New Delhi, Sep 29 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear next week a PIL seeking suspension of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and challenging the manner in which the poll panel led by him took decisions allegedly without the approval of two Election Commissioners. The matter was mentioned before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana. Senior advocate Vikas Singh, who mentioned the matter, told the bench that as per the statutory scheme, decisions of the multi-member Election Commission have to be unanimous or by majority. "The way the Election Commission is functioning, there is serious doubt over whether the decisions are unanimous," he submitted. "We will list this next week", the CJI said. The PIL, filed by Patna resident Rakesh Kumar Singh, has urged the top court to determine whether CEC Kumar has been individually exercising powers that legally belong to the Election Commission as a whole, and, if so, to declare those actions unauthorised and take appropriate legal action.

 "Direct that respondent No.3 (CEC) shall not exercise the functions of Chief Election Commissioner of India pending final hearing of the present petition; direct that during such period, the business of the Commission be transacted by the unanimous decision of respondent Nos. 4 (Sukhbir Singh Sandhu) and 5 (Vivek Joshi); and direct that any appointment to the resulting vacancy be made upon the recommendation of a Committee, including the Hon'ble Chief Justice of India," the plea stated."Respondent No. 3 ought to be suspended from functioning as Chief Election Commissioner of India, pending final hearing of the present petition, so as to restore the multi-member character of the Election Commission," the plea said. The plea comes in the backdrop of a report in the Indian Express which claimed that Election Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi had objected on record at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that they said were issued without their knowledge or recommendation   Under fire over the red flags raised by two of its commissioners over the SIR process, the EC has asserted that differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberations in any institution and all its orders carry full legal sanction and follow established statutory procedures.

 The petition has made the Union Law Ministry, the poll panel, CEC Kumar, Sandhu Joshi and Maneesh Garg, a senior official of the poll panel, as parties.  "This petition concerns not the fortunes of any individual constitutional functionary, but the constitutional identity of the Election Commission of India itself. Article 324(1) of the Constitution does not vest the superintendence, direction and control of elections in an individual Chief Election Commissioner. It vests those powers in 'a Commission'," the plea said. Referring to constitutional schemes, the plea said they "deliberately separated membership of the Commission from the chairmanship of the Commission, and separated the chairmanship of the Commission from the Commission's power".   According to the petition, Sandhu and Joshi recorded at least 14 objections between October 2025 and August 2026 concerning various actions attributed to the Election Commission. The objections relate to communications allegedly issued in the name of the Commission without its approval, the absence of agendas and minutes of meetings, changes to statutory Form-6, access and control over the ERONet/ECINet electoral-roll database, changes in IT-related work allocation and appeals filed in the name of the Election Commission before West Bengal Appellate Tribunals, it said.  

 "Declare that the powers vested under Article 324 of the Constitution are constitutionally required to be exercised by the ECI as a multi-member collegial body'¦, and that no communication, order, direction, appeal or other act may be issued or represented as an act of the Election Commission save pursuant to a decision of the Commission taken unanimously or, upon disagreement, by majority," the plea submitted. The plea relied on written objections recorded by the two ECs and said the underlying allegations should not be treated as conclusively established merely on the basis of media reports. The plea urged the court to call for the Commission's primary records, including minutes, agendas, approval sheets, file notings, work-allocation orders, IT-access records, server logs and database-change histories. 

 One of the issues raised concerns the alteration of Form-6, the statutory form used in connection with electoral roll registration.  The petition submitted that Joshi recorded an objection on May 16, 2026, stating that the form could not lawfully be altered to require additional SIR-related disclosures without an amendment to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.   Sandhu is stated to have concurred with the objection on May 19, it added. The petition also referred to concerns recorded by Joshi regarding the gradual centralisation of the electoral-roll database and sought an independent audit of database access credentials.It further refers to objections concerning access by field-level statutory officers to the ECINet system.  "Direct Respondent Nos. 2 and 3 (Election Commission and the CEC) to preserve, without alteration, deletion, destruction, overwriting or archival, all physical and electronic records relevant to the present petition, including minutes, agendas, file notings, approval sheets, correspondence ...," it said.

 The plea also referred to filing of appeals in the name of the Election Commission before appellate tribunals in West BengalThe petition also referred to alleged objection by Sandhu seeking to know who authorised such appeals and under what authority. It urged the court to examine the legality of the disputed Form-6 alteration and certain IT work-allocation measures and, subject to the records produced before the court, the authorisation of the West Bengal appeals.

/Agencies