GYANESH Kumar stands impeached. Though not legal, the symbolic public impeachment of India’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), organised by the INDIA bloc parties on October 31 in New Delhi, marks an unprecedented development in the country's struggle to protect democracy. Presided over by former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, the proceedings saw the participation of opposition leaders, Members of Parliament, representatives of civil society organisations and people whose names had been deleted from the electoral rolls in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. 

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge moved the resolution, which listed six charges against the CEC. These include the deliberate deletion of 13.2 crore voters from electoral rolls, unauthorised changes to Form 6, centralisation of electoral-roll management through the ECINET, bypassing of the other two Election Commissioners in decision making and acting at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The exercise was a powerful expression of public accountability at a time when the Opposition's motions had been rejected by the presiding officers of Parliament. 

The fact that such a public proceeding became necessary is by itself an indication of the crisis of credibility facing the Election Commission. Never before in independent India has public confidence in this institution stood so deeply eroded. The impeachment, therefore, was not merely directed against an individual, but was also a call to restore the independence of this constitutional office. 

A MANIPULATIVE EXERCISE

Presented as an exercise to cleanse electoral rolls of duplicate, deceased and ineligible voters, the experience of the implementation of the SIR exercise has exposed serious questions about its methodology, transparency and fairness. From the burden of proof being shifted to the voter, linkage with the 2002 electoral roll, reliance on algorithms to flag “logical discrepancy”, the arbitrary use of Form 7 to the insistence on fresh applications from voters whose names were deleted, from the enormous adjudication backlog in West Bengal to the manipulation of voter identities in Pilibhit, the SIR has raised grave concerns about the integrity of India's electoral process. The Election Commission's latest affidavit in the Supreme Court has only deepened these concerns.

ECI AFFIDAVIT: A WEB OF CONTRADICTIONS

The ECI's latest affidavit before the Supreme Court, filed on October 26, is a web of contradictions. While the affidavit maintains that major decisions concerning the SIR were unanimous, the notings recorded by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi reveal a different story. The affidavit's assertion of unanimity fails to answer the central question: were the Commissioners consulted before decisions were implemented?

LYING ON OATH

The Form 6 controversy is particularly revealing. The Commission insisted that voters whose names were deleted during the SIR must submit Form 6 to get themselves enrolled again. Form 6 is meant for new enrolment. How can a voter who was already registered and voted in elections earlier, give a false declaration that their name was not there earlier and they would like to enroll afresh. A constitutional body was asking people to lie on oath.

The two Commissioners had objected that additional declarations could not be introduced into the statutory form without following the prescribed legal procedure. The affidavit now claims that the declaration was a separate document, not an amendment to Form 6. Yet it admits that its presentation on the online portal could give the impression that the statutory form had been amended. The Commission has subsequently changed the online procedure implicitly acknowledging that the earlier arrangement was problematic.

On ECINET, the affidavit insists that no entry can be added, deleted or modified except by an order of the ERO. But it does not adequately explain the complaints recorded by the Commissioners that software module had been developed without their knowledge and that state officials were unable to carry out their statutory responsibilities. Its announcement of an expert committee to examine the platform, including experts from IIT Bombay and IISc Bengaluru, only underlines the need for scrutiny.

THE CRISIS OF ADJUDICATION

In West Bengal approximately 60 lakh voters were placed in the adjudication process. The scale of the appeals subsequently filed before the appellate tribunals has been staggering. In its September affidavit, the ECI informed the Supreme Court that 38,20,683 appeals had been filed, of which only 1,02,231 had been disposed of, leaving more than 37 lakh pending. An adjudicator had remarked that going at this pace it would take decades for the process to get over. 

In the latest affidavit the ECI says that appeals against the inclusion of voters were filed by officials in the West Bengal CEO's office and that these matters were not brought to the Commission's notice. This sits uneasily with the earlier recorded concerns of Commissioners who had sought information about the appeals and found that even the state Chief Electoral Officer could not provide details. The affidavit does not adequately explain who authorised the filing of such a large number of appeals or why the Commission was apparently unaware of proceedings conducted in its name. It needs mention that the West Bengal CEO, Manoj Kumar, who helmed the SIR in the state, was appointed the Chief Secretary to the Government of West Bengal immediately after the BJP came into office. Equally disturbing is the appointment of Subrata Gupta as the advisor to CM Suvendu Adhikari. Subrata served as the ECI's Special Roll Observer during the SIR exercise ahead of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections.

WEAPONISATION OF FORM 7

Form 7 is intended to enable objections to the inclusion of a name in the electoral roll on specified grounds, including death, permanent shifting of residence, duplicate registration or ineligibility. Yet, the experience in West Bengal, Karnataka, Delhi and various other states has exposed its rampant misuse. Apart from booth level agents of the BJP filing Form 7 in bulk, investigations have also revealed that thousands of deletions were generated through the election software, with the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) appearing as the objector and, in many cases, without a clearly recorded reason. According to reports 5,72,330 out of 6,39,049 Form 7 applications had resulted in deletions. 

MANIPULATIONS CONTINUE POST-SIR

The recent Pilibhit scandal in Uttar Pradesh provides another alarming illustration of targeted deletions. Following complaints that names had been altered after the final SIR roll was published, an inquiry found irregularities in 10,470 approved Form 8 applications. A computer assistant had entered 13,779 applications for corrections between May 31 and August 29, but no supporting physical forms or records were available. In several instances, entirely different names appeared against existing EPIC numbers. The Election Commission has since ordered the suspension of two EROs and directed criminal proceedings against those responsible.

This is not a minor technical lapse. If a voter's identity can be altered in the electoral database without a valid application or supporting documentation, the integrity of the entire electoral roll is in question. There is every possibility that similar violations have been done elsewhere.

DAMNING TESTIMONIES

The testimonies of Anita Jaiswal, Kanta Prasad and Waheed at the impeachment demonstrate three different dimensions of disenfranchisement. Declared dead and removed from the electoral rolls, Kanta Prasad was there physically; Waheed from Bijapur, Karnataka even after producing voters who had been declared dead claimed their names were not restored in the electoral roll; Anita Jaiswal a single mother from Delhi holding her voter ID said, "From 2012 to 2025, I voted in every election. My vote made MPs and ministers; but one day at a cyber cafe, I found out that my voter ID was deleted. Who gave you the right to delete it? You can't give me a job, can't give me a house. Then who gave you the right to take my right to vote away?"  

The House was unanimous – Time’s Up Bro!

THE ULTIMATE GOAL

Till the current SIR, the ECI’s slogan underlined inclusion — “No Voter be Left Behind”. The SIR turned this on its head. The SIR is not simply an exercise in electoral-roll revision or to trace the so-called “ghuspetiyas”. It is targeted disenfranchisement. This denial of a democratic right cannot be separated from the political context where Muslims and other marginalised communities continue to be portrayed by the BJP-RSS as objects of suspicion. It cannot be understood divorced from the deeper ideological contest over the idea of India. These attempts to redefine citizenship through increasingly intrusive administrative processes are part of a broader political project to reshape the character of the Indian Republic on majoritarian lines. 

That the SIR is linked with the issue of citizenship has been made amply clear by the assertion of Union Minister for Panchayati Raj Rajiv Ranjan Singh that beneficiary payments and identification for schemes under the Ministry of Panchayati Raj will shift from Aadhaar to a combination of biometric authentication and the Elector's Photo Identity Card (EPIC / Voter ID) number.