“Has the Election Commission lost all its credibility?” Senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai’s question cannot simply be dismissed as another media comment. The more fundamental question is why the credibility of a constitutional institution entrusted with conducting elections has become the subject of such intense public debate. Electoral victories and defeats are an ordinary part of democratic politics. But when doubts begin to surround the institution that conducts the elections themselves, the issue ceases to be merely partisan. It becomes a question about the health of democracy.

The developments on October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, added another troubling dimension to the debate. Students, youth groups, civil society activists and political leaders sought to protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi against the functioning of the Election Commission and, in particular, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The Delhi Police had said that permission had not been granted and imposed restrictions on the gathering. According to The Indian Express, around 700 protesters were detained and taken away in buses.

There are legitimate grounds for regulating public demonstrations. The State has a responsibility to protect public order, traffic and the rights of others. But the right to peaceful protest cannot become so heavily conditioned by administrative restrictions that dissent itself is rendered ineffective. When young citizens questioning the conduct of a constitutional institution are detained on Gandhi Jayanti, the symbolism is difficult to ignore. The answer to public distrust cannot be the visible deployment of coercive authority.

Mumbai presented a somewhat different situation. Permission for a protest at Shivaji Park was denied, with the authorities citing a 2013 Bombay High Court order, government rules, the area’s silence-zone status, traffic concerns and the movement of patients to hospitals. Nevertheless, large numbers of protesters gathered. The Mumbai episode therefore cannot be equated mechanically with the detentions in Delhi. Yet both episodes raise the same larger question: can administrative restrictions on dissent resolve the doubts that have already surfaced about the Election Commission?

The controversy has its roots in the investigative report by The Indian Express journalist Ritika Chopra. The investigation reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections at least 14 times over ten months to decisions and processes concerning voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, changes to Form 6 and the centralisation of electoral-roll data. The report said that the Special Intensive Revision had resulted in more than 13 crore names being struck off draft electoral rolls across 30 States and Union Territories.

The significance of the report lies not merely in the number of objections, but in their institutional character. Two of the three Election Commissioners reportedly raised concerns about being kept out of important decisions and described certain steps relating to new voters as “unauthorised” and “illegal”. They also questioned the centralisation of voter-database access in Delhi. Such allegations, because they come from within the Commission itself, demand more than political rebuttal. They demand documentary clarification.

The Election Commission has maintained that differences of view are part of decision-making and that its decisions, including those relating to the SIR, were unanimous. Yet its response, as reported by The Indian Express, did not explain who altered Form 6, why certain processes were handled in particular ways, or why the full Commission did not meet during a significant period. The gap between an institution’s assertion of unanimity and the questions raised by its own members is precisely where transparency becomes indispensable.

The controversy has consequently drawn criticism from former election officials, jurists, academics, journalists, editors and opposition leaders. These criticisms should not automatically be treated as established facts. Nor should they be dismissed merely because they come from political opponents. What matters is that a constitutional institution has become the subject of an unusually broad public debate about its internal decision-making and electoral procedures.

The real issue, therefore, is larger than whether Gyanesh Kumar is personally right or wrong. How are decisions being taken within the Commission? How are dissenting views recorded and resolved? What safeguards exist before a voter is deleted from the electoral roll? Can an eligible citizen effectively challenge such a deletion? Who controls the voter database, and what independent oversight exists over the technology governing it? These are questions that require answers in documents, not assurances from press statements.

A democracy cannot silence a question by detaining those who ask it. Nor can an institution preserve credibility through official assertions alone. Credibility is built through transparency, collective decision-making, procedural fairness and accountability. The Election Commission’s constitutional duty is to conduct elections. Its larger democratic obligation is to ensure that citizens have reason to trust the process by which their votes are registered, protected and counted.

The question raised by Rajdeep Sardesai, therefore, deserves neither an automatic “yes” nor an easy “no”. It deserves scrutiny. If the Election Commission believes that its credibility remains intact, the most convincing response would not be indignation but openness. An election is not credible merely because it is conducted; it is credible when citizens can see that the institution conducting it is transparent, accountable and demonstrably independent. That is the test the Election Commission now faces.