam for many years in the name of citizenship. We know this very well because we are from Assam. Now, there is a conspiracy to do the same thing across India through SIR. Therefore, the time has come for the democratic people of the entire country to resist it in a democratic and peaceful manner,” he said.

Dr. Ghanashyam Nath said the Forum would continue to press for the four demands. “Our four-point demand must be met; otherwise, we will consider our next course of action,” he said.

The Forum has appealed to democratic citizens, social organisations and concerned groups in Assam and across the country to strengthen the demand for protection of voting rights and electoral democracy through a peaceful and democratic citizens’ movement.

Related:

Assam: ‘No to SIR!’ Complete the pending NRC! 

SIR Phase 3: 1.58 crore names deleted from draft rolls across 12 States and UTs

Supreme Court issues notice on plea for time-bound reverification of Assam NRC over “large-scale errors”

Assam FT deems Assam NRC to be final NRC

The post Scrap SIR, Restore Names of Genuine Voters, Stop Disenfranchisement: Forum for Social Harmony – Nagorik Udyog appeared first on SabrangIndia.

·         Indian Muslims need not look to Pakistan-centric preachers or scholars for intellectual and religious direction—particularly when some of them have yet to fully internalise and articulate the demands of pluralism within their own national context.

·         Javed Ahmad Ghamidi’s intellectual trajectory itself reflects an important Indian influence: his thought was significantly shaped by the rationalist and reformist legacy of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. What Indian Muslims need today is not a wholesale importation of religious discourse from across the border, but a creative regeneration of the reformist, rational and pluralist intellectual tradition that emerged on Indian soil.

·         We need to take that legacy forward—critically, creatively and in response to India’s own civilisational, constitutional and pluralistic realities. The real task before us is to recover, renew and radically regenerate the Indian tradition of Islamic thought—not merely repeat imported formulations. We need scholars who can engage Islam through the lived realities of India: its constitutional framework, civilisational diversity, interfaith encounters, Sufi heritage and deeply plural social fabric.

·         There is an irony here that deserves to be confronted. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi’s intellectual formation was significantly influenced by the rationalist and reformist thought of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan—an Indian Islamic thinker who spent decades arguing for peace, dialogue, intellectual renewal and a non-confrontational engagement with modernity. If that intellectual inheritance could travel from India to Pakistan, why should Indian Muslims now imagine that their intellectual regeneration must necessarily come from Pakistan?

·         Indian Muslims do not need borrowed certainties. They need an indigenous intellectual renaissance. The time has come to stop importing answers and start producing them. We must learn to think beyond perpetual reaction, beyond every immediate political provocation, and beyond the anxieties of the next news cycle. A community that may define its intellectual agenda primarily! An intellectual renewal must mean more than changing rhetoric. It must produce new institutions, new scholarship and new answers to contemporary questions.

If Maulana Abul A’la Maududi’s political project emerged from the specific crises of colonial India and was subsequently articulated within the political realities of Pakistan, can his political theology provide an adequate framework for Indian Muslims in the twenty-first century?

For me, the answer is increasingly clear: Indian Muslims need not make Maududi’s political Islam the organising framework of their contemporary intellectual life. But that immediately raises a more difficult and important question:

What about Javed Ahmad Ghamidi?

Here the answer cannot be as simple. Ghamidi represents a substantially different intellectual trajectory. His work has challenged a number of inherited assumptions about Islamic law, politics, religious authority and the relationship between revelation and historical circumstance. His approach gives considerable importance to the Qur’an as the primary source of religious understanding, distinguishes enduring religious principles from historically conditioned arrangements, and subjects inherited interpretations to renewed scrutiny.

For Indian Muslims searching for an intellectually serious alternative to political Islam, these features make Ghamidi’s thought worth studying.

But worth studying is not the same as suitable for wholesale adoption. That distinction is crucial.

Ghamidi’s Real Significance

Ghamidi’s importance lies less in providing a ready-made political programme for India than in demonstrating that Islamic thought can be reconstructed through disciplined interpretation rather than ideological repetition.

This is an important departure from the tendency to treat every inherited formulation as equally immutable.

His engagement with questions of governance, jihad, citizenship, religious authority and Islamic law opens space for a different kind of Muslim intellectual conversation—one in which historical context, textual interpretation and reasoned argument matter.

In this respect, Ghamidi offers something that Indian Muslims urgently need: an example of intellectual disentanglement from the idea that every political claim made in the name of Islam is necessarily a religious obligation.

Yet there is a second side to the assessment.

Ghamidi’s intellectual framework was developed within the Pakistani context and within a particular South Asian scholarly genealogy. His formative relationship with Maududi and Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi is significant, even where his later conclusions differ from theirs. The reformist thought of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan also provides an important Indian parallel, particularly in the movement away from confrontationist political readings of Islam towards peace, dialogue and intellectual engagement.

Therefore, it would be historically simplistic to present Ghamidi as an entirely independent intellectual phenomenon—or as a straightforward continuation of Wahiduddin Khan.

His significance is better understood as part of a larger South Asian argument over what Islam means in the modern age.

And that argument has not ended.

Where Ghamidi Helps—and Where Indian Ulema Must Go Further

For Indian Ulema, Ghamidi’s approach can be useful precisely where it encourages critical examination of inherited political theology.

But India presents questions that require more than a Pakistani reformist framework.

The Indian Muslim intellectual condition is shaped by a constitutional order, a multi-religious society, India’s own civilisational history, regional cultures and languages, and the lived experience of Muslims as a large religious minority. Therefore, the Indian question cannot simply be: What does Ghamidi say about the Islamic state?

It must be: What does Islam mean for Muslims living as equal citizens in India’s constitutional and plural social order?

That leads to an entirely different intellectual agenda. Can Islamic ethics provide a theological vocabulary for equal citizenship?

How should concepts such as adl (justice), ihsan (moral excellence), rahmah (mercy) and shura (consultation) be interpreted within democratic public life?

How should Muslim jurisprudence address freedom of conscience, interfaith relations, gender justice, economic participation and constitutional rights?

What can India’s Sufi, Rishi and Bhakti traditions contribute to an Islamic theology of coexistence?

And how should Muslim scholars respond to artificial intelligence, biotechnology, environmental crisis, economic inequality and technological transformation?

These questions require Indian Muslim thinkers thinking from India—not merely Indian Muslims reading thinkers from elsewhere.

The Missing Indian Dimension

India has never been intellectually barren in matters of Islam.

The subcontinent produced powerful traditions of Qur’anic scholarship, Islamic philosophy, Sufism, Persian literature and Urdu thought. The Sufi centres of Delhi, Ajmer and the Deccan, the Rishi–Sufi traditions of Kashmir, the encounters between Sufis and Bhakti saints, and the reformist and intellectual contributions of figures such as Shah Waliullah and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan all demonstrate that Indian Muslim thought has historically interacted creatively with its surrounding civilisation.

This inheritance needs to be recovered—not as nostalgia, but as raw material for a new intellectual synthesis.

Ghamidi can therefore be read alongside this Indian inheritance rather than above it.

His work may help Indian Muslims reconsider inherited assumptions. Wahiduddin Khan may offer another model of religious engagement. Maududi may remain important as an object of historical and intellectual study. Iqbal may reopen questions of selfhood and creativity. Indian Sufi and Bhakti traditions may provide resources for interreligious ethics.

But none should become the final template.

From Following Thinkers to Producing Thought

This is ultimately the central issue. Indian Muslims have spent too much intellectual energy asking which scholar to follow and too little asking which institutions, methods and questions will produce the next generation of scholarship.

The answer cannot be another personality-centred movement.

India needs research institutions devoted to Qur’anic studies, Islamic philosophy and theology; centres for Islam and constitutional citizenship; serious academic study of Indian Sufism and Rishi traditions; madrasa–university intellectual programmes; Muslim public-policy and data research; translation and publishing initiatives; and fellowships for young scholars.

The purpose should be to create an intellectual culture in which disagreement is possible, inherited positions can be examined, and new interpretations can emerge without fear. That is where the Ghamidi question becomes genuinely useful.

Ghamidi need not be the answer to India’s intellectual crisis. His example can instead become part of the reason Indian Muslims begin asking better questions.

Maududi’s political theology belongs to an important chapter of South Asian Islamic intellectual history, but its political premises cannot simply be transplanted into twenty-first-century India. Ghamidi represents a more reformist and interpretive trajectory, and therefore deserves serious engagement. Yet his framework too emerged from a particular historical and national context.

The Indian Muslim intellectual project must ultimately move beyond both. Not by rejecting the wider Muslim intellectual world, but by entering it as a producer rather than merely a consumer.

India should not merely import Islamic thought. It should generate Islamic thought rooted in India’s constitutional reality, civilisational plurality and lived Muslim experience.

The decisive question is: Can India produce a new generation of Muslim thinkers who are deeply rooted in Islam, intellectually independent of imported ideological templates, conscious of India’s civilisational inheritance, and capable of addressing the realities of the twenty-first century?

That is the intellectual renaissance Indian Muslims should now begin building.

Today, Indian Muslims have no shortage of pan-Islamic intellectuals, transnational preachers or scholars speaking in the name of a global Ummah. What we lack is not voices—but an intellectual vision and renewal adequate to modern India’s reality.

What would that renewal actually look like?

It would mean developing an Indian Islamic theology of constitutional citizenship—one that explains, in substantive theological terms, why equality before law, freedom of conscience, democratic participation and fraternity are not merely political compromises but can be understood through the ethical resources of Islam.

It would mean producing a serious Islamic intellectual response to science, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change and the digital revolution, rather than allowing Muslim discourse to remain trapped in questions inherited from nineteenth- and twentieth-century ideological battles.

It would mean rethinking madrasa education so that classical disciplines—Qur’an, Hadith, Fiqh, Arabic and Islamic theology—are placed in meaningful conversation with constitutional law, philosophy, economics, history, sociology, comparative religion, technology and the natural sciences.

It would mean recovering India’s own Sufi, Rishi and Bhakti traditions of ethical coexistence, not as romantic folklore but as serious intellectual resources for understanding India’s religious pluralism, shared sacred spaces and the ethics of disagreement.

It would mean developing a contemporary fiqh of citizenship and minority participation appropriate to a constitutional democracy—moving beyond the old binaries of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb and asking what Islamic ethics requires of citizens living together under a common constitutional order.

It would mean making women’s education, intellectual leadership and economic participation central to Muslim social reform, rather than treating them as peripheral questions.

It would mean creating research institutions that produce data-driven scholarship on Muslim education, employment, poverty, entrepreneurship and social mobility, replacing anecdote and political rhetoric with evidence.

It would mean cultivating a new generation of Muslim scholars capable of speaking to Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian and Jewish intellectual traditions without either polemical hostility or superficial interfaith symbolism.

And it would mean developing a distinctly Indian Muslim intellectual vocabulary around peace, pluralism, environmental responsibility, ethical economics, social justice and human dignity—drawing from the Qur’an and Islamic intellectual history while engaging seriously with the realities of contemporary India.

Contributing author at New Age Islam, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is an Indo-Islamic scholar, writer and researcher on Indian Sufism, interfaith ethics, and the spiritual history of Islam in South Asia. His latest book is “Ishq Sufiyana: Untold Stories of Divine Love”.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

The post Maududi Is Not Relevant for Indian Muslims — Nor Is Ghamidi appeared first on SabrangIndia.

An African American interpretation of Buddhism, it is a collection of articles by scholars and Buddhist activists who, writing from their personal experiences of racial exclusion, explore “trauma, belonging, healing, and transformation,” even as they “wrestle with their suffering.”

Subtitled Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation & Freedom, the book prompted a thought even as I carried it in my hand: if Dalits in India have been embracing Buddhism in large numbers, why wouldn’t Black Americans do the same, given that they, too, have experienced a qualitatively similar form of discrimination?

Even before I began reading the book, which was published in 2020, I sought to find out what percentage of Americans are Buddhists and, of these, how many are Black. This is what I found: Buddhists represent approximately 1.0% to 1.3% of the U.S. population, or about 3.5 to 4.4 million people. A majority are of Asian descent—roughly 60% to 67%—while about a quarter to one-third are White.

As for Black Americans, they make up roughly 3% of all Buddhists in the United States. And within the broader Black American population, less than 0.5% identify as Buddhist. Yet, from my personal interactions in the United States, I have found that Buddhist cultural presence, visibility, and affinity appear to be growing rapidly.

Someone I know intimately is by no stretch of the imagination a Buddhist. Yet he is among the millions living in America who identify as Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or “spiritual but not religious,” while regularly practising Buddhist meditation or adopting aspects of Buddhist philosophy. Not without reason, according to one source, the absolute number of Buddhist practitioners in the United States grew by more than 20% between 2010 and 2020.

Yet, as far as Black Americans are concerned, they haven’t gone the Dalit way.

Buddhists in India may make up a minuscule 0.7% to 0.8% of the country’s population, or about 8.4 million people, but a vast majority of them are Dalits—around 85% to 90%.

In all likelihood, many of them followed their icon, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who publicly converted to Buddhism at the fag end of his life—in October 1956, just two months before his death in December 1956—after concluding that the caste hierarchy and the practice of “untouchability” were inextricably embedded in orthodox Hindu scriptures.

Returning to Black & Buddhist, I couldn’t find any direct reference to Ambedkar or Dalits in its chapters. This could be because the anthology’s primary focus is specifically on the African American and Black diaspora experience in the United States, examining intergenerational trauma, white supremacy, capitalism, and the distinctive resilience of Black Buddhist practitioners in America.

However, in the book’s introduction, the two editors, Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl A. Giles, explicitly name “caste designations” alongside racism, sexism, white supremacy, imperialism, and colonialism as inherent, exploitative features of the capitalist system that Buddhism must actively confront.

There is, of course, a critique of Mahatma Gandhi by one of the contributors, Sebene Selassie, similar to what some Indian Dalit intellectuals, as well as the well-known litterateur Arundhati Roy, have been saying.

Selassie writes: “When (Gandhi) was living in South Africa as a young lawyer, his stance on anti-Black racism was well-defined and expressed: he believed Indians and whites to be part of an Aryan brotherhood and inherently superior to Black people, which was not an uncommon stance of Indians living there at the time.”

I didn’t expect Selassie to go on to examine whether Gandhi changed his views thereafter.

But let me turn to the book now.

Each of the eight contributors—Cheryl A. Giles, Lama Rod Owens, Sebene Selassie, Lama Dawa Tarchin Phillips, Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Gyozan Royce Andrew Johnson, Kamilah Majied, and Ruth King—gives graphic details of the suffering and trauma they have experienced, which led them to adopt the Buddhist way of life as a way out.

They go on to conceptualize Buddhism by identifying the paths they believe have helped them overcome their suffering: Right View, Right Mindfulness, Right Intention, Right Livelihood, Right Concentration, Right Action, Right Speech, and Right Effort.

Given this framework, what appeared particularly interesting to me was the way the book looks at capitalism.

While pointing out that in the capitalist society in which they live there is “creativity and freedom,” the book also underscores—and let me quote here—that the system leads to “exploitation, poverty, classism, caste designations, racism, sexism (and other ‘isms’ related to sex and gender), ageism, white supremacy, human supremacy, imperialism, and colonialism.”

Further, capitalism “allows for shortened lifespans for poor people due to chronic stress, hunger, thirst, and treatable but untreated diseases.”

This is quite close to the Marxian analysis—something the powers-that-be in the United States would perhaps detest from the bottom of their hearts.

A closer look, however, suggested that it is nowhere near the typical Communist way of thinking—the proletariat versus the capitalists.

One of the solutions offered is “Right Action.”

The book wonders: “A question Black Buddhists ponder is ‘What is Right Action when confronted by a violent racist?’ Our actions are not just about our own self-preservation but”—and here I paused—“also about the well-being of those around us, including violent perpetrators.”

It says that Black actions, from a Buddhist perspective, should lead to “domino effects and we vow not to become oppressors even while being oppressed.” Insisting that “hatred does not transform hatred” and “only love does that,” it underscores the importance of responding without reproducing the very violence one is confronting.

Quite Gandhian, I thought.

Further: “Right Action, at its core, is love. Love in Right Action applies to everything we do, including our hobbies, vocations, work, and activism. Right Action is necessary in the economic system we live in.”

And how does one observe “Right Livelihood” in a capitalist setup?

Not by rebelling against the system, but by ensuring that one does not make “money in a way that harms others.” In fact, one must live as “spiritually integrated, nonexploitative, generous, and constructive human beings” by beginning with “examining if and how greed operates in our lives.”

The book warns: “Capitalism can breed greed if we have the wrong view that possessing a multitude of things, or having much more money than we need, brings real security and real joy.”

Here, it cites “studies in the US” to argue that “being rich does not make one happy and does not promote mental, emotional, or psychological security.”

Regretting that Black people have “been the objects of capitalism and exploited as property,” the book says that, through the generations, they “have created a collective psychological defense against the vulnerability of being seen as financially insecure.”

The result is that “some of us have come to value things that don’t bring lasting joy.”

Often, “a large home, a luxury car, precious gems and metals, and expensive designer clothing, and paying for these things through doing work that exploits, maims, causes addictions, or kills others” are considered “symbols of success,” feeding the delusion “that being wealthy or appearing to be wealthy protects Black people from exploitation.”

The book believes: “Right Livelihood promotes safety, truth, nonharming, and constructive enterprises. Right Livelihood is not the pursuit of greed and has no interest in impressing others with material excess.”

It adds: “It is not a way to demonstrate economic viability or invulnerability. It can be used as a springboard to create economic alternatives within the system in which we find ourselves. Right Livelihood is certainly a fitting description for Right and Noble anti-racism activism…”

And how does one achieve Right Action and Right Livelihood?

The answer the authors offer is through Right Concentration.

“Supported” by experienced meditation teachers and students, one can undertake “meditation retreats” for this purpose. But here, they warn, one must be selective. One should check whether the retreat centre would be in a position to support participants during what could be an emotionally and mentally vulnerable period.

The book underlines: “Long meditation retreats evoke mental and emotional vulnerability because returning to one’s object of meditation over and over again can trigger trauma.”

But this “should not be taken to mean that meditation is not right… The real questions are these: What type of meditation retreat is appropriate? How long? How often? To what end?”

Why would an African American anti-racism activist want to experience Right Concentration?

By committing to “cultivating peace of mind and peace of body as we struggle for liberation”; by helping each other so that “our collective souls and collective selves may be nourished for generations of communities to come.”

Right Concentration, the book believes, would help one know one’s “traumatized history, without the constructs of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion and without preferences and desires, fears and terrors, anger and rage—imagine how much freedom there may be.”

“We would come out of that experience knowing ourselves as part of the Universal Renaissance in Black Self-Knowledge…”

All this would have to be done, says the book, at a time when, in the United States, one often hears African Americans being told: “Go back to Africa where you belong!”

It says: “Black belonging has always been contested in the United States and we are now being asked to support the exclusion of Brown people at our borders, Black people from African countries, and the Muslim world which is largely populated by people of color.”

This, the book argues, ought to be overcome through “benefactor practice,” which “weaves together the threads of ancestral myth, memory, and connection with others, all of which may be modes of healing intergenerational trauma that lives in our bodies.”

It says: “Integrating these threads is a lifelong process that can be supported by bringing our benefactors into our meditation practice. We know trauma lives in the body. We carry it every day. Trauma cannot be buried, ignored, pushed aside, or denied. As long as we breathe, trauma reminds us it is with us and rises to the surface. Transforming trauma means being willing to address it in our lives.”

“In other words,” the book argues, “being Black-identified does not mean that I am also anger-identified. To be Black has come with significant woundedness and trauma from having to survive a white supremacist culture as well as having to hold the transhistorical trauma of (the) ancestors who also survived the same trauma and passed it on unknowingly” to the next generation.

Yet, through meditation practice, one can experience “Blackness” as something “based upon resiliency, community, deep joy in the face of violence, and a profound gratitude” for Black culture, “which continues to transform marginalization into celebration.”

Courtesy: CounterView

The post From caste to race: Reading ‘Black & Buddhist’ through an Indian lens appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Her remarks were a response to the The Indian Express report that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had red-flagged multiple issues, including deletion of names, in various states during the pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters’ list, triggering a massive political storm.

“It has now been proven that the BJP and the EC looted the West Bengal assembly polls,” Banerjee said in a Facebook live, thereafter reported by PTI and New Indian Express.

“There will be pan-India protests till Gyanesh Kumar remains CEC. He must be immediately arrested and put behind bars. The chair of the CEC is not for a person like him. It’s another fight for freedom, this time from the compromised CEC, and the BJP that has destroyed India,” she added.

The IE report claimed that Sandhu and Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over the last 10 months to decisions and orders concerning SIR, including some allegedly taken without their knowledge. The Election Commission has, however, said that decisions relating to SIR were taken unanimously with the approval of all three commissioners.

“Re-election must be held in West Bengal with the old voter list,” she said, adding that INDIA bloc partners have spoken about the matter and will meet soon.

The remarks come days after the Election Commission froze the use of the ‘All India Trinamool Congress’ name and its reserved ‘twin flowers-and-grass’ symbol amid an escalating factional feud over control of the party.

The poll panel subsequently allotted separate interim identities to the two groups for the October 6 bypolls, with the Mamata faction getting ‘Mamata All India Trinamool Congress’ and the ‘football player’ symbol, while the rival faction led by Arup Roy was allotted ‘Democratic Trinamool Congress’ and the ‘envelope’ symbol.

The post ‘BJP, EC looted the West Bengal polls’: Mamata seeks CEC’s arrest, fresh elections with pre-SIR voter list appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The IE investigation, on the front pages of all editions of the paper stated that two Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected formally at least 14 times on various decisions taken and orders issued without their knowledge in the last 10 months. On the face of it, the Election Commission appears to have evaded the most important concerns – not least of which is what happens to the 13 crore names deleted as part of the ECI’s special intensive revision of voter rolls.

As the Indian Express report notes, the controversial national rollout of the SIR has been under the supervision of all three Commissioners. Now, with the reported disagreement of Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to some of the decisions made in the course of the SIR, there are renewed and serious concerns over the legitimacy of an extremely contested and controversial exercise.

In its press note, the ECI has repeated that it a constitutional body that functions under the strict mandate of Article 324 of the Constitution, statutory rules and established institutional conventions. Noting that the Commission operates as a “multi-member constitutional body,” the ECI states that “written notes, observations, technical suggestions and internal checks-and-balances are standard, ongoing practices designed to ensure complete transparency, legal compliance and operational rigour.”

Avoiding any response into the particulars of the formal objections reported by the newspaper, the ECI claims then, “All actions of ECI have been in accordance of laws and instructions of the Commission.”

The press note may be viewed here:

Official Press Note pic.twitter.com/xIQvXHqMSt

— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) September 23, 2026

The ECI also announced:

“All official orders, decisions and administrative directions issued by the Commission carry full legal sanctions and follow established statutory procedures under The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023.”

However, this stand of the ECI that its actions were legally sanctioned evades the seriousness in the report– that two out of three Election Commissioners in a three-member body complained about being kept in the dark when it came to the adding new voters and the deleting of names.

The two have also expressed formal concerns over integrity of voter software and raised the issue of a centralised voter database that bypasses state officials.

The ECI’s response makes light of this concern and puts them under the umbrella of ‘operational queries or inputs,’ saying:

“Any operational queries or inputs raised by Commission members during draft stages are part of standard administrative practice aimed at safeguarding voter rights. The suggestions given by the Commissioners were for further improving the electoral processes.”

The ECI also adds:

“Differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution. They are a part of the decision-making process before a final decision is taken. Not only the three Commissioners, but every officer of the Commission is fully authorized to give his suggestions to the Commission for improving the electoral system.”

Contradicting this, the IE reports make it amply clear that the Election Commissioners’ objections were not “suggestions,” but full-fledged formal complaints. In one, Sandhu notes that the EC acted against the written advice of two commissioners and claim its action was “unauthorised and illegal.” Sandhu and Joshi also, the report says, wrote separately to the Cabinet Secretary complaining about changes in work allocation that did away with crucial oversight despite their advice against it.

In what appears as a weak defense, ECI further claimed

“Highlighting certain specific internal notes/observations spread over the period of 10 months while overlooking the much larger body of approvals, decisions, instructions and initiatives give only one part of the picture. In recent months, the Commission has taken numerous decisions, issued instructions, introduced around 40 new initiatives and undertaken many electoral reforms including the conduct of Electoral roll revision (including SIR) across the country. All these decisions are an outcome of the unanimous decisions of the full Commission in the past one year.”

Notwithstanding the fact that some communication transcended the meaning of “internal” – like the complaint to the Cabinet Secretary as illustrated above – it is unclear why the gravity of 14 objections in 10 months should reduce under the weight of the allegedly much larger body of approvals.

“The Commission has recently successfully conducted major elections of Bihar, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Assam and West Bengal and election-related exercises during this period. This work involved wide-ranging administrative and operational machinery and many Commission approvals and instructions.”

Even today, the contentious deletions in some of these states, especially West Bengal, is being heard by the courts and the impact they have had on people’s ability to access public welfare is well reported. The Election Commission’s description of these SIRs as “successful” raises questions on its awareness of the issues and lives at stake.

In what reads as a response to the report that notes the Election Commissioners’ reservations against a central database, the ECI says:

The Commission’s digital platforms, such as ECINet, operate under strict data security protocols to prevent unauthorized tampering, manipulation, etc. IT security checks and audit controls are standard cybersecurity measures implemented across national databases. Statutory authorities, including Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and District Election Officers (DEOs), function as per statutory powers for registration and deletion under law.

The press note, signed by P. Pawan, a deputy director in the Media Division of the ECI, finishes with the line:

“Election Commission of India remains fully committed to executing its constitutional duties with complete integrity, recognizing its vital role in advancing our democracy.”

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The disclosures in The Indian Express, September 23 have only strengthened suspicions and concerns that the CPI (M), other opposition parties and civil society organisations have all along raised since the SIR process was initiated. 

Reports indicate that two out of the three Election Commissioners have recorded objections to several decisions relating to electoral-roll revision and the SIR process. According to the law all the three election commissioners are equal and any difference should be settled by a majority or unanimity. The CEC didn’t follow this rule, but went on imposing his views without caring for the objections raised his other EC colleagues. Significantly, these differences concern fundamental questions about how voters are being added or removed from the electoral rolls and how the SIR is being implemented. 

“What is being revealed now is that the CEC has all along falsely claimed that the entire process is transparent and decentralised. It is now clear that over the past few months the entire system has been centralised to the extent that it obscures who is actually taking decisions. The Supreme Court has also flagged the over reliance on technology and the “mechanical” issuance of notices.

“The issues raised by the two Election Commissioners go beyond the SIR process. It concerns the institutional integrity and democratic functioning of the Election Commission, transparency in the electoral process, over centralisation and the protection of the right to universal adult franchise. The credibility of the Election Commission as an unbiased institution is at stake. People have lost confidence in a compromised Election Commission, for which CEC Gyanesh Kumar should be held accountable. He cannot continue in office any longer.

Hence, the Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) also demands an immediate halt to the SIR process. The integrity and democratic functioning of the ECI must be restored. Transparency in the appointment of the Election Commissioner’s has to be ensured by scrapping the concerned legislation and enacting a new one by accepting the Supreme Court guidelines for a selection committee comprising of the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and Chief Justice of India.

Related:

Judgement delivered, paradox prevails: every voter a citizen, but what is the fate of 51.8 million excluded?

SC greenlights SIR, upholds ECI’s power to revise electoral rolls

The Bihar Verdict 2025: How an election was engineered before votes were cast

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In a series of posts on social media platform ‘X’, both the party handle and Leader of the Opposition (LOP) Rahul Gandhi’s handle both highlighted the investigation and also credited Gandhi for his campaign on #VoteChori (Vote Theft). Gandhi had also called these shenanigans by the ruling party and ECI as treason.

BIG BREAKING : PANIC in BJP camp

Congress has launched a protest against CEC Gyanesh Kumar .

Wait for when Rahul Gandhi arrives.

Gyanesh Kumar Bad Day Began pic.twitter.com/2bYJ1NTJFB

— The Rebel (@TheRebel_IN) September 23, 2026

Vote chori is a crime against the Indian people and a direct attack on our constitution.

The BJP, RSS and EC who organised it have committed an act of treason.

Justice will be served. pic.twitter.com/30kX06CBiH

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 23, 2026

‘वोट चोरी’ देशद्रोह है pic.twitter.com/05VvkkwBzb

— Congress (@INCIndia) September 23, 2026

ECI had conducted free & fair elections: LoP Rahul Gandhi ji would be India’s PM today. Congress would have formed govt in Haryana. Congress would have formed govt in MP. MVA would have formed govt in Maharashtra. Modi would have lost his own seat. ECI robbed the people’s mandate to please their masters.

The post INC protests outside ECI, demands CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“The explosive findings published by The Indian Express today, backed by evidence, have now cast serious doubts over the results of every Assembly election held after the SIR exercise. The investigation reveals that Chief Election Commissioner #GyaneshKumar had been acting unilaterally and in secrecy, without the concurrence of the other two Election Commissioners. Even more alarming is the revelation that Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi were kept in the dark about crucial decisions being taken within the very institution they jointly oversee. Their objections to decisions being taken without their knowledge were brushed aside on as many as 14 occasions in just ten months. These revelations have severely eroded the credibility of the Election Commission.”

He elaborated further, “The Election Commission is a three-member body whose business must, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously. Where the Commissioners differ in opinion on any matter, the decision must be based on the majority view. If two of its three members were themselves kept unaware of what was being done in the Commission’s name, this cannot be dismissed as a mere internal or procedural matter. It constitutes a grave assault on Indian democracy. The credibility of an apex institution that is expected to function independently, transparently and without political interference has been seriously compromised.”

“The revelations concerning the electoral rolls are equally disturbing. Appeals were filed against the inclusion of voters even after courts had ordered that their names be added to the electoral rolls. Who authorised these appeals? Who filed them? The two Election Commissioners themselves say they were kept in the dark.

“The law empowers Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to scrutinise and revise electoral rolls. Yet, they were unable to add even those who had been duly found eligible to vote. ERONet, the digital platform through which these changes had to be made, was entirely under the control of one person. When such concerns are being raised by two serving Election Commissioners, the extent of political interference that may have taken place within the Election Commission is plain to see.

“As early as March this year, the DMK, along with other Opposition parties, moved an impeachment motion against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. He has no right to continue in office any longer. #GyaneshKumarMustGo immediately. The SIR exercise must be halted. The DMK demands a fair and thorough investigation into everything that has transpired within the Election Commission and that those responsible be held accountable.”

Related:

Exclusive Investigation SIR: How many voters did the ECI actually disenfranchise? Why do final figures show inexplicable ‘additions’?

Judgement delivered, paradox prevails: every voter a citizen, but what is the fate of 51.8 million excluded?

SC greenlights SIR, upholds ECI’s power to revise electoral rolls

The Bihar Verdict 2025: How an election was engineered before votes were cast

The post Former TN CM, M. K. Stalin demands Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation appeared first on SabrangIndia.