The Explosive History of Feuds Inside the Election Commission
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Election Commission of India (ECI) stands as one of the world's most formidable democratic arbiters, its corridors at Nirvachan Sadan have witnessed explosive interpersonal clashes, public rebellions, and institutional tug-of-wars for over three decades. Ever since the poll body shifted from a single-member entity to a multi-member commission in October 1989 under Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) R.V.S. Peri Shastri—who quietly saw the appointments of S.S. Dhanoa and V.S. Segal as an executive effort to curtail his authority—the balance of power within the commission has remained volatile. Although those initial appointments were revoked by January 1990 returning the body to a single head, the permanent restoration of the multi-member setup in 1993 ignited one of Indian governance's most famous bureaucratic wars under the legendary CEC T.N. Seshan.
The Legendary T.N. Seshan Revolt: Secret Files Withheld and the Landmark 1995 Supreme Court Verdict
When the P.V. Narasimha Rao government appointed M.S. Gill and G.V.G. Krishnamurthy as Election Commissioners in 1993, T.N. Seshan viewed the measure as an existential strike against the independence of his office. The fiery bureaucrat flatly refused to recognize their administrative existence, barring them from attending critical high-level deliberations, denying them work allocations, and refusing to share confidential state dockets, once even making headlines by referring to his newly appointed colleagues as "two donkeys in my office." Seshan challenged the government’s multi-member ordinance in court, culminating in a historic 1995 Supreme Court verdict that permanently reshaped India's electoral apparatus: the apex bench ruled that the status, powers, and voting strength of Election Commissioners are entirely equal to the CEC, establishing that the Chief Election Commissioner is strictly "first among equals."
Restroom Leaks to Sudden Resignations: Navin Chawla, Ashok Lavasa, and Arun Goel's Exits
The internal fault lines re-emerged dramatically between 2006 and 2009 during the tenure of CEC N. Gopalaswami and Election Commissioner Navin Chawla. Months before superannuating, Gopalaswami submitted an unprecedented formal recommendation to the President of India seeking Chawla's removal, alleging overt pro-Congress bias and claiming Chawla leaked inside commission proceedings to political leaders while taking frequent restroom breaks during closed-door meetings. The Manmohan Singh government rejected the petition, and Chawla subsequently succeeded Gopalaswami as CEC. A decade later, during the 2019 general elections, open friction flared again when Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa dissented on Model Code of Conduct clearances granted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah; Lavasa resigned abruptly in August 2020 to join the Asian Development Bank. The precedent of mid-tenure exits was mirrored on March 9, 2024, when Election Commissioner Arun Goel resigned unexpectedly ahead of the Lok Sabha polls citing personal reasons, amid widespread speculation of deep friction with then CEC Rajiv Kumar—reaffirming that internal dissent remains an enduring hallmark of the multi-member poll watchdog.
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