The credibility of the Election Commission is in question. A recent survey by CSDS-Lokniti across five states and Delhi-NCR points to a significant drop in trust in the Election Commission. It is an important warning.
Trust in the EC has dropped sharply since 2019. In some states, there has been a significant decline between 2024 and 2025. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the proportion of respondents expressing “no trust” rose from 16 per cent in 2024 to 31 per cent this year. This will hardly surprise any reasonable person who has been following the EC’s conduct. Its response to, or rather deliberate obfuscation of, allegations made by Rahul Gandhi and opposition leaders and determined defence of the SIR, only to be reined in by the Supreme Court, are responsible for this growing trust deficit.
The consequences of this increased societal distrust are grim. Once the neutrality and integrity of the referee institution are questioned, the entire process comes under a cloud. No democracy can afford the legitimacy of its selection process to be undermined. This is the foundation on which democracy is built.
The only path to redemption for the Election Commission is to open itself up to democratic scrutiny. Not just by the Opposition but by the electorate at large. This may seem naive given the EC’s recent conduct, but public pressure can go a long way in prying open even the most opaque and unaccountable structures of government. There are precious lessons to be learnt from hard-won successes in embedding democratic processes of transparency and public scrutiny in India’s welfare schemes. Lessons that could go a long way in restoring public faith in the Election Commission.
But first, let us understand the roots of this trust breakdown.
Document maze
There is no doubt, as CSDS data shows, that public trust in the electoral system has been waning since 2019. While talking to voters in Uttar Pradesh during the 2024 elections, I found that the integrity of EVMs was part of the electoral chatter even among BJP supporters. This was borne out in surveys. A post-poll survey, which I was involved in, of over 36,000 respondents across 20 states and union territories, conducted by the Data Action Lab for Emerging Societies, found that when asked about the fairness of the EVM process, only 62 per cent of respondents answered in the affirmative. Another 22 per cent explicitly said that EVMs are not fair, with 16 per cent refusing to answer the question. I present this data not to challenge the fairness of the EVM process, but to point out that, slowly but surely, the wider electorate has begun to interrogate the legitimacy of the electoral process. Thus, the seeds of distrust has long been sown. The absurd and botched-up SIR process simply accelerated this.
Consider the hell the EC has unleashed. It trapped ordinary voters in a document maze by declaring widely accepted identity documents—Aadhaar, ration card and its own voter card—suspect, replacing them with a new set of 11 documents, many of which even the most privileged Indians struggle to procure. Only these new documents were deemed appropriate for determining citizenship and, therefore, eligibility to vote.
The living “dead” (living electors declared dead in the draft electoral rolls) who made a dramatic entry in the Supreme Court in the 12 August hearing on SIR, are an all too familiar reality for most Indians whose basic needs from ration to cash are dependent on the production of government documents.
It is no surprise then that close to half the respondents (45 per cent) in the latest CSDS poll believed that genuine voters may be removed from voter lists if an SIR were to be conducted, and just over a quarter (27 per cent) said they were very confident that the EC would ensure inclusivity.
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The social audit
Even as the tyranny of documents is primarily responsible for this trust deficit, it may also hold within it the solution. One of the most powerful efforts to hold the state accountable is social audits. Through the power of democratic deliberation, these audits effectively use the government’s obsession with documents and turn it into a tool for democratic accountability.
The government may seek to trap citizens in their document maze, but scrutiny of these documents empowers citizens to challenge the state and demand accountability. When conducting social audits, citizens quite literally became “auditors”, arming themselves with government documents and, in full public view, cross-verify the claims in the documents with realities on the ground. This is how “ghosts” of welfare—fake and dead names that would make their way into beneficiary lists so that local officials and politicians could siphon funds and ration meant for the public—were exorcised.
With the launch of the MGNREGA, these processes became integrated in the governance architecture, and some states, including Bihar, set up social audit cells to conduct regular audits.
The power of the social audit lies in the fact that it is a deeply democratic act. The government quite literally invites citizens to scrutinise its documents and hold it accountable for its functioning. Embedding this process into the everyday functioning of a government programme was not easy. It took decades of activism by pioneers like Aruna Roy and the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan to generate public pressure from the grassroots to conduct social audits. Even today, it faces resistance. But the practice of social audits stands tall as one of India’s most unique and deeply democratic efforts to deepen accountability of government. In this present moment of democratic crisis, this practice can be a saviour.
The EC now claims that it has 98 per cent of documents from voters, and the Electoral Registration officers will now deal with claims and objections and verify eligibility. Thanks to Supreme Court intervention, critical “documents” like the list of deletions are now in the public domain. To restore public trust, the EC can use the next few weeks, in coordination with Bihar’s social audit cell and local NGOs, to undertake social audits in areas which have seen large deletions and where verification processes are likely to be more fraught. This will have a ripple effect beyond Bihar.
No democracy can afford for the integrity of its electoral process to be compromised. Restoring credibility is critical for our democracy. India’s remarkable history of using democratic tools to strengthen its welfare systems offers an important path out of the current crisis. It’s not too late yet, but soon it will be.
Yamini Aiyar is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Saxena Center and Watson Institute, Brown University, and the former President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research. Her X handle is @AiyarYamini. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)