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A Public Interest Litigation filed in the Supreme Court on September 25, 2026, by advocate Shailendra Mani Tripathi has brought an unprecedented internal rift within the Election Commission of India into the judicial spotlight. It seeks the initiation of criminal proceedings against the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, under Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, as well as a probe into the alleged unilateral orders of the CEC by forming a Special Investigation Team.

As per Indian Express expose, fourteen formal written objections to the Chief Election Commissioner's executive orders by the Election Commissioners Dr. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Dr. Vivek Joshi were documented over a period of ten months, which cannot be dismissed as routine administrative friction. The internal breach regarding the Chief Election Commissioner's unilateral executive orders without collective decision-making, the modification of voter registration rules via updates to digital portals, and the centralization of electoral rolls management in Delhi represent direct violations of multi-member decision-making obligations per the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023.

The Election Commission's official defense, issued on September 23, 2026, and reiterated following an all-member meeting on September 26, 2026, that written notes merely reflect standard internal deliberation fails statutory scrutiny. In T.N. Seshan v. Union of India, the Supreme Court unambiguously denied the possibility of the existence of a supreme Chief Election Commissioner, as the statutory scheme was purposefully devised to prevent arbitrary executive governance. The violation of this results in transforming the internal dispute into administrative illegality.

Multi-Member Governance or Monocratic Rule?

The statutory framework governing the internal decision-making process is established in Section 18 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023. Per Section 18(2), the Commission shall transact its business unanimously. Where there is a difference of opinion between the Chief Election Commissioner and the other Election Commissioners, then the matter will be decided according to the opinion of the majority. Further, Section 18(1) requires that even the procedure of transaction and allocation of business will be regulated by the unanimous decision. There is no ambiguity in the statutory structure, the Chief Election Commissioner has a single vote, does not have a casting vote, and cannot exercise any superior veto powers over other members.

In public law, the distinction must be made between the preliminary observations made during the drafting phase and formal objections registered to the published decisions. Two out of three commissioners' registration of formal objections to specific operational directives on the grounds of their unlawfulness, including objections registered on May 16, May 19, and August 13, 2026, to the modified Form 6 digital process and centralized IT access, means breaking the consensus.

Once the unanimity is broken, the Chief Election Commissioner is required by law to start the majority voting process. In administrative law, ignoring statutory decision-making procedure means that the executive act is ultra vires and improper. The systematic non-compliance with Section 18 of the 2023 Act is manifested directly in two main areas during the Special Intensive Revision.

Can an administrative portal update override statutory voter registration rules?

The first violation is the alteration of the voter enrollment procedure via digital platforms without subordinate rulemaking. The statutory rules of voter registration are set by the subordinate legislation, namely, the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and the standardized forms prescribed by the schedule thereto. During the Special Intensive Revision, the additional field of declaration was added to the ECINet and ERONet digital portals, obliging the first-time applicant who submits Form 6 to provide information about ancestral links with the previous revision rolls.

Two Election Commissioners recorded formal objections stating that altering the voter registration criteria via updating the digital portal without the formal amendment of the 1960 Rules via the statutory procedure is unauthorized, amounting to the illegal delegation of legislative power and a colorable exercise of administrative discretion.

Who holds the statutory authority to manage electoral rolls?

The second area of the operational overreach is related to centralizing the Information Technology control and undermining the local statutory powers. The statutory regime of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 grants the power of preparation, revision, correction and deletion of entries in electoral rolls to the local Electoral Registration Officer, intentionally decentralizing this power to guarantee local fact-finding and procedural justice.

Centralized software controls implemented via the Information Technology division in Delhi, which limited the administrative access for the local officers and automatically deleted voter registrations during the revision, directly contradicting this statutory regime.

Is There Statutory Immunity for Systemic Procedural Breaches?

Current litigation in the Supreme Court of India touches upon the constitutional problem of whether the actions of the executive, which constitute systemic procedural breaches, may claim statutory immunity. Section 16 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023 grants the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners immunity from civil and criminal prosecution for any act, thing or word done or said in good faith in the course of the discharge of his/her official duties.

However, legal precedents explicitly state that the doctrine of good faith does not grant absolute protection to actions which have been taken in breach of statutory procedure on the systemic level. The administrative action is not performed in good faith if it seeks to evade the statutory procedure for attaining the unauthorized administrative result. Once the executive actions have passed from the subjective error in exercise of discretion to intentional and repeated violations of statutory procedures, the statutory immunity under Section 16 is lost, and the directives in question become totally susceptible to judicial control and administrative invalidity.

Remediation: Dealing with the Unilateral Decisions Already Taken into Effect

Under public law, any administrative act taken in violation of mandatory statutory procedure is null ab initio. Nevertheless, in order not to disrupt operations, the previously taken actions can be remediated in the following way:

1. Mandatory Full-Commission Review: Any contested directive needs to be submitted for voting under Section 18. Those directives which fail to receive majority approval shall be quashed, and the software changes reversed.

2. Restoration of the Discretion of EROs: Any automated and central portal purges need to be subjected to local review by the Electoral Registration Officers.

3. Independent Audit of the Digital Portals: An expert technical audit of ECINet and ERONet is required to identify, confirm, and reverse the unauthorized software changes.

4. Severability of Operational Decisions: Non-contentious routine decisions can stay unamended, so only substantive policy changes are being isolated.

To allow the unilateral executive orders to be effective despite the recorded dissents means setting up a dangerous precedent for Indian administrative law. To restore its reputation, the Election Commission needs to adhere to statutory requirements, to conduct majority voting to conform to the statutory rulemaking procedure concerning the voter forms, and to restore the discretion of local Electoral Registration Officers according to the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

Author is a a third year B.A L.L.B (Hons.) student at National Law University Odisha. Views are personal.

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