Opposition plans fresh notice seeking CEC removal, nationwide protests

The Opposition parties will submit a fresh notice next week in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to move a motion for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, and the constituents of the Congress-led INDIA bloc announced their intent to launch nationwide protests in the coming days over the alleged “hijacking” of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

In Goa, which goes to polls by March next year, Opposition parties demanded a rollback of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral rolls. The parties pointed to The Indian Express’s report on Thursday on how efforts by Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer to add the names of 97 voters were blocked by the ECI.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) also said that it will launch an “Election Commission Thik Karo” campaign and also threatened a “Jantar Mantar 2.0” agitation if CEC Kumar were not to quit within 48 hours for “undermining” electors’ rights. The Congress Working Committee will meet on Tuesday to discuss its planned protests.

Sources in the Congress said the motion for CEC Kumar’s removal is being drafted and will be vetted by legal experts before being submitted in both Houses of Parliament, most likely by next week. A notice moved by 73 Opposition MPs on April 24 seeking Kumar’s removal is pending in the Rajya Sabha. A fresh notice will be submitted in light of revelations in a report by The Indian Express and since seven of the 73 MPs who signed the earlier notice later joined the BJP.

Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters here, party leader Rahul Gandhi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and CEC Kumar were “deshdrohis” (traitors) as they “destroyed” India’s vote, and demanded that the CEC immediately resign. He advised Kumar to turn “approver”, just as his two colleagues, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, have acknowledged that “vote chori” (theft of votes) is taking place.

Gandhi said a big reason for Sandhu and Joshi putting on record their dissent on SIR was the pressure that the Congress put by launching its campaign on “vote theft” from February 2025 onwards, including his dissent note as the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha on the appointment of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, and flagging the alleged rigging in constituencies in Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka.

Gandhi held press conferences alleging “vote theft” in 2025 and the Congress also launched a “vote adhikar yatra” in August-September 2025. The Congress leader said Sandhu and Joshi recorded the first of their dissents on October 25, 2025, a little over a month after his press conference in which he alleged “vote theft” in Karnataka’s Aland Assembly constituency.

Amid questions being asked about whether its press note on Wednesday was approved by all three Election Commissioners, the ECI on Thursday “clarified” that its statement dated September 23 was “issued with the approval of the full Commission”, and that it is the “regular practice of issuing press notes at the ECI”. The press note that the ECI issued on Wednesday had asserted that all its official orders, decisions and administrative directions carry full legal sanction and that differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution.

The ECI issued a press note in response to reports published in The Indian Express on Wednesday morning that the ECI’s SIR, in which the names of 130 million electors have been struck off the voter rolls, has been questioned within the poll panel by two of the three Election Commissioners, Sandhu and Joshi. It stated that Sandhu and Joshi have formally objected, on record, at least on 14 occasions over the last 10 months, including four times on a single day, to decisions taken and orders issued under CEC Kumar, without their knowledge.

In a follow-up to its Wednesday reports on the issue, The Indian Express on Thursday reported on how the “centralisation of ECINet”, the tech backbone of the poll panel, and “cutting out state ground-level officials” played out in Goa. Among other issues, Sandhu and Joshi flagged how Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) did not have access to additions and deletions of electors in their jurisdiction.

In his press conference, Gandhi alleged that several of the recent elections have been “rigged” and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls were “completely fake”. He said Modi and Shah would be investigated for what they have done to this country. “This is an attack on the Constitution and the legal structure of the country. You were supposed to ensure that the vote was protected. We have enough information to prove this with certainty. There are going to be consequences to this. We are not going to let democracy be destroyed and sit silent,” he said.

Gandhi also showed on screen pictures of Modi, Shah, industrialist Gautam Adani, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Principal Secretary to the PM P K Mishra and Gyanesh Kumar under the header “conspirators”. Under the header “pawns”, photographs of the likes of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Union minister Piyush Goyal, a couple of journalists and two personalities from the film world were shown. He played videos where Home Minister Shah is heard saying the BJP will be in power for 30 years and the Prime Minister raising the slogan ‘Abki Baar 400 Paar’. No political leader who operates in a democratic environment can make such statements, Gandhi said. In India, there is a fundamental force called anti-incumbency which starts to resist and it does not spare anybody, but the BJP is immune to it, and we know why, he said.