I have no objection to Rahul Gandhi questioning the Election Commission of India. Scrutinising powerful institutions is part of his job as Leader of the Opposition. What I object to is the now-familiar Congress method: raise legitimate procedural questions, inflate them into a sweeping indictment and then treat indignation as proof.
The latest quarrel concerns the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and reports of differences within the three-member Commission. The opposition has demanded the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation, a pause in the revision exercise and even judicial intervention. As The Indian Express reported, the demands arrived rapidly once disagreement inside the Commission became public.
That sequence matters. An internal disagreement is not evidence of a stolen election. It is evidence that a collegial body had an internal disagreement. The distinction is elementary, yet much of the INDIA alliance’s rhetoric depends on erasing it.
Dissent inside an institution is not institutional collapse
I would be more worried if every Election Commissioner appeared to agree instantly on every consequential question. Independent officials are supposed to test one another’s reasoning. Notes of caution, alternative interpretations and arguments over implementation can indicate that an institution is functioning, not that it has been captured.
The Commission subsequently said decisions connected with the revision were taken unanimously. That claim does not end the matter, and the photograph of three commissioners seated together was no substitute for a detailed explanation. The ECI should publish a clear chronology: what concerns were raised, what safeguards were adopted, how disputed cases are reviewed and what data will let citizens evaluate exclusions and corrections. Its own official website should become the definitive repository for those answers rather than leaving voters to reconstruct policy through partisan press conferences.
This is my specific criticism of the institution—and, indirectly, of a government whose political interests are damaged when constitutional bodies communicate poorly. In today’s climate, terseness looks evasive. The BJP should want radical procedural transparency because suspicion thrives where documentation is thin. Defending the Commission with television combat alone merely turns an administrative dispute into a party contest.
Yet the opposition’s leap remains indefensible. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra reportedly invoked treachery while opposition figures demanded the CEC’s departure. Those are grave conclusions. They require evidence that officials deliberately subverted an election, not merely evidence that commissioners debated the design or implementation of roll revision.
Electoral rolls need maintenance, not mythology
Voter lists are not sacred manuscripts delivered complete and error-free. People die, relocate, register twice or discover mistakes in their details. A democracy must continuously update its rolls, and any serious party knows this because its booth workers spend election season checking them. The real policy questions are whether eligible voters receive adequate notice, whether documentation requirements are reasonable, whether claims and objections are accessible, and whether corrections can be audited.
Those are concrete questions. Congress could identify constituencies, publish verified samples of wrongful exclusion, demonstrate a systematic pattern and pursue remedies through the courts and the Commission. Instead, its national messaging too often begins at the final allegation: the institution is compromised, the referee is partisan, the result is suspect.
This habit is politically convenient. It converts the hard work of understanding defeat into a morality play in which Congress is eternally virtuous and every institution that disappoints it becomes illegitimate. The party can then avoid less glamorous questions about organisation, candidate selection, alliances and booth-level mobilisation. The BJP’s response—that Congress should examine why it loses—is partisan, but it is not frivolous.
Nor should anyone accept the lazy claim that criticism of Congress amounts to demanding blind faith in the ECI. I am asking for the opposite: verification instead of theatre. The Commission should release enough material for specialists, parties and ordinary voters to test its account. If exclusions occurred, they must be corrected quickly. If officials ignored recorded objections, the public deserves to know why. If the opposition possesses evidence of deliberate manipulation, it should place that evidence before the country in a form that can survive scrutiny.
Congress cannot outsource persuasion to outrage
The INDIA alliance increasingly treats maximal language as a substitute for a cumulative case. A procedural concern becomes an assault on democracy; an institutional disagreement becomes a rupture; an adverse decision becomes proof of capture. Friendly commentators then repeat the most dramatic interpretation until allegation and established fact blur together.
This may energise people already convinced that every BJP victory is suspicious. It is less useful for persuading voters who want to know precisely what happened to a particular name on a particular roll. They can distinguish between a grievance and a demonstration. They also notice when parties defend the Election Commission after favourable results and denounce it after unfavourable ones.
The government and BJP should resist their own temptation to dismiss every complaint as sabotage. A confident ruling party benefits from clean rolls, accessible appeals and exhaustive disclosure. It should press for those standards without trying to speak on behalf of the Commission. Institutional independence is strengthened when the ECI explains itself, not when party spokesmen explain it for the ECI.
But the burden attached to an accusation must remain with the accuser. Rahul Gandhi is entitled to ask hard questions. He is not entitled to have his conclusion accepted before presenting the chain of evidence. Give voters documents, affected names, verifiable patterns and a legally coherent argument. Until then, demanding a resignation is not democratic vigilance. It is another attempt to make outrage do the work that opposition politics has neglected.