The Election Commission of India is under fire like never before. The SIR has struck 13 crore names off draft rolls,…

The Election Commission of India is under fire like never before. The SIR has struck 13 crore names off draft rolls, putting the EC at the centre of intense public debate over its role in deciding who gets to vote — and who doesn’t. HOWEVER, what nobody knew: through that same period, some of the sharpest questions were being asked from inside. Out today, after months of work. Our #ExpressInvestigation 🧵 (1/10)

The Election Commission is three people, not ONE: a Chief and two Election Commissioners, equal in rank. By law they decide together. Unanimously if they can, by majority if they can't. Two of three is a majority. (2/10)

We spent months investigating the inner working of the EC. What we found: the majority of the Commission, kept in the dark for almost a year. Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi objected on record at least 14 times in 10 months, FOUR times on a single day, to decisions taken in the Commission's name without their knowledge. Here is what they flagged: (3/10) indianexpress.com/article/expres…

The software. In January the EC launched ECINet, "in strict accordance with the law," the CEC said from the stage. Within months, both Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi were writing that the platform was UNRAVELLING: local officers, who by law add and delete names, were being shut out, their access to the voters' list controlled by the IT division in Delhi. They asked for an audit. No answer. (4/10) indianexpress.com/article/expres…

Form 6 is what you fill to become a voter. Only the Government can change it. In July it got a new question: Were your parents on the last SIR roll? No answer, no registration. Both Commissioners had said in May this couldn't be done without the Government amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. It was changed ANYWAY. Sandhu called it "unauthorised and ILLEGAL." That question (in Form 6) is still there (5/10) indianexpress.com/article/expres…

Bengal. The Supreme Court handed the state's SIR to judicial officers. They heard 60 lakh voters flagged for "logical discrepancies" and retained 33 lakh on the roll. Then lakh appeals were filed to get those voters (retained on the voters' list) deleted. When the court asked the Commission to explain, Sandhu asked his OWN officers: Has EC filed appeals against inclusion of voters? Who authorised these? Who filed them? He didn't know. Joshi didn't know. Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer didn't know. (6/10)

The dissonance within the EC came to a head in late July. A new officer was put in charge of the EC's administration division in Delhi and, within hours, issued a work allocation order that potentially changed who controls the IT files. Neither of the two Commissioners were told. One asked for the file (on the change) and was REFUSED. So the two did something no Election Commissioner had done before: each wrote separately to the country's top bureaucrat, Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan, calling the order a "clear violation" of the law that governs the Commission. The next day, they jointly struck it down. (7/10) indianexpress.com/article/expres…

There's been dissent in the Election Commission before. In 2009, a CEC recommended a colleague's removal. In 2019, a Commissioner boycotted meetings until his dissent was recorded. Each time: one member, one issue, settled by a vote. But this is different. Two of three, the majority, say they weren't told at all. And from May to August, the full Commission didn't meet once. (8/10)

So why should you care about this unprecedented rupture in the Election Commission? BECAUSE being eligible to be enrolled as a voter is no longer enough. In one state, 97 people proved they belonged, the officer agreed, and the software, controlled from Delhi, never let him record it. They're still off the roll. BECAUSE the reason you trust the voter list is that nobody controls it: thousands of officers do, one constituency each. Centralise the software, and that stops being true. And BECAUSE the check built to catch this, three Commissioners deciding together, was tried. But TWO of the THREE say they were kept in the dark on key processes rolled out to revise the rolls. (9/10) indianexpress.com/article/expres…

10. Investigations like this take months. If you think this kind of reporting matters, subscribe to @IndianExpress : (10/10) indianexpress.com/express-plus/s…