- 43 minutes ago
The Supreme Court has issued notices to the Centre and the Election Commission of India regarding decisions allegedly taken by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar without the consent of fellow election commissioners, while declining an interim plea seeking his suspension. The apex court clarified that it did not approve modifications made to Form 6, the voter registration document requiring an additional declaration of parental electoral links during the Special Intensive Revision process. The controversy has sparked political confrontation, with the opposition alleging unilateral decisions and the ruling party denying any illegality. In a panel discussion, former Delhi High Court judge Justice S. N. Dhingra defended the poll panel's procedural powers to seek documentation and identify non-citizens, questioning judicial overreach. In contrast, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa highlighted institutional concerns, pointing to reported internal objections by election commissioners, the lack of recorded meeting minutes, and questions surrounding deletions in West Bengal, stressing the need for institutional transparency.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Good evening, you're watching Newstrap with me, Maria Shaquille.
00:03From sunset to the streets and now to the Supreme Court, the SIR battle is just getting bigger by the
00:08day.
00:08The battle played out in the Supreme Court earlier today with the Election Commission and Chief Election Commissioner facing growing
00:15questions.
00:16While the Supreme Court has refused an interim plea seeking the suspension of CEC Gyanesh Kumar,
00:21it issued notices to the poll panel and the centre seeking their detailed responses on decisions allegedly taken by the
00:28CEC
00:29without the approval of the other two Election Commissioners.
00:32The bench observed that the decision, or should I say decisions, of the ECI have to be either unanimous or
00:42taken by a majority.
00:43It also made it clear that if there is any illegality, the consequences will follow.
00:49However, the highlight of the hearing was the court's statement in Form 6,
00:52where it said that the Supreme Court did not approve the modified Form 6.
00:57Before I bring in the guests to ask who approved the modified Form 6 and how,
01:03take a look at this report.
01:18Go Gyanesh, go!
01:23The chant is getting louder.
01:29The protests are only getting sharper.
01:36The pressure on Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is mounting.
01:42And at the centre of the battle is Form 6.
01:47A form meant for every new voter is now at the centre of a fresh political and legal storm.
01:57The Supreme Court today said it will examine the controversy over the modified Form 6.
02:05And the Chief Justice of India made one thing clear,
02:08that the modified Form 6 hasn't been approved by us.
02:13So, who changed Form 6?
02:17Did the EC act alone?
02:21Or was the decision taken by the Election Commission as a whole?
02:26That is the question now before the Supreme Court.
02:31So, what exactly had changed?
02:33Form 6 is the application a new voter fills to get their name added to the electoral roll.
02:39But an additional declaration was attached to the online form.
02:43It asked applicants to establish a link with an earlier electoral roll through their parents or grandparents.
02:50And that additional requirement soon became a major point of contention, even within the Election Commission.
02:57According to an Indian Express report, Election Commissioners Sukhbi Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections to the additional
03:05declaration.
03:05The EC later changed the process.
03:08In states where SIR has been completed, the additional declaration has now been removed.
03:14In simple terms, if SIR is over, then there is no need for extra old roll linkage declaration.
03:21But where SIR is still underway, the additional declaration continues to apply during the SIR process.
03:27The Election Commission has so far maintained that this was an additional SIR document and that Form 6 itself was
03:35not formally amended.
03:37But here is where the controversy erupted.
03:39The additional requirement became part of the online application process.
03:43And applicants couldn't proceed without completing it.
03:48That is now fueling a fresh political attack on Gyanesh Kumar.
03:53Leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi has accused the CEC of taking illegal and unilateral decisions, calling it an alleged abuse
04:02of his position.
04:03His party is also echoing the same.
04:06There have been some very serious changes and questions added to the Form 6, which many have been questioning and
04:12how these changes happened.
04:14Was this taken unanimously by the Election Commission?
04:17Did the government, the executive approve it?
04:19And now the court itself is asking how these changes have been made.
04:23And I think finally today, the conscience of the Supreme Court has been pricked.
04:28CJP then claimed the Election Commissioner had apparently taken down its September 26th press release,
04:34which it said claimed the Supreme Court had upheld the Form 6 order.
04:39But the government was quick enough to fact-check deleted EC note claim.
04:44The government says the September 26th press release is still available in the public domain and hasn't been taken down
04:52by the Election Commission.
04:54The BJP has hit back at the Congress over its claim that the CEC changed Form 6 to help the
05:02BJP,
05:03saying that Rahul Gandhi is misleading the nation and that the court has not declared Form 6 illegal.
05:34As the political battle over Gyanesh Kumar gets more heated,
05:38power, process and the Election Commission are now at the heart of the debate.
05:44The Supreme Court has spoken.
05:46Will the CEC now respond?
05:49With Anisha Mathur, Bureau Report, India Today.
05:55Joining me first on the show is Justice S.N. Dhingra, who is former Delhi High Court judge.
06:03He is someone known for his sharp view on constitutional accountability.
06:09Justice Dhingra, I appreciate your time.
06:10I'm going to begin with what happened in the court today.
06:13Article 324, sir, gives the Election Commission wide disciplinary power.
06:19But the court has said that these are not unbounded.
06:22How should we legally define that limit?
06:26Especially when the commission creates new procedural requirements like the special intensive revision.
06:35I think the Supreme Court should have at least seen the problems being solved.
06:43See, S.I.R. is a procedure to be considered for revision of the electoral rolls.
06:53Now, in the electoral roll revision, it is who is to do it?
06:59Election Commission.
07:00Who will set the procedure for doing the revision?
07:03Election Commission.
07:05Election Commission.
07:05The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court available for laying down procedure for everything.
07:14Supreme Court has not been able to lay the procedure for its own working.
07:20See, so far, Supreme Court is working on ad hoc basis.
07:26See, anybody who comes, brings a petition and claims a hearing without thinking whether there is a substance or not,
07:36if he is a person of eminence or an advocate of known repute,
07:42an advocate who can, you see, who knows very good English, who can talk loudly, convince the court that I
07:52have the priority to be heard.
07:55He takes time of the Supreme Court.
07:59Has the Supreme Court laid down a procedure for its own working?
08:03That in how much time will be devoted to such petitions and how much time will be given to the
08:10people who are waiting for years and years and years and years?
08:15How if the Supreme Court has not been able to lay the procedure for its own working,
08:22how Supreme Court can say that Election Commission has crossed the line by providing a procedure for S.I.R.?
08:36Can S.I.R. be done without a procedure on ad hoc basis as Supreme Court functions on ad hoc
08:43basis?
08:46But Justice Dhingra, here is the Election Commission publicly stating that the Supreme Court upheld a particular procedure.
08:54In this case, the S.I.R., but the court later clarifies that it did not approve specific modification like
09:00Form 6.
09:02The entire question is with regards to Form 6.
09:07That raises legal concerns around institutional accountability.
09:12Or would you say that it could also be perhaps misinterpretation of a judicial order?
09:21I think an order can be misinterpreted only if order cannot be read in one way and it can be
09:31read in many ways.
09:33You see, an order cannot be misinterpreted if it can be read only in one way.
09:39Can the Supreme Court say that my order could be read in ten ways?
09:46If the Supreme Court leaves lacunas, if the Supreme Court leaves its order open, if the Supreme Court says that,
09:54okay, I go up to this and rest is your duty, then who will perform that duty?
10:00Only the Election Commission?
10:03If the Supreme Court is not a legislative body.
10:09The Supreme Court has, I think, umpteen times laid down and said that we are not law-laying body.
10:20We only adjudicate laws.
10:24Now, if a body is there, given responsibility of conducting a SIR, if it is the duty of Election Commission
10:35to conduct SIR,
10:36and it is being conducted from 1952.
10:40Not related, not something new.
10:44Those procedures are being followed every time.
10:47And you see, our population has increased from 1952 when we were hardly 35 crores.
10:54We are 135 crores now.
10:59And for handling such a massive population, the procedures are to be evolved.
11:09And especially when in this population there are non-citizens.
11:16There are citizens who have infiltrated.
11:18There is those who cannot claim right to vote.
11:23Can a non-citizen claim right to vote?
11:26He may be living here for five years.
11:29No.
11:30Constitution doesn't give right to vote to a non-citizen.
11:34Now, for identification, segregation,
11:37the procedure is to be laid down by Election Commission only, not by Supreme Court.
11:44Before I go in further details with regards to Form 6, Justice Dingra, your brother judge,
11:50member of the present Supreme Court, Justice Bouya, has given a recent statement at the valedictory address at Nalsar
11:58that disenfranchisement of millions is arbitrary and that no waterboughtery can justify it.
12:04How do you look at his statement?
12:09See, Justice Bouya should have looked into rules of ethics laid down by Supreme Court.
12:18I think he has forgotten that ethics apply to him also.
12:23See, it is provided in Supreme Court rules of ethics that no sitting judge shall comment on matters which are
12:32likely to come Supreme Court
12:33or which are pending before Supreme Court.
12:36So, if a person who doesn't know ethics, why should the importance be given to his statement?
12:45Who doesn't follow rules of ethics of his own institution?
12:50So, if the Election Commission, I'm coming back to the question of Form 6.
12:56Justice Dingra, here is the Election Commission which has modified a statutory form like Form 6
13:02without explicit legislative backing.
13:06So, would that be tested on grounds ultra-virus and perhaps arbitrary as well under Article 14?
13:13And what standard could the court apply here?
13:19See, modification of Form is necessitated with the change of times.
13:27Do you follow the same Form which were being followed in 1952?
13:33No.
13:35See, the Forms have changed all over India, all over the world, in all, you see, areas.
13:43The forms of pleadings have changed in Supreme Court, forms of pleadings have changed in High Court.
13:50The, you see, these changes are brought by usage.
13:58Now, you see, if you read CPC and if you go to the pleadings, you will find there is no
14:04match.
14:05But, you see, these are being followed.
14:08So, forms, statutory forms only need that you need to have requisite information for doing your work.
14:19If you have to do SIR, then you need requisite information.
14:27And form is meant for that.
14:30Form doesn't decide your rights and constitutional rights.
14:37It only seeks information.
14:41Why should there be, you see, ban on seeking information?
14:49If your parents are voters or not, if they have been, their voting card, what was their SIR number?
14:58Voting card number?
15:00When you were born?
15:02Where you were born?
15:03Where did you study?
15:07You cannot, you see, para-drop in India and become citizen?
15:14These para-drops are to be, you see, found out and denied the right to vote because they are not
15:22citizens.
15:23My last question to you, Justice Dingran, this is with regards to all the demands of resignation of the CEC,
15:31which has come in, and also the suspension of the CEC, the petition which was before the Apex Court.
15:40In case parts of the SIR exercise are eventually found to be unlawful, does the position of the CEC become
15:51untenable?
15:54See, that Supreme Court will decide if they are eventually found unlawful or not.
16:00But let me ask one question.
16:04If 10,000 or 1 lakh people start demanding that the Chief Justice of India should resign,
16:12and I think that if you send a message to people, there may be one core people who may say
16:22that the Chief Justice of India should resign.
16:24Should the Chief Justice of India resign, or this bench should resign because it is not competent?
16:33If this is a criteria that some people have collected and want resignation, I think entertaining such petitions by Supreme
16:43Court, these are only political petitions.
16:48which are, you see, if Hullagulla is the criteria for admitting petitions, then I think that then the Supreme Court
16:58would one day, you see, will not be able to do any other work.
17:07This kind of Hullagulla cannot be criteria for citing somebody or this.
17:13If the constitutional immunities have been given to CEC, the same have been given to Supreme Court judges.
17:25All right, Justice Dingra, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us.
17:29Let me try and get a view of a former election commissioner now.
17:33We have Ashok Lavasa joining us.
17:36Mr. Lavasa, I appreciate your time. I'm sure you're following all the developments very, very closely.
17:41The election commission says the Supreme Court upheld the Form 6 declaration during SIR, but the court has now clearly
17:48said that it did not approve any modification to Form 6.
17:52How do you read this contradiction? Is it misinterpretation, overreach or something more serious?
18:03Well, I think, first of all, I have not seen the order of the Supreme Court, but certainly I have
18:09heard what you are saying about the Supreme Court saying that they have not approved any change in Form 6.
18:16Now, I think this further complicates the matter and makes the ECI's position more awkward.
18:25Because if you go back in time when the Indian Express investigation was first reported, the first response of ECI
18:35was that everything is fine, all decisions are taken unanimously, and there was no clarification on Form 6.
18:42On 26th of September, they said that they are using two Form 6, one version for non-SIR and the
18:50modified version for SIR states, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
18:56And even that time, questions were raised.
19:00What does upheld mean? Was the Supreme Court specifically asked or informed that they have changed or they have added
19:11a declaration to Form 6 and that any change requires the approval of the competent authority, which is the government?
19:19Was any specific approval sought from the Supreme Court?
19:24Did the Supreme Court ask the election commission whether you have got the approval of the competent authority?
19:31So, we don't know whether all these questions were raised during the hearing.
19:37So, therefore, today's statement by the Supreme Court actually makes the ECI's position a little untenable.
19:46But Mr. Lavasa, here is the court's own judgment which says that the commission has residual authority to design documentation
19:54for SIR, but that power is not unbounded and must have a rational nexus, one would say.
20:00In your view, did the EC stay within that boundary or did they stretch it?
20:10As I said that, you know, I have not read the letter of the order, but clearly between what the
20:20Supreme Court has observed today as reported in the media and the belief ECI had that the court had actually
20:29approved this, there is a gap.
20:32And this becomes all the more stark because two of the election commissioners pointed out that the changes made were
20:41unauthorized and illegal.
20:43Mind you, this is much after the Supreme Court had given this order which you are referring to.
20:50So, if the impression in the ECI or the belief in the ECI was that this means court had endorsed
20:59the declaration form or the change in Form 6, why would the ECs say that this was unauthorized and illegal?
21:08As the election commission reported, Mr. Lavasa, I mean, the Indian Express had reported about internal dissent within the commission
21:17and even rollback of Form 6 changes which had happened only recently, one of the impacts of that story.
21:24Does this indicate a breakdown of the collegial decision-making model which is under Article 324?
21:40There is clearly a rift, a difference of opinion, but I would reiterate what I have been saying that I
21:47would not call this strictly a dissent because a dissent technically is something where a formal agenda is placed in
21:56the full meeting of the commission and there a member insists that I have a different opinion and that should
22:04go on record.
22:06Here, it seems that both the election commissioners pointed out after the form 6 was changed that they thought that
22:14the change was not in order.
22:17Now, what happened after they made this point is not known to us.
22:22Did the election commission take into account their objections, discuss this matter, examine it on the file?
22:30All these facts are not known.
22:32Perhaps when the Supreme Court goes deeper into this, these facts might be revealed.
22:38But clearly, all the three were not on the same page.
22:43And what baffles me is that if two election commissioners were of the view that this was illegal and unauthorized,
22:52I think they were within their remit or their authority to call a meeting of the commission and put a
23:00halt to this kind of illegality.
23:04My last question to you, sir, is what the election commissioners done few minutes ago.
23:11They have fact-checked Rahul Gandhi from their handle, where they are saying that the order for SIR in Bihar
23:17issued on 24th June 2025 was issued with a unanimous approval of the commission.
23:22I'm quoting what the election commission of India has said.
23:25This order has been upheld by the Honorable Supreme Court of India and its judgment dated 27th May 2026.
23:31And then it goes on to talk about what it actually said with regards to Form 6.
23:37How do you look at it?
23:41You know, I think the confusion stems from the fact that there is a communication from the ECs which says,
23:52as reported in the Indian Express, that for a year or so there have been no minutes of the commission
23:59meetings.
23:59If there are no minutes formally issued, how do you know whether a decision was unanimous or by majority?
24:07So that is still an open question, although I don't think that either of the commissioners have specifically written anything
24:18to say that they objected to the decision of conducting the SIR.
24:22All their objections as revealed in the 14 letters that have been brought to light in the Indian Express report
24:32is a minutes were not issued.
24:36And now ECI has clarified that henceforth they will issue the agenda in advance and also issue minutes, which seems
24:44to be an indirect admission that there was indeed a lapse.
24:48The other two objections major are on the illegality in the changes in Form 6 and the denial of access
24:56to ERO, to the ECI net, which comes in the way of the ERO being able to discharge his legally
25:07bound duty.
25:08So these two objections are very substantive and they amount to creating an obstacle in a designated officer being able
25:18to perform his duties and the changes which clearly are against the spirit of the rules and the act under
25:28which SIR was done.
25:29So I think these two are the principal illegalities that have been mentioned.
25:34And the third, which is even more serious, is how come that 16 and a half lakh objections were filed
25:44in the case of West Bengal asking for deletion of electors who were legitimately admitted through the process of SIR.
25:53That question is still open.
25:56That question is still open.
25:57Nobody has answered that question.
25:59That was one of the objections raised by the ECs.
26:02And I think people ought to know, is the ECI itself objecting to people who it has admitted in the
26:11electoral roll?
26:12Has it authorized somebody to do it?
26:14Who are these 16 and a half lakh people against whom objections have been raised?
26:20I think it hits at the integrity of the entire SIR exercise, the way it was conceived and the way
26:28it has been executed.
26:31Certainly, I think it will do good if the Election Commission actually holds a press conference and replies and answers
26:39all the questions that are being raised.
26:41Ashok Lavasa, appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us.
26:45We are putting out both the interviews on our website and also on the YouTube channel.
26:48That's all from me. Thanks so much.