The Cabinet Secretariat disclosed last week that it had decided against taking action against Maneesh Garg, a senior IAS officer serving in the Election Commission of India (ECI), noting that any such action would be “inappropriate” and “construed as interference in the functioning of the Constitutional body”.

Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had written to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan on July 29 seeking action against Garg . The Secretariat decided to acknowledge their letters but not act on them.

The correspondence was among the internal disagreements revealed in a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express , which found that Sandhu and Joshi had raised at least 14 objections over 10 months to decisions taken within the ECI. Their letters concerning Garg related specifically to a work-allocation order he issued on July 28, shortly after taking additional charge of the Commission’s administration division.…