If disagreements are routine, why has this become such a controversy? Because the reported disagreement is not simply over what the Commission should decide.

Some of the notes reported by the Express raise an important question: Who authorised actions to be taken in the Commission's name in the first place? In April, for example, Sandhu and Joshi separately flagged communications they said had been issued without the requisite approval of the Commission, according to the investigation.

The factual question is therefore not merely whether commissioners had different views, but whether the disputed actions fell within areas requiring approval by the Commission and, if so, what approval existed. 5.

Have not Election Commissioners dissented before? Yes.

Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa disagreed with the majority in five Model Code of Conduct cases involving complaints against PM Modi and then BJP president Amit Shah. In some cases the Commission's final position was reached 2-1.

But the current episode is not identical. The reported notes by Sandhu and Joshi relate heavily to administration of the electoral-roll system and the process by which actions were authorised, rather than commissioners being formally outvoted 2-1.

6. Should EC dissent be made public?

That question remains unresolved politically and institutionally. The case for confidentiality is that collegial bodies need room for frank internal discussion.

Officials may become more guarded if every disagreement is immediately made public, particularly while elections are underway. The opposite argument is that disclosure can demonstrate that controversial decisions were debated rather than simply rubber-stamped.

At the RBI's Monetary Policy Committee, the law requires publication not only of the final resolution but also how every member voted and each member's written explanation. The Supreme Court routinely publishes majority and dissenting judgments.

The Election Commission has traditionally taken a different approach. 7.

Why has electoral roll software become part of the controversy? Because election administration is increasingly also software administration.

The law places responsibility for constituency electoral rolls with statutory officials such as Electoral Registration Officers. But modern voter rolls are maintained through interconnected digital platforms.

The Express investigation reports that Sandhu and Joshi questioned growing centralisation of access to the electoral database and the extent to which local statutory officials retained control. One episode cited involved 97 Goa voters who had been found eligible by electoral officials but could not immediately be restored because the software lacked the required facility at that stage, according to the report.

8. Why SIR makes all this more consequential?

The simple answer is: Scale. The Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision has involved electoral rolls across multiple states and Union Territories.

More than 13 crore names were excluded from draft rolls during the exercise across 30 states and UTs. Exclusion from a draft roll is not necessarily permanent: Voters may make claims, submit documents and pursue appeals.

But depriving any electorate from casting vote for any election, howsoever local, should be treated as a serious issue in any democracy. The system needs to find a quick way to rectify it.

Delhi SIR exercise has created a peculiar scenario. 9.

What’s the row about appointing election commissioners? On September 23, Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma differed on selection mechanism of election commissioners.

Justice Sharma favoured reference to a five-judge Constitution Bench; Justice Datta took a different view and emphasised that the EC must not only be independent but also appear independent. 10.

So, what is the larger question raised by the EC row? It is less about whether disagreement inside the Election Commission is healthy or unhealthy.

A three-member constitutional body is designed to accommodate disagreement. The bigger issue is whether there are clear rules for what happens around that disagreement.

It’s also about the sanctity of electoral rolls. No eligible voter should be deprived of their right to cast vote in any kind of polls.

Almost every AI tool’s demo shows a user sparring with the assistant to book travel, as it seems to be the most frequent use case. The viral Instinct agent is n...