Delhi’s streets have filled with slogans, marches and ultimatums demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner . The script is familiar: The Election Commission was a paragon of independence until yesterday, and a wicked government has just desecrated it.

It is a moving story. It is also a fiction, and those telling it know better.

Have any proof? Show it.

Begin with what the protesters cannot produce: A finding. The Supreme Court, hearing the pleas on the SIR, declined to pass any interim order suspending the CEC. It issued a notice and asked the Commission to respond. That is all. The Commission rejects the claim that reported objections amount to institutional dissent. A demand for resignation before a single adverse finding is not a legal argument. It is a rally dressed as a verdict.

70 years of ‘government-appointed’

Article 324 left appointments to the President acting on the government’s advice.…