“India has always been a flawed democracy but at least citizens felt they had the right to vote and that elections were regular and fair,” said Sen. “SIR has taken away that right. From how it has been conducted, it’s difficult to see how the motive was anything other than to enhance the election prospects of the BJP.”
- Ronojoy Sen, Senior Fellow at the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore.
Last month, Indian Express reporter Ritika Chopra released a publication regarding unaddressed objections in the Election Commission of India, a constitutional body appointed by the President to administer the country’s electoral process. She revealed how two of the commissioners had submitted written dissent to the decision to cut 130 million names from Indian electoral rolls. The decision was a part of the Special Intensive Revision process, a standard procedure generally utilized to manage India’s more than 1 billion registered voters. However, the revision was so grand that a wave of protests led by the opposition has consumed New Delhi, Mumbai, and other Indian cities, exhibiting a case example we are left with no choice but to declare a contribution to Indian democracy slowly fading. Specifically, the controversial ECI revision represents a key contribution to a broader pattern of democratic backsliding in India, evident by operations of leaders working within the law towards potentially anti-democratic ends and a weakening of horizontal and vertical accountability.
Operating Within the Law
A useful way to discern the ECI’s actions as contributing to India’s democratic backsliding is through the lens of Ozan Varol’s Stealth Authoritarianism. Varol describes the concept as the use of legal mechanisms that exist in regimes with favorable democratic credentials for anti-democratic ends. (Varol, p. 1684). The authoritarianism is “stealthy” in how operating within the law enables leaders to obscure their anti-democratic intentions over time. In the case of the ECI controversy, the process technically operated within legal constraints: the Indian courts and Article 324 of the Constitution grant the ECI the power to revise at virtually any time, as long as reasons are recorded, and in whatever way the Election Commission sees fit. This is the assertion that the ECI has utilized in its case against the opposition bloc’s accusations of manipulating the list to remove non-loyalist voters. Many individuals have protested that the names were removed to target certain voters, claiming the removal helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party unfairly. The sequence of events can be analyzed well by Varol, who describes the lawful operations as disguised behind a rhetoric of helping the people, as the ECI has done by claiming the revision was necessary to ensure the “purity” of elections and restore public confidence in the integrity of the electoral rolls. As such, the mass revision presents an example where anti-democratic ends are reasonable incriminations to point out, yet proceed behind the scenes, within the law, and over time rather than upfront.
Weakening Vertical Accountability
Beyond utilizing legal mechanisms to reward anti-democratic effects, the mass revision by the ECI signifies a weakening of vertical accountability, one where attempts to hinder civic engagement have been executed through such sweeping cuts. Varol describes this dilution as processes that can place prohibitive obstacles to voting, generally following a pattern of restricting individuals to engage in elections, and even being used to exclude opposition voters from electoral participation. (Varol, p. 1702). Adam Przeworski et al. take it further by describing the mechanism: leaders control who can sanction by manipulating who votes and how those votes become seats. (Lecture, Democratic Erosion, October 7, 2026). The pattern sounds familiar because it is: while 13% of registered voters cut from the electoral rolls seems a minimal redaction, the number of excluded individuals makes up more than the population of Japan. As a result, individuals across India have been removed from voter rolls despite being alive and never missing an election. Such an enormous scale begs the question of intent. When the right to vote, which is regarded and intended as a mechanism to not only engage with election politicians and leaders, but to hold them accountable for their political promises and misgivings, is taken away at such a large scale, it is only reasonable to become skeptical of vertical accountability weakening. Thus, the mass deletion shows that Indian leaders maintain power to manipulate who votes and how, demonstrating evidence of vertical accountability and consequently, democracy, being slowly weakened in India.
Weakening Horizontal Accountability
Beyond the weathering of vertical accountability, the recent ECI controversy represents a strong scenario of a deterioration of horizontal accountability, where checks and balances between institutions and leaders are impaired. (O’Donnell, p. 61). This deterioration is evident in how two out of the three Election Commission members, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, were not informed of “crucial information” regarding the massive revision by the third commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar. Moreover, Sandhu and Joshi had submitted written objections towards several parts of the controversial deletion at least 14 times in the 10 months prior. While the omission of information and acting without the agreement of key members is not the most immediately apparent instance of weakened horizontal accountability – as opposed to court packing or replacing leaders with loyalists, as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discuss – it represents impairment nonetheless, as it achieves a similar end.
Proof the System Works?
Yet, perhaps the fact that the commissioners expressed their concern demonstrates that the checks are still working, and as a result, the ECI controversy in fact does not represent an instance of continuing democratic erosion. After all, the Supreme Court issued notices within weeks, Sandhu and Joshi were able to dissent, a free press released the story, and the opposition is protesting openly. Additionally, former ECI members have spoken up, criticising SIR as a “‘hostile exercise’ that has undermined the sanctity of the country’s electoral rolls by focusing on the exclusion – rather than inclusion – of voters.” Perhaps, then, the ability for these people to speak out and for individuals to protest represents a system that is working to hold leaders accountable in a way that only a stable democracy would enable.
However, the recent ECI revision is part of a broader trend of Indian democracy eroding nonetheless, since erosion can occur simultaneously with functioning checks and balances. Levitsky and Ziblatt note how “the erosion of democracy takes place piecemeal, often in baby steps…many of them adopted under the guise of pursuing some legitimate—even laudable—public objective, such as combating corruption [or] ‘cleaning up’ elections.” (Levitsky & Ziblatt, p. 77). International indices tend to rate India as a slowly eroding democracy, due to events such as tax raids in 2023 and opposition leaders getting arrested before the 2024 election, leading Freedom House to deem the country as partly free. Additionally, Varol writes how stealth authoritarianism can leave space for discontent, and visible checks can be a part of how democracy fades. (Varol, p. 1713). Whether or not India’s government is tolerating the discontent intentionally, its effects can coexist with and even mask the gradual impairment of democracy.
Conclusion
The recent removal of 130 million voter names in India by its Election Commission represents an important contribution to the country’s gradual democratic backsliding, evidenced by technically legal actions with potentially anti-democratic intent and a weakening of horizontal and vertical accountability. While the revision can appear as a demonstration of India’s checks and balances successfully working, the effect of the removals points to a larger trend of events that have led indices to mark the country as not fully democratic. Chopra’s work gives hope to India in that the country can reverse this trend.
Works Cited
Chatterjee, Shrabana and Senjuti Sengupta. “Deleted, and left in limbo,” The Hindu, October 3, 2026, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/deleted-and-left-in-limbo/article71538194.ece.
Chaturvedi, Arpan and Krishna N. Das. “Why India’s tens of millions of voter deletions have led to widespread protests,” Reuters, September 28, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/india/why-has-drive-verify-indias-billion-voters-put-poll-body-under-scrutiny-2026-10-09/.
Chopra, Ritika. “‘Illegal, unauthorised’: Election Commissioners objected to Form 6 change,” The Indian Express, October 12, 2026, https://indianexpress.com/article/express-exclusive/election-commission-illegal-changes-form-6-gyanesh-kumar-10889714/.
Ellis-Petersen, Hannah and Shaikh Azizur Rahman. “‘How do you explain the deletion of 130 million names?’: why Indian voters are on the streets,” The Guardian, October 13, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/14/india-protests-election-commission-gyanesh-kumar.
Freedom House. “India,” https://freedomhouse.org/country/india.
Levitsky, Steven and Daniel Ziblatt. “How Democracies Die,” 2018.
O’Donell, Guillermo A. “Delegative Democracy,” The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Sucheta. “Article 324 Is Not a Dead Letter; ECI’s Special Intensive Revision of Bihar Electoral Rolls Is Constitutionally Valid: Supreme Court,” SCC Online, May 28, 2026, https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2026/05/28/special-intensive-revision-sir-eci-validity-upheld-sc/.
Tripathi, Ashish. “Bihar voter roll revision adds to ‘purity of polls’, Election Commission tells Supreme Court,” Deccan Herald, July 22, 2025,
Varol, Ozan. “Stealth Authoritarianism,” 2015.
The Wire Staff, “From Changes in Form 6 to SIR Voter Deletion Appeals, 2 Out of 3 Election Commissioners Objected 14 Times in 10 Months: Report,” The Wire, September 23, 2026, https://thewire.in/government/2-out-of-3-election-commissioners-objected-14-times-in-10-months-on-sir.
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