New Delhi: In August 2025, Congress MP and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (LoP), Rahul Gandhi alleged there were irregularities and even rigging in the voter list of Karnataka’s Mahadevapura assembly constituency. He urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to provide machine-readable voter lists and insisted that CCTV footage from polling booths should not be destroyed.During a rally, he raised concerns about the practice of destroying CCTV footage and video evidence.In response, ECI said that any aggrieved candidate may file an election petition with the relevant high court within 45 days to contest their election outcome. If such a petition is filed, the CCTV footage is preserved as evidence. Otherwise, there was no reason to retain it, unless the intention is to violate a voter’s privacy.Shortly thereafter, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar also cited privacy concerns and asked, “Should the election commission share CCTV footage of any voter – regardless of whether that individual is one’s mother, daughter-in-law or daughter?”However, this was not the first instance in which the ECI attempted to restrict public access to CCTV footage from polling stations and video recordings of the electoral process. Invoking privacy served as a smokescreen behind which the commission sought refuge as questions about the transparency of the electoral process grew louder.About eight months ago, in December 2024, the ECI amended the rules regarding CCTV footage and video recordings citing the following two reasons:Firstly, requests to obtain such recordings were steadily increasing.Secondly, providing them required significant administrative resources and manpower.However, in response to a query filed under the Right to Information Act, the same ECI has now stated that it does not possess any data regarding the number of such requests received over the past five years.In its response dated September 14, 2026, the ECI stated that it does not possess data “in any material form” regarding the number of applications or requests seeking CCTV footage from polling stations and counting centres.This response holds considerable significance because, precisely two years ago, the commission itself justified the modification of regulations to restrict public access to CCTV and electoral video recordings by citing an alleged increase in such requests and the resulting administrative burden.So now the question is not just whether CCTV footage ought to be made publicly accessible. It’s also this: if the number of people requesting footage and the scale of such requests were important enough to justify changing the rules, then what record, data or study was that “large scale” assessment based on?What did the commission say before changing the rules?After “consultation with the Election Commission,” the Union government modified the election conduct rules on December 20, 2024. Under this amendment, just five words were added to Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 – ‘As specified in these rules”.To put it simply, this amendment means that public access to election-related documents has been restricted to only those documents explicitly mentioned in these rules.This modification took effect immediately after an order by the Punjab and Haryana high court. On December 10, 2024, the court instructed the ECI to provide documents, videos and CCTV footage related to the Haryana Assembly elections held in 2024, in response to a petition filed by advocate Mehmood Pracha.A week following this directive, on December 17, 2024, ECI submitted a letter to the Legislative Department of the Ministry of Law and Justice proposing an amendment to Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Elections Rules. The commission cited the resource requirements and administrative burden involved in providing electronic records as the justification for the proposed amendment.The commission stated:“Providing non-statutory papers and electronic recordings necessitates involvement of substantial manpower which is impractical post-election, as administrative resources are significantly reduced. Moreover, the office of the Returning Officer ceases to exist once the electoral process in a constituency concludes. Assigning them additional workload of supplying non-statutory documents post-election, at such a large scale, will overburden and cripple the administrative functioning in the field. Therefore, supplying non-statutory papers is both resource intensive, cumbersome and will not serve any legal purpose.”The ECI further requested to notify the proposed amendment as soon as possible, stating, “Therefore, in order to safeguard the public interest without infringing the right of inspection/ transparency or access to the statutory and non-statutory papers, it is proposed that the word ‘statutory’ may be added before the word ‘papers’ in Rule 93(2)(a) of the said rules. The amendment to Rule 93(2) may be done as per the proposal given in the Annexure.”Proposal prepared by the Election Commission of India.On December 20, the Ministry of Law provided its first response to the commission’s proposal, and on that very same day, the regulations were modified – all within a single day.A document from the Ministry of Law dated December 20 reveals that they engaged in discussions with the commission’s officials and prepared a draft for rule modifications. However, due to ambiguity surrounding the word “statutory”, it was revised to “as specified in these rules”. On the same date, the ECI reviewed the draft, approved it and asked for it to be notified soon.On the same day, December 20, the draft was translated into Hindi and verified by the Official Language Section. And on the same day, the law ministry issued the final notification and sent it to the Government of India Press for publication in the official Gazette, thereby effecting the regulatory amendments.Let us look at the commission’s proposal, which served as the foundation for regulatory modifications again. At the heart of the ECI’s reasoning were two key points –That such records were being sought.That such requests was so overwhelming that it was overburdening administrative resources.After the rules were modified, on December 22, the English daily Indian Express reported, citing an ECI official, that a large number of people were requesting video footage from the commission.Now these are the precisely the points where the September 2026 RTI response raises serious questions.Where is the data of “increasing demand”?Transparency activist Kanhaiya Kumar filed an RTI request seeking seven types of information spanning the last five years.The most fundamental question was: how many requests came in each year? Subsequently, questions were posed regarding the category-wise breakup of such requests, i.e., how many of the requests were received from (a) candidates or political parties, (b) media, (c) general public or RTI applicants, (d) courts or law-enforcement agencies.Another question was: How many times was CCTV footage actually provided, and how many requests were denied or refused.However, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) stated regarding items number of yearly requests that the information sought was not available with the commission in “any material form” within the meaning of section 2(f).In response to how many requests were received from candidates or media or the general public, it was put in the category of clarification/opinion/suggestion.However, the applicant had not asked the commission whether CCTV footage should be provided or not, nor did the applicant seek the commission’s opinion on the matter. The applicant had instead requested information regarding the number of requests received, the quantity that were approved, and the quantity that were rejected.Older ECI documents contradict the responseIn 2009, an important guideline document called the ‘Compendium of Instructions on Conduct of Elections’ was released. Within Volume 1 of this document, specifically on pages 26-27, under the section titled ‘Inspection and Supply of Copies (Prints) of Video Tapes’, the procedure for inspection of video cassettes and providing certified copies has been explained.The document explicitly mentions that requests have been received from electoral candidates, officials of political parties and other interested parties to watch video recordings and obtain their copies (prints).’That is, the commission’s previous instructions mention the fact that requests were received from candidates, political parties and other interested parties seeking to view video recordings or asking for their copies.Subsequently, the ECI had prescribed a uniform procedure for addressing such requests.Note that the instructions did not merely address requests, but also established the procedure for the preservation of video records, their cataloguing, examination and the provision of certified copies.In other words, the request for access to video recordings was neither a new nor an unexpected development. The ECI had already established an administrative process for handling such requests years prior and it was accustomed to responding to them.This fact renders the 2026 response increasingly important, in which the ECI claimed that no record of such requests over a five-year period was available in any material form.A significant question emerges in this context. The ECI, while proposing changes in the rules, contended that providing such records would necessitate a substantial workforce and could adversely affect the functioning of regional administration. However, if the ECI does not have data on the number of requests received in the last five years, then what was the basis for this policy decision to be implemented across the country, and how did the Ministry of Law evaluate the commission’s proposal?Regarding this report, questions were sent to ECI and the Union Ministry of Law and Justice through email on October 9, 2026, seeking their views on the matter. Till the time the report was published, no response had been received from either of them. The report will be updated once their response is received.Meanwhile, the duration for which CCTV footage is retained has also been reduced.Following the amendment to Rule 93 in December 2024, the election commission implemented a major change in May 2025 regarding the retention period for CCTV footage, videography and photographs related to electoral processes.Under the instructions issued on May 30, 2025, electoral videos and photographs shall generally be retained for a period of 45 days following the declaration of results, after which these records may be destroyed. Earlier, different time limits, ranging from three months to one year, were applicable for preserving records related to different phases of elections.The ECI had cited recent instances of electoral record misuse as the reason behind this change. It explains that individuals other than electoral candidates were using portions of these records out of context, thereby spreading misinformation and malicious propaganda.A few months before this change made by the ECI, in January 2025, the Supreme Court had directed during the hearing of a pending case to securely preserve video recordings from polling stations.That is, on the one hand, the commission decided to limit public access to electoral records and reduce the duration for which they are preserved, while on the other hand, it is unable to state how many requests for such records were received over the last five years.This raises an important question: Were these decisions regarding electoral transparency backed by any systematic evaluation of the actual number of requests received and their impact behind these decisions related to election transparency?Chandigarh mayoral electionIt is noteworthy that during the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation elections in January 2024, an official was caught on CCTV cameras manipulating the vote counting process. Following this, in February, the Supreme Court cancelled the election result and declared Kuldeep Kumar, the joint candidate of Aam Aadmi Party and Congress the legitimately elected mayor.This article was originally published on The Wire Hindi and has been translated by Naushin Rehman.