The dissonance within the EC came to a head in late July.
A new officer was put in charge of the EC's administration division in Delhi and, within hours, issued a work allocation order that potentially changed who controls the IT files. Neither of the two Commissioners were told. One asked for the file (on the change) and was REFUSED.
So the two did something no Election Commissioner had done before: each wrote separately to the country's top bureaucrat, Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan, calling the order a "clear violation" of the law that governs the Commission.
The next day, they jointly struck it down.
(7/10)
https://t.co/8g8HYlUcr4
Bengal.
The Supreme Court handed the state's SIR to judicial officers. They heard 60 lakh voters flagged for "logical discrepancies" and retained 33 lakh on the roll. Then lakh appeals were filed to get those voters (retained on the voters' list) deleted.
When the court asked the Commission to explain, Sandhu asked his OWN officers:
Has EC filed appeals against inclusion of voters?
Who authorised these?
Who filed them?
He didn't know. Joshi didn't know. Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer didn't know.
(6/10)