As October 2 Nears the Gyanesh Kumar Row Opens Multiple Fronts
As October 2 protests loom, who is saying what in the Gyanesh Kumar row — and what are Congress, the Left, CJP, BJP and the ECI doing about it?
The controversy around Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has moved beyond an internal dispute within the Election Commission. As October 2 approaches, allegations over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls are now producing parallel protest plans by Opposition parties, Left organisations, student groups and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), while the BJP and the Election Commission have offered sharply different readings of the crisis.
At the centre is an Indian Express investigation that reported at least 14 recorded objections by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi over 10 months on matters including voter registration, deletion and restoration, Form 6 and control of electoral-roll databases. The objections have since become the basis for demands for Kumar’s removal.
The Election Commission, however, says the picture is incomplete. After its September 26 meeting, it said the SIR order and schedules had been approved unanimously by all three commissioners. It also announced that meeting agendas would henceforth be circulated in advance, minutes issued afterwards and an expert review conducted of ECINet’s compliance with electoral laws. On September 30, it dropped the additional SIR declaration from Form 6 in states where the exercise has concluded.
Congress has taken the controversy to the political streets. Its Working Committee has demanded Kumar’s removal, a halt to SIR and restoration of names it says were excluded from electoral rolls. The INDIA bloc meeting in Delhi on September 30 then converted that demand into a broader programme: district-level “Save Democracy” marches from October 2 to 8, a march by Opposition MPs to the Election Commission on October 6, a proposed meeting with President Droupadi Murmu and five larger rallies. A November 1 Delhi rally was also announced.
But October 2 will not belong to one political formation alone. The Left has announced a separate Kolkata procession from the Netaji statue to Mahatma Gandhi’s statue at Esplanade, demanding Kumar’s removal, an immediate halt to SIR and restoration of names allegedly deleted during the revision. The demand also extends to repealing the 2023 law governing appointments to the Election Commission. The Left’s September 29 protest outside the ECI headquarters in Delhi ended with the detention of CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby and other leaders.
Then there is the CJP. After Mumbai Police denied permission for its planned Shivaji Park demonstration, founder Abhijeet Dipke announced a “Jail Bharo Andolan” for October 2. Its demands include Kumar’s resignation and criminal proceedings, freezing SIR and restoring the January 2025 electoral roll, besides repealing the 2023 appointment law.
A separate civil-society and student mobilisation is also planned in Delhi. AISA president Neha Bora, advocate Prashant Bhushan and RJD MP Manoj Jha have called for an October 2 Jantar Mantar protest seeking Kumar’s “impeachment”. Delhi Police had not granted permission as of September 30.
The BJP has rejected the Opposition’s framing. Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan characterised the proposed “Save Democracy” campaign as an attempt to “save dynasty” and argued that the electoral-roll controversy was being used to explain political defeats in advance. BJP leaders have also defended the ECI’s institutional functioning and described differences within the Commission as part of normal deliberation.
The legal question is now running parallel to the street campaign. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a petition challenging Kumar’s functioning and the legality of SIR, including claims that certain powers were exercised without the collective involvement of the Commission. That is an allegation before the court, not a judicial finding.
So, before the first October protest begins, the question is no longer simply who stands behind Gyanesh Kumar. It is what happens when an internal ECI dispute, a contested voter-revision exercise and several independent political and civic mobilisations converge around the same date — and whether the competing claims about India’s electoral rolls can now be settled through documents, institutional answers and judicial scrutiny rather than slogans alone.
