In late September 2026, Arnab Goswami, Chief Editor of the Republic Media Network, dismissed a report in The Indian Express as "nonsense" and "not worth mentioning." The report had claimed that two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had raised objections on roughly 14 occasions over a ten-month period to internal measures adopted by the Commission — concerning information sharing, changes to electoral rolls, the process for filing Form 6, work allocation, and IT and oversight matters related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Goswami's reaction was not unusual in itself; it was, in fact, a textbook example of how much of Indian television news now functions — not as a forum for examining institutions, but as a battlefield where every report is treated as a political act requiring an immediate counterattack.
Goswami argued that the report distorted what is simply normal, healthy internal debate. Internal records and dissenting views, he said, are standard in any well-functioning democratic institution — he drew parallels with the deliberative processes of the courts — and their existence demonstrates that the Commission is independent and dynamic rather than monolithic or manipulated. He noted that the Commission had clarified that final decisions were reached unanimously, and cited the Supreme Court's earlier endorsement of the Special Intensive Revision process. The opposition, he argued — singling out Rahul Gandhi and the Indian National Congress — was making a far-fetched claim by interpreting internal procedural disagreements as evidence of "vote chori" or institutional capture, a claim he said sat awkwardly with the opposition's own earlier portrayal of the Commission as a mere rubber stamp.
His remarks reflected his characteristic style: assertive, high-profile rebuttals of narratives he deems politically motivated, typically accompanied by direct attacks on opposition figures. Supporters see this as a necessary corrective — a counter to what they view as repeated attempts, following political failure at the ballot box, to delegitimize election results and constitutional institutions. Critics counter that it amounts to selective institutional praise: transparency concerns, procedural questions, and the concentration of power within the Commission are brushed aside whenever a report becomes inconvenient.
The episode matters less for what it says about the Election Commission than for what it reveals about the media ecosystem in which such stories now live. When a news anchor's first response to a documented report is to declare it worthless rather than to interrogate it, journalism and advocacy become indistinguishable. The same is true, of course, on the other side: reports on institutional dissent are too quickly weaponized as proof of predetermined conclusions — "vote chori" — before the substance of the objections has even been examined. Both impulses serve the same purpose: to spare audiences the discomfort of complexity.
The legitimate questions raised by the reporting deserve better. What was the specific nature of the Commissioners' objections, and how were they resolved? What legal and operational safeguards protect the voter rolls, and how well did they function during the SIR? What has judicial oversight actually established, and where does uncertainty remain? And what are the political motivations of the various actors — including those in the media — who claim to speak for the public interest? These are questions that can be answered only through patient, skeptical reporting, not through nightly declarations of victory.
Meanwhile, the courts have weighed in on aspects of the revision process, and political actors remain free to seek further review or legislative amendment. But substituting institutional criticism for acceptance of election results carries its own democratic cost — as does treating every criticism as an attack on democracy. Public trust in electoral bodies rests not merely on the absence of proven fraud, but on visible, sustained transparency and on a media landscape willing to scrutinize the process without predetermined conclusions.
In a climate of extreme polarization, reducing complex institutional dynamics to a binary choice between "trivialities" and "existential threats" only deepens the echo chamber. Healthy disagreement within the Election Commission is normal — not a flaw — provided such differences are neither suppressed nor exploited, and provided the public has access to comprehensive, unfiltered information about how the institution actually functions. That last condition is the media's job to meet. The Goswami episode suggests we are still a long way from meeting it.
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*Freelance writer
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