RTI reply: Govt admits both Election Commissioners wrote letter against CEC Gyanesh Kumar

New Delhi: Both fellow Election Commissioners of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had written a letter against him. The government has admitted this in reply to an RTI query. According to the reply, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi made the complaint, and the letter was addressed to the Cabinet Secretariat.

Until now, the Election Commission had remained silent on the matter. The BJP, on the other hand, had stuck to its claim that no such letter had been written. It had rejected the suggestion that the Election Commissioners had written a letter complaining about the Chief Election Commissioner. After news of the letter emerged, there was considerable uproar in the country. All opposition parties have come together over the allegations of "vote chori" (vote theft). They have accused the government and the Chief Election Commissioner of colluding to get people's votes deleted.

The opposition parties further said the Election Commission is helping the BJP form governments in every state. They allege that votes are being stolen for this, and that the votes of genuine voters are also being deleted. According to them, the Chief Election Commissioner is running the Election Commission in an arbitrary manner, and the proof is that his own two Election Commissioners wrote a letter of complaint about him.

In its RTI reply, the government said two Election Commissioners had written a letter of complaint against the Chief Election Commissioner. The letter was received by the Prime Minister's Office. It was then sent to the Cabinet Secretariat, where it was read. The complaint letter ran to 10 pages. A reply was also sent. The reply was two pages long, while two more pages were file notings.

The government has not made clear what issues the two Election Commissioners raised in their complaint. It is also not clear what reply the Cabinet Secretariat gave to the complaint. Since the letter was 10 pages long, it appears the complaint was not on a single issue. It is possible that several issues were raised one by one and evidence was also given for them.

After news of the letter emerged, pressure on the government and the Chief Election Commissioner increased. A press conference was then held with the Chief Election Commissioner and the two other Election Commissioners on the same stage. But even there, both Election Commissioners sat like silent spectators. They also did not speak to the Chief Election Commissioner during this time.

It has been said that Sandhu and Joshi wrote to the Cabinet Secretary. It is alleged that they did not agree with some decisions and that a meeting of the full Commission was not held for 4 months. The Election Commission's response to this is that all decisions were unanimous. The Bihar SIR order of June 24, 2025 was unanimous, and the Supreme Court upheld it on May 27, 2026.

On what could happen next, it has been said that if the EC does not provide proof of unanimity on 14 decisions, the Supreme Court could declare those decisions ultra vires, that is, unlawful. In that case, the SIR process could stop and the voter list could be corrected afresh.