India’s Election Commission is facing a test of credibility

India’s Election Commission (ECI), one of the most trusted public institutions in the world’s largest democracy, is facing a test of its credibility.

Over the past few weeks, it has fielded a string of allegations from the opposition, ranging from voter fraud and manipulation to inconsistencies in electoral rolls. It has denied all of these.

Opposition leaders, who have held massive protests against the ECI in recent days, said they were considering an impeachment motion to remove the chief election commissioner from his position. They hadn’t filed the motion by Thursday, the last day of the monsoon session of parliament, and currently don’t have the numbers to see it through.

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of India’s main opposition party Congress, has launched a 16-day, 1,300km (807 miles) march – known as the Voter Adhikar Yatra (Voter Rights March) – in Bihar state to protest against the ECI, marking a dramatic escalation in the political fight. Bihar, set to vote in a key state election later this year, has been in the middle of a heated controversy over a recent revision of electoral rolls.

Gandhi first made the allegations of vote theft in August, accusing the ECI of colluding with the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to rig the 2024 general elections.

Using granular data from the ECI’s own records, he alleged that a parliamentary constituency in the southern state of Karnataka had more than 100,000 fake voters, including duplicate voters, invalid addresses and bulk registrations at single locations.

The ECI has repeatedly called the claims “false and misleading”. And the BJP has strongly denied these allegations, with leader Anurag Thakur saying the Congress and the opposition had come together to make these “baseless claims” because they were anticipating a loss in Bihar.

Gandhi’s press conference was held as the controversy in Bihar was raging.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) happened between June and July, with the ECI saying its representatives visited all of Bihar’s 78.9 million voters for verification.

The ECI says this was done to update the voter lists after more than 20 years, but opposition leaders say the process may have disenfranchised tens of thousands of people, especially migrants, because of the haste with which it was conducted and the onerous documentation required as proof.

After a draft of the updated list was published on 1 August, several reports, including by the BBC, highlighted errors in the count, such as the wrong gender and photos assigned against people’s names, and dead voters on the rolls.

The new draft rolls have 72.4 million names – 6.5 million fewer than before, with the commission saying the omissions include duplicate, deceased and migrant voters. Those who believe their names were wrongly struck off have been given until 1 September to appeal.