'Established beyond doubt': Rahul Gandhi accuses CEC of illegally changing Form 6 after court rebuke

The confrontation between the opposition and the Election Commission over the voter rolls sharpened on Monday, with Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi declaring it 'established beyond doubt' that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had changed Form 6 'illegally and unilaterally' , hours after the Chief Justice of India said the Supreme Court had never approved any modified version of the form. 'Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us. Let's be clear. When the record is produced, we would like to see who has modified,' Chief Justice Surya Kant observed while hearing a plea seeking the suspension and prosecution of the CEC. Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy had raised concerns about the new Form 6 declaration being used in Delhi's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The controversy centres on the new declaration attached to Form 6, the statutory form used by citizens enrolling as voters for the first time. Under the new version, applicants must state whether they or their parents were mapped in the previous SIR , a condition the earlier form did not carry. The change reportedly emerged after an Indian Express investigation found the declaration had been implemented despite written objections from Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, who said the statutory form could not be altered without amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. Gandhi, posting on X with a screenshot of an earlier Commission press release, wrote: 'This is just one more proof of him abusing his position to help the BJP. He and everyone else involved in this criminal assault on our democracy will be held accountable.' His charge follows the Court's observation that it had no occasion to examine the new Form 6 declaration in its May 2026 Bihar SIR judgment, since the declaration was introduced after that judgment. The Commission responded with an unusually direct point-by-point rebuttal. It said the Bihar SIR order of June 24, 2025 was issued with unanimous Commission approval and upheld by the Supreme Court in its May 27, 2026 judgment, and quoted its September 26 press note: 'The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Supreme Court. For non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules will be used.' The court has issued notices to the Commission and the Centre on the petitions but declined to suspend the CEC for now, saying it would await responses and records. With a public-interest plea also seeking an SIT probe into the deletion of 13 crore voters during the SIR, the question the CJI posed , who changed the form, and by what authority , now hangs over the credibility of the entire exercise.