On March 23, the Kerala state wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) posted a picture on its official X account that created a furore in Indian politics. It showed an official communication from India’s Election Commission—a constitutional body established to ensure free, impartial, and fair elections in the country—prominently displaying the BJP's Kerala Unit seal. Seen on an Election Commission of India (ECI) document that was sent out to various political parties and district collectors across Kerala, eighteen days ahead of the elections in India’s southernmost state.

The caption under the image in the post needed no explanation. “Have all pretences been dropped by the BJP?” it read. “It is no secret that the same power centre appears to control both the Election Commission of India and the BJP. Even so, at least have the decency of maintaining two separate desks.”

The Election Commission had the following response:

“The BJP Kerala Unit had recently approached the CEO’s office seeking clarification on the 2019 guidelines regarding the publication of criminal antecedents of candidates. Along with their request, the party submitted a photocopy of the original 2019 directive. The party’s seal was present on that specific copy provided by them. Due to an oversight, the office failed to notice the party symbol on the submitted document and inadvertently redistributed it to other political parties as part of the requested clarification. The guidelines in question have undergone revisions since 2019, which have already been communicated to all political entities. The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer acknowledged the lapse as soon as it was detected.”

Chief Electoral Officer Ratan U. Kelkar called it an “inexcusable error” and said that once the mistake was spotted, a withdrawal notice was issued the same day. An Assistant Section Officer handling the file was suspended pending inquiry, and a detailed probe was launched, expected to conclude within 48 hours. Recorded as simply a clerical error, immediately rectified, an officer was suspended. The case was dismissed.

The document in question is not obscure. It is a standard FAQ about candidates' criminal records, something that election officials have issued dozens of times. In fact, the BJP's 2019 version of this FAQ has been in government files for seven years. It bears its stamp. The claim is that someone took this document, overlooked the stamp, and sent it out.

It's possible. Then again, why would the BJP's seven-year-old stamped copy be accessible to this official? After all, these FAQs have been amended since 2019. The suggestion is that the officials both chose to share the incorrect document, and that the unrevised versions originated from a political party's submission. Thus, here we are: with an explanation that is technically plausible, but in the current political climate, one that is impossible to accept at face value.

India’s opposition political party, the Indian National Congress, leader Pawan Khera did not let this irony slip by, asking whether the BJP's victories in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, 2019, and 2024 were also the result of similar “clerical errors.”

Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal state Chief Minister and fierce critic of the BJP, went a step further. “Was it a clerical mistake in the design of the BJP symbol, or was it an attempt to fulfill political objectives?” she said, calling for all political parties to fight the one-sided, one-party rule over all institutional processes.

The Criminal Stamp

One could, with considerable straining of the imagination, try to understand the initial incident in terms of administrative carelessness. However, the subsequent crackdown subverts all such theories. The Kerala Police issued notices to 270 X handles, 200 Facebook pages, and 90 Instagram accounts, demanding that the shared image of the offending circular be removed. Facebook and Instagram, in response to police directives, took down posts containing the image.

Let us be clear about what is being suppressed. It is not an edited picture. Nor is it a false or AI-generated document that could be construed as spreading disinformation. It is an image of a real letter from the Election Commission's own offices, bearing a BJP seal. Critically, the authorities had already acknowledged it as being real before explaining it away as an error. Citizen users who were sharing real, acknowledged, and official information were now being issued legal notices and had their information removed.

This development has sparked many opinions in the state. Many feel that the police infrastructure is being utilised to stifle discourse rather than tackling crime. It is the irony in this instance of suppression, perhaps, that gives it the sharpest edge.

Kerala Police sits under the jurisdiction of the Election Commission while the Model Code of Conduct is in place. The body, whose official document carried the ruling party's seal, is now seeking to suppress information sharing and erase evidence-based citizen reporting.

The Proxy Stamp

The ECI has struggled with a crisis of credibility for a decade. With this struggle, questions from opposition parties and observers of India's elections continue to increase amidst a build-up of events and silences.

The opposition political party leader, Rahul Gandhi, has spent the better part of a year giving presentations on what he calls “documented evidence” of “vote chori” or the vote theft: that around 2.5 million votes were stolen in northern state of Haryana, citing that more than a hundred thousand voters had fake photographs, including that of a Brazilian model who appeared on 22 different voter registrations.

During a 2024 election in the north Indian city of Chandigarh, a presiding officer was caught on CCTV in the middle of the count, appearing to deface the ballot papers. To this, the Supreme Court remarked: "This is a mockery of democracy.” Earlier this year, in the western state of Maharashtra, electronic voting machines were found in the car of an election official.

The appointment mechanism for the Election Commissioners has been challenged in the Supreme Court. The speed and bias in the enforcement of the code of conduct are questioned after every election. The trust required to make the election process in a democracy credible has been breached for years.

The BJP stamp did not create this crisis. But it has become a symbol for it. It is a symbol that leaves no room for ambiguity because it cannot be rationalised away, appearing as it did in a state that was three weeks away from elections.

The ECI was set up to safeguard the constitution; it is the only body powerful enough to make elections meaningful. But in the minds of its citizens and democratic observers, it is now a body that confuses process with accountability. It suspends officers, issues clarifications, and holds press conferences.

Most troublingly, the EC does not act in a way that could be logically perceived as an attempt to earn back the public's trust. An institution that has faith in its own integrity would not suppress accurate information. It would not serve notices to 560 social media accounts for publishing a document it has already admitted to be true. It would not invoke the powers of the Model Code of Conduct to police inconvenient evidence from the public domain. It would not view the citizens it exists to serve as a problem to be managed.

The Election Commission and the entire democratic process in 2026 are so closely intertwined that observers no longer seem to be able to distinguish between them. It is not about the presence of the stamp, the suspended officer, or the midnight movements of voting machines; these institutions would prefer it to be known. It is a fateful crisis in the EC itself.

Kerala votes today. Counting is on May 4.∎