On Friday, October 2, 2026, the announcement of an "independent commission" triggered intense discussion across political and legal circles in New Delhi. The body has been created to probe the legitimacy and practical outcomes of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) undertaken nationwide by the Election Commission of India (ECI). Organized under the banner of the Independent Commission of Former Judges on the Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls, this non-governmental panel was set up by a private association of advocates operating as the Lawyers Association for Constitution (LAFC).

The newly created bench consists of five retired members of the higher judiciary. Presiding over the body is former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan Bhimarao Lokur. Working alongside him on the bench are four other retired jurists:

• Justice A.K. Patnaik, former judge of the Supreme Court of India;
• Justice Badar Darrez Ahmad, former Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court;
• Justice Rekha Sharma, former judge of the Delhi High Court; and
• Justice Anjana Prakash, former judge of the Patna High Court.

Assisting the bench in its proceedings is a roster of senior advocates and legal figures known for active participation in public-interest litigation, including Kapil Sibal, Prashant Bhushan, C.U. Singh, P.C. Sen, Raju Ramachandran, Rebecca M. John, Warisha Farasat, and Vrinda Grover.

According to a formal press statement issued by the LAFC, the body has taken up the task of running an "independent inquiry" to assess whether the Election Commission carried out the Special Intensive Revision with procedural fairness. The full bench plans to travel to multiple regions of the country, recording personal accounts from citizens who claim to have experienced disenfranchisement or disruption from the exercise. Alongside these hearings, the panel intends to gather and evaluate field data regarding additions to and deletions from the official voter registries.

Beyond the specific roster of individuals assembled for the initiative, the timing behind its rollout has drawn substantial scrutiny. The panel makes its appearance precisely as opposition groups and select mainstream news outlets, most visibly The Indian Express, intensify efforts to challenge the credibility of the Election Commission. These critiques allege administrative irregularities in the execution of the revision drive and accuse the election authority of working in hand-in-glove coordination with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. These circumstances have generated serious doubts regarding the impartiality of the panel, especially given that its presiding figure, Justice Lokur, has built a visible track record of vocal public friction with the current administration.

Opposed the Revocation of Special Status for Jammu and Kashmir and Anti-Terror Safeguards

Justice Lokur has openly opposed key legislative and policy initiatives enacted by the Modi administration. Among his most prominent objections was his public condemnation of the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution—a decisive structural move that revoked the special autonomous framework of Jammu and Kashmir, an action that was subsequently reviewed, validated, and upheld in its entirety by a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India.

Similarly, the former jurist has made known his strong resistance to statutory provisions under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), legislation structured to equip central and state authorities with the legal powers required to interdict, prosecute, and curb anti-national operations and domestic terror networks.

His confrontational posture toward executive and judicial conventions first gained nationwide attention in January 2018. Justice Lokur participated in the unprecedented press conference held on the lawns of a private residence by four sitting Supreme Court judges—widely characterized in public discourse as a rebel grouping. During that appearance, the dissenting judges leveled sharp criticisms against the sitting Chief Justice of India and raised grievances regarding the executive's lack of action on the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) intended to oversee judicial appointments.

Three years prior to that event, in October 2015, Justice Lokur sat as an influential member of the five-judge Constitutional Bench that struck down the Ninety-ninth Constitutional Amendment and with it the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act. The NJAC had been enacted with overwhelming cross-party support by Parliament under the Modi government to dismantle and replace the in-house, non-statutory Collegium mechanism for appointing higher court judges with a broader institutional selection body.

Enduring Ties with the Higher Judiciary of Pakistan

While maintaining an uncompromising, adversarial stance against the elected government in New Delhi, Justice Lokur has nurtured visible and cordial relationships across the border with Pakistani legal dignitaries.

In January 2019, shortly after retiring from the Supreme Court of India, Justice Lokur traveled to Islamabad to attend the formal swearing-in ceremony of his longstanding acquaintance, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, as the 26th Chief Justice of Pakistan.

That journey was not an isolated gesture. Years prior, Justice Lokur had similarly traveled to Pakistan to attend the judicial oath-taking ceremony of another Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, underscoring personal ties that have persisted despite protracted diplomatic tensions between the two nations.

Associated with Foreign-Funded Human Rights Organization and Contested Border Control Measures

The retired apex court judge has also maintained sustained links with international non-governmental bodies. Justice Lokur serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), a prominent advocacy body that has historically drawn substantial financial support from external donor channels, including the United States Department of State.

Operating through its International Advocacy and Programming (IAP) division, the organization routinely monitors and critiques domestic governance practices across member states under the lens of its proprietary human-rights metrics. While associated with the CHRI, Justice Lokur joined hands with other self-described "eminent citizens" to issue and sign a joint declaration targeting the legal architecture of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The joint declaration aggressively contested the administrative detention of undocumented entrants and condemned the construction of dedicated immigrant detention centers along India's border belts.

The operational background of the CHRI itself subsequently came under stringent regulatory review by India's security and financial oversight apparatus. In June 2021, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) suspended the organization’s operating license under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) on grounds of fiscal discrepancies. Ten months later, in April 2022, the MHA escalated its regulatory actions by completely canceling the CHRI’s FCRA registration, citing persistent legal infractions under the statute and an ongoing failure to submit mandatory overseas financial accounts and programmatic filings.

In a separate development marking his international judicial portfolio, Justice Lokur holds the distinction of being the first Indian jurist chosen to hold office inside a foreign national court, having been appointed to serve as an overseas judge on the non-resident panel of the Supreme Court of Fiji.

Headed Independent State Inquiry into Pegasus Surveillance Allegations

Justice Lokur's involvement in politically sensitive probes took center stage in July 2021. The Trinamool Congress administration of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal issued an executive notification establishing a state-level two-member commission of inquiry, co-headed by Justice Lokur, to interrogate the Pegasus "snoopgate" controversy.

The political dispute centered on claims that central agencies had deployed high-end, military-grade cyber surveillance tools developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group to monitor the mobile devices of opposition party leaders, investigative journalists, civil rights activists, and high-ranking constitutional figures across India.

Rallied Behind Opposition Figures While Questioning Judicial Decisions Involving Political Opponents

Justice Lokur’s ongoing interventions in political debates have frequently drawn criticism from observers who argue that his post-retirement commentary mirrors partisan positions rather than objective juristic neutrality.

This became particularly evident in early 2024 following the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal, then serving as the Chief Minister of Delhi and national convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and subsequently by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on serious allegations of systemic kickbacks and money laundering tied to the controversial, later-withdrawn Delhi Excise Policy 2021–22.

Kejriwal took the unprecedented decision to remain in office and attempt to govern the National Capital Territory directly from inside Tihar Jail. While Justice Lokur openly conceded during a public discussion that retaining the chief ministerial chair post-arrest amounted to an outright breach of constitutional morality, he nevertheless offered an apologetic defense for the politician's conduct. He maintained that since numerous public figures had violated constitutional propriety over the years without consequences, Kejriwal doing the same would ultimately make very little difference—a rationale critics likened to a magistrate releasing an accused thief on the grounds that other crimes had taken place elsewhere unpunished.

The retired judge took a similarly aggressive posture regarding actions taken during volatile political flashpoints in Uttar Pradesh. When Indian National Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra traveled toward Lakhimpur Kheri following violent clashes that left eight persons dead—including four BJP party workers—the local police placed her under temporary preventive detention to head off public disorder. Justice Lokur subsequently sought to depict this temporary preventive containment as an egregious and unlawful arrest, ignoring administrative requirements to preserve peace in a volatile district.

In direct contrast to his leniency toward opposition figures, the former judge adopted a sharply critical perspective regarding the acquittal of former BJP parliamentarian and Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh by a Delhi court. Brij Bhushan had faced criminal prosecution over allegations of sexual harassment leveled by several national wrestlers. Following the judicial outcome, Justice Lokur openly questioned the competence of the Delhi Police's investigation and insisted that the Supreme Court of India should have personally taken over and micro-managed the proceedings from their inception.

Imputed Improper Motives to the Central Government Over High Court Transfer

Justice Lokur targeted the Union government with claims of political retaliation concerning the routine administrative transfer of former judge Justice S. Muralidhar from the Delhi High Court to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in February 2020. Lokur publicly suggested that the transfer was driven by political animus and timed as an executive rebuke to an interim judicial order Justice Muralidhar had delivered regarding riot-related hate speech complaints.

He later extended these allegations of undue executive pressure to the higher judiciary's internal selection mechanisms, asserting that the central government had improperly pressured the Supreme Court Collegium into withholding Justice Muralidhar’s elevation to the top court. Justice Lokur placed blame on the executive for failing to process the Collegium’s recommendation to appoint Justice Muralidhar as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court.

Official Collegium resolutions paint an administrative picture at odds with that narrative: the Collegium had initially proposed the transfer in September 2022, but officially recalled its own recommendation in April 2023 because Justice Muralidhar was due to demit judicial office just four months later, in August 2023.

Following these events, Justice Lokur turned his rhetoric against the institutional opacity of the Collegium system itself. Ironically, it was Justice Lokur who had authored a concurring opinion striking down the NJAC in 2015—the very statutory mechanism that was drafted by Parliament to replace the opaque, closed-door Collegium setup that he later accused of buckling under government pressure.

Controversy had previously surrounded Justice Muralidhar's tenure at the Delhi High Court. In November 2018, a division bench headed by him issued a ruling quashing the transit remand and ordering the direct release of Gautam Navlakha alongside other left-wing activists detained in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. The investigative agencies had argued before the bench that these individuals were core organizers linked to banned insurgent networks and active participants in an operational conspiracy targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Authored a Contested Assessment of the Capital Disturbances and Championed Judge-Led Activism

Justice Lokur previously chaired a non-official citizens' fact-finding committee that produced a report evaluating the communal riots of February 2020 in North-East Delhi. Rather than providing an even-handed appraisal of the events that erupted during the height of the anti-CAA mobilizations, the report painted the deadly clashes as a coordinated, pre-planned campaign of aggression executed by the Hindu community against the Muslim community. Critics condemned the findings as an ideological, selective narrative that systematically omitted provocative street mobilizations, attacks on law enforcement, and the targeted killing of intelligence operative Ankit Sharma and head constable Ratan Lal.

Throughout his post-bench career, Justice Lokur has consistently championed expansive judicial activism, encouraging judges to expand their institutional role far beyond standard constitutional adjudication. This deep-seated ideological inclination toward activist interventions appears to have found an outlet in this newly formed tribunal. By agreeing to lead what critics describe as an unconstitutional parallel tribunal on an administrative electoral revision exercise that has already received confirmation from the Supreme Court, the retired judge has solidified perceptions regarding his subjective political disposition.

The broader panel assisting this commission is made up of individuals who have repeatedly and publicly attacked the Election Commission of India and contested the Special Intensive Revision drive. This dynamic raises serious questions regarding whether its eventual determinations will offer genuine legal objectivity. Without constitutional sanction, statutory authority, or evidentiary powers, the panel functions as an informal private assembly whose ultimate conclusions appear predetermined by the ideological inclinations of its members.

The Origins of the Lawyers Association for Constitution

The organization behind the commission, the Lawyers Association for Constitution (LAFC), is an unaccredited private lawyers' body that describes itself in its literature as "non-partisan, secular, and non-casteist."

The association was officially launched on Independence Day, August 15, 2026, during an inaugural meeting convened at Kerala House on Jantar Mantar Road in New Delhi. The group has invited membership applications from practicing advocates and university law students who declare their alignment with its public-advocacy objectives. Justice Lokur was present in person at Kerala House during the formal unveiling of the organization that has now selected him to head its inquiries.