(In this image posted by @ECISVEEP via X on July 22, 2025, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar with Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. Photo: PTI/File)
04/Oct/2025
There is an urgent need to decentralise India’s electoral machinery and process to fit into the federal concept of “Union of States” as enshrined in Article 1 of the Constitution.
Recent developments have demonstrated the highly centralised, authoritarian and autocratic functioning of the Election Commission of India (ECI). By its commissions and omissions, the ECI has displayed that it is secretive, stealthy and does not respect the will of the people. It has become dysfunctional and has lost its capacity to hold free and fair elections which is its raison d’être.
When Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition (LoP) pointed out that 1,00,250 of around six lakh voters in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura assembly constituency are bogus, and alleged that this helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win the seat in a close contest, EC responded with passive-aggression, shaky legalese and intimidation of the LoP.
It has offered fact-checks that check no facts, demanded oaths, and done everything possible to avoid confronting the problem. Similar was its response to the exposure of voter fraud in the Aland Assembly Constituency.
In recent years ECI has weaponised India’s voting system by facilitating spurious injection of votes after the end of polling hours.
And now there are reports of large-scale manipulation of electoral rolls and the Commission’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation into this serious fraud. All these show that the Commission is intoxicated with the unlimited and arbitrary powers it enjoys under Article 324 of the Constitution and the immunity provided to the Commissioners by the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners Act 2023!
Way back in 1984 in the AC Jose vs Sivan Pillai & Ors case, Supreme Court had sounded the alarm of this distinct possibility. The judgment dealt with the argument that Art. 324 of the Constitution gives full powers to the Commission in matters of superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and also for the conduct of elections to the Parliament and state legislatures.
It was argued that the Commission, being a creature of the Constitution itself with its plenary powers flowing directly from Art. 324, will prevail over any Act passed by the Parliament or Rules made thereunder. The Court disagreed and ruled that it is not possible to read into Art. 324 such a wide power entrusted to the Commission.
The Court rationalised the ruling thus:
“If the Commission is armed with such unlimited and arbitrary powers and if it ever happens that the persons manning the commission shares or is wedded to a particular ideology, he could by giving odd directions cause a political havoc or bring about a constitutional crisis, setting at naught the integrity and independence of electoral process, so important and indispensable to the democratic system.”
With the recent confrontation between the Chief Election Commissioner and the LoP, it appears that the Supreme Court’s prophecy is coming true and the abruptly ordered Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which is being extended to the whole country, only confirms it.
With extreme role concentration, a completely distorted and partisan appointment process and almost total impunity from dismissal or prosecution, Election Commissioners have become centres of absolute power as far as elections are concerned. And as the famous adage goes – “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Such arrogance has led the ECI to treat the voting public as dirt whose role is only to stand in ‘Q’ and press a button and nothing else. Commencing from 2018 Delhi’s Nirvachan Sadan has been hermetically sealed and has been functioning more as a secret society obeying orders from North/South Block and not as a public authority with a constitutional mandate to conduct free and fair election!!
All representations, requests and suggestions from the public, civil society and political parties are trashed with authoritarian contempt.
With disdain the Commission also refuses to respond to queries under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Even when they reply it is either false or patchy. While the ECI demands complete accountability from citizens to produce records to validate their existence, voting rights, and citizenship, it refuses basic transparency itself under the RTI Act.
Things have come to such a pass that ECI in reply to RTI query says that they have no information about the Returning Officers who conducted the 2024 Lok Sabha election under its own direction and supervision!
What makes things worse is that India’s election machinery has become too massive, unwieldy and unmanageable. India’s electorate grew more than five-and-a-half times from around 173 million in 1952 to 968 million eligible voters in 2024.
From 2.25 lakh polling stations it is now 10.5 lakhs deploying 1.5 crore polling officials and 2,100 general, police, and expenditure observers on election duty. In the event ECI is compelled to conduct Lok Sabha election in seven phases thereby compromising its sanctity and integrity.
Without free and fair elections there is no democracy. This cannot be allowed to happen in the world’s largest democracy. There is an urgent need to decentralise India’s electoral machinery and process to fit into the federal concept of “Union of States” as enshrined in Article 1 of the Constitution.
And the best way is to return to the original Constitution drafted by the Constituent Assembly wherein Article 289 provides for separate (Central and State) Election Commissions for ‘superintendence, direction and control’ elections to Parliament and State Legislatures:
“Article 289. (1) The superintendence, direction and control of all elections to Parliament and of elections to the offices of President and Vice-President held under this Constitution, including the appointment of election tribunals for the decision of doubts and disputes arising out of or in connection with the elections to Parliament, shall be vested in a Commission to be appointed by the President.(2) The superintendence, direction and control of all elections to the Legislature of a State for the time being specified in Part I of the First Schedule and of elections to the office of Governor of the State elections to constitute a panel for the purpose of the appointment of a Governor of the State held under this Constitution including the appointment of election tribunals for the decision of doubts and disputes arising out of or in connection with elections to the Legislature of such State shall be vested in a Commission to be appointed by the Governor of the State.”
It was Dr BR Ambedkar who later reversed it with this explanation:
“The original proposal under Article 289 was that there should be one commission to deal with the elections to the central legislature, both the Upper and Lower Houses, and that there should be a separate election commission for each province and each state, to be appointed by the governor or ruler of the state. This [new Article 324] proposes to centralise the election machinery in the hands of a single commission to be assisted by regional commissioners, not working under provincial governments… As I said, this is a radical change.”
Little did Ambedkar realise that this “radical change” would prove very costly to the very survival of electoral democracy in the country. Dr Ambedkar might have opted for this centralised solution considering the intimidating prospect of setting up Election Commissions in all the states to conduct Assembly elections.
But this is no longer the case now with every state having State Election Commissions (SEC) which are autonomous constitutional authorities responsible for administering elections to the 3rd tier of democratic governance i.e. the Local Self Government, which includes the panchayati raj Institutions and the urban local bodies.
Before 1992, elections to these bodies were conducted by the respective State Governments. The Constitution was amended in 1992 through the 73rd and 74th amendments in order to provide legal sanctity to the Local Self-Governments (LSGs), giving LSGs their rightful place in the process of nation building.
Article 243 K & Article 243 ZA were inserted to establish a SEC in every state as a constitutional body with powers of ‘superintendence, direction and control’ of the preparation of electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to the Panchayats and Municipalities in the State.
SEC consists of a State Election Commissioner, who is appointed by the Governor for a fixed tenure of 5 years and cannot be removed from his office except in like manner and on the like grounds as a Judge of a high court. As per the constitutional provision, ‘superintendence, direction and control’ of the conduct of Elections to Urban & Rural Local bodies vest in the SEC.
The SEC is also responsible for delimitation of all the constituencies, which is done before every general election to the local bodies i.e. after every 5 years. The SEC is also empowered to register and deregister political parties in the state. SEC ensures a level playing field for the political parties in the election fray, through strict observance by them of a Model Code of Conduct evolved with the consensus of political parties.
As we see the structure and functioning of SECs are almost the same as that of the ECI and they are equipped to take upon the role of conducting elections to the State Assemblies also. By decentralising the election machinery and the process we can prevent India from morphing into an ‘electoral autocracy’ which it is fast becoming!
MG Devasahayam, formerly of the IAS, is coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
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