In a word, the Indian State appears to be rushing to jettison democracy, as the expression is understood round the world, and hurtle toward fascism. This is at the heart of the current anxieties on account of the goings-on in the Election Commission of India (ECI) and its actions since Gyanesh Kumar took over as its chief in February, 2025.The recent expose through meticulous – and courageous, considering the times we live in – reporting by Indian Express on the ECI’s misdoings, its malevolent ways framed within a prejudicial design to exclude crores of legitimate voters and prevent the lawful enrolment of fresh young voters, and its opaque in-house procedures to assist the regime in gaining a centralised chokehold on the states’ voters’ lists through naked violation of the constitutional mandate for decentralised, constituency-wise, enrolment to eliminate manipulation possibility by a bloody-minded central nodal authority, points in one direction alone.This is especially so when the ECI’s evidently thought out moves to dismantle democracy are seen in conjunction with other disquieting happenings of the past decade or so. Fresh on the table, as reported by The Hindu, is the thrust of the High-Level Committee on Demography Changes, under the Union Home Ministry, which is bullying states to furnish religion-wise data on voter registration, vehicles registration, property transactions, school enrolment and other categories.EC converted into a factory to enable fascism in IndiaIt is hard to miss that the hallowed ECI – created by the Constitution to conduct and superintend free, fair and unbiased elections that would do a democracy proud – is being pushed to being converted into a factory to make heavy machine tools to embed the design of fascism in India.An unclean voting system tailored to favour the government in power by removing en masse electors suspected to lean toward regime opponents is intended to perpetuate the regime and its Savarkarite ideology that finds its fullest expression in Golwalkar’s “We or Our Nationhood Defined”, a tract so shameful in its projection and embracing of the methods of European fascism that the regime’s thought-guides and leaders are too frightened to publicly own it, as this would cause revulsion, and bring mockery and international ostracism.The hit-man within the ECI to make the goal come true, it now transpires, was none other than the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kumar, hand-picked for the job by prime minister Narendra Modi after the law to appoint the CEC was changed in December 2023.In the changed law, in a selection panel of three, the PM and a chosen cabinet colleague would automatically prevail – and succeed in having the CEC who would do their bidding and manipulate the ECI’s decisions. The third member, the leader of the opposition (LoP), would record his dissent and leave in disgust.Yes, India’s Parliament, using a crushing majority, has actually seen it fit to steamroll such a law into force. Before this 2023 enactment, the three-member selection committee was made up of the PM, the LoP, and the Chief Justice of India (CJI). The new law removed CJI from the committee, converting the selection body into an in-house government outfit, akin to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet for top-flight positions.If democracy is to be protected, a law so dangerous not only needs to be thrown into the dustbin but declared ultra vires of the Constitution. Only then does it make long-term sense to force the ouster of the CEC, which has no doubt become a necessity.Just as imperative is the reversal of the key decisions taken in Kumar’s tenure against which his two brother Election Commissioners (ECs) have spoken out on file, as the Indian Express reports of September 23 graphically show.Indeed the file jottings, of the two ECs have turned out to be the Curse of the Pharaohs for the evil-doers, as public opinion in the country is slowly coming to grasp the enormity of what’s transpired and anger builds. The LoP, Rahul Gandhi, who has been seeking to expose the extramural doings of the ECI for the past two years, is at the centre of things but make no mistake, it is the ordinary Indian who has been cheated out of his wits and is keen to ask a few questions. How is the regime going to respond? How much state repression will be let loose against the protesting citizen will be watched worldwide.“Vote chori” coming on top of “chanda chori”, and people being diddled out of their voting rights on the heels of the massive scandal over devotees’ donations for the Ram temple in Ayodhya amounting to thousands of crores of rupees, being siphoned off by those trusted to safeguard it, is causing public revulsion. Prime minister Modi is, as usual, silent when the boat is caught in a storm.The CEC is the “first among equals” but all three Commissioners are equal in rank and equal in their vote in reaching decisions, but the other ECs were sidelined by the CEC. Under his leadership, the egregious decisions of the ECI have left more than 13 crore Indians disenfranchised from their right to vote. This is already around 20% of the total number of those who voted in the Lok Sabha election of 2024. But the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise rolls on. Kumar and his masters are not done yet. Only a handful of states and Union Territories have so far been covered. Just look at the scale of things. In Delhi, in one-third of its 70 Assembly constituencies, more people have been removed from the voting rolls under SIR than the number that voted in the last election held in February, 2025. Absurdity appears to have lost all meaning.The tragic consequences of SIRThe notion of SIR for even a single state in its entirety, leave alone the whole country, is alien to the Representation of the People Act, 1950 or the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and yet we have seen the tragic consequences of it going full steam ahead.And this is because the Supreme Court of India gave it sanction in a judgment of May 27 this year, merely making a bald reference to the RPA and the relevant rules. This judgment by a bench headed by CJI Surya Kant needs to be re-visited before the present CJI retires in February 2027, or subsequently. Its existence is an affront to the Indian voter and to India’s democracy.In particular circumstances, the relevant law and rules permit “intensive revision” or part “intensive” and part “summary” revision for an Assembly constituency only, or in a part of it, in special circumstances such as delimitation, i.e. fresh demarcating of a constituency’s boundaries. It is a requirement that the election authorities set out the reasons in writing for what they do. The question of a “Special Intensive Revision” for each state and UT in the country is a monstrosity that has been unveiled under the current dispensation.On the basis of the reply received to her Right to Information (RTI) query, the well known RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj informs us that there is nothing on record in the ECI to suggest that a discussion was held there, and clearance recorded, to unleash the SIR on the country. Then where does the genus appear from? That is the question. It vitally concerns the citizen.Does it come from some secret location within the government? If so, then it is an act of subversion of democracy and established law and procedures. It is clear proof that India’s Election Commission is not a neutral body any more, and functions to subserve the interests of the government which itself appears to work in darkness.Not long ago, even when it allowed the scuttling of very large numbers of voters from the electoral roll in West Bengal to be sent for judicial review, although polling day loomed (with the dark words “so what if they can’t vote in this election…?”), in an expansive mood, a judge on a Supreme Court bench said that if there were large-scale deletions in the voters’ list “we will step in”! When will the top court redeem this pledge?It is instructive to keep in mind that 91% of all so-called doubtful cases in the West Bengal have been cleared by judicial tribunals appointed under the direction of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the top court won’t sit in time to permit some 18,000 voters the opportunity to clear the test hurdle and take part in bye-elections.Again in West Bengal, a staggering 16 lakh voters cleared by judicial tribunals have been mass deleted on account of “objections” filed by quarters that remain invisible or unknown? There is madness in the air, sending all the wrong messages to the nation. Evil intent too appears to envelop the poisoned atmosphere. Why? Who is responsible?Signs that cause deep uneaseScholars, democracy watchers, journalists, other observers, concerned citizens, have wrestled with the idea of when to believe that fascism with capital letters is upon us. Some seem to have a check-list of sorts, “mapped”- the current buzzword in the SIR context- against last century’s experience of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. This won’t do at all.There may not be a closing down of all but the favoured media, or a shuttering of regime-opposing political parties, or a mass spectacle of the hunting down of “Muslims, Christians, Communists”, the three “internal threats” identified in Golwalkar’s “Bunch of Thoughts”, or the phenomenon of a wholly transformed judiciary who rise when the Leader’s image flashes, affirming the establishment of total control over the entirety of the Indian universe- social, political and individual, but there are already enough signs that cause deep unease.Think of the following, working back in time: the recent “purification” ceremony at a public ground and the defence by Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) state leaders of this vile act in Uttarakhand after the Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who belongs to a Dalit community, addressed a public meeting there; bulldozer justice on the flimsiest pretexts in BJP-run states; regular attacks on religious structures and congregational gatherings of the minority communities and the dragging out of priests and nuns; a former Chief Justice of India green-lighting the challenge to the Places of Worship Act which had ugly consequences in Varanasi and other places; the unwritten sanction given to uncivil outfits from within civil society to attack at will and sometimes even kill individuals from the minority communities or attack and kill dissenters or regime opponents (see the recent case of the goon Swatantra Bhardwaj), the attempt by the executive to freeze bank accounts of the Congress before the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP’s principal all-India opposition, effectively to defenestrate and cripple it on poll eve. The category can be stretched.These are new signs of an elemental nature in public affairs and governance in India – not the familiar system inefficiencies, malfeasance, mis-governance, rampant corruption, official high-handedness or the display of authoritarianism seen in the pre-Modi past. What we see enacted through the ECI, seemingly abetted by certain judicial approaches at times, is in furtherance of anxieties as regards the question of fascism. There is no getting away from the stark question: Is India already in the crucible of Fascism?Anand K. Sahay is a veteran journalist.