The Election Commission controversy has now escalated into a political potboiler, with Opposition leaders taking to the streets, the Delhi police cracking down on protests and several leaders getting detained. Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi was among those detained.
The high drama escalated into public questions as well. This time however, from NDA’s allies themselves. Bihar allies Chirag Paswan of the LJP and Upendra Kushwaha of the the RLM have publicly sought clarifications from the poll body, asking for the organisation to “dispel confusion among the masses.”
The Delhi Police had denied permission for a protest at Jantar Mantar and detained several student leaders and activists demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation/arrest over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Police detained CPI-ML(L) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya and activist Yogendra Yadav, among other protesting students and activists. Police put up barricades to stop marches toward the Election Commission office and detained protesters before taking them away in buses, with members of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and Indian Youth Congress among those detained. AISA president Neha Bora was also detained.
This wasn’t confined to Delhi— Congress launched a nationwide agitation demanding Kumar’s resignation, with protests across multiple states and Congress workers trying to gherao Election Commission offices; police detained protesters and used water cannons and tear gas in some places.
Kumar’s planned visits to Meerut and Varanasi were postponed. Demonstrations were reported in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Chandigarh and Manipur. Nationwide protests against CEC Gyanesh Kumar: Detentions, water cannons as Congress takes to streets.
The agitation follows reports that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally raised objections over voter registration, deletion/restoration of names, and the functioning of the ECI’s electoral-roll technology. The ECI has pushed back, saying differing views are part of normal institutional deliberation and that decisions were taken unanimously. Rahul Gandhi had a day earlier accused the CEC of “vote chori, kanun chori, sanstha chori.”
Separately, over 2,000 citizens — including academics, lawyers, retired civil servants and journalists — wrote an open letter to Chief Justice Surya Kant urging the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of alleged irregularities in the SIR exercise, citing internal dissent among commissioners, unauthorised changes to Form 6, and centralised control of voter data.