Introduction: The Retreat into Opacity
The Election Commission of India (ECI), the constitutional entity tasked with ensuring free and fair elections, has recently taken a step that signals a disquieting retreat from transparency into a constitutionally suspect zone of opacity. The ECI, reportedly, has mandated the destruction of all election-related CCTV, webcasting, and video footage after a mere 45-day period post-declaration of results. This executive order, presented as a benign administrative update, is in fact a measure with profound constitutional implications, posing a direct and formidable challenge to the foundational principles of electoral integrity, the citizen’s fundamental right to information, and the overarching rule of law.
This article posits that the ECI’s directive is a facially unconstitutional act. It is a colourable exercise of power that is manifestly arbitrary, directly infringes upon the fundamental rights to information and equality as enshrined in Articles 19(1)(a) and 14 of the Constitution of India, and systematically dismantles the architecture of electoral justice. By ordering the pre-emptive destruction of the most crucial and unimpeachable evidence of electoral conduct, the directive effectively sabotages the statutory right to challenge an election, thereby undermining the basic structure of the Constitution, which is predicated on the pillars of democratic accountability and judicial review.
The analysis herein will proceed in a structured manner to build this constitutional challenge. First, it will deconstruct the impugned directive and its legislative predicate—the controversial December 2024 amendment to Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961—to reveal an architecture of engineered obscurity. Second, it will examine the nature and limits of the ECI’s plenary powers under Article 324, arguing that these powers are intended to be a shield for democracy, not a sword against its core principles. Third, the article will establish the directive’s irreconcilable conflict with the judicially fortified fundamental right of the voter to be informed, a right that has been repeatedly expanded and protected by the Supreme Court. Fourth, it will apply the rigorous test of arbitrariness, as articulated under Article 14, to expose the flimsiness of the ECI’s official justifications. Finally, the article will conclude with a call for reversal to restore the vital light of transparency to India’s electoral process, without which democracy itself is diminished.
I. The Architecture of Obscurity: The Directive and its Legislative Precursor
To comprehend the full constitutional import of the ECI’s data destruction mandate, it is essential to first dissect the policy itself and place it in its immediate legal and historical context. The directive issued on May 30, 2025 did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the culmination of a two-pronged administrative and legislative strategy that has progressively and systematically constricted the avenues for public and judicial scrutiny of the electoral process. This section will detail this strategic construction of an opaque regime, beginning with the directive’s radical departure from established policy, followed by an analysis of its legislative foundation, and concluding with a deconstruction of the untenable justifications offered by the Commission.
A. The May 30, 2025 Directive: A Drastic Reversal of Policy
The directive reportedly mandates that all “CCTV data, webcasting data and photography of election processes at various stages” shall be preserved for a period of only 45 days following the declaration of results. After this period, if no election petition pertaining to the specific constituency has been filed, the letter instructs that “the said data may be destroyed”.
This new policy represents a sharp and dramatic reversal of the ECI’s earlier guidelines. The earlier framework—outlined in a 2024 memo issued to all Chief Electoral Officers of states—had established a more nuanced and robust retention schedule.
Under those guidelines, the retention period for video and photographic evidence was tiered according to the specific stage of the electoral process, acknowledging the varying evidentiary relevance of different records. For instance, footage from the pre-nomination period was to be kept for three months, while recordings of critical processes like nomination, campaigning, polling, and counting were to be preserved for periods ranging from six months to a full year. This tiered system provided a reasonable and extended window for the discovery of irregularities and the gathering of evidence.
The new directive collapses this logical, multi-tiered structure into a single, dangerously short, 45-day deadline for all forms of electronic footage. The ECI has explicitly linked this 45-day period to the limitation for filing an election petition under Section 81 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The radical nature of this policy shift is best illustrated by a direct comparison.
| Stage of Election Process | Retention Period under Pre-May 2025 Guidelines | Retention Period under the reported May 30, 2025 Directive |
| Pre-Nomination Period | 3 months | 45 days |
| Nomination, Withdrawal and Scrutiny | 1 year | 45 days |
| Campaign Period | 6 months | 45 days |
| Polling Day(Inside/Outside Polling Stations) | 1 year | 45 days |
| Counting of Votes | 1 year | 45 days |
B. The Legislative Precursor: The December 2024 Amendment to Rule 93(2)(a)
The ECI’s data destruction directive was preceded and enabled by a crucial legislative change. In December 2024, the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, acting on the recommendation of the ECI, amended Rule 93 of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961. The original text of Rule 93(2)(a) was a broad, inclusive provision that stated “all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”.
The amendment was deceptively simple. It inserted the phrase “as specified in these rules” into the provision. The amended rule now reads: “all other papers as specified in these rules relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”. Since electronic records like CCTV footage, webcasting clips, and video recordings are not explicitly “specified” in the Rules as inspectable papers, this amendment effectively created a legal shield, removing them from the ambit of public inspection.
The timing of this amendment is highly suggestive of its intent. It was pushed through just two weeks after the Punjab and Haryana High Court, acting on a petition filed by advocate Mehmood Pracha, had directed the ECI to release election papers and videography related to the Haryana Assembly elections, as reported by The Hindu. The clear cause-and-effect relationship indicates that the amendment was not a proactive measure for good governance but a reactive manoeuvre designed to pre-empt further judicial orders compelling transparency. It was a move from a default-open system to a default-closed system. This legislative change laid the groundwork for the subsequent administrative directive; once access to the footage was legally restricted, the next logical step was to mandate its physical destruction.
This amendment has not gone unchallenged. A plea filed by transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj is currently pending before the Supreme Court, arguing that the amendment imposes “unreasonable restrictions on the fundamental right to information of voters” and seeks to keep crucial records out of the purview of public disclosure.
C. Deconstructing the ECI’s Justifications: A Veil of Plausible Deniability
The 2024 memo and later reports reveal a trio of justifications by the ECI for its new policy, each of which wilts under scrutiny and appears to be a veil for the directive’s true effect of fostering opacity.
- The “Internal Management Tool” Fallacy: The Commission has claimed that videography and CCTV footage are not mandated by law but are used merely as an “internal management tool”. This characterisation is a gross misrepresentation of the role these technologies play in modern elections. The ECI’s own circulars state and call for use of CCTV and videography for a wide spectrum of critical processes. This includes the First Level Checking (FLC) of EVMs, the security of strong rooms where EVMs are stored, surveillance of critical polling stations, and the entire counting process. The existence of such detailed, mandatory protocols demonstrates that these recordings are not a peripheral or optional extra; they are an integral and indispensable component of the ECI’s own framework for ensuring electoral integrity. To dismiss them as a mere “internal tool” is to contradict its own established procedures and suggests a post-facto rationalization for an otherwise indefensible policy of destruction.
- The Exaggerated “Voter Privacy” Concern: The ECI has also cited the need to protect voter privacy, arguing that the release of footage could lead to the identification of voters and expose them to pressure, discrimination, or intimidation. While voter privacy is a legitimate concern, the ECI’s solution—the complete and permanent destruction of all footage—is a disproportionate and extreme response. It is an argument that sacrifices the integrity of the entire electoral process at the altar of a speculative and manageable risk. Numerous less restrictive alternatives exist to balance privacy with accountability. For instance, access could be mediated through court orders, which is an existing process; footage could be redacted to obscure the faces of ordinary voters not involved in any alleged malpractice, or access could be limited to specific segments relevant to a legal challenge. The ECI’s choice of the most extreme option—annihilation of the record—over these balanced alternatives reveals that privacy is likely a pretext, not the primary driver of the policy.
- The “Malicious Narratives” Pretext: The most heavily relied-upon justification is the need to curb the “recent misuse of this content by non-contestants for spreading misinformation and malicious narratives on social media”. This was also a concern mentioned in the 2024 memo. Objectively, this rationale is constitutionally perilous. It amounts to a “heckler’s veto” over public information, where the potential for misuse by a few is used to justify denying access to all, including the judiciary. The duty of a state agency in a democracy is to counter misinformation with facts and to prosecute illegal misuse of data, not to eliminate the data itself. This reasoning shows a paternalistic and troubling distrust of the citizenry, the media, and the courts, assuming they are incapable of discerning context or truth.
The timing of this rationale is particularly telling. It follows the high-profile Chandigarh mayoral poll case, where CCTV footage was not misused for “malicious narratives” but was used by the Supreme Court itself to expose and rectify a blatant subversion of democracy. The most prominent recent use of such footage was to uphold the rule of law, not to spread misinformation. This context strongly suggests that the ECI’s stated fear of “malicious narratives” is a convenient cover for a more profound fear of “inconvenient truths” that objective video evidence can irrefutably reveal.
II. The Plenary Power of the ECI: A Shield for Democracy, Not a Sword Against It
At the heart of the ECI’s authority lies Article 324 of the Constitution, a provision that grants it vast and plenary powers to ensure the sanctity of the electoral process.
A. The “Reservoir of Power” under Article 324
Article 324(1) of the Constitution of India vests the “superintendence, direction and control” of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of all elections in the Election Commission. The Supreme Court of India, in the landmark case of Mohinder Singh Gill v. Chief Election Commissioner, (1978) 1 SCC 405, provided the most authoritative interpretation of this clause. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, writing for the majority, famously described Article 324 as a “reservoir of power” for the ECI. The Court held that this provision endows the Commission with the necessary authority to address any contingency that may arise during an election for which the enacted laws—such as the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (RPA)—are silent. The core principle is that where the law has a vacuum, the ECI can step in with its plenary powers to ensure that the constitutional objective of a free and fair election is not frustrated.
In Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India, 2023 (6) SCC 1, the Supreme Court recommended an independent appointments committee, revealing a consistent concern with insulating the Commission from executive influence and preventing arbitrary action. The judiciary has consistently pushed for an ECI that is not only powerful but also independent, accountable, and non-arbitrary.
B. The Limits of Plenary Power: Subservience to Law and Fundamental Rights
The “reservoir of power” doctrine is not a license for unchecked authority. The Supreme Court has been equally clear about its limitations. The ECI’s power under Article 324 is fundamentally bound by two critical constraints:
- Conformity with Existing Law: The plenary power operates only in areas “unoccupied by legislation”. Where Parliament has enacted a specific law governing a particular aspect of the electoral process, the ECI is bound to act in conformity with that law. It cannot issue directives that override, contradict, or frustrate the purpose and scheme of a validly enacted statute.
- Adherence to the Constitution: The ECI, as a creature of the Constitution, must exercise its powers in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution’s fundamental tenets. Its actions cannot abrogate the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III and must not damage the basic structure of the Constitution, of which free and fair elections, democracy, and the rule of law are indispensable components.
The directive to destroy CCTV footage after 45 days transgresses both these boundaries. It is a quintessential “colourable exercise of power”—an action that, while ostensibly within the ECI’s administrative domain, is in substance an encroachment upon the legislative field and an affront to constitutional principles. The Parliament has created a detailed statutory framework for the resolution of election disputes through the mechanism of an election petition, as laid out in Part VI of the RPA, 1951 (Sections 80-116C). Section 87 of the RPA explicitly states that the trial of an election petition shall be governed, as nearly as may be, by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and that the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, shall apply in all respects.
This statutory scheme presupposes the existence and availability of evidence. By mandating the destruction of the most direct, objective, and unimpeachable form of evidence—video footage—the ECI is not merely “managing” an internal process; it is actively sabotaging the efficacy of the judicial process prescribed by Parliament. It creates an evidentiary vacuum that directly frustrates the ability of a High Court to adjudicate an election petition on its merits. This is a clear inversion of the Mohinder Singh Gill doctrine. The ECI’s power was intended to be used remedially, to fill gaps in the law to ensure fairness. Here, it is being used to create a gap—an evidentiary black hole—that subverts fairness.
For example, what happens when an election petition gets filed on the 44th day post the declaration of results and in the course of the proceedings, the Court orders the ECI to produce the camera recording of the election process. The Election Commission can simply say that it does not keep such data and get away with it.
Furthermore, the directive runs counter to the entire trajectory of judicial thinking on the ECI’s institutional integrity. The Supreme Court’s interventions, from commenting on the abolition of Election Commissioner posts in S.S. Dhanoa v. Union of India, 1991 (3) SCC 567, to mandating a new appointment process in Anoop Baranwal, have been aimed at strengthening the ECI’s independence and ensuring its decisions are judicious and not arbitrary. As the Court observed in Dhanoa, when an institution is “accountable to none, it is politic to entrust its affairs to more hands than one. It helps to assure judiciousness and want of arbitrariness”. A unilateral executive fiat of this magnitude, which reverses long-standing policy and has far-reaching consequences for electoral justice without any public consultation, embodies the very kind of arbitrary executive action that the judiciary has consistently sought to curb. It is an exercise of power that prioritizes administrative convenience and opacity over the constitutional duty to uphold democratic accountability.
III. The Voter’s Right to Know: A Non-Negotiable Fundamental Right
The ECI’s directive to erase the visual record of an election is also a direct and frontal assault on a fundamental right that the Supreme Court has painstakingly carved out and fortified over two decades: the voter’s right to information. This right, derived from the guarantee of freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, is the lifeblood of an informed electorate and the bedrock of a functioning democracy. The ECI’s policy of data destruction attempts to constrict this right, treating it as a limited, disposable privilege rather than the dynamic, non-negotiable right the Constitution guarantees.
A. The Evolution of the Right to Information under Article 19(1)(a)
The jurisprudential journey of the voter’s right to know began in earnest with the landmark judgment of the Supreme Court in Union of India v. Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), (2002) 5 SCC 294. In this seminal case, the Court was faced with the question of whether voters had a right to know the background of the candidates seeking their votes. The Court’s answer was an emphatic affirmative. It ruled that the right to vote would be meaningless without access to information about the candidates. For a citizen to make an informed choice, which is the essence of participation in a democracy, they have a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(a) to be informed of the antecedents of candidates, including their criminal records, financial assets and liabilities, and educational qualifications. The Court reasoned that “misinformation or non-information of any kind will create an ‘uninformed citizenry which makes democracy a farce'”.
When Parliament attempted to dilute this judgment by passing an amendment to the RPA, the Supreme Court stood firm. In People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) v. Union of India, (2003) 4 SCC 399, the Court struck down the newly inserted Section 33B of the RPA, which sought to prevent candidates from having to disclose any information beyond what was statutorily required. The Court powerfully articulated that the voter’s right to information is not a static concept that can be capped or frozen by legislation. It declared this right to be dynamic, one that must be allowed to grow and evolve to meet the needs of a maturing democracy. This judgment established a crucial principle: the fundamental right to information in the electoral sphere cannot be curtailed by ordinary legislation or executive action.
B. From Candidate Information to Systemic Transparency: The Electoral Bonds Judgment
The scope of this fundamental right was dramatically expanded in the recent, constitutionally significant judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (Electoral Bonds Case), 2024 INSC 113. Here, the Supreme Court extended the right to information beyond the individual candidate to the systemic issue of political party funding. In striking down the anonymous Electoral Bonds Scheme, the Court held that the secrecy of political funding violates the voter’s right to know under Article 19(1)(a).
The Court’s reasoning is directly applicable to the present issue. It held that “information about funding to a political party is essential for a voter to exercise their freedom to vote in an effective manner”. The logic is clear: to make a truly informed choice, a voter needs to know not just about the candidate, but also about the forces and finances that influence the political system. This principle of systemic transparency is paramount. The conduct of the election itself—whether it is free from malpractice, whether counting is accurate, whether strong rooms are secure—is a critical piece of systemic information.
C. The Directive’s Assault on the Right to Information
The ECI’s directive to destroy video footage is a modern-day analogue to the unconstitutional Section 33B that was struck down in the PUCL case. While Section 33B was a legislative attempt to block access to information, the ECI’s directive achieves the very same end through administrative means—by physically and permanently destroying the source of the information. It is an attempt to “freeze and stagnate” the right to information by rendering it unenforceable.
The ECI’s narrow, litigation-centric view—that the footage exists only for the purpose of an election petition and is useless after 45 days—is a constitutionally flawed perspective. The right to information serves a much broader purpose than merely facilitating litigation. It is essential for continuous public discourse, academic research, media scrutiny, and civil society advocacy for electoral reforms. By destroying the raw data of an election’s conduct, the ECI prevents any meaningful post-mortem analysis of the process, shields systemic flaws from public view, and stifles the very debates that strengthen democracy. This is a direct infringement of the collective right of the citizenry under Article 19(1)(a) to receive and impart information about the functioning of a core democratic institution.
The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court has consistently moved towards greater transparency. The ECI’s directive represents a stark and unconstitutional reversal of this trend.
The balancing act between the right to information and the right to privacy, which the Supreme Court meticulously performed in the Electoral Bonds case using a “double proportionality” test, is entirely absent in the ECI’s calculus. The Court acknowledged the privacy interests of donors but ultimately found that the public’s right to know was paramount for ensuring electoral integrity. In stark contrast, the ECI’s directive gives absolute and disproportionate primacy to a speculative privacy concern and a paternalistic fear of “misuse,” while completely extinguishing the concrete and judicially sanctified fundamental right to information.
IV. The Animus of Arbitrariness: The Directive’s Violation of Article 14
Beyond its infringement of the right to information, the ECI’s directive is constitutionally vulnerable for its inherent arbitrariness. Article 14 of the Constitution guarantees equality before the law and the equal protection of the laws. Over decades of interpretation, the Supreme Court has expanded this guarantee to serve as a formidable bulwark against arbitrary state action. Any executive or legislative act that is unreasonable, irrational, or capricious is liable to be struck down as violative of Article 14. The ECI’s data destruction mandate, when subjected to this test, reveals itself to be a textbook case of arbitrary executive action.
A. The Doctrine of Arbitrariness: Maneka Gandhi and its Progeny
The modern doctrine of arbitrariness was powerfully articulated by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, (1978) 1 SCC 248. In this case, the Court held that the “procedure established by law” under Article 21 must be “fair, just and reasonable,” not “fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary”. Crucially, the Court established the “golden triangle” principle, holding that Articles 14, 19, and 21 are not mutually exclusive silos but are deeply interlinked. An action that is arbitrary under Article 14 would fail the test of reasonableness under Article 21 and could also impose unreasonable restrictions under Article 19.
Following Maneka Gandhi, the Court in cases like EP Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu, 1974 4 SCC 3 explicitly stated that “equality is antithetical to arbitrariness” and that Article 14 embodies a guarantee against any form of arbitrary state action. This means that every action of the state or its instrumentalities must be based on reason and must not be guided by extraneous or irrelevant considerations.
B. Applying the Arbitrariness Test to the ECI’s Directive
When the ECI’s directive is placed on the anvil of the arbitrariness test, it fails on multiple counts.
- Lack of a Rational Nexus: For an action to be non-arbitrary, there must be a rational nexus between the objective it seeks to achieve and the means adopted to achieve it. The ECI’s stated primary objective is to prevent the misuse of footage on social media to create “malicious narratives”. The means adopted is the blanket destruction of all footage for all purposes after 45 days. There is no rational connection between these two. The policy is excessively broad; it uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut. To prevent potential misuse by a few “non-contestants,” it penalizes all legitimate stakeholders, including electoral candidates, the judiciary, researchers, and the general public. The proper response to misuse is targeted legal action against the miscreants under existing laws (such as the Indian Penal Code or the Information Technology Act), not the pre-emptive destruction of a public record.
- Gross Disproportionality: The measure is also grossly disproportionate to the harm it purports to prevent. The speculative harm of a few “malicious narratives” on social media cannot justify the certain and irreversible harm of destroying an entire class of crucial evidence that is vital for upholding the integrity of the democratic process. As argued previously, less restrictive and more proportionate alternatives are readily available. These could include creating secure archives, allowing access only through a court order, or implementing a system of redaction to protect voter privacy while preserving evidence of official conduct. The ECI’s choice of the most extreme and destructive option available demonstrates a lack of application of mind and is, therefore, arbitrary.
- The Unreasonableness of the 45-Day Timeline: The 45-day timeline is itself a product of arbitrary and unreasonable logic. The RPA, 1951, provides a 45-day limitation period to file an election petition. An election petition is a serious legal undertaking that requires a petitioner to plead “material facts” and “full particulars” of any corrupt practice (Section 83, RPA, 1951). Gathering sufficient prima facie evidence of malpractice across a constituency—which can have over a thousand polling stations—consulting with legal counsel, and drafting a legally sound petition is a formidable task. The ECI’s directive creates a perverse situation where the clock for the destruction of the best evidence runs concurrently with the clock for filing the petition. This makes it practically impossible for a petitioner to access and analyse this crucial evidence to build a credible case before the deadline expires. The directive, therefore, does not merely align with the limitation period; it weaponizes it, using it as a guillotine to sever the link between a legal challenge and the evidence needed to sustain it.
This policy is both procedurally and substantively arbitrary. It is procedurally arbitrary because it was enacted as a unilateral executive fiat, reversing a long-standing, reasoned policy without any apparent stakeholder consultation. It is substantively arbitrary because the policy itself, as demonstrated, is irrational, disproportionate, and serves no legitimate public purpose that could outweigh the immense damage it does to the principle of electoral transparency. The arbitrariness is not an unintended consequence; it appears to be a deliberate feature designed to create a system of de facto impunity for electoral malpractice. By making the burden of proof for an election petitioner nearly impossible to discharge, the directive structurally insulates electoral processes from effective judicial review, a result that is the very definition of an arbitrary state action that undermines the rule of law.
The critical importance of video evidence is not a matter of academic speculation; it has been vividly demonstrated in recent events. The Chandigarh mayoral poll case (2024) stands as a powerful testament to this fact. It was solely the “unimpeachable” evidence captured by CCTV cameras that allowed the Supreme Court to witness the Presiding Officer brazenly defacing ballot papers. This video evidence enabled the Court to intervene decisively, overturn the fraudulent result.
The directive also unfairly shifts the burden of proof in election petitions. By destroying the best evidence, the ECI forces petitioners to rely on weaker, circumstantial evidence and oral testimony, which is notoriously difficult to marshal and easy to discredit. The state, through its instrumentality, is actively destroying evidence that could corroborate a petitioner’s claim, making an already difficult legal burden nearly impossible to discharge. This fundamentally subverts the notion of a fair trial as envisaged under Section 87 of the RPA, 1951.
The inescapable question that arises is stark: How many Chandigarh-style frauds would go undetected, unproven, and unpunished under the ECI’s new data destruction regime? By removing the most effective tool for exposing malpractice, the directive does not curb “malicious narratives”; it ensures that the official narrative, however flawed, is the only one that survives.
V. Conclusion and Recommendations: Restoring the Light of Transparency
A synthesis of the arguments presented leads to an inexorable conclusion. The directive is a colourable exercise of the ECI’s plenary powers under Article 324, as it is used not to fill a legislative gap for the sake of fairness, but to create an evidentiary vacuum that frustrates the statutory scheme of electoral justice established by the Representation of the People Act, 1951. It is a direct violation of the voter’s fundamental right to information under Article 19(1)(a), a right painstakingly developed by the Supreme Court in a series of landmark judgments from ADR (2002) to the Electoral Bonds (2024) case, which collectively establish transparency as a non-negotiable pillar of Indian democracy. The directive fails the test of arbitrariness under Article 14, as it is an irrational and grossly disproportionate measure that serves no legitimate public purpose sufficient to justify the complete destruction of a vital class of public records.
This issue must be viewed not as a one-off administrative misstep, but as a symptom of a worrying institutional trend towards opacity. Built upon the flawed legislative foundation of the amended Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, the directive is part of a broader pattern where transparency is treated as a liability to be managed rather than an asset to be cherished. In a democracy, the answer to the potential misuse of information can never be the elimination of information itself. The path to strengthening public trust lies in greater openness, not in enforced obscurity. To reverse this dangerous trend and restore the light of transparency to India’s electoral process, the following actions are imperative.
The ECI must initiate a transparent, inclusive, and consultative process involving all relevant stakeholders—including all recognized political parties, civil society organizations working on electoral reforms, legal experts, and former election commissioners—to formulate a new, comprehensive “Election Records Retention and Access Policy.” This new framework should be codified in the rules and must:
- Establish a significantly longer, tiered retention period for all electronic records, with a minimum retention of at least two years for general elections, aligning with international best practices and providing ample time for litigation and research.
- Create a secure, modern, and auditable digital archival system for this data to ensure its long-term integrity and preservation.
- Establish clear, fair, and reasonable protocols for providing access to this data for the purposes of litigation, academic research, and public scrutiny. These protocols should incorporate necessary safeguards for individual voter privacy, such as court-mediated access or redaction, without resorting to the extreme measure of blanket destruction.
Upholding the sanctity of the electoral process is the shared responsibility of all democratic institutions. The ECI can best fulfil its constitutional mandate not by drawing a curtain over its processes, but by embracing transparency as the ultimate guarantor of its integrity and the public’s trust.
(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)
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