124 former Indian officials defend election commission in open letter

A group of 124 former Indian administrative, diplomatic and allied service officers issued an open letter defending the Election Commission and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, known as SIR. The appeal was reported on October 10.

The authors said allegations of vote rigging should be supported by credible evidence. They pointed to party polling agents, electronic voting machine sealing, secure storage and voter-verified paper audit trail checks.

The letter argued that roll revision was needed to remove inaccurate entries. Its Bihar examples included around 2.2 million deceased voters and 700,000 duplicate entries identified during the exercise, alongside roughly 2.15 million added voters. The figures were presented as the signatories’ evidence for their argument.

The signatories also highlighted notices, hearings and appeals during SIR. They said electoral institutions should be judged consistently regardless of which party wins.

Named signatories included former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal and former officials R.D. Kapur, Samirendra Chatterjee, Gopal Krishna, Vivek Bhardwaj and Navneet Sehgal. The letter sets out their position and does not itself settle disputes over particular alleged violations.