New Delhi: Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Thursday gave Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar a 48-hour ultimatum to resign, accusing him of “rigging” the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to favour BJP.
The outfit warned that failure to meet its demands, which also include an immediate halt to further SIR-related exclusions, restoration of the Jan 2025 electoral rolls pending verification, and an independent investigation into decisions taken during the SIR exercise, would trigger a nationwide agitation followed by an indefinite sit-in in Delhi.
The outfit launched its nationwide ‘Election Commission Thik Karo’ campaign Thursday, taking on an investigation by a media house, which reported that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months to Election Commission of India ’s (ECI) decisions concerning voter additions and deletions, changes to Form 6, and centralisation of electoral-roll data. Addressing a press conference, CJP national convener Abhijeet Dipke and co-convenors Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka alleged that more than 13 crore names had been excluded from draft electoral rolls across 30 states and Union territories during the SIR exercise. The outfit said this amounted to around 13% to 14% of the country’s total electorate at the draft-roll stage.
The report claimed the two commissioners had described some steps as “unauthorised” and “illegal”.
The outfit also flagged the additional declaration introduced in online Form 6 for first-time voters. CJP said the reported objections raised questions over how decisions affecting voter registration, deletion and restoration were authorised, and demanded that ECI publicly explain how the objections were dealt with and who authorised the decisions in question. The investigation reported that applicants were required to answer a new question on whether their own, their parents’ or grandparents’ names appeared in the electoral rolls of the last SIR, despite the section not being formally marked mandatory.
Under Gyanesh Kumar, we are seeing an electoral system in which Election Commission is deciding who remains on the voter rolls and who does not,” Dipke said. “Democracy means people choose their govt. This is not democracy, this is autocracy. Sandhu and Joshi had reportedly objected to the change, describing it as unauthorised and illegal.