AFTER ELECTION Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi wrote to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan seeking action against an officer in the Election Commission of India on July 29, the Cabinet Secretariat decided to acknowledge their letters, but found that taking any action would be “inappropriate” and “construed as interference in the functioning of the Constitutional body”, internal records show.

The file notings, provided by the Cabinet Secretariat in reply to an RTI application by transparency campaigner Commodore Lokesh K Batra (retired), show that the two Election Commissioners had written separately to the Cabinet Secretary seeking action against Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg.…