Inside the ECI’s ‘black box’: IE investigation proves print journalism still has bite

Mainstream print media “abhi jinda hai” (still alive). That’s the conclusion we can draw from the September 23 investigative report helmed by Ritika Chopra of The Indian Express on dissent within the Election Commission of India (ECI) over how the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was being conducted. Also, those who thought the days of print media are over should pause and think again.

One of the biggest journalistic scoops has emerged towards the end of a year when we had every reason to ask whether mainstream media in India will ever find its spine. This is not just because of the paucity of serious reporting that “holds power to account” but also the nauseating obsequiousness evident on days like September 17, the prime minister’s birthday.

In this dismal scenario comes the investigative report in The Indian Express. The story is so solid that so far, the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, who is in the eye of the storm, has not faced the media directly. Instead, the ECI has issued a press release that side-steps the serious concerns raised in the story.

In summary, for those who have not read it, the Express story reveals that two of the three election commissioners raised 14 objections in writing over a 10-month period about various actions taken by the commission on the SIR. The three commissioners have equal status, and decisions must be taken by consensus or majority. Yet, some decisions were taken without the knowledge of these two commissioners. 

The most serious question raised by the dissenting commissioners concerns a change to Form 6 that new voters are expected to fill out. In that form, a question was added requiring new voters to provide details if their parents or grandparents had been voters. Despite the two commissioners quoted in the story pointing out that such a change could not be done without amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, the change was made. 

In sum, the story has given a twist to the SIR controversy that raises several crucial questions. Opposition parties and the newly formed pressure group, the Cockroach Janta Party, have now taken up many of these. 

The story has also shifted focus away from the growing number of incidents in which well-known personalities are left out of the electoral rolls, or asked to prove they should be considered voters. Such reporting obscures the real crisis: millions of ordinary people, many of them poor, who have no voice and simply cannot meet the demands of an exercise that verges on irrationality.  

For every ‘Very Important Person’ given space in the media to air their grievances about being left out, there are millions of women like Laxmi who lived on central Mumbai’s pavements. Her “house” was a tarpaulin attached to the wall of a building abutting the pavement. Before elections, in my reporting days, I sought out people like her to get their views. Once, when I asked her why she wanted to vote when the government did practically nothing for her, she replied, “Didi, if I don’t vote, how will anyone know I exist?”  

But back to the Express story, it is interesting that despite the intense competition in mainstream print media (for TV coverage, read this article in Newslaundry), national newspapers have acknowledged the story.

This is noteworthy because often, when one newspaper breaks a story, others might report the substance on their news pages, but rarely mention the source. For instance, you will see a headline quoting an opposition leader saying something about the ECI, but the story that follows will just say that “reports” about its functioning have prompted such comments. The reader would not know where these “reports” were published.

This time, The Hindu, Hindustan Times and even Times of India wrote strong editorials based on the Express story and acknowledged it. For non-journalists, this might mean nothing. And in any case, not many people read editorials in newspapers, even if they read newspapers. But the very fact that the day after the Express story, the lead editorial in all three papers was based on this story illustrates its importance. It is clearly not going to disappear for a while.

In fact, a day after the Express story, the Economic Times reported that “the annual Summary Revision of electoral rolls for 2026-27, potentially affecting the timely inclusion of new 18-year-old voters” had been put on hold. This means Indians eligible to vote in forthcoming elections might have to wait until they can be registered. Given our large youth population, this could mean millions of potential voters being disenfranchised. According to this story, this is another fallout of the lack of consensus between the three election commissioners.

The many problems raised by the SIR exercise have been reported by newspapers and more diligently by several independent digital platforms since it began. The Reporters’ Collective, for instance, has put together this important archive of its stories. If you go through them, you get a sense of the crisis that India faces as an electoral democracy.

And the Express story illustrates why people have reason to lose faith in the very institutions like the ECI that are supposed to function in the best interests of citizens. As the newspaper has stated in its editorial, its investigation into the ECI “points to a betrayal of trust — of the people, by one of the country’s most storied institutions. It shines a light into an institution’s black box and reveals a disturbing story.” 

What has emerged so far is only the trailer. Let us see whether major media houses pick up the story and pursue it further, such as by revealing the person or people who ordered the changes to the SIR process without the consent of the two dissenting election commissioners.

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