New Delhi, November 1: Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi told the INDIA bloc's rally at Ramlila Maidan on Sunday that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar would be removed from his post and jailed, accusing him of facilitating alleged vote theft in the country, ANI reported.
Source: ANI via SahilOnline
"Listen to me. What I say always turns out to be true, doesn't it? I am telling every citizen and every youth of India: Gyanesh Kumar will be removed from the post of Chief Election Commissioner. Gyanesh Kumar will go to jail. Without Gyanesh Kumar, neither Narendra Modi would have become Prime Minister nor Amit Shah would have become Home Minister," Gandhi said, according to ANI.
The speech came hours after opposition leaders and thousands of supporters marched from Minto Road to Ramlila Maidan demanding Kumar's resignation over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Read: Thousands march to Ramlila Maidan as 'Chalo Dilli' rally demands election chief's resignation
Gandhi alleged that vote theft had taken place in several Assembly elections and in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, claiming votes were manipulated through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and by deleting and adding names to voter lists, ANI reported. "For years, vote theft has been happening in this country. Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections: in all these elections, vote theft has occurred," he said. These are the opposition's allegations; no court has upheld them.
Nation Press reported that Gandhi described the alleged theft as a 'rarest of rare' offence and said what Kumar had allegedly done for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah "amounts to treason and theft of the voice of every citizen". Gandhi further claimed that 15 per cent of India's voters were removed from electoral rolls after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, ANI reported, while in the same speech he put the figure at 13.5 crore names, Nation Press reported. The bloc's own charge sheet read out a day earlier used a figure of 13.2 crore — the opposition's numbers differ between documents and speeches and have not been independently verified.
Source: Nation Press
Other bloc leaders spoke in the same vein. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee mocked Kumar as "Vanish Kumar" in a nursery-rhyme passage accusing him of rigging elections, The Daily Jagran reported, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra named Kumar and the other two Election Commissioners, saying they would one day have to answer for taking away people's votes, The Indian Post Live reported. Gandhi also raised farmers, youth and labourers, alleging they were being denied their rights while the country's wealth was concentrated in a few hands, ANI reported, and closed by reviving his 'Mohabbat ki Dukan' phrase.
The Election Commission rejects all of this. It says the SIR orders were unanimous, has denied the opposition's allegations, and has described SIR as a regular practice carried out eight times since independence, The Indian Post Live reported. BJP leaders have called the opposition's symbolic 'public impeachment' of Kumar a drama, argued the revision is needed to identify illegal immigrants on the rolls, criticised the choice of November 1 — the anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi — as hurting survivors, and held a counter-rally in west Delhi the same day, the report said.
Source: The Indian Post Live
Under the Constitution, removing a Chief Election Commissioner requires a parliamentary process similar to removing a Supreme Court judge, with large majorities the opposition does not currently have — so Sunday's vow is a political pledge, not a step that has been set in motion. Whether the Commission has to answer in court or only in the street remains open.