Letters to The Editor — August 19, 2025

The ECI’s response

The defence provided by the Election Commission of India (ECI) regarding its refusal to publish readable voters’ rolls for recognised political parties and to upload the voters’ list on its website is, quite frankly, terrible. The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha has highlighted what can be called the incompetence of the ECI.

The responses given by the ECI during the recent press conference to valid questions about the lack of transparency regarding the uploading of voters’ rolls and other pertinent issues were absurd.

C. Raghavan,

Chennai

As the guardian of elections in India, the ECI must take the moral high ground, ensuring that all allegations and doubts are clarified and checked thoroughly. This is essential to maintain public trust in our elections and in democracy itself.

N.S. Girinaath Paranjothi,

Erode, Tamil Nadu

The tone and the tenor adopted by the ECI convey arrogance and an adversarial attitude. The Congress’s case is that the data relied upon by its leader are from the ECI’s own database. The ECI was evasive on several key questions from the media. There was no explanation for conducting such a massive exercise in the midst of the monsoon. The ECI has failed to live up to its constitutional mandate to be a neutral umpire. This is worrisome.

S.K. Choudhury,

Bengaluru