The Cabinet Secretariat has formally acknowledged a complaint lodged by two Election Commissioners, S S Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, concerning the internal administrative conduct of a senior poll officer. The matter, revealed through a 21-page RTI response provided to transparency activist Commodore Lokesh K Batra (Retd), highlights the delicate balance of authority within the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the limitations of executive intervention in constitutional bodies.
The controversy originated in July 2026, when Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi wrote to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan. Their letters objected to an order issued by senior Deputy Election Commissioner (DEC) Maneesh Garg, who was officiating as a link officer for DEC (Administration). The Commissioners alleged that Garg had revised the allocation of work among senior officers—including the appointment of Seema Khanna as head of the IT division—without seeking prior approval or conducting discussions with the Commission or the affected officers.
According to documents shared in the RTI reply, the Commissioners’ grievances were not isolated. Internal notes indicated that the duo had previously raised concerns regarding the management of the ECINET software, which they described as overly centralized, allegedly hindering field officers' access to electoral roll modifications. These objections were part of a broader sequence of communications, with reports noting that the Commissioners had raised formal objections 14 times over a 10-month period regarding voter database integrity.
In response to the letters from Sandhu and Joshi, the Cabinet Secretariat opted to send a formal acknowledgement, marking copies to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for his information. A confidential file noting dated August 4, 2026, articulated the rationale for this measured approach. It stated that the Election Commission is a constitutional body, explicitly designed to be insulated from interference by the Executive to ensure independent and transparent functionality.
The Secretariat’s notes emphasized that because the communications were sent by the Commissioners in their individual capacities rather than as a formal directive from the Commission as a whole, executive interference would be inappropriate. The document further clarified that since Maneesh Garg is an officer functioning under the ECI, his conduct is subject to the rules and guidelines established by the Commission itself. Consequently, the Secretariat concluded that any outside intervention at that stage could be misconstrued as an infringement on the ECI's constitutional autonomy.
The Cabinet Secretariat’s decision to limit its involvement to an acknowledgement reflects a strict adherence to the separation of powers between the government and the autonomous constitutional body. While the Secretariat acknowledged that complaints from constitutional functionaries must be treated with seriousness, it maintained that the internal disciplinary and administrative processes remain the sole jurisdiction of the Election Commission.
This development follows earlier public discourse surrounding the operational transparency of the ECI. As the situation stands, the Cabinet Secretariat has effectively deferred the issue back to the Commission’s internal leadership, emphasizing that the governance of its own officers rests firmly within the ECI's own constitutional mandate. No further executive action regarding the specific work allocation order has been reported following the Secretariat’s response.
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