Election Commission on 'damage control' : What do nine new decisions mean?

All three Election Commissioners met on September 26 for their first meeting since the Express investigation alleged internal rupture. They issued a press note afterwards addressing the SIR row, ECINet, and voter enrolment. Congress and other opposition parties immediately branded it as a "damage control" exercise, while the BJP claimed that it exposed the allegations as manufactured controversy.

What did the Election Commission claim?

The ECI claimed that all ECI orders, including the June 24, 2025 order launching the SIR exercise, were issued with “unanimous approval of the Commission” in the past year. It claimed that the Supreme Court had already upheld the updated Form 6 declaration used in the SIR exercise in its May 27, 2026 order. The letter sent to the Cabinet Secretary was not about any “policy matter of the commission or IT division”; rather, it was related to the “working of an officer on deputation to ECI”. The work redistribution orders issued by the officer were never actually implemented, following the pushback from the two commissioners.

Also Read: Gyanesh Kumar: Who is the CEC at centre of ECI rift over voter rolls?

What are the nine decisions?

• Voters excluded from rolls for being "unmapped" or flagged with a "logical discrepancy" will no longer get hearing notices. Booth Level Officers will instead visit their homes to collect documents and upload them on ECINet for decisions by the EROs. In-person hearings at ERO/AERO offices are no longer mandatory except in exceptional cases; these will preferably move online. Family members can now attend hearings on an elector's behalf
• Help desks or special camps will be held by District Election Officers for underprivileged and severely economically marginalised people.
• The declaration attached to Form 6 has been upheld by the Supreme Court; the SIR-specific declaration stays. Form 6, the standard registration form under the 1960 Rules, will apply for regular voter registration outside the SIR period;
• Field officers already have "role-based" access to the ECINet. While it is still agreed to bring in an independent IIT/IIIT expert, under a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner-led committee, to verify ECINet's legal compliance, and committing that future IT changes will go through the Committee of Officers before Commission approval, so the objections are addressed procedurally going forward without conceding that anything was wrong in the past.
• Claims-and-objections deadlines were extended to October 12 in Maharashtra and October 30 in Delhi
• The decisions (vi)-(ix) discuss the internal communication and compliance of the officers of ECI, such as foreign trips, appraisals and directives issued to them. For all commission meetings, the agenda will be circulated in advance, and minutes will be issued.

What does this mean?

The joint press note doesn't actually deny any of the 14 specific objections the Express reported or raised by the two Election Commissioners. It attempts to project institutional unity and hints at a reconciliatory tone. Several of the nine decisions, such as the ECINet audit, the home-visit policy, and the Form 6 carve-out, seem like quiet concessions to exactly what Sandhu and Joshi had been flagging internally. Joshi's objection was specifically about an online version of Form 6 on ECINet that included an extra question about applicants' parents and blocked submission unless answered; the Commission's statement doesn't say whether it removed that specific online field. It doesn't mention appeals against inclusion in West Bengal voters specifically, or why there were repeated requests for software permission to reverse the deletion in Goa went unanswered. Seema Khanna, the ECI's Director General of IT, whose office holds the ECINet permissions, is at the centre of the dispute, and the press note never names her.
The language of (vi)–(ix) reads like corrective housekeeping rules – agenda circulated in advance, minutes issued for every meeting, APARs completed by December 31 every year, commission approval required for officers' foreign trips and all directions issued by the Commissioners to officers shall be “meticulously complied with” – written in response to an internal conflict.