The joint Opposition rally of November 1 marks a turning point in the agitation for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, and more significantly against those seen as his political masters who have worked to enable and protect him. At this stage, the Opposition can no longer work within the framework of the Election Commission (EC) as it stands today without risking a total loss of credibility in its agitation against the CEC.
With elections due in Uttar Pradesh and four other states in early 2027, the choice is stark. Either the government finds a way to replace the CEC, at immeasurable loss of face after having defended him more than he has defended himself, or the Opposition stays away from elections conducted under him. That second option is no longer hypothetical: many voices have already called for a boycott if Kumar holds on.
If the Opposition contests while denouncing the electoral process, it lends legitimacy to what it has declared compromised. If it boycotts, the elections become a farce, handing the ruling party a walkover. There is no face-saving middle ground. This is a dangerous slide in political engagement and a do-or-die moment in national politics. Either way, the government is caught in a trap of its own making, and the Opposition is locked into a fight it cannot stand down from.
It need not have been this way. The simplest course was to keep some distance from the CEC and his indefensible conduct in presiding over large-scale vote deletions under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls. The trouble with the rolls did not begin with Kumar – the Opposition’s charges go back to the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra elections –but once smaller irregularities went through, the slope grew more slippery. Large-scale deletions have left inevitable track marks.
With protests gathering pace, the government’s response has been a rerun of its old playbook: self-righteous protestation and shouting matches meant to crowd out the Opposition’s voice. But the more the ruling party plays this hand, the more it is seen as one with the CEC. And the more it is seen as one with the CEC, the more questions arise about its electoral victories in the states and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. That allowed Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi to call the last elections “illegal” at the rally and charge the CEC with treason. It is the government’s closeness to the CEC that makes such charges land.
The ruling party has had little to say on central questions. Its leaders have instead questioned the size of the rally and complained that its timing disrupted Diwali shopping – a desperate search to divert attention. The reality is that the November 1 rally, headlined ‘Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao’, generated genuine energy and was among the largest the capital has seen recently.
Beyond Ramlila Maidan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being mocked across social media. What took ten years and untold resources to build – a carefully curated image – is collapsing at lightning pace over ‘vote chori’. The Prime Minister and his PR team must wonder how this came to be. Part of the answer lies in their own method. Many once held up the megaphone mode of communication as a template for all seasons. It should be painfully evident now that brute force makes for bad communications. Dominating the landscape, monopolising conversation, and overplaying rhetoric may win short-haul headlines, but they build nothing lasting.
The larger lesson is about India itself. A Pew Research Centre survey released in early 2024 found that 85% of Indians surveyed favoured rule by a strong leader or the military, the highest share among 24 countries studied. Two in three backed a strong leader making decisions without interference from Parliament or courts. By that measure, a strong-leader image should have been unassailable. Modi should be riding high; he is instead being pulled down.
Why has this come to pass? It has been argued that Congress lost power after the Emergency not because constitutional guarantees were suspended but because of the excesses of target-driven population control and sterilisation camps. On this view, democracy matters far less to ordinary citizens than commonly assumed. Yet the ‘vote chori’ agitation tells the story of a completely different India.
Indians may admire a strong hand in the abstract, but rights as they play out in everyday life matter deeply. A vote is seen as an invitation to participate in the democratic process. Over decades, electoral officers came to doorsteps to enrol new voters. Never before have names been struck off as easily as under the SIR. The SIR generated a widespread sense of fear; the invitation turned into a threat. Free and fair elections matter, and while Indians may complain about the process, they will rise to fight when the system itself is tampered with to grab and retain power.
Yet the nation must prepare for difficult times. The signs of a tightening grip are visible: social media posts taken down, people stopped from reaching protests, heavy police deployment, and Jantar Mantar de-notified as a protest site during the agitation. Equally, the protests will not be easily silenced. What new strains will emerge, and what toll they will take, is not yet clear. But the coming together of the Opposition and the resolve of citizens to defend their vote offers hope amid gloom this festival season.
The Billion Press
(Jagdish Rattanani is a
journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR. Views are personal.)
