The three-member Election Commission comprises Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. According to The Indian Express report, Sandhu and Joshi recorded their objections on at least 14 occasions, including four times on a single day, over decisions and orders that they said were taken without their knowledge.
The reported objections concerned issues including the registration of new voters, deletion and restoration of names from electoral rolls, appeals against orders restoring voters and the custody and security of electoral-roll data. The two Commissioners also raised concerns over changes to Form 6, the application used by new voters to register themselves.
The Indian Express reported that Sandhu and Joshi described some steps concerning new voters as “unauthorised” and “illegal”. They also raised concerns about the gradual centralisation of access to the electoral-roll database in Delhi and the impact of the system on the statutory powers of officers handling voter rolls at the state and local levels.
According to the report, the objections were also copied to CEC Gyanesh Kumar. In a separate development, Sandhu and Joshi wrote independently to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan over changes in work allocation that they said had been made without their knowledge and which, according to them, removed a layer of oversight over the information-technology system supporting electoral rolls.
The Indian Express reported that the SIR process began in Bihar in June 2025 and that more than 13 crore names had been struck off draft voter rolls across 30 States and Union Territories during the exercise. The report said the objections raised by Sandhu and Joshi covered the functioning of the Commission during this period.
The report has triggered a fresh political controversy, with lawyer Prashant Bhushan calling for Supreme Court intervention. Posting on X, Bhushan alleged that two of the three Election Commissioners had opposed steps taken by Gyanesh Kumar concerning the SIR and claimed that the process had deprived more than 13 crore voters of their right to vote. He called on the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of the matter.
Bhushan further said that the Indian Express report showed how Gyanesh Kumar had allegedly disregarded objections raised by the other two Election Commissioners over the manner in which the SIR was being conducted. He said the report was serious enough to warrant Kumar’s immediate removal and legal action against him.
The controversy surrounding the SIR began in Bihar ahead of the Assembly elections, where opposition parties had repeatedly questioned the Election Commission over the voter-roll revision exercise. The issue subsequently became contentious during the West Bengal Assembly elections and is now at the centre of a dispute over the SIR process in Delhi.
The Supreme Court also took up the Delhi SIR issue on Tuesday. During the hearing, a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant observed that notices issued to voters appeared to have been generated mechanically and asked the Election Commission to examine whether additional filters were required. Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that, in all probability, the notices were machine-generated.
The court was hearing a petition by activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri concerning the disclosure of names of voters who had received notices and the reasons for those notices. The petition was argued by Prashant Bhushan. The court issued notice to the Election Commission and sought a status report.
The Supreme Court proceedings and the reported objections from within the Election Commission have placed the SIR process under renewed scrutiny, particularly over how voter registration, deletion, restoration and electoral-roll data are being handled.
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