Finally, 'Ringleader' GYANESH KUMAR IN THE DOCK. A TURNING POINT for India?
Modi’s regime will collapse in a year, or he will impose an Emergency, said Rahul Gandhi. With the CEC in the dock, and a simmering political churning led by millions of students across the country, is his prophecy coming true?
By Manan Kumar in Delhi
The first part of the explosive investigation series by the Indian Express has shattered the fake, artificially manufactured aura of Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose expensive birthday celebrations were held on a gigantic scale across the country less than a week ago, even while the parents mourned their young sons, dead under the rubble at Satyanikitan in South Delhi.
The Express reports detailing serious formal complaints by the two serving Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, regarding the dubious conduct of the electoral Special Intensive Revision (SIR), are a stark reminder of what Congress leader Rahul Gandhi prophesied in June this year: that Modi will not be PM one year from now, as the system under him was rapidly eroding and collapsing.
Modi’s regime will collapse in a year, or he will impose an Emergency, Rahul Gandhi said.
He repeated this in Parliament and followed it by warning the Election Commission and its officers to be ready to face the consequences. The institutional revolt or implosion from within that he suggested seems to be happening.
Besides, Arvind Kejriwal has demanded the arrest of Gyanesh Kumar, saying he is the ‘sargana’ (ringleader) who has been implementing the 'vote chori' agenda of Modi and Amit Shah. SIR and all the elections held under him should be immediately scrapped, he said. Respected lawyer Kapil Sibal has said that the CEC should be forthwith suspended.
Mamata Bannerjee too has demanded that Gyanesh Kumar should be arrested. The entire India Alliance is together in this battle, she said, warnign that there will be a nation-wide movement.
The Express investigation reportedly based on internal documents and conversations with several key officials in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Panaji, calling it a "rupture inside the Election Commission," raises several key issues in what is widely reported to be unfair and brazenly biased conduct of the SIR. The newspaper detailed several instances of serious objections cited by the two other election commissioners. Some key objections revealed by Express are.
14 Objections in 10 months
The two dissenting ECs put their strong objections in writing 14 times in ten months for keeping them in the dark about several steps including adding new voters and deleting old ones. In August, EC Sandhu even asked in writing on what grounds 1.6 million voters were added to the West Bengal electoral rolls?
Illegal and Unauthorised Changes in Form 6 and Form 8
They objected to the change in Form 6 on several occasions, calling it illegal and unauthorised. The change in Form 6 for new or young voters required them to answer whether their name appeared in the SIR held in the early 2000s; whether the name of a parent or grandparent appeared in that roll, or whether neither their name nor that of their parents appeared in it. EC Joshi warned that the two forms Form 6 and Form 8 (for making changes and corrections), are prescribed statutorily and cannot be altered without making amendments in the Registration of Electoral Rolls, 1960.
Compromised Integrity of the Database
The two ECs even raised a red flag regarding the gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database warning that ECINet (a unified portal that brought over 40 EC portals and Apps under one umbrella, meant only for BLOs) was eroding a well-placed decentralised system by restricting the officers on the ground who are responsible for preparing and finalising the electoral rolls. After raising this issue thrice as a gross violation of law with CEC Gyanesh Kumar, they separately wrote to the top most bureaucrat in the Union government, Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan.
CEC Acting as Law unto Himself
The two ECs questioned the decisions CEC Gyanesh Kumar made unilaterally, despite their objections, and in some cases even without their knowledge. According to Article 324 of the Constitution -- the three election commissioners are equal in rank. The CEC is to be treated only as first among equals and doesn't have the power to decide alone.
The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Condition of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 also states under Section 18 that all business of the Commission "shall, as far as possible, be transacted unanimously." It also says that “in case of difference of opinion on any matter it shall be decided according to the opinion of the majority.”
The two ECs raised this issue on several occasions in internal notes.
Damning Reports by non-Godi Media, Citizens Journalists and Civil Rights Activists
In-depth ground and well-researched reports by media and research organisations like Sabar Institute and BehanBox in Bihar and West Bengal, Reporters Collective in Delhi and elsewhere, and civil rights activist Anjali Bhardwaj across India and in the Supreme Court for over than a year now have already listed grave doubts on not only on SIR and the Election Commission but also on the government in power.
Using RTI, Bhardwaj objected to ECI’s intentions as early as in August 2025 when she revealed that no files existed on how the decision to undertake a nation-wide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was processed and approved by the ECI; there was no record of the ‘independent appraisal’ which ECI claimed in its affidavit as the basis for SIR.
When asked for a copy of orders/guidelines of Bihar’s 2003 roll revision, the ECI provided the 2025 order.
The curious case of mass deletion of voters in West Bengal and Delhi
The high reinstatement rate of deleted voters in West Bengal by a tribunal constituted by the apex court has increased the suspicion on the ECI. The unexpected results have been widely viewed as a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise genuine voters en masse and favour the BJP that finally won the elections, in what is termed by Mamata Banerjee and others as a “stolen” or “hijacked” polls, under the shadow of para military forces.
Of the limited cases processed and decided so far, around 1.26 lakh out of a massive 3.83 million total appeals filed before the 19 Supreme Court-mandated tribunals, nearly 93 per cent of the deleted voters were found to be valid and were added back to the electoral rolls.
Of these appeals, 2.2.2 millions appeals were filed by voters whose names were deleted during the SIR process.
This leaves over 37.05 lakh appeals pending that according to ECI’s own submission will take 12 years to complete at the present rate. Does that mean that the deleted voters cease to be Indian citizens with the right to vote for 12 years? And what is the guarantee that the 12 years will not be stretched to 21 years in the future?
Mamata Banerjee seems to have fallen prey to this design as she lost the elections in her impregnable fort Bhowanipur by only 15,015 votes where the total deletion accounted for over 51,000 voters. Curiously, 44,787 names were struck off in the primary phase under absent, shifted, deceased, or duplicate entries but the follow-up clean-ups added additional 14,154 voters under a separate status of "under adjudication”.
Similarly, former chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal lost the New Delhi constituency to the BJP’s Parvesh Verma by a narrow margin of a little over 4,000 votes. In the 2020 election, the constituency had 1,46,122 registered voters, but before the February 2025 Delhi assembly polls, the ECI deleted 37,558 or roughly 25% eligible voters over a five-year period.
Voices of former Election Commissioners
Several former election commissioners, including former CECs SY Quraishi and OP Rawat and the former (resigned) EC Ashok Lavasa, with vast experience to hold elections, have already come out against SIR.
Lavasa has called the SIR illegal and sought its immediate scrapping. Quraishi has not only called the concept of setting up separate tribunals for regular voter list appeals completely bizarre and against the spirit of law, but also asked for all electoral lists prepared before January 2025 to be scrapped. He even levelled a charge at the present ECI for deliberately fiddling with the electoral list to help the incumbent government lose. He also questioned the Supreme Court for being a silent witness to the blatant violations.
Rawat has described the SIR as a Frankenstein which has created fear in the minds of voters, changes in Form 6 as changes to the statutory voter registration Form 6 as illegal, and hinted at some sort of ulterior motive in the conduct of SIR.
Indeed, the political churning appears to be a decisive turning point waiting to happen, when Indian democracy seems to be fast turning into, what critics called, a typical banana republic. A gigantic churning which is happening among millions of students, farmers and workers is for everyone to see.
Are these pointing to the prophecy made by Rahul Gandhi?
Manan Kumar is a journalist based in Delhi. He has earlier worked for The Telegraph, Kolkata, among other media organisations.