New Delhi: Meetings in poll-bound states are being conducted only by deputy Election commissioners at best and sign-offs on press releases dished out to reporters are also full of officers lower down the rankings of the autonomous body tasked with the conduct of free and fair elections.In times past, read as just months ago, all three election commissioners would tour states, meet local officers, members of the general public and the press to get the lay of the land before announcing dates for elections. Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar was almost a poster-boy with his personal temple visits also getting due publicity with photographs run by news agencies. At least 5-10 of his photographs and public engagements flooded reporters’ inboxes each week and appeared on EC’s social media handles.Ever since the ‘Gyanesh must resign’ protests picked up steam and 30,000 armed security personnel were called into the national capital to quell protests and physically hold down protesters, the entire month of October has been Election Commissioner-free.These five states are crucial and significant. Four are border states – Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh too – with Goa the sole coastal state set to elect a new assembly early next year. Special intensive revision has been conducted in these states. A win in Uttar Pradesh, especially, is crucial for the BJP to try and claw back into the status of a dominant party, in terms of the narrative. SIR has been most controversial there, with the ‘Pilibhit model’ coming under severe criticism, of EPIC numbers remaining the same but names and other details changing mysteriously for over 10,000 voters. The EC was forced to lodge FIRs and also dismiss two officials, other than disabling logins for their colleagues. The egregious matter came to light only due to the opposition pointing it out. The voter list of UP drawn up by the EC after SIR, is about 3 crore thinner than that drawn up by the state election commission, which is the basis for the panchayat and municipal polls in the state. The SIR has shrunk the voter list in these five states by 13.24%, with UP contributing to 90% of the missing voters. In an assembly election, winning margins are often thin and the shrinking of the rolls is contributing to anxiety after the West Bengal experience with a poorly conducted and what some analysts believe is a doctored SIR list on the basis of which elections were conducted in the state.For The Wire’s full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.The anger on the streets that is directed towards the ECs, especially after an unprecedented public impeachment conducted by the opposition and civil society, may have led to them to vanish from even pre-poll duties, but this raises serious questions.1) Have they gone missing because they do not want to be seen together in poll-bound states?The so-called joint affidavit before the Supreme Court has raised questions, as there has been no public sighting of the three nor notice of any meetings they have all held after the one meeting in late September. Senior journalist Narendra Nath told Ravish Kumar in October that “a union minister had assured his government and the BJP that all three ECs would hold a joint press conference at the same time as leader of opposition, Rahul Gandhi was to meet the President of India with other party leaders, to puncture the opposition narrative, but the two ECs flatly refused despite late-night persuasions, feelers via bureaucrat-colleagues of theirs.” Weeks after this failed masterstroke, there has been no joint appearance of the three ECs.2) Has the government asked the ECs, especially Gyanesh Kumar, to stay away from the public eye for reasons of optics?Gyanesh Kumar is now a well-recognised symbol of the decline of institutions under the Modi government’s 12 year stay in New Delhi, something that is now politically articulated and sharply out on the streets? Does the government think his presence will tar the forthcoming polls too in the public eye and further cast a shadow on the credibility of BJP’s latest electoral victories after 2024? 3) If this is the case and the Modi government can prevail upon the one autonomous institution of the republic, then how autonomous is it?This was raised earlier too when security forces, placed there by the Union home ministry did not allow the ECs to meet opposition MPs, not civil society activists and other senior IAS officers, including a former LG of Delhi and a former home secretary. Who took that call to keep the ECs closeted and away from MPs and others? 4) Who is taking decisions in the Election Commission if the three are AWOL?There are decisions that require the three independent commissioners to ponder over and greenlight unanimously or at least by majority. Under whose and what brief are junior officers like senior deputy EC Maneesh Garg acting, whose role was also raised by an election commissioner as part of the 14 letters Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi wrote in 10 months, as reported by The Indian Express and then revealed by the government of India by an RTI.