Gyanesh Kumar row: How BJP is mounting a counter-offensive against Opposition’s Election Commission attack

Congress workers staged protests against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar at every district headquarters in Uttar Pradesh on Monday, the party said in a statement.

In Agra, Congress workers smeared black ink on the parental house of Gyanesh Kumar. The protestors wrote ‘Vote Chor’ on the gate of the house.

A group of protestors from Congress reached the house in early hours on Monday and raised slogans against Kumar whose family resides here in Vijay Nagar colony in Agra. The defacement on the gate was later cleared.

Hundreds of workers and supporters participated in the protest organised by the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee demanding the dismissal and arrest of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, in Bengaluru on Saturday, 26 September.

Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai, speaking on the occasion of leaders and workers from various parties joining the Congress, said that following directives from the All India Congress Committee, protests against the CEC would be held at every district headquarters in the state on Monday.

Why is CEC Gyanesh Kumar under attack?

Gyanesh Kumar has come under attack from the opposition after a news report claimed that he ignored objections raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi on 14 occasions in 10 months over decisions and orders related to the SIR exercise.

The news report by Indian Express triggered a political firestorm, with the Opposition parties attacking the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, and demanding his arrest and criminal prosecution.

The Election Commission has in its response maintained that differing views and observations are a normal part of institutional deliberations, asserting that its orders have full legal sanction and follow statutory procedures.

Kumar, a 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of the Kerala cadre, was appointed as the election commissioner on March 15, 2024, following his retirement. He later took charge as the 26th Chief Election Commissioner on February 19, 2025.

BJP fields prominent CMs to defend Gyanesh Kumar

The Bharatiya Janata Party (VJP) on Sunday fielded its prominent chief ministers against Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and the INDIA bloc to counter “baseless allegations” questioning the impartiality of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and expose their “conspiracy to malign the country’s constitutional institutions”.

The BJP said that despite the ECI’s “point-by-point and fact-based clarification on all the fabricated allegations levelled by the Opposition”, the Congress and its allies, “frustrated by their repeated electoral defeats, remain determined to undermine constitutional propriety in an attempt to conceal their failures”.

The ruling party said that over one crore duplicate entries and 2.8 crore names of deceased voters were removed from electoral rolls across states and UTs under the SIR exercise, and “those who benefited from dirty rolls are now crying foul”.

Who benefited from keeping these duplicate names on the rolls? If there was nothing to hide, why the panic over cleaning up voter lists?” the BJP said in a post on its X handle.

Rahul Gandhi on 24 September said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar were ‘deshdrohis’ (traitors) as they ‘destroyed’ India’s vote.

The leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha reiterated his demand seeking the immediate resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India. Rahul Gandhi also suggested that Kumar should turn approver, as that would be an act of nationalism.

Adhikari mounts a strong defence

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari mounted a strong defence of the Election Commission , blaming former CM Mamata Banerjee for the deletion of 27 lakh names and asserting that neither the BJP nor the poll panel could be held responsible for the exclusions.

Addressing a press conference here, Adhikari also seized on Saturday’s meeting of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, saying that their meeting and the subsequent statement issued by the poll panel made it clear that SIR-related decisions were not taken unilaterally by the CEC.

Showing a photograph of the CEC and the two election commissioners sitting together, as released by the poll panel a day ago, the BJP leader said the meeting of the three proved that the decisions were taken collectively.

“Those who are unable to mentally accept the BJP’s victory in Bengal are trying to spread confusion by clinging to a fabricated report. This picture itself proves that every decision relating to the SIR was taken jointly and unanimously. There is no question of anyone imposing a decision unilaterally,” Adhikari said.

What did Yogi Adityanath say?

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath accused the Congress and its allies of weakening democratic institutions for political interests and said they should apologise to the nation for their criticism of the ECI and the SIR. Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said the Opposition was raising a “false alarm” over SIR.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said: “No votes have been stolen; Rahul Gandhi’s mind has been stolen.” He said the LoP wants to “malign institutions under the guise of defending the Constitution and create anarchy in the country so that people lose faith in the system and the country can be pushed towards communist ideology”.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma described the INDIA bloc as an “alliance of defeated people”.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, also joined the league of chief ministers to come in defence of Election Commission of India.

Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel accused the Congress of having “double standards”.

“Whenever they win elections, they talk about the victory of democracy and neutrality of the EC, but when the mandate goes to the BJP, they start singing false tunes of vote chori and irregularities,” he said.

Apart from these statements, teh BJP is learnt to be launching a counter offensive against the Opposition’s allegations against Election Commission of India. The saffron party does not want the issue to set off protests and campaigns like it happened preceding the recall of the farm laws, against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and more recently, over exam paper leaks, Hindustan Times said in a report quoting people aware of the details.

A section within the BJP fears that the narrative could have a wider resonance on the ground, others feel that the attempt to discredit the poll panel, with the mandate to conduct assembly and general elections, will have no adverse impact on the BJP’s electoral fortunes as was reflected after the Bihar state polls last year, HT report said.

The issue was raised by the opposition in the state, but the BJP-JDU combine swept the polls winning 174 of the 243 seats and the opposition had just 35.

“Rahul Gandhi and Tejasvi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal undertook a 1,300 km yatra across 25 districts and alleged that 6.5 million voters were impacted by the SIR…We saw how the Congress and the RJD were routed in the polls. Had the allegations been true, people would have come out in protest,” a senior BJP leader who was part of the Bihar campaign was quoted as saying bt HT.

BJP does not want to take chances

But the party, as perthe report, does not want to take chances since it does not want people to take to the streets as they did during the year-long protest in 2020 over the three farm laws; the sit-in over CAA that went on for over three months and the recent students’ protest led by the Cockroach Janata Party over paper leaks that led to the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The Cockroach Janta Party has said that it will launch a nationwide protest from Mumbai on October 2 if Gyanesh Kumar does not step down as the Chief Election Commissioner.

“If Gyanesh Kumar does not resign by tomorrow, CJP will begin its nationwide protest from Mumbai on 2 October, and take it to cities across India,” CJP national convener Abhijeet Dipke posted on Twitter last week.