A leading national daily has this morning revealed that the officer about whom the two Election Commissioners had complained to the Cabinet Secretary about in July 2026 continues to be the key pivot in the Election Commission. Instead of action being taken against him, the officer is now overseeing the controversial IT division of the Election Commission. The letter to the Cabinet Secretary was prompted by an order from the officer that removed oversight from the IT division to enable it to continue functioning without any transparency. We now learn that since August, the officer himself has been given the power to oversee the IT division. So the ECI’s deceptive clarification in its Press Note released on September 26, 2026 was to hide the real story. The two Election Commissioners had pointed out that the IT division was restricting access of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to the ECINet voter roll system and overriding the statutory authority of the EROs over deletions/additions in the roll. The complaint reached the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), for which the Minister responsible is the Prime Minister himself. So the PM is aware of all this and it is likely taking place on his direction. It appears that the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the PM himself have kept the particular officer in place to retain their centralised control over the entire system. The Vote Chori operation is becoming clearer by the day.