At sixes and sevens, the ECI’s growing credibility crisis

Is the Election Commission of India (ECI) at sixes and sevens, idiomatically and otherwise? Will Form 6 be its undoing, and has Form 7 caused it unmanageable discomfiture? The barbs associated with these forms have further damaged the image of the beleaguered constitutional body entrusted with safeguarding the constitutional right to vote of “we, the people”.

Never before has the ECI been so severely berated, becoming the object of unprecedented public outcry, adverse media attention and social scrutiny as in recent times. It took the ECI years of toil and transparency to earn public trust; it has taken the temperament of a few individuals to erode it through their disregard for the concerns, genuine or imagined, of those who had earlier sworn by the very same institution.