Congress leader P. Chidambaram has stressed that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is an administrative body responsible for ensuring free and fair elections, not a court empowered to adjudicate disputes like one.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Chidambaram argued that the ECI “cannot behave like a Court” when dealing with petitions or complaints. He cited Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, explaining that it applies only to specific decisions made by an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) regarding acceptance or rejection of a claim to be included in electoral rolls — and not to cases involving alleged large-scale manipulation of an entire constituency’s voter list.
He also stressed that the poll body’s duty extends beyond political parties to the voters themselves.
Chidambaram’s remarks follow a letter from Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, asking him to provide evidence to support his recent claim that a voter had cast her ballot twice in last year’s Lok Sabha elections. The CEO’s letter referred to Gandhi’s press conference, where he displayed documents he described as “EC data” and cited voter Shakun Rani’s alleged double voting based on polling officer records.
The controversy comes ahead of a planned march on Monday by opposition INDIA bloc MPs to the ECI headquarters in New Delhi, led by Rahul Gandhi. The protest will target the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and alleged election malpractices. Gandhi has demanded that the ECI release digital voter rolls to enable public and party audits, calling “vote chori” an attack on the principle of “one man, one vote.”
