CEC Gyanesh Kumar with ECs Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in New Delhi, Saturday. (X/@ECISVEEP)Three days ago, the Election Commission of India had a straightforward answer to The Indian Express investigation into how the three-member body was functioning.Two of its members had recorded objections at least 14 times to decisions touching the core of the Commission’s mandate: who gets registered as a voter, who gets deleted and restored, who appeals against those restorations, and who controls the systems through which the electoral roll is maintained.WATCH | Election Commission Investigation: Ritika Chopra Answers All Your Questions On ECI InvestigationThe Commission called those notes “suggestions” and “inputs”, part of normal deliberation.Also Read | Form probe team, move against CEC Gyanesh Kumar: Petitioner to Supreme CourtThe important decisions of the past year, it insisted, had the “unanimous” approval of the full Commission.On Saturday, the Commission met again. What followed was striking. In a four-page note issued after the meeting, it announced nine decisions that addressed, point by point, several of the concerns recorded by the two Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.What are the Election Commission’s new decisions?Agendas will now be circulated before every Commission meeting and minutes issued afterwards. Officers’ foreign trips will need Commission approval. New IT modules and portals will go through a committee of officers before being placed before the Commission. The ECINet will be reviewed by a committee headed by a senior Deputy Election Commissioner and will include an independent expert from an IIT or IIIT. If field officers need more flexibility in the system, it will be provided. And directions issued by Commissioners to officers will be “meticulously complied with”.Story continues below this adAlso Read | CEC must go, Supreme Court should act, pause SIR: Opposition after Election Commission divide out in openThese decisions map, almost item for item, onto the concerns the two Commissioners had put on file over 10 months: that agendas were not circulated and minutes not issued, that officers went abroad without the Commission’s approval, that new IT modules were built without its knowledge, that the electoral-roll database needed an audit by an independent expert, that field officers lacked “proper and complete access” to ERONet, and that an administrative order had altered the allocation of work around the IT division without them.In Goa, where The Indian Express found 97 voters cleared by local officers still missing from the final roll, the Commission says 81 have now filled Form 6 and the CEO has been directed to facilitate their inclusion.This sharp turn signals how deep the disquiet inside the Commission had become, and how far it had travelled outside, with Opposition parties by Friday demanding that polls on SIR rolls be cancelled.Also read | Election Commissioners knocked on Cabinet Secretary’s door over voter software integrityWhat happens to Form 6?Story continues below this adBut the concessions have limits, and Form 6 is where they show. The note reads like a concession there and isn’t one. It says the form prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules will apply outside the SIR period, which was the substance of Joshi’s May objection.Express investigation | 14 times in 10 months, two Election Commissioners objected on record to poll panel stepsBut the objection was about the online form on ECINet, where a question on the applicant’s parents was inserted between sections J and K, and which would not let an applicant proceed without answering it. The note does not mention the online form, or the question, or say whether it has been removed.It says the Supreme Court “upheld” the declaration, which the court’s May 27 order on the SIR does not appear to do in terms. And it does not say who put the question there in July, or why it stayed after Sandhu called it “unauthorised/illegal” on August 13.WATCH | Sukhbir Singh Sandhu & Vivek Joshi: Who Are The 2 ECs Who Objected To SIR?Other unanswered questionsOther questions go unanswered too.Story continues below this adAlso Read | ‘Illegal, unauthorised’: Election Commissioners objected to Form 6 changeThe note says nothing about the central one from West Bengal: Who authorised the appeals filed against voters whose inclusion had been ordered by judicial officers, were they filed on behalf of ECI, and if yes, who was it authorised by?It does not explain why Goa’s requested software facility to restore voter names was never enabled.ALSO READ | Goa staff sent 8 emails in 7 days, but EC shut out valid votersAnd it does not say whether DG (IT) Seema Khanna, whose functioning was a point of contention and Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg, against whom both Commissioners sought action, stay.Explained | Behind Form 7, deletion but only after probeAnd it leaves the biggest question open: what the new normal inside the Commission looks like. Whether Gyanesh Kumar now takes Sandhu and Joshi along before decisions are made, and whether the two, having put their objections on record, will have more say at the table, remains to be seen. An award-winning journalist with 19 years of experience reporting on politics, governance, and public policy, Ritika Chopra is currently Resident Editor of The Indian Express, Mumbai. She oversees the edition’s editorial coverage and reporting on the city and the wider region. Previously, she has served as Chief of the National Bureau (Government) and National Education Editor in New Delhi, leading coverage of government policy and education. Ritika has closely tracked the Union Government, with a focus on politically sensitive institutions such as the Election Commission of India and the Education Ministry, and has authored investigative reports that have prompted official responses. Ritika joined The Indian Express in 2015. Previously, she was part of the political bureau at The Economic Times, India’s largest financial daily. Her journalism career began in Kolkata, her birthplace, with the Hindustan Times in 2006 as an intern, before moving to Delhi in 2007. Since then, she has been reporting from the capital on politics, education, social sectors, and the Election Commission of India. ... Read More Tags:Election Commission