Anil Tyagi | Who Runs ECI: A Political Duo, an Autonomous Trio, Admin Sextuplet?

Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in Parliament, alleged that the duo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, and the chief election commissioner (CEC), were involved in a “conspiracy” to diminish the country’s electoral system. The aim was to run down the Election Commission of India (ECI), an autonomous institution under the Constitution. Constitutionally, the trio of election commissioners, headed by the CEC, who are all IAS officers, manages the affairs. Yet recent disclosures hint that three other civil servants are involved.

The bureaucratic narrative begins in July 2021, when Ashwini Vaishnaw, the 1994-batch Odisha-cadre IAS, took charge of the ministry of electronics and information technology. In October 2022, Ajay Bhadoo, a 1999-batch Gujarat cadre IAS, became the deputy election commissioner in ECI. He had served as secretary to Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel. Along with Mr Bhadoo, two bureaucrats entered the picture: H.R. Srinivasa, a 1996-batch Bihar-cadre IAS, and Seema Khanna, DG (IT). They worked in tandem, or conflicted randomly, with some of the members of the “IAS” trio in ECI. Media seems to drag Seema Khanna’s name.

Let us follow another tech-led trail of events. In 2018, ERONET was being rolled out as the electoral-roll technology management system. It was built by government institutions, including C-DAC. In 2019, the new, so-called efficient system was migrated across the country. Four years later, in 2023, came the next transformation as the ECI, as per its records, implemented the next tech phase, ERONET 2.0. By then, the electoral database of millions of Indian voters became a gigantic national digital infrastructure. The list of voters was handled and managed electronically, with names added and ejected.

Around the six civil servants, three election commissioners and three others, a tech architecture stands as a private-sector partner. In 2022-23, a software leader and a Tata Group firm, TCS, was embedded inside the architecture of ERONET 2.0. The role of the state-owned C-DAC was reduced. ECI’s recruitment document (December 2023) explicitly stated that ERONET 2.0 and related applications were developed by TCS. The system has 1.05 million election officials, verified over 78 crore electors, and generated more than 25 crore EPICs, apart from nearly 125 crore voter information slips.

It is time to ask a few questions: Who roped in TCS? Where are the minutes that record the decision? Who can add, and delete, names from the voters’ list? How did six IAS officers, including the three election commissioners, allow an outsider, TCS, to become central to the electoral machinery?

Tata imbroglio: Vijay Singh’s secret ladder

Vijay Singh, a former civil servant, has emerged prominently in the ongoing boardroom battle for control over Tata Sons, the parent of the sprawling salt-to-software Tata Group. Until recently, he was an important cog in Tata Trusts, which together own two-thirds of Tata Sons’ equity, and a nominee director of the trusts in Tata Sons. Now, he and others wish to dilute the role of Noel Tata, the successor to the late Ratan Tata. Vijay Singh’s story is of an IAS who travelled from his state cadre of Madhya Pradesh to the commanding heights of India's largest business empire. His journey began in a state, where he was regarded as a protégé of the former chief minister Arjun Singh. Both hailed from the Thakur community, and maybe the social links translated into something else. In 1982, Mr Singh moved to Delhi, and entered the secretive machinery of the Festival of India. He found himself under the wings of S.K. Misra, a bureaucrat with deep political associations, and Pupul Jayakar, an influential figure in India's cultural establishment. After five years in the Capital, and several global assignments, Vijay Singh went back to the state, and became its chief secretary. This was followed by the ultimate prize: the post of central defence secretary in 2007. In October 2007, the ambitious Tata Group got seven defence industrial licences. Later, Mr Singh became an integral part of Tata Trusts and Tata Sons, and was chairman, Tata Advanced Systems.

Power shift behind Dhami

Uttarakhand has a bureaucratic mystery. Where does the power flow from? Anand Bardhan, chief secretary, heads the bureaucracy. But there is a powerful circle around chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, with Ramesh Kumar Sudhanshu, principal secretary to the CM, at the Centre. The latter has fingers in several pies such as finance, forest and industrial development. Around him are secretaries to the CM, i.e., Shailesh Bagauli, Vinay Shankar Pandey and Deepak Rawat. The shifting power base moved a bit more due to a few bolts. On September 30, 2026, the Supreme Court took exception to Uttarakhand’s failure to appear in a coaching-centre-related case. It issued a contempt notice to chief secretary Bardhan, and noted that the state had neither appeared in the case, deposited Rs 50,000, nor filed an affidavit. Media reports indicate that a recent internal RSS survey of BJP chief ministers gave negative markings to states like Uttarakhand and Rajasthan. In an earlier unrelated matter, the Enforcement Directorate searched the Dehradun residence of Chandan Singh Jeena, officer on special duty of the former chief minister Harish Rawat. BJP’s top brass assessed that “if things continue as they are… it will be difficult for the BJP to return to power in these states next time”.

The writer is a senior journalist and alumnus of the Delhi School of Economics. He is the editor of gfiles, India’s first magazine on civil services and governance. @AnilTyagilive.