Supreme Court to hear today two pleas against CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s functioning, SIR

The Supreme Court will hear on Monday two petitions questioning the functioning of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, calling for an SIT probe against him and others and seeking to declare the nationwide SIR of electoral rolls illegal. A bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana will hear the matter.

The petitions were filed days after The Indian Express reported that ECs Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders concerning the SIR of electoral rolls. The two commissioners said some of the decisions were issued without their knowledge or recommendation. The two ECs separately wrote to the country’s top bureaucrat, Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan, flagging concerns over the integrity of voter software.

The ECI said the letters sent by Sandhu and Joshi to the Cabinet Secretary concerned an officer on deputation and were not related to policy or IT division matters. One of the petitions by Patna resident Rakesh Kumar Singh referred to the alleged differences between CEC Kumar and Sandhu and Joshi and the objections raised by them. “Article 324(1) of the Constitution does not vest the superintendence, direction and control of elections in an individual Chief Election Commissioner. It vests those powers in a Commission,” said the plea.

Singh pointed out that Article 324(2) provides that the ECI comprises the CEC and such number of other ECs as the President may determine from time to time. Article 324(3) further stipulates that, when other ECs are appointed, the CEC shall serve as the Commission’s chairperson. “The constitutional text therefore deliberately separates membership of the Commission from the chairmanship of the Commission, and separates the chairmanship of the Commission from the Commission’s power.”

Singh said his grievance is not that Kumar exercised the CEC’s powers improperly, “but that he has… held out as entitled to exercise a power, the collective decision-making authority of the Commission under Article 324 and Section 18 of the 2023 Act [Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act], to which Article 324(3) gives him no individual title, he being Chairman of the Commission and not the Commission itself.”

The petitioner urged the court to declare SIR, and all actions, decisions, directions, and measures taken under it, invalid from the very beginning and without legal authority. The petitioner argued that the SIR was undertaken without the necessary statutory or constitutional authority and without following the procedure required by law.

The other petition by Delhi-based lawyer Shailendra Mani Tripathi has sought a probe by an independent, high-powered judicial inquiry commission or an SIT headed by a retired judge of the top court. The petition refers to “unprecedented constitutional fractures and illegalities committed within the ECI under the CEC as exposed by documentary records published on September 23, 2026”. The plea said the alleged “act of… CEC Kumar… falls squarely outside the ambit of official immunity and constitutes distinct, personal criminal liability”.