Democracy depends on elections, but elections depend on something even more fundamental: trust in the institution conducting them.
A voter may disagree with a candidate, a political party or even an election result. But the democratic system begins to weaken when people start questioning the neutrality of the institution that conducts the election itself.
Interestingly, this concern is not new.
It was already being debated in India’s Constituent Assembly in 1949, long before the first general election of independent India. The members were not merely discussing who would appoint a constitutional officer. They were wrestling with a much deeper question:
How do you make the referee independent when the government of the day has an interest in the game?
That question has travelled from the Constituent Assembly to the present.
A seemingly simple constitutional provision
The Constitution placed the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the hands of the Election Commission under what eventually became Article 324.
The idea itself was revolutionary for newly independent India.
Instead of leaving elections entirely to ordinary government machinery, the Constitution created a specialised constitutional institution responsible for the electoral process.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar defended this centralised arrangement because elections, in his view, needed to be conducted through an institution sufficiently independent of provincial political influence. He also proposed important protection for the Chief Election Commissioner, whose removal was to be treated similarly to that of a Supreme Court judge.
But some members of the Assembly immediately saw another problem.
What about the appointment itself?
If the government effectively controls the appointment of the person who is supposed to supervise elections, could the institution remain completely independent?
That was where Shibban Lal Saxena entered the debate.
Saxena’s warning
Saxena supported the larger objective of creating an independent Election Commission, but he believed the proposed safeguards did not go far enough.
His concern was straightforward.
Under a parliamentary system, if the President formally appoints the Election Commissioners, the appointment would ordinarily operate on the advice of the government of the day.
Therefore, merely saying that the President appoints the Election Commission would not necessarily eliminate executive influence.
Saxena proposed stronger safeguards. Among other things, he suggested that appointments should be subject to confirmation by a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament sitting together. He also argued that conditions of service and tenure should be determined by Parliament rather than being left to executive discretion.
His underlying philosophy was more important than the precise mechanism.
If the Election Commission is supposed to protect the voter’s right to choose freely, its own independence cannot be left vulnerable to executive influence.
Then came H. N. Kunzru’s sharper question
The next day, Hirday Nath Kunzru pushed the argument further.
He accepted the need for central control over elections. His concern was not simply whether the Centre should control the electoral machinery.
His concern was whether the central government itself could influence the supposedly independent body.
Kunzru pointed out the constitutional reality of a parliamentary system.
The President, in ordinary circumstances, would act on the advice of the Council of Ministers. Therefore, saying that the President appoints the Election Commissioners did not necessarily mean that the President was acting independently of the Prime Minister and government.
This created a potential structural problem.
The very government that would participate in elections could effectively influence the selection of those responsible for conducting them.
Kunzru therefore wanted the framework to contain stronger safeguards and argued that Parliament should have a role in determining important aspects of the Election Commission’s functioning. His concern was that the Commissioners should be able to perform their duties fearlessly and impartially.
His warning went beyond appointments.
He was thinking about the entire institutional ecosystem:
appointment, tenure, removal, conditions of service and operational independence.
Ambedkar’s compromise
Ambedkar did not dismiss these concerns.
The eventual constitutional arrangement was something of a compromise.
The Election Commission was made a constitutional body.
The Chief Election Commissioner received significant protection against arbitrary removal.
And importantly, the Constitution left Parliament with the power to make laws regarding aspects of the appointment process.
The framers therefore created an independent constitutional institution without completely spelling out every detail of its appointment mechanism.
That unfinished space would remain significant for decades.
And eventually, it became the centre of a major constitutional controversy.
The problem of the missing law
Article 324 contemplated parliamentary legislation concerning the Election Commission’s appointments.
Yet for many decades, Parliament did not enact a comprehensive law specifically establishing a detailed selection mechanism for the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners.
The result was an unusual constitutional situation.
The Constitution established the institution.
But the detailed process for choosing its members remained largely dependent upon the existing constitutional framework and executive practice.
For decades, this did not produce a formal alternative selection committee.
But the fundamental question remained dormant rather than disappearing.
Who should choose the referee?
The Supreme Court enters the picture
In 2023, this question reached the Supreme Court in Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India.
The Court considered the absence of a parliamentary law dealing comprehensively with appointments and prescribed an interim arrangement.
Until Parliament enacted a law, the selection process was to involve three constitutional actors:
the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India.
The logic was intuitively attractive.
The Prime Minister represented the executive.
The Leader of the Opposition represented the political opposition.
The Chief Justice represented an institution outside electoral politics.
It created a mechanism in which no single political side would possess the entire institutional architecture of selection.
But this was explicitly an interim judicial arrangement, not a permanent constitutional amendment.
And Parliament soon responded.
The 2023 law changed the equation
Parliament enacted the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023.
Under the law, the selection committee consists of:
• the Prime Minister, as Chairperson
• the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha
• a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister
The President formally appoints the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners on the recommendation of this committee.
This brought the old constitutional question back into public discussion.
The issue is not simply whether the people chosen are personally honest.
It is about something deeper:
Does the architecture of appointment itself create sufficient confidence in institutional independence?
Actual independence and perceived independence
This distinction is often missed.
An Election Commissioner may be completely honest and impartial.
But constitutional institutions require more than individual integrity.
They also require institutional credibility.
Consider a cricket match.
Imagine that the referee is unquestionably honest. But suppose one team alone selected the referee.
The referee might still make every decision fairly.
Yet spectators could reasonably ask whether the structure itself was appropriate.
That does not prove the referee is biased.
It simply demonstrates why perception of independence matters alongside actual independence.
Elections work in much the same way.
A constitutional institution should not merely be independent.
It should be structured in a way that makes its independence visible and credible to the public.
The framers understood this danger
This is what makes the Constituent Assembly debate so fascinating.
Saxena was worried about executive influence.
Kunzru was worried about the possibility that political influence at the Centre could replace provincial political influence.
Ambedkar was concerned with creating a centralised electoral authority insulated from arbitrary executive removal.
They disagreed about the precise institutional design, but their concerns converged around one principle:
Electoral machinery must not become an instrument of political power.
That principle is bigger than any individual government.
It is bigger than any political party.
It is ultimately about the citizen.
Because the vote is meaningful only when the voter believes that the system surrounding that vote is fair.
But is a different appointment system automatically better?
Not necessarily.
A committee containing more institutions does not magically produce impartiality.
A committee dominated by political representatives can have its own problems.
A committee involving judges may create questions about separation of powers.
A parliamentary mechanism can become hostage to political majorities.
There is therefore no perfect formula.
The real objective should be to create a system where no single political authority has excessive influence over the institution responsible for conducting elections.
That is the constitutional principle worth protecting.
The deeper meaning of the debate
There is something almost poetic about the fact that this question appeared in the Constituent Assembly before independent India had even conducted its first general election.
The framers were trying to anticipate problems that did not yet exist in their full form.
They understood that democracy could not survive merely through the existence of elections.
It required institutions capable of standing between political competition and constitutional rules.
The Election Commission is one such institution.
It is not supposed to determine who wins.
It is supposed to ensure that the rules through which victory and defeat are determined remain credible.
That makes its independence fundamentally different from ordinary administrative independence.
The real question is not “Who is honest?”
Political debates often become personalised.
Is this Commissioner impartial?
Is that government trustworthy?
Is this party manipulating the institution?
Such questions may be important, but constitutional design asks a better question:
What happens when a less trustworthy government comes to power?
A strong constitutional system should be designed for that possibility.
The Constitution should not depend entirely upon the permanent goodness of those occupying temporary offices.
That is why institutional safeguards matter.
The framers knew that governments would change.
Political parties would rise and fall.
Majorities would disappear.
Oppositions would become governments.
But the institutions overseeing elections would have to remain.
The referee must belong to the game, but not to a team
Perhaps this is the simplest way to understand the entire debate.
The Election Commission is necessarily part of the electoral system.
It cannot exist outside politics altogether because elections themselves are political events.
But it must remain sufficiently distant from individual political interests to function as a neutral referee.
That is why the debate that began in 1949 remains alive.
Saxena asked whether executive control could undermine independence.
Kunzru asked whether central political influence could simply replace provincial political influence.
Ambedkar attempted to construct constitutional safeguards around an independent electoral institution.
Decades later, the Supreme Court and Parliament have continued to grapple with the same institutional problem.
The names, governments and legal mechanisms may change.
The constitutional question does not.
Conclusion
A democracy is not protected merely because citizens are allowed to vote.
It is protected when citizens believe that their vote enters a system governed by institutions that are fair, independent and trustworthy.
The Constituent Assembly understood this danger before India had even experienced its first nationwide democratic contest.
Perhaps the most enduring lesson from that debate is therefore simple:
The strength of an election does not depend only on who wins the vote. It also depends on whether the referee is trusted by those who played the game.
And when the referee’s independence matters as much as the result itself, the method of choosing the referee becomes a constitutional question, not merely an administrative one.
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