Election Commission Accountability: S.Y. Quraishi, Ashok Lavasa, GVL Narasimha Rao
A high-stakes discussion on the Election Commission of India focuses on recent course corrections and controversies surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. Former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa highlighted that rolling back decisions on Form 6, ECI net review, and Form 7 amounts to an admission of mistakes, stressing that accountability must be fixed. Lavasa noted, 'The principal issue now would not only be that so many crores of people were disenfranchised quite unfairly, but to fix the accountability on who took these decisions and why were these decisions taken.' Former Chief Election Commissioner Dr S.Y. Quraishi contended that unilateral decisions without multi-member consensus were illegal, arguing that the election process had been vitiated. In response, senior BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha MP GVL Narasimha Rao defended the SIR exercise, stating that voter list revisions were long overdue and aligned with standard democratic electoral cleanups globally.