The recent open letter issued by a group of retired judges, bureaucrats, and armed forces personnel chastising Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi for allegedly “defaming” the Election Commission of India (ECI) disguises itself as a defence of constitutional propriety. In reality, it reads like a thinly veiled admonition to the opposition: stay silent, stop asking uncomfortable questions, and never challenge institutions – even when those very institutions are visibly bleeding credibility under an increasingly authoritarian-populist government.In a democracy, however, the right, and indeed the duty, to question institutions does not diminish when the ruling regime grows more powerful. It becomes more urgent. The political opposition, civil society, and citizens are not merely entitled to scrutinise institutions; they are compelled to do so when those institutions show signs of capture, bias, or erosion of independence. The letter’s rebuke, therefore, misses the fundamental crisis at hand: India’s democratic institutions are not being attacked by criticism; they are being weakened by the consolidation of power, procedural manipulation, and systemic politicisation. To mistake an alarm for defamation is to misdiagnose the actual democratic backsliding India is undergoing.The central claim of the letter that criticism of the ECI undermines public trust is persuasive only if one assumes the Commission continues to function as it once did. That assumption is no longer tenable. Over the past decade, structural changes have shifted the balance decisively in favour of the executive. The most consequential change came with Parliament’s passage of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023, which removed the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel and replaced him with a cabinet minister nominated by the Prime Minister. This reform effectively placed appointments to the ECI under near-total control of the ruling government.ECI turning into the ruling party’s ‘strategic shield’This is not just an administrative adjustment but a clear move toward institutional subservience, weakening the Commission’s ability to serve as a neutral democratic referee. These changes have turned the ECI increasingly into the ruling party’s “strategic shield,” and the Goel appointment controversy is the classic example that revealed the ease with which constitutional authority can be moulded to suit partisan ambitions.The deterioration of trust is not simply a matter of political narrative. Independent audits and civil-society reports have raised concerns about the opacity of voter roll deletions, inconsistent enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct, and a pattern of delayed or selective action that appears to favour the ruling party. A detailed report by VoteforDemocracy describes systemic dysfunction within the Commission –an assessment grounded in documented lapse, not partisan conjecture.Criticism of the ECI, then, is neither reckless nor gratuitous; it is a constitutional imperative. To ask the opposition to remain silent in the face of institutional weakening is to ask them to abdicate their core democratic function. In mature democracies, institutions earn trust through transparency, accountability, and independence; they do not demand it by invoking their symbolic sanctity. Yet that is precisely what the letter seems to imply – that institutions must be insulated from public criticism even when their conduct raises legitimate apprehensions.The allegation of ‘vote chori’ cannot be dismissed as mere political rhetoric when it emerges from patterns that demand scrutiny. Concerns over unexplained spikes in voter turnout, sudden swings in postal-ballot counts, and large-scale deletions from electoral rolls without adequate disclosure have steadily eroded confidence in the process. The recent Haryana episode, where the same Brazilian woman’s photograph, later identified as a stock image of Larissa Nery, appeared across multiple voter IDs under different Indian names, only deepened public anxiety about the integrity of electoral rolls.Rahul Gandhi highlighted this anomaly publicly, noting that her image appeared 22 times across ten booths, while subsequent reporting confirmed that the photo originated from a stock-photo upload by Nery herself. Authorities dismissed it as a clerical lapse, yet the episode exposed how porous and weakly verified the voter-data architecture has become. Many have flagged similar discrepancies nationwide, warranting investigation rather than censure of those who expose them. In a political climate where institutions increasingly operate behind opaque walls, questioning such irregularities is not defamation but a democratic obligation. The charge, in this context, reflects a deeper anxiety over whether the electoral machinery of India still functions with the required neutrality.This pattern of erosion is not limited to the Election Commission. The judiciary, long considered the last bulwark of constitutional democracy, is undergoing its own crisis of credibility. The International Commission of Jurists has issued a formal warning that between 2014 and 2024, India experienced “retrogressive developments in respect of judicial independence,” citing executive interference, opaque appointments, and an informal veto power over the collegium.Even scholarly works in international journals argue that unchecked powers within the judiciary –especially the master-of-roster authority – have facilitated institutional capture rather than resisting it, leading to selective listing of cases and delays in sensitive matters.The judiciary’s internal crises have only deepened public distrust. The Yashwant Varma cash scandal, where large sums of partially burnt currency were discovered at a sitting judge’s residence and subsequently deemed serious enough to warrant impeachment proceedings, dealt a severe blow to the judiciary’s moral authority.Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R. Gavai admitted publicly that corruption within the judiciary could “gravely damage public trust,” acknowledging that the institution faces a crisis not of perception but of integrity. This is not the outcome of criticism from the opposition; it is the result of systemic vulnerabilities intersecting with executive influence and the absence of institutional safeguards.The story repeats across other institutions. The Central Information Commission – once the backbone of India’s Right to Information architecture – has been systematically hollowed out through sustained neglect, rising vacancies, and staggering backlogs, with tens of thousands of unresolved appeals and complaints effectively crippling the very purpose of the RTI regime. Meanwhile, investigative agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate, CBI, and Income Tax Department have increasingly become political instruments: since 2014, a staggering 95% of the 121 high-profile politicians probed by the ED belong to Opposition parties, suggesting these bodies are being weaponised against dissent rather than serving justice.Maintaining the façade of democratic procedure while systematically hollowing out its substanceTo treat criticism of these institutions as a form of institutional assault is to invert logic. The real danger to institutions comes not from critical speech, but from the steady entanglement of state bodies with the executive. Across global democracies, scholars call this phenomenon “executive aggrandisement,” a process in which the ruling regime maintains the façade of democratic procedure while systematically hollowing out its substance.Professor Maya Tudor of Oxford University, writing for the Journal of Democracy, argues that India is witnessing precisely this dynamic, where the formal architecture of democracy remains intact even as the norms and independent institutions that sustain it are corroded.The signatories of the letter warn that public criticism may erode trust. But trust is not a decorative value; it is a by-product of institutional behaviour. When institutions fail to act independently, public trust erodes. It is this erosion that enables course correction. To demand unquestioning trust is to demand the absence of accountability. A democratic culture cannot be built on uncritical reverence; it requires vigilance, scrutiny, and contestation.The opposition’s responsibility, therefore, is not to maintain the reputational comfort of institutions but to question them fearlessly when their conduct merits scrutiny. The institutional decline visible today is not the work of critics but the consequence of a political climate in which dissent is portrayed as disloyalty and accountability as sabotage. What the letter frames as “venomous rhetoric” is, in many cases, a legitimate democratic alarm. The opposition is expected to speak truth to power precisely when power grows more intolerant of scrutiny.Across the world, institutions retain their legitimacy not by silencing critics but by demonstrating independence. In India today, the burden of restoring democratic equilibrium falls not only on constitutional bodies but on those willing to call out their failures. The opposition cannot be expected to remain decorous when institutions appear increasingly reluctant to uphold the foundational principles they were designed to protect.If institutions are to regain their authority, they must earn it through integrity, transparency, and autonomy, not through warnings that shield them from democratic accountability. India’s democratic project does not need defenders who police criticism; it needs institutions that warrant public confidence and political actors willing to scrutinise them. In that sense, the open letter issued as a reaction to Rahul Gandhi misdirects its concern. The crisis is not that institutions are being criticised. The crisis is that they have given the public reason to.The responsibility of the opposition and the public in general is clear: speak out when institutions weaken, challenge when the executive overreaches, and question relentlessly when democracy is at stake. Silence is not civility. Silence is complicity.Amal Chandra is an author, political analyst and columnist. He posts on X @ens_socialis