Put Gyanesh Kumar BEHIND BARS for TREASON
Updated: 26 minutes ago
Ritika Chopra’s stellar investigation may have directly exposed the dark underbelly of Gyanesh Kumar’s illegal subversions of the electoral process backed by the Modi-Shah apparatus, but it is also an indirect indictment of the Indian judiciary. It’s not enough if the CEC is forced to quit and punished for treason; it’s time some of the top judges are also made accountable for their brazen acts of omission and commission.
By NR Mohanty in Delhi
The Indian Expose expose ( Septemeber 23, 2025) on the shenanigans of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India has once again paroved that, controary to the popular belief -- legacy journalism is not dead yet; it can show its fangs when it chooses to.
We all knew all this while that the Election Commission (EC) of India headed by Gyanesh Kumar has become a sidekick of the Modi establishment, that it carries out the instructions of the ruling dispensation with unfailing loyalty and regularity. However, before the Express revelations on Wednesday, we had no inkling that the two Election Commissioners (ECs), Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, (ECs) — who enjoy co-equal powers with the CEC in the decision-making process — had pointed out the irregularities and the illegality of many of the decisions of the CEC.
The Express investigation tells us that they had objected to the CEC’s decisions at least 14 times in the last 10 months -- but to no avail. The CEC unilaterally went ahead with his decisions, ignoring the procedural and substantive issues raised by the other ECs.
This brings us to an intriguing question: why did the two distinguished Election Commissioners choose to appear to be going along with the CEC when he used to ask his subordinate staff to issue press releases on matters that were never discussed in the formal meetings?
It is indeed surprising that the ECs were raising their objections quietly in the official correspondences, but they seemed to be in perfect harmony with the CEC when they sat together in the press conferences or other official programmes where the CEC held forth justifying the Election Commission’s decisions.
After all, Article 324 of the Constitution affirms that the ECs enjoy co-equal powers with the CEC on all decision-making and decisions are taken on a majority vote, if no consensus is reached. It means the two ECs could have held sway in the decision-making of the Election Commission, as the CEC didn’t enjoy the overriding veto power.
Why did then the two Election Commissioners sit as mute witnesses, when the CEC went ahead taking decisions unilaterally, without taking two ECs into confidence?
Why did they not raise their voice when — as one of the ECs noted in his official correspondence — the Election Commission’s meetings were held without any agenda and they came to know about the Election Commission‘s decisions only from the media?
Were these two Election Commissioners caught in the binary of professional integrity vs personal safety?
Were these two ECs afraid that they would face the same fate as that of Ashok Lavasa who had objected to giving a clean chit to Modi -- when the latter indulged in blatant violation of the code of conduct during the 2019 elections?
The Modi dispensation had unleashed the ED, CBI and income tax authorities against Lavasa’s family and later eased Lavasa out of the Election Commission.
Were Sindhu and Joshi contemplating that they would meet the same fate if they escalated the matter further beyond writing confidential official notes?
Another intriguing question is: why did these two Election Commissioners choose to write their missive to the Cabinet Secretary, not to the President of India who is the only Constitutional functionary they are accountable to as Election Commissioners?
Did these two ECs forget that they were no more mere civil servants — which they were, before they were appointed to the Election Commission — whose last port of call was the Cabinet Secretary?
They are now part of a constitutional body and their calling was their conscience. The country would certainly be grateful to them for recording their dissent in writing, though the democratic forces in the country would have preferred if the two Election Commissioners had come out on their own highlighting the dark deeds of Gyanesh Kumar -- before he succeeded in rigging successive elections in favour of the BJP.
The Express investigation raises another crucial question: who gave the intrepid investigative journalist Ritika Chopra the access to the official files of the Election Commission so that she could present an exhaustive report -- with evidence -- on the differences simmering within the constitutional body?
It could be either of the Election Commissioners, or may be both; or, it could be some high officials of the administrative set-up of the Commission who had the relevant files at their disposal. If the two Election Commissioners were instrumental in the leakage, they deserve accolades for making their serious concerns about the conduct of elections come to light in the larger interest of Indian democracy. If it were some officials of the Commission who ensured that the illegalities of the CEC hit the headlines so as to protect the integrity of the election process in the future, then they deserve our salute for placing the interest of the country above that of their political masters.
They may have to pay a price for their courageous action, as Modi-Shah dispensation, as has been the predictable pattern -- would try to hunt them down to take revenge for daring to expose their henchman, Gyanesh Kumar. But, rest assured, the democracy-loving people of India would embrace them as true nationalists for exposing the anti-national triad of Modi-Shah-Gyanesh Kumar!
Whatever be the source of the Express report, these revelations come at a critical moment of India’s electoral history. So far, the illegalities of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process launched by Gyanesh Kumar-led CEC has been repeatedly articulated by the opposition leaders, certainly most vociferously by the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi. The ruling BJP used to make a vilification campaign against Rahul Gandhi and others, portraying them as instances of ‘sour grapes’! ‘When they lose an election, they blame the electoral process’, has been the charge of the saffron bandwagon against the opposition leaders.
Now, the Express report has brought to light that the two Election Commissioners looked at the viciousness of the Commission in the same way as most opposition leaders did about the SIR process; that lends gravitas to the charge that Gyanesh Kumar has allowed himself to be the hatchet man of the evil Modi-Shah regime.
Such a man at the helm of the electoral machinery would be a mockery of what Dr BR Ambedkar had envisioned about India’s democratic process while drafting the provisions of the Indian Constitution.
This man must go.
The Cockroach Janata Party’s call to launch a nation-wide demanding for the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar is a timely step; but it’s inadequate. Gyanesh Kumar must not just resign; he must be put behind bars for treason. The youth of the country must spearhead that larger campaign to protect and defend our democracy.
The fight must not end with just the fall of Gyanesh Kumar; we must remember that anti-national characters like Gyanesh Kumar survive and prosper, thanks also to the protection extended to them by the Supreme Court of India on several occasions. The opposition parties had raised the issue of changes in Form 6 by the Election Commission which was beyond the scope of its constitutional authority; only the government could amend Form 6 with parliamentary approval. But Gyanesh Kumar went ahead and did it on his own.
The two Election Commissioners had flagged it; the matter had been taken up before the Supreme Court by many democratic activists, but the Court sat over it without pronouncing its verdict. So Gyanesh Kumar had his way.
Similarly, in the case of large-scale deletions from the voter-list during the 2026 West Bengal assembly election, the apex court asked the judicial officers to determine the eligibility of the deleted voters, but agreed with the Election Commission that the election could go ahead without their participation in the voting process. As a result, almost 27 lakh voters were excluded from the election process (incidentally, Mamata-Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress lost to the BJP by, more or less, a similar margin).
At the pace in which the judicial scrutiny is happening in West Bengal, it is estimated that it would take almost 20 years or more to complete the process. Does that mean all these voters whose names had been arbitrarily deleted by the Election Commission will have to wait for 20 years before they can vote?
Witness the irony!
Hundreds of cases in which judicial scrutiny is complete in the last six-odd months, more than 93% have been declared eligible voters! At the end of the day, it may turn out that more than 25 lakh voters’ names had been illegally deleted by Gyanesh Kumar’s Election Commission in West Bengal alone!
The Supreme Court could have allowed these voters to cast their vote in the election. But Gyanesh Kumar was determined to hand Modi-Shah the stolen victory in the West Bengal election; there is a widespread perception and belief in West Bengal and across the country that the Supreme Court clearly played into Gyanesh Kumar’s hands by toeing his line!
Had the judges of the Supreme Court bench who adjudicated the SIR cases — Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymala Bagchi, Justice V M Pancholi and Justice R Mahadevan — applied the basic legal mind of a law graduate, they would have forthwith declared the centralisation of the control of the website, ECINET, for addition and deletion of names by Gyanesh Kumar as void.
After all, Section 22 of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1950 stipulates that only Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) of a specific assembly constituency (usually the Sub Divisional Magistrate of the area) is designated as the sole legal authority to maintain and correct the voter list, either through formal voter application or through suo motu action on the basis of proper verification.
However, without the amendments to the People’s Representation Act, Gyanesh Kumar mandated the IT department to centralise the digital architecture so that the EROs could not add or delete names. As a result, hundreds of EROs officially complained that they were shut out from accessing the software and, therefore, and they could not add eligible names or delete the ineligible ones.
Who then carried out the lakhs of deletions?
As are the widespread speculations, the en masse deletions were allegedly carried out by either Amit Shah’s Home Ministry or the BJP’s IT cell -- all in the name of the Election Commission!
Surely, this was an open-and-shut case. It was a patently illegal act by Gyanesh Kumar to arrogate onto himself the power which had been constitutionally assigned to the EROs. The CJI-led Supreme Court bench made appropriate noises about the subversion of the constitutional mandate, but refused to give the ruling to resurrect the constitutional process, letting Gyanesh Kumar have a free run to rig the electoral outcome. That raises serious questions on the integrity of some of the senior most judges of our highest judiciary.
Ritika Chopra’s stellar investigation may have directly exposed the dark underbelly of Gyanesh Kumar’s illegal subversions of the electoral process backed by the Modi-Shah apparatus, but it is also an indirect indictment of the Indian judiciary. It’s not enough if Gyanesh Kumar goes and is punished for treason; it’s time some of the top judges are made accountable, for their brazen acts of omission and commission.
NR Mohanty is a seasoned journalist, commentator and academic. He is former Resident Editor, Hindustan Times and The Times of India (Patna Edition) and former Director, Jagran Institute of Management and Mass Communication (JIMMC).