October 12, 2026

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CRISIS OF CREDIBILITY

For months, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has fought Opposition allegations of "vote chori" and rejected claims that its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls placed an unconstitutional burden on vulnerable citizens. On September 23, a report in The Indian Express brought the credibility battle to Nirvachan Sadan itself. Two of the three election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, reportedly recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders they said were taken without their knowledge, asking who had authorised them. The ECI, on its part, through two press notes, said that all decisions related to the SIR were unanimous, though it did not respond to some of the other allegations in the newsreport.The controversy has now reached the Supreme Court. On September 29, the apex court agreed to hear, in the following week, a petition asking whether Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar took key decisions without the concurrence of the other two election commissioners (ECs). The plea seeks production and preservation of the ECI's records since October 2025, potentially putting its internal decision-making and claims of unanimity under judicial scrutiny. The ECI must not merely be independent but must also be seen to be independent, Supreme Court Justice Dipankar Datta said

FIXING PILOT TRAINERS

Pilots in India have recently been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, the latest example being the Air India pilot who tested positive for drugs following a severe mid-air crisis on a Phuket Delhi flight in early August. India is also projected to need 30,000-40,000 new pilots over the next decade. And the government wants these pilots to `Train in India, Fly in India' as well.Which is why a significant overhaul of the pilot training ecosystem is under way. As part of that initiative, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has begun ranking all approved flying training organisations (FTOs) every six months. These rankings are based on five parameters--assisting students, safety, performance, operational capability and compliance--with four grades, A+ being the highest and C the lowest (see boxes, The Scorecard and How the Rankings Work). Two rounds have already been conducted, the first in October 2025 and another this April. The picture they present is not an encouraging one. Not one FTO--not even the government's own--got the top grade in the inaugural round, prompting civil aviation minister K. Ram Mohan Naidu to say, "Now we know where we stand." Things improved marginally in the second round, with an FTO finally