Former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa challenges the framing of the Election Commission’s internal rift. Asked by Abhinandan Sekhri whether the “dissenting notes” amount to genuine dissent, Lavasa flips the premise, arguing that if two Election Commissioners share one view and a third disagrees, it is the third (the Chief Election Commissioner in this case) who is dissenting, not the two being labelled as such.
The conversation then turns to the changes made to Form 6 during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Lavasa argues that the Commission overstepped its authority regardless of whether all three commissioners were in agreement.
As he says, “The Election Commission of India is not competent to make these changes, because they fall under the principle of subordinate legislation, which ought to be approved by the competent authority — in this case, the government.”
Manisha Pande brings up the case of Goa, where election officers who had verified wrongly-deleted voters were reportedly unable to restore them to the rolls due to what the Commission described as a “software” limitation. Lavasa is unconvinced that this explanation absolves the Commission of responsibility, offering the segment’s standout line: “Whenever you use technology, it is used to support the law. It cannot impede the enforcement of law or the taking of action in accordance with the law.”
Produced by Amit Pandey with production assistance from Hassan Bilal & Sound by Anil Kumar.
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