SIR row brings past Election Commission differences back into focus

New Delhi: The differences between election commissioners over the ongoing SIR have brought to the fore at least two past cases where members of the poll authority had divergent views which came out in the open.

During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, then election commissioner Ashok Lavasa had given dissent notes on clean chits to top BJP leaders over alleged model code violations.

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He had demanded that the dissent notes be included on record in the final published order. But noting that executive orders of the EC do not have a provision for attaching dissent notes in final decisions, his demand was turned down by the then Commission headed by Sunil Arora.

Lavasa had later resigned from EC to join the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

In May 2021, then election commissioner Rajiv Kumar, who later became the chief election commissioner (CEC), attempted to file a separate affidavit with the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court defending the poll body against a court observation.

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The observations were made by the Madras High Court, which said that the Election Commission was "singularly responsible" for the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic due to its handling of assembly elections.

Then CEC Sushil Chandra was against the affidavit that Kumar wanted to file. Their differences came out in the open and made headlines.

The poll authority is yet again under fire after incumbent election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi red-flagged a variety of issues, including deletion of voters in the ongoing special intensive revision of voters' list.