Photo: Sharma Dhawan / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Opposition parties in the INDIA bloc on Saturday (October 31) held a symbolic “public impeachment” of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in New Delhi, adopting by a show of hands a motion that accuses him of six counts of misconduct linked to the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The three-and-a-half-hour session, which has no legal standing, was set up to look like a sitting of the Lok Sabha.
A Parliament in a garden
The proceedings took place in the garden of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s official residence at 10, Rajaji Marg, with former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar presiding. Sonia Gandhi and other senior bloc leaders sat in the front row, alongside Opposition MPs, student leaders, civil society activists and voters who say their names were wrongly removed from the rolls.
Moving the motion, Mr. Kharge accused the CEC of running the Election Commission on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The charges include deleting voters’ names, altering Form 6 without parliamentary oversight, centralising electoral rolls through the commission’s digital platforms, and keeping the other two Election Commissioners out of decisions. Mr. Kharge said 193 Opposition MPs had filed notices for the CEC’s removal in both Houses about seven months ago, but those were rejected. He also called for repealing the law that gives the CEC lifelong immunity.
Rahul Gandhi’s warning to officials
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said the Opposition had been pushed to this format because every institutional route was closed to it. He claimed that 13.3 crore names, about one in seven voters, had been deleted, and argued that the 2024 general election could not be called legal. He said Mr. Kumar should be removed and tried for treason, and told election officials that they were the bloc’s “first target”.
You are hiding behind the institution you have sworn to protect. Remember, you cannot hide behind it forever.
Rahul Gandhi, addressing the CEC and election officials
Trinamool Congress leaders Sagarika Ghose and Mahua Moitra alleged that the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election had been “stolen” through deletions, while CPI(M) MP John Brittas said he had himself attended two hearings to prove he was an eligible voter. Voters from Kolkata described being asked to prove their citizenship despite voting for years, and activists introduced a man who said he had been declared dead in the revision.
BJP: ‘not a single vote stolen’
The BJP dismissed the event as a mockery of democratic institutions. At a press conference, MP Sambit Patra suggested the Opposition seat Rahul Gandhi as a “mock Prime Minister” and said no one’s vote had been stolen. He said roughly 12 crore voters had permanently shifted, of whom about 6 crore had already applied to be re-included, while about 2.8 crore names were removed because the voters had died and nearly 1 crore were duplicates. He added that the Election Commission had said its SIR decisions were unanimous.
What comes next
The mock impeachment carries no legal weight, and the Opposition’s formal removal notices in Parliament have already been turned down. The bloc is now taking its campaign to the streets, with a rally against the CEC and the SIR planned at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday (November 1), after weeks of protests, detentions and court hearings in the capital over the voter-roll revision.
