While much has been written about the procedural deviations committed by the EC in implementing SIR, key questions remain regarding the larger strategy
The Cockroach Janta Party, an inadvertent creation of the head of the highest judiciary, has announced a nationwide agitation starting October 10. The protest will launch from the same site that served as the battleground for a restive Gen Z barely three months ago – an agitation that forced the government to sacrifice its Education Minister over paper leaks and systemic failures in education. This will be Jantar Mantar 2.0, demanding the ouster of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for allegedly disenfranchising 13.4 crore voters across 30 states and Union territories through the dubious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, which the party claims lacks constitutional sanction.
Party founder Abhijit Dipke declared that once the CEC goes, it will be the Prime Minister’s turn. This is an ominous warning for an establishment already smarting under attacks from activists, civil society bodies, the Opposition combine and diverse sectoral groups. These factions demand that the Election Commission in its present form be disbanded, that all elections held after the SIR came into operation be countermanded and that Gyanesh Kumar be tried as a common criminal for allegedly rigging elections massively in favour of the ruling party.
The 157th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi saw protest movements erupt in various cities, notably at Shivaji Park in Mumbai and Jantar Mantar in Delhi. At both locations, the protests were suppressed with a heavy hand by local police and the CRPF, bringing back the agitation-atrocity syndrome seen earlier in July.
While much has been written about the procedural deviations committed by the Election Commission in implementing the SIR, key questions remain regarding the larger strategy behind these actions. Consider the procedural shifts: the composition of the three-member committee selecting the CEC and two ECs was altered through an amendment passed by voice vote without Opposition members present. This process heavily favoured the government while granting lifelong immunity to election officials for actions taken in the discharge of their duties.
Furthermore, public disclosures reveal that the two ECs formally disagreed 14 times over a ten-month period, only to later join the CEC at a press conference claiming all decisions were unanimous. Most surprisingly, the government itself answered on behalf of the Election Commission and took steps to rectify administrative issues in the Commission’s name.
When key state institutions are compromised, democracy suffers, forcing citizens to take to the streets. The disclosures regarding Form 6 and Form 7 additions, deletions and alterations reveal these changes were carried out arbitrarily through ECI Net rather than by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), seemingly targeting a particular community. Throughout this, the CEC functioned unilaterally despite objections from the other two ECs, violating the norm that majority views prevail in disputes. Who benefits from this systematic exclusion when the Constitution mandates universal adult franchise and the principle of one person, one vote?
This exercise appears linked to a broader plan for a National Register of Citizens, creating a system of mass disenfranchisement. This structure yields two categories: those who can vote (endorsed as citizens by the Supreme Court) and those who cannot (rendered non-citizens). This dynamic connects directly to the project of ‘One Nation, One Election,’ filtering out non-citizens to complete a process of political re-engineering and aiding delimitation efforts to carve out favourable territories for the party in power.
For the last two years, allegations of vote tampering have entered mainstream political discourse, amplified by the Congress party and key Opposition factions questioning the ruling party’s electoral victories in Bihar, Haryana, Maharashtra and West Bengal. Why would a party enjoying untrammeled power at the Centre for over 12 years stoop to disregarding the popular mandate?
With persistent unemployment, rising inequality and the concentration of state resources among select corporates, the government’s performance is viewed negatively by large sections of the electorate. For millions of poor, uneducated and marginalised citizens, including migrant labourers, the right to vote remains their fundamental lever of influence. Consequently, the exposure of mass voter deletions across multiple states has enraged broad segments of society, creating a volatile domestic situation where force no longer suffices to contain public outrage.
The judiciary’s role in this crisis has been largely disappointing. The Supreme Court’s failure to take suo motu cognisance of the issue as public unrest grows remains a point of concern. This erosion of process carries significant implications for the global standing of the world’s largest democracy.
In ‘How Democracies Die’, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt note that modern democracies frequently collapse not at the hands of military generals, but through elected leaders who subvert the systems that brought them to power. The tragedy of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s tools are used subtly and legally to weaken its own core foundations.
The birth of the republic heralded a new age for emerging democracies across the Global South. Today, the nation faces a critical juncture where its democratic foundations are being severely tested. As public dissatisfaction grows, state suppression of peaceful protest may represent a temporary check rather than a permanent resolution to deep-seated institutional challenges. The world continues to watch the unfolding events in Delhi.
The Billion Press
(Dr Malay Mishra is a retired diplomat, educator and political analyst. Views are personal.)
