Amid the ongoing CEC row, a group 124 former IAS, IFS and allied services officers, in an open letter, defended the Election Commission and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and questioned the allegations of vote rigging without credible evidence.
"If the system you call rigged is the same one that handed you your victories, ask yourself whether it is the system you doubt, or only the result. Democracies are worn away by those who create loud political narratives to incite volatile sections of citizens without sufficient proven evidence that their vote was never counted, or their vote doesn't matter. That's clearly an attempt to find relevance after being discarded by people through electoral system," NDTV quoted the letter.
The group's letter comes amid inetnsifying campaign against the Election Commission by the opposition. Leaders such as former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, ex-Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and ex-Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar were detained on Saturday.
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"We belong to no party. We write because one word, 'rigged', is now thrown at our elections without evidence, and every repetition wounds democratic trust that belongs to all of us," it added.
The letter highlighted India's shift from booth capturing, ballot box stuffing and electoral violence to the current electoral system, which includes polling agents, EVM sealing and VVPAT verification, citing Bihar's 2025 Assembly elections.
"Today, Bihar, once synonymous with booth capturing, held its 2025 election without a single re-poll, a first in its history. Turnout was the highest since 1951, and women voted in record numbers. This did not happen because officials became saints. It happened because the system that ECI created trusts no one blindly," the letter read.
"Every candidate's agent watches every booth and takes home a signed count of the votes cast. Machines are sealed with the agents' signatures and guarded in strong rooms that candidates may watch. Paper slips are matched with machine counts, a safeguard the Supreme Court upheld in 2024. Rigging would need the silence of tens of thousands of officials from governments of every political colour, and of the losing parties' own agents. No such conspiracy has ever been proved. The same logic governs the top, it added.
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The group also said that each candidate's polling agent is allowed to remain present at the polling station and is given a signed record of votes cast. It added that EVMs are sealed in the presence of polling agents, whose signatures are part of the process, before the machines are moved to strong rooms.
"Rigging would need the silence of tens of thousands of officials from governments of every political colour, and of the losing parties' own agents," it said. "No such conspiracy has ever been proved."
Citing the top court's earlier verdict, the group said, "The Election Commission was made a multimember body, a design the Supreme Court upheld in 1995, so that no one person holds such power."
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