Getty imagesThe Election Commission of India (ECI), which is one of the most reliable public institutions in the world’s largest democracy, is facing its credibility test.
In the last few weeks, it has created a part of the allegations from the opposition, from voter fraud and manipulation to discrepancies in electoral rolls. It has denied all these.
Opposition leaders, who have staged a massive protest against the ECI in recent times, said they were considering an impeachment motion to remove the Chief Election Commissioner from their posts. He did not file a proposal on the last day of the monsoon session of Parliament on Thursday, and currently there is no number to see through it.
During this time, India’s main opposition party Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched the 16 -day, 1,300 km (807 mi) March – known as Voter Adhikar Yatra (Voter Rights March) – to protest against ECI in Bihar state, marking a dramatic growth in political battle. Set to vote in a major state election later this year, Bihar has been in the midst of a warm controversy over the recent amendment of the electoral rolls.
Gandhi first accused the Vote theft in August, accusing the ECI of rigging the Governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 general elections.
Using the grain data from the ECI’s own record, he alleged that there were more than 100,000 fake voters in a parliamentary constituency in the southern state of Karnataka, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses, and wholesale registrations at single places.
The ECI has repeatedly called claims “wrong and misleading”. And the BJP has strongly denied these allegations with leader Anurag Thakur Saying The Congress and the opposition came together to create these “baseless claims” as they were expecting losses in Bihar.
Gandhi’s press conference was held as a dispute in Bihar.
Special intensive amendment (SIR) took place between June and July, the ECI said its representatives visited all 78.9 million voters in Bihar for verification.
The ECI says that this was done to update the voter lists after more than 20 years, but the opposition leaders say the process may have separated tens of thousand people, especially migrants, because with a hurry, with which it was operated and required required required as proof.
The update list was published on 1 August after a draft, several reports, With BBCCounting errors were highlighted, such as photos assigned against wrong gender and people’s names, and dead voters on rolls.
The new draft roll has 72.4 million names – 6.5 million less than before, the Commission said that the lapse included duplicate, deceased and migrant voters. Those who believe that their names were incorrectly killed, they have been given till 1 September to appeal.
AFP through Getty ImageMeanwhile, the criticism also intensified that the ECI published the names of 6.5 million people, who were excluded from the draft role.
Opposition parties questioned why the commission had kept the physical copies scanned instead of the machine-elective lists of the voters abandoned, which could be independently verified by analysts and political parties.
Eventually, India’s apex court also asked the ECI to publish a searched list of voters and also to explain the reasons for their exclusion.
Court intervention highlighted ECI’s “procedural failures” and should be seen as “Rap on the Por” Editorial Said in the major Hindu newspaper.
Amid growing criticism, ECI held a rare weekend Press conference 17 August to address some allegations.
“If you use words like vote theft and misguided citizens, what else would you call it apart from insulting the Constitution of India?” Referring to Gandhi’s allegations, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanash Kumar said.
He cited the Supreme Court’s decision of the 2019 Supreme Court that the demand of the opposition for machine-elective voter lists may apply to the privacy of the people.
He also demanded that Gandhi either give an affidavit under the oath to prove his allegations, or apologize to the nation for his comment.
But instead of resting the case, the statements expressed further displeasure, some opposition politicians accused Kumar of either answering specific questions or avoiding providing unsatisfactory explanations.
Pawan Khera of Congress Party told BBC Hindi that Kumar’s “adverse voice seems to be” as a BJP leader was speaking “at the press conference.
Experts say that on their own, Gandhi’s allegations, or the fact that millions of new voters have been linked or removed from the role in Bihar do not prove any wrongdoing.
Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy told BBC Tamil, “When the voter list is intensively verified, the number is obliged to make such a big difference,” former Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy told BBC Tamil.
Shri Gopalaswamy said that when the electoral rolls for the southern state of Karnataka were revised in 2008, some 5.2 million voters were removed, with about one million people applying to be re -added.
He also agreed with the demand of ECI for a signed affidavit by Gandhi, saying that responding to the allegations without a written complaint leads to a bad example for the institution.
Getty imagesBut with Gandhi’s voter rights and with Bihar elections, the issue is unlikely to die on the issue.
Senior journalist Smita Gupta told BBC Hindi, “Whatever the Election Commission says, the opposition will definitely make an issue in the upcoming Bihar elections.”
Meanwhile, ECI has great concerns in playing about the impact of all this on public confidence in the ECI.
“The Trust once took over almost undeniably command, now under more public investigation,” has written in the Indian Express newspaper by former Chief Election Commissioner Sy Quraishi.
He said that while “procedural architecture for transparency in elections remains in place … the notion of fairness is as important as its reality. Strengthening this belief is important as ensuring technical accuracy”.
According to a survey published in this month, a research program at the Center for the Study of Development Society (CSDS), however, has fallen rapidly in ECI.
The agency chief Sanjay Kumar is separate in the ECI and BJP’s crosshare after issuing an apology for sharing wrong data to share wrong data on voting in the state of Maharashtra, but its findings in other states point towards a growing trust deficit with ECI.
In all the six states surveyed by CSDS in 2025, the number of people who had no trust in EC increased rapidly since 2019 – in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, it increased from 11% to 31% in the period.
This systematic erosion, Mr. Kumar told Wire The news portal should “have a big concern” for the commission.
“This is not only the belief of the opposition that has gone down, it is also a belief among those who have come down. The data clearly indicates that,” Mr. Kumar said.
