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Snapshot of the day
September 28, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia, Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh S.K.
Maharashtra’s chief electoral officer S. Chockalingam has written to Nirvachan Sadan requesting various changes to the way the special intensive revision is being conducted so that electors, especially vulnerable individuals, do not unnecessarily have to jump through hoops, reports the Indian Express. The newspaper’s Vallabh Ozarkar writes that Chockalingam in particular asked for:
A third option within the Election Commission’s intranet that would allow electoral registration officers to exempt people from hearings when they submit valid documents, so that senior citizens, disabled people and other vulnerable groups do not face “unnecessary inconvenience and apprehension”
A 14th placeholder category called ‘other equivalent document’ to be added to the EC’s ‘indicative’ list of 13 documents that will help accommodate tribal people, homeless individuals and sex workers. This is possible because the list of documents is not exhaustive, he pointed out
EROs to be able to adjudicate some ‘logical discrepancy’ cases without escalation to their bosses, the district electoral officers, when they are themselves satisfied with the evidence on hand
FAQs to be made available to EROs because oral instructions from the CEO’s office or the EC are “insufficient”
Chockalingam’s requests are important because though the law puts EROs in charge of the electoral rolls in their constituency, it appears that even in this third phase of the SIR – 15 months after the exercise began, in Bihar – there may be impediments preventing them from discharging their duties smoothly. He also happened to send his letter a day after the Express, led by Ritika Chopra, published its landmark expose revealing that the EC was seized of complaints from EROs, DEOs and CEOs that they “don’t have proper and complete access to the ERONet portal” because it has been overly centralised at Nirvachan Sadan. (The EC had announced on Saturday that people issued notices do not need to visit their ERO and that the latter can authorise online hearings in appropriate cases.)
And the spotlight this expose has put on the EC won’t be dimming anytime soon. Now a petitioner has approached the Supreme Court seeking a writ of quo warranto (Latin for ‘by what warrant’) that would ask chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar if he has taken unilateral decisions – despite the law requiring the EC to work by consensus – and if so on what basis. The Express‘s revelations of commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu objecting to or complaining about being in the dark over various decisions ‘raise a serious constitutional question’, the petitioner has said. The court agreed to hear his plea next week.
Yet another question has arisen over CEC Kumar’s conduct. Scroll‘s Ayush Tiwari recalls that Kumar was election commissioner back in May 2024 when residents in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal alleged that the police threatened and beat Muslim electors to prevent them from voting. At the time, the returning officer in the constituency was Kumar’s son-in-law Manish Bansal. The latter did not adjourn the elections and a day later the EC denied that anyone was prevented from voting. But did Kumar recuse himself from the EC’s deliberations on the allegations given that the RO was his son-in-law, asks Tiwari. We do not know.
At Indira Bhavan in Delhi, the Congress’s working committee met today and adopted a resolution demanding that CEC Kumar step down, that the SIR be scrapped, that 13 lakh names struck off the rolls be restored and that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah resign. The matter is expected to figure during a meeting of the opposition INDIA bloc’s constituents in the capital tomorrow.
Meanwhile more cases are coming to light of
