ECI protests | Decoding rival strategies

Earlier this month, a senior cabinet minister called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on routine business and, as a courtesy, asked how he was doing. The PM, always ebullient and never short of ideas or opinions, had none to offer this time. “You know what’s happening,” he said. Indeed, the whole country knows. In the 12 years of its rule, the Modi government has weathered the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protests at Shaheen Bagh, the farmers’ siege of the national capital and the wrestlers’ sit-in at Jantar Mantar. Those battles were over laws, policies or individuals. This time, the referee is under scrutiny. On September 23, The Indian Express reported that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised 14 written objections to decisions issued in the name of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, mostly over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.