The Backstory: When EC disagreements went public, from Seshan to Lavasa

NEW DELHI: The Election Commission is facing a fresh political storm over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, with the opposition demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation following a report in The Indian Express on differences within the poll panel over the exercise.According to the report, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected at least 14 times over 10 months to SIR-related decisions, including those concerning voter deletions and electoral roll data. The report has brought into focus a question that has surfaced at different points in the Election Commission's history: what happens when members of the poll panel disagree over how it should exercise its powers?There have been two prominent instances when such differences moved beyond the commission's internal proceedings and became matters of public and judicial scrutiny.