Summary: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has told the Supreme Court, in an affidavit filed on 26 October 2026 as the unanimous decision of all three commissioners, that the petition against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar rests on a single newspaper report. All three SIR orders were unanimous, no vote was ever needed, and six Supreme Court orders since 2017 have upheld electronic voting machines (EVMs), it says. Rahul Gandhi and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc called a 1 November Ramlila Maidan rally regardless, even as Congress failed to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s third straight Assam win, in a state where SIR was never run, writes Rajeev Deshpande in Open.
Why it matters: The “vote chori” story was built to explain defeat, and it has collapsed in court on the record of the very commissioners it claimed were at war. What Congress offers instead of evidence is street rallies and the company of anti-Hindutva activists like Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, while its losses, Assam included, keep mounting.
“Calling Congress’ Bluff” — Open The Magazine, 30 Oct 2026
An affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Election Commission of India (ECI) by Deputy Election Commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu, a Rajasthan-cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who holds a law degree and has served as secretary to the state government, chairman of a discom and collector in far-flung Barmer and Banswara, clinically marshals facts relating to ECI’s decisions, constitutional mandate and the apex court’s orders to set out in simple prose why there is no anomaly in the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and no basis to claims that millions of voters have been disenfranchised…
Read the full article at Open The Magazine →
