INDIA Bloc MPs Gear Up for Another Protest Against CEC on October 8
The whole CEC row is heating up again, and the INDIA bloc isn’t letting it cool down for a second. After the big drama on Parliament Street and the sit-in near the Election Commission headquarters on Tuesday, they’re already planning the next round. Congress has called for nationwide protests on October 8, and the larger INDIA bloc is sticking to its “Save Democracy” programme that runs through that date. District-level marches and demonstrations are still on the cards, and MPs are expected to keep the pressure on Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. It all started building after that Indian Express investigation last month. The report said Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had put their objections on record at least 14 times in ten months. They were unhappy about decisions on adding and deleting voters, changes to Form 6, and the way the voter database was being handled. The opposition jumped on it, calling the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls a tool for “vote chori.” They want Kumar to resign, the SIR scrapped, deleted voters restored, and, in some cases, a return to paper ballots instead of EVMs. On September 30, leaders from 19 parties sat together for over three hours and finalised a plan. Mallikarjun Kharge announced “Save Democracy” marches in every district from October 2 to 8. MPs from both Houses were to march to the EC office on October 6. They also talked about meeting the President and filing cases in the Supreme Court against the 2023 law that gives the CEC and other commissioners certain protections. Tuesday’s protest was the first big street action. Rahul Gandhi led a few hundred MPs from Parliament towards Nirvachan Sadan. Akhilesh Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee, Supriya Sule, Sanjay Raut, and others walked with him. Police stopped them on Parliament Street. Things got noisy. Slogans like “Vote chor, gaddi chhod” and “Democracy not for sale” filled the air. Some leaders climbed barricades. Rahul even posted “Gyanesh, it’s done bro. Time to resign.” A group of Congress MPs, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, managed to enter the Akashvani Bhavan complex next door and sat there for hours. By evening, police detained Rahul, Priyanka, and several others. They were released later. Wednesday saw more of the same. Leaders met for lunch, then tried heading to Jantar Mantar in buses. Police stopped them again and detained a few more people. Rahul made it clear they won’t stop until Kumar resigns. “This is a fight to protect the most sacred thing in this country,” he said. “There is nothing that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can do that will stop us.” Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal has now written to state units asking them to organise protests at state, district, and block levels on October 8. They’ve called October 7 a “Black Day for Indian Democracy” after the detentions. The district marches under the original plan are still supposed to continue through the 8th, so expect more local actions across the country tomorrow. BJP has been pushing back hard. Leaders say this is just frustration after electoral losses. They call the opposition’s claims baseless and say the Election Commission is doing its job of cleaning up the rolls. The Commission itself has maintained that decisions were unanimous and that the SIR is a necessary exercise after years without a full revision. They’ve also said no formal meeting request came from the opposition before the October 6 march. What’s interesting is that some parties outside the strict INDIA fold have joined in. BJD MPs walked with the protesters, saying their leader Naveen Patnaik directed them because of concerns over voter deletions in Odisha. AAP has also been seen at some of the actions. The opposition is trying to project a broader front on this one issue even if they don’t always agree on other things. The demands remain the same: Kumar must go, SIR must be rolled back, genuine voters who were struck off should be put back, and some want ballot papers for future elections. They’re also talking about approaching the President and pushing cases in court. Five big rallies are planned for October and November, including one in Delhi on November 1. For ordinary people watching this, the core worry is simple. If the voter list isn’t clean and transparent, faith in the whole process takes a hit. Both sides claim to be defending democracy. One side says the Commission is compromised and lists are being manipulated. The other says the revision is overdue and the opposition is just sore about results. Tomorrow’s protests will tell us how much steam the campaign still has. Local units are being told to hit the streets at every level. In Delhi, the conversation is already about the next steps after the two days of detentions. The INDIA bloc keeps saying this is not about one man but about the institution. The government and the Commission keep saying the process is fair and the protests are political theatre. Whatever happens on October 8, the row is far from over. The MPs who marched on Tuesday and Wednesday have made it clear they intend to keep showing up. The district programmes are still running. And the demand for Kumar’s resignation is not going away quietly. It’s a messy, noisy fight that has put the Election Commission right at the centre of the political battlefield again. Sources:Indian Express, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Print, Times of India, NDTV Profit, Outlook India, Frontline, The Diplomat, ANI reports. @Rohit Manral
Congress Hits Streets Across India Demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar Quit; AISA’s Neha Among Those Picked Up at Jantar Mantar
Yesterday on Friday the Congress and a bunch of student and civil society groups went all out against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. They’re saying he has to resign, some are even calling for his arrest. The whole thing is boiling over because of that Special Intensive Revision of the voter lists and that report about two other Election Commissioners raising objections several times. In Delhi the main action was around Jantar Mantar. AISA had called a protest, and a lot of familiar faces showed up – Neha Bora (she’s the AISA president), Dipankar Bhattacharya from CPI(ML), Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Anjali Bhardwaj and others. Police said nobody had taken permission, so they started rounding people up. Neha was among those detained. They took her to Kanjhawala police station. From there she sent out a video saying basically, “We only came to demand accountability. We’ll be back tomorrow.” Altogether police picked up around 150 people from three spots near Jantar Mantar and DDU Marg. Most were released by evening. Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav was also detained when his group tried to march towards the Election Commission office. It wasn’t just Delhi. Congress workers came out in a lot of places. In Patna the police turned water cannons on them. Same thing in Chandigarh. In Imphal they used tear gas. In Guwahati they detained Gaurav Gogoi. In Lucknow the state Congress president was taken away. People burnt effigies, shouted slogans, the usual scene. K.C. Venugopal from the Congress made it clear they’re not stopping. He said the protests will continue till Kumar goes. They’re talking about moving notices in Parliament and they’ve already announced district-level protests for Monday. There’s a CWC meeting on Tuesday too. The other side is saying this is all political drama. The Election Commission maintains that internal differences are normal and the final decisions on the SIR were unanimous. Police keep repeating that no permission was given, so they had to clear the area. That’s pretty much where things stand right now. The opposition is treating this as a big fight over the fairness of the electoral process, and the government and the EC are holding their line. Looks like next week is going to be noisy as well. Sources: The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Siasat, Telegraph India, Deccan Chronicle, National Herald (25-26 September 2026 reports). @Rohit Manral
Deep Rot: On the Election Commission of India’s Functioning During Its SIR
With the SIR thoroughly vitiated, CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls – this big clean-up drive they call SIR – was supposed to be about making the voter lists pure and accurate. No eligible person left out, no ineligible one kept in. That’s the line. But the way it’s been run under Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has left a sour taste that just won’t go away. And now, with reports of deep internal rifts coming out, it’s hard to see how this exercise hasn’t been thoroughly compromised. Back in 2025, they kicked off SIR in Bihar ahead of the assembly polls. House-to-house checks by booth-level officers, forms to fill, draft rolls, claims and objections – the works. Then it spread. Phase after phase across states and union territories. By the time it reached places like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and beyond, the numbers of deletions started looking huge. Crores of names struck off – some dead, some shifted, some just not matching up. Opposition parties cried foul from day one, saying genuine voters, especially those who might lean their way, were being pushed off the rolls. The Commission kept insisting everything was transparent, multi-party agents were watching, courts had given the go-ahead. Fair enough on paper. But then the cracks inside Nirvachan Sadan itself started showing. Just this week an investigation laid it out. The other two election commissioners – Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi – had put their objections on record at least fourteen times over ten months. Decisions and orders going out without them even knowing, they said. Changes to Form 6, the basic application for new voters. Centralised control over the database that field officers use. Questions on how names were being added, deleted, restored. Appeals processes. One report even mentioned four objections on a single day. That’s not normal difference of opinion over tea. That’s a full-blown signal that the three-member body wasn’t functioning as a collegium the way the Constitution expects under Article 324. The Commission’s response? Differing views are part of healthy discussion, final decisions were unanimous. Okay. But when two of the three keep flagging that things are happening behind their backs, the claim of unanimity starts sounding thin. And Gyanesh Kumar sits right at the top of this. He’s the first CEC appointed after the 2023 law that tilted the selection panel towards the government – no Chief Justice in the mix anymore. Came in as Election Commissioner in March 2024, right before the Lok Sabha schedule, then took over as CEC in February 2025. Background is solid IAS, Kerala cadre, important central postings including cooperation ministry. But the manner of functioning during SIR has raised the same old questions about independence that have dogged the institution for years. Think about the scale. Over a crore names removed in some phases, more than five crore in twelve states and UTs alone by one count, and still going in others. In West Bengal the deletions ran into millions; in Delhi notices went out in large numbers. People on the ground – ordinary voters, opposition workers – kept saying the process felt rushed, the verification uneven, the appeals window too tight in places. The Commission points to record turnout in some polls held on revised rolls and says no major court challenges stuck after the Supreme Court upheld the legality. Yet the political temperature never cooled. Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” charges, the public back-and-forth, the earlier notices in Parliament seeking the CEC’s removal – all of it kept piling up. Those notices were rejected, but the underlying unease didn’t vanish. What makes this different is that the dissent is no longer just from outside. It’s internal. When the two other commissioners feel the need to formally object to how the SIR is being steered – access to data, form changes, the very process of revision – the exercise loses the moral authority it claims. A clean electoral roll is the foundation. Everyone agrees on that. But if the body preparing it is seen as operating with one person calling most of the shots while the others scramble to catch up, the foundation starts looking shaky. Voters notice. Parties notice. And once trust erodes, it is devilishly hard to rebuild. Gyanesh Kumar has defended the SIR robustly. He’s spoken of unparalleled transparency, of BLOs and BLAs keeping watch, of purest rolls in the world. Fine. But leadership also means ensuring the institution itself doesn’t look fractured. The reported centralisation of database control, the alleged bypassing of colleagues on key orders – these aren’t minor process notes. They go to the heart of collective decision-making that the Commission is supposed to embody. At this point the SIR stands vitiated in the public eye. Too many deletions without enough confidence that every eligible citizen was properly heard. Too many questions about how decisions were taken. The only clean way out is for the man heading it to step aside. CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign. Not as some political scalp, but because the institution needs to recover its credibility before the next round of polls. Let a full three-member body, functioning without these internal shadows, take charge of whatever remains of the revision and of future ones. Democracy runs on trust more than on perfect lists. Right now that trust is fraying, and the deep rot has to be cut out before it spreads further. Sources: Reports from The Indian Express investigation (September 2026), The Hindu, Economic Times, Tribune, Scroll.in, and Election Commission of India press notes and statements on the Special Intensive Revision process. @Rohit Manral