The ECI has crossed all limits of shamelessness by shrugging all its responsibilities in the face of grave allegations of vote theft and mass rigging. Constitutional authorities are expected to be the epitome of probity - not hide behind vaguely drafted press notes to hide their guilt in destroying democracy. The onus on catching the scale and volume of their vote theft cannot be on political parties and its BLAs. ECI claims “utmost transparency is the hallmark of electoral roll preparation”. We wish to ask ECI if any of these decisions are part of their agenda of promoting “utmost transparency”: 1. Denying machine-readable rolls to parties; and taking down already uploaded machine-readable versions of the draft SIR rolls 2. ⁠Deleting CCTV footage within 45 days 3. ⁠Submitting before the Supreme Court that it is not bound to disclose the reason behind deleting 65 lakh names in the Bihar SIR process 4. ⁠Refusing to meet opposition MPs marching to meet the ECI The tone and tenor of this press note raises greater suspicions that the ECI will take no steps to address the public’s grave concerns about mass scale vote rigging done by the BJP-controlled ECI. If the ECI “welcomes the scrutiny of electoral rolls”, the Chief Election Commissioner and other ECs must come clean on why they still refuse to provide parties with machine-readable electoral rolls and why CCTV footage is being deleted.