Why Citizens Are Losing Trust in India’s Election Commission and Judiciary: A Growing Crisis of Institutional Confidence
India’s constitutional institutions are facing an increasingly visible trust deficit. The concern is not simply that citizens disagree with particular decisions of the Election Commission of India (ECI) or the courts; it is that a growing section of the public is questioning whether the institutions responsible for protecting electoral fairness and constitutional rights are sufficiently transparent, independent and accountable.
Recent polling provides one of the clearest indications of this change. The August 2026 India Today–Mood of the Nation survey found that the proportion of respondents who believed Indian elections were free and fair had fallen to 51.9%, from 56.5% in January 2026 and 64.4% in August 2025. Meanwhile, 40.9% said they did not believe elections were free and fair, up from 31.7% a year earlier.
The findings are important because they do not show a simple rejection of the Election Commission. In the same survey, 43.3% said their trust in the ECI had increased over the previous year, while 38% said it had declined. Moreover, 60.2% supported the stated objective of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to identify bogus or duplicate voters. The data therefore points to a more complicated problem: citizens can support cleaner electoral rolls while simultaneously becoming less confident about the fairness and transparency of the process used to produce them.
That distinction has become particularly important during the nationwide SIR exercise. An Indian Express investigation published on September 23 reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected on at least 14 occasions over 10 months to decisions concerning the electoral rolls, including changes relating to voter enrolment and deletion. The report described an unusual rupture within the three-member Commission.
The dispute is especially sensitive because electoral rolls determine who can exercise the constitutional right to vote. In West Bengal, the ECI told the Supreme Court that 27.16 lakh voters had been removed during the SIR process and that more than 22 lakh of them had subsequently filed appeals seeking reinstatement. Overall, 38.31 lakh appeals were reported, including appeals seeking both inclusion and deletion. Only 1,607 voters had been reinstated in time to vote in the 2026 Assembly election.
The Supreme Court itself has recently scrutinised aspects of the SIR process. In September, a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant questioned the Election Commission over notices issued to more than 33 lakh Delhi electors. The Court said the notices appeared to have been issued “almost mechanically” and sought clarification about the meaning and basis of the Commission’s “logical discrepancy” category.
The Court also asked whether the notices clearly explained to voters what documents or information could resolve the discrepancies. The significance goes beyond the immediate Delhi exercise: when an ordinary voter receives a notice challenging the basis of their inclusion on the electoral roll, confidence depends not merely on the final decision but on whether the process is understandable, accessible and capable of being independently challenged.
At the heart of the wider controversy is the question of institutional independence. The 2023 law governing appointments to the Election Commission changed the selection mechanism that had previously been the subject of a Supreme Court recommendation involving the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and Chief Justice of India. Under the new framework, the selection committee gives the Union government a greater role. Critics argue that this creates a structural concern about independence, while supporters of the existing system maintain that the constitutional framework and statutory safeguards remain intact.
The controversy has also moved beyond political parties. In July, 23 opposition parties wrote to Chief Justice Surya Kant alleging that electoral processes were being manipulated and asking the judiciary to intervene. These were political allegations, not judicial findings, and the BJP rejected the opposition’s interpretation, accusing it of shifting responsibility for electoral setbacks onto constitutional institutions.
The judiciary therefore finds itself caught in a difficult position. Citizens often turn to courts precisely because they are expected to provide an independent check when other institutional mechanisms fail. But when courts intervene, their decisions can themselves become politically contested. When they decline to intervene, delay proceedings or defer to administrative authorities, those who expected judicial protection can interpret the outcome as institutional passivity.
Chief Justice Surya Kant recently addressed this issue directly. Speaking at the Ram Jethmalani Memorial Lecture in September, he said public trust in the judiciary should not be confused with public approval. According to the CJI, trust is built through fairness of process rather than by delivering outcomes that people want, and courts should remain open to examination, questioning and criticism.
That principle is particularly relevant because judicial legitimacy depends on more than winning or losing individual cases. A court can make an unpopular decision and retain institutional credibility if citizens believe the reasoning was transparent, the law was applied consistently and both sides received a meaningful opportunity to be heard. Conversely, even a legally defensible decision can deepen distrust if the process appears opaque or inaccessible.
The problem is amplified by India’s enormous judicial backlog. The Freedom House 2026 assessment describes the Indian judiciary as formally independent while also identifying severe case backlogs, understaffing and obstacles to accessing justice. It separately raised concerns about the independence and perceived politicisation of institutions, while acknowledging that India’s electoral contests continue to be regarded in significant respects as competitive and that executive elections are generally considered free and fair.
This matters because institutional confidence is cumulative. A voter who encounters difficulty correcting an electoral-roll error, sees conflicting explanations from officials, reads about internal disagreements within the Election Commission and then faces a lengthy judicial process may begin to distrust not one institution but the entire chain designed to protect their democratic rights.
Yet the available evidence does not justify saying that Indians have collectively lost faith in democracy, the Election Commission or the judiciary. The 2026 survey itself demonstrates a divided public rather than a uniform collapse of confidence. A majority still regarded SIR as necessary, more respondents said their trust in the ECI had increased than decreased, and 51.9% continued to describe elections as free and fair.
The deeper issue is therefore not simply whether institutions are trusted or distrusted. It is whether they are providing enough visible evidence of fairness to sustain that trust. For the Election Commission, that means greater transparency around voter-roll algorithms, deletion criteria, internal decision-making and appeals. For the judiciary, it means timely hearings, clear reasoning, procedural accessibility and demonstrable independence.
The latest disputes show why this matters. On September 25, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking action against CEC Gyanesh Kumar over alleged statutory violations connected with the SIR process and challenging decisions allegedly taken without the concurrence of the other Election Commissioners. The allegations remain to be adjudicated, and the filing itself is not evidence that the allegations are true.
India’s institutional crisis, if that is what the accumulating evidence ultimately proves it to be, will not be resolved simply by one court order, one election or one change of office-holder. Public confidence is built slowly through predictable rules, transparency and accountability—and can deteriorate when citizens repeatedly encounter unanswered questions.
The central test for India’s constitutional institutions is consequently straightforward but demanding: not whether every citizen agrees with their decisions, but whether citizens can see and understand the process by which those decisions are reached. The recent fall in confidence over electoral fairness, the controversy surrounding SIR, internal disagreements within the ECI and renewed scrutiny of judicial independence suggest that restoring that confidence will require institutions to make fairness not only a constitutional principle, but something citizens can visibly experience.
