Short answer. Under the amended Section 21, the inventory and photograph must be done in front of the accused (or the person seized from, or a representative or counsel), together with an elected public official and one representative — either from the National Prosecution Service or the media. Those witnesses must sign the inventory.
What the law says
in the presence of the accused or the person/s from whom such items were confiscated and/or seized, or his/her representative or counsel, with an elected public official and a representative of the National Prosecution Service or the media who shall be required to sign the copies of the inventory and be given a copy thereof
RA 9165, Section 21 — Chain Of Custody. Read the full provision →
The two groups the law names
Section 21 lists the people who must watch the inventory and photograph in one sentence. First is the person side: the accused or the person/s from whom such items were confiscated and/or seized, or his/her representative or counsel. Second is the independent-witness side: an elected public official and a representative of the National Prosecution Service or the media. The point of pairing them is that the count is verified both by someone with a stake in the outcome and by outsiders, immediately, at the moment the items leave the accused's hands and enter the chain of custody.
The witnesses must actually sign
Presence alone is not the requirement. The elected official and the National Prosecution Service or media representative shall be required to sign the copies of the inventory and be given a copy thereof. The signatures are the paper record that these people were there and saw what was inventoried, and the copy handed to each of them is a safeguard against the sheet being altered afterwards. When a case is later scrutinised, the inventory that carries the required signatures is the document that anchors the seizure; an unsigned or incomplete one invites the argument that the witnesses were not genuinely present.
Only one of the National Prosecution Service or media is needed
A common misreading is that the team needs both a prosecution-service witness and a media witness. The statute joins them with or: it needs an elected public official plus one of those two. This is a deliberate loosening from the original 2002 text, which demanded a media representative and a Department of Justice representative and an elected official — three witnesses in all. Republic Act No. 10640 reduced the burden in 2014. So a seizure witnessed by an elected councillor and a single prosecutor, with no media present, satisfies the current requirement.
When the required witnesses are missing
The section is not read as automatically fatal if a witness is absent. It provides that noncompliance under justifiable grounds, so long as the integrity and evidentiary value of the seized items are preserved, does not by itself void the seizure. But that clause is an exception, not the norm: the prosecution must both explain why the witness could not be secured and show the drugs stayed intact. For someone reviewing a seizure, the first questions are who actually witnessed the inventory, whether they signed, and — if any were missing — what reason the record gives.