Before anyone can move a criminal-contempt case against the Chief Election Commissioner, the Attorney General must first consent. An advocate has now sought that consent, alleging the CEC bypassed the other two Election Commissioners in breach of Supreme Court rulings that the poll body is a multi-member commission. The request rests on a news report of internal objections; no contempt case exists yet, the allegations are untested, and the Election Commission has denied any rift.
New Delhi: A Supreme Court advocate has sought the consent of the Attorney General for India to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, alleging wilful disobedience of Supreme Court judgments governing the functioning of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Advocate Brajesh Singh, in a letter of September 24 to Attorney General R. Venkataramani, invoked Section 15(1)(b) read with Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. Under that provision, criminal contempt in the Supreme Court can be initiated by a person only with the written consent of the Attorney General; the letter is therefore a request for such consent, and not, at this stage, a contempt case.
The basis of the request
The request follows a September 23 report in The Indian Express, which stated that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had, on at least 14 occasions over the preceding ten months, recorded objections to decisions said to have been taken by the poll panel without their knowledge or approval, on matters including changes to Form 6, the addition and deletion of names from electoral rolls, and the centralisation of access to the electoral-roll database. According to the letter, the two Commissioners had described some decisions as “unauthorised” and “illegal”.
These are the contents of a news report and of the advocate’s letter; they have not been established, and the reported objections are attributed to the two Commissioners as recorded in the report. The ECI has denied the suggestion of any rift, stating that the matters raised were operational queries, inputs and suggestions at the draft stage, and that the decisions taken by the Commission were unanimous.
The judgments relied on
The letter’s principal ground is an alleged violation of the Supreme Court’s judgment in T.N. Seshan v. Union of India, which, it contends, requires the Election Commission to function as a multi-member constitutional body in which the CEC is primus inter pares, first among equals, rather than an absolute authority. In that case, the Court had held that the CEC could not be projected as “mightier than the institution”, and that the decisions of a multi-member Election Commission are decisions of the Commission and not of its Chairman.
The advocate has also relied on the Supreme Court’s 2023 judgment in Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India, which emphasised the importance of an independent Election Commission for free and fair elections. The letter contends that issuing decisions or communications in the name of the “Full Commission” while allegedly bypassing the other Election Commissioners would amount to wilful defiance of the law declared by the Supreme Court under Article 141, and that alleged changes to the electoral database and rolls without the other Commissioners’ involvement could interfere with ongoing electoral processes and judicial scrutiny of electoral transparency.
What happens next
The next step lies with the Attorney General. If consent is granted, contempt proceedings may thereafter be instituted before the Supreme Court; if it is declined, the proposed contempt cannot proceed by this route. The consent requirement operates as a filter, intended to prevent frivolous or motivated contempt actions, so that the mere making of a request does not, by itself, mean that any proceeding will follow.
Why it matters
The request turns on a settled but significant principle about how the Election Commission is meant to function. Since T.N. Seshan, the constitutional position has been that the ECI is a multi-member body in which the CEC is first among equals, and that its decisions are institutional decisions, not the unilateral acts of the Chairman. The premise of the contempt request is that decisions taken or issued in the Commission’s name without the concurrence of the other Commissioners would depart from that model; whether the facts bear that out, and whether any departure rises to the level of contempt, are precisely the questions that would fall for examination only if consent is granted and a case is filed.
It bears emphasis that this is, at present, only a request for consent, resting on a media report whose account the ECI has disputed. No court is seized of the matter, no notice has issued, and the CEC has not been called upon to respond in any proceeding; the allegations are untested, and the ECI’s position is that the internal exchanges were part of the ordinary, collaborative process of decision-making and that its decisions were unanimous. The development is significant because it seeks to translate a reported internal disagreement into a question of compliance with the Supreme Court’s judgments, but it remains at the threshold, and nothing has been decided.
The request also comes at a time of heightened attention to the Election Commission’s independence, with the Supreme Court having, a day earlier, referred the challenge to the 2023 law on the appointment of Election Commissioners to a Constitution Bench. That larger debate, over how the Commission is constituted and how it functions, forms the backdrop against which this contempt request has been made, though the two matters are legally distinct.
Matter: Request to the Attorney General for India for consent under Section 15(1)(b) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against the Chief Election Commissioner
Sought by: Advocate Brajesh Singh, by letter dated September 24, 2026, to Attorney General R. Venkataramani
Grounds cited: Alleged violation of T.N. Seshan v. Union of India and Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India
Status: Consent stage only; no contempt case filed. Allegations untested and based on a news report; the ECI has denied any rift, terming its decisions unanimous.