New Delhi:
A group of 124 former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers has issued an open letter defending the Election Commission of India (ECI) and its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, arguing that allegations of electoral fraud must be supported by credible evidence.
The group warned that unsubstantiated claims of vote rigging undermine public trust in democratic institutions.
The letter, addressed to the citizens of India, comes amid protests by Opposition leaders who allege irregularities in electoral rolls and claims of “vote chori”, or theft of votes. The dispute has prompted protests in the national capital, with several Opposition leaders, including four former chief ministers, detained by police on Saturday as they attempted to join demonstrations against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The former civil servants said they had spent their careers conducting and studying elections, including preparing electoral rolls and securing strong rooms where electronic voting machines (EVMs) are stored.
“We belong to no party. We write because one word, ‘rigged’, is now thrown at our elections without evidence, and every repetition wounds democratic trust that belongs to all of us,” the letter read.
“We know what a rigged election looks like. We served in those days you know only from films: the katta at the booth, the bahubali’s men, ballot boxes stuffed or stolen, voters turned away. Booth capturing was so common that Parliament made it a crime in 1989. When violence speaks, democracy falls silent,” it continued.
The group cited the 2025 Bihar Assembly election as evidence of improvements in electoral administration, saying the state recorded no re-polling for the first time in its history and achieved its highest voter turnout since 1951, with women also participating in record numbers.
“Today, Bihar, once synonymous with booth capturing, held its 2025 election without a single re-poll, a first in its history. Turnout was the highest since 1951, and women voted in record numbers. This did not happen because officials became saints. It happened because the system that ECI created trusts no one blindly,” the letter read. “Every candidate’s agent watches every booth and takes home a signed count of the votes cast. Machines are sealed with the agents’ signatures and guarded in strong rooms that candidates may watch. Paper slips are matched with machine counts, a safeguard the Supreme Court upheld in 2024. Rigging would need the silence of tens of thousands of officials from governments of every political colour, and of the losing parties’ own agents. No such conspiracy has ever been proved. The same logic governs the top.”
The group’s letter comes as the Opposition intensifies its campaign against the Election Commission. Former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and former Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar were among the leaders detained while attempting to join protests in Delhi on Saturday.
“If the system you call rigged is the same one that handed you your victories, ask yourself whether it is the system you doubt, or only the result. Democracies are worn away by those who create loud political narratives to incite volatile sections of citizens without sufficient proven evidence that their vote was never counted, or their vote doesn’t matter. That’s clearly an attempt to find relevance after being discarded by people through electoral system,” the letter read.
According to the letter, every candidate’s polling agent can observe proceedings at a polling station and receives a signed account of the votes cast. EVMs are sealed in the presence of agents, with their signatures forming part of the process, before the machines are transported to strong rooms.
The officers also said these strong rooms are secured under arrangements that allow candidates and their representatives to monitor them, reducing the scope for unauthorised access to voting machines before counting. For a large-scale conspiracy to manipulate election results, the letter argued, officials and political representatives across multiple stages of the process would have to cooperate or remain silent.
“Rigging would need the silence of tens of thousands of officials from governments of every political colour, and of the losing parties’ own agents,” it said. “No such conspiracy has ever been proved.”
The letter cited a Supreme Court ruling in 1995 upholding the multi-member structure of the Election Commission.
“The Election Commission was made a multimember body, a design the Supreme Court upheld in 1995, so that no one person holds such power,” the officers wrote.
They added that the presence of three election commissioners allowed questions to be considered collectively, reducing the risk of unilateral decision-making.
“A system cannot be honest when you win and rigged when you lose,” the letter read.
