Impeach CEC to Protect India’s Electoral Integrity

Adv. Sharfuddin Ahmad, National Vice President, Social Democratic Party of India rejects the Election Commission of India’s repeated claims of combating “vote theft” through deletion of so-called fake or duplicate voters. Far from protecting democracy, the Commission has enabled systematic disenfranchisement of genuine citizens while shielding the very fraud it claims to oppose.

During his August 17 remarks, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar asserted that the removal of 65 lakh voters in Bihar—8.3% of the state’s electorate—was merely a cleansing exercise to protect electoral integrity. This explanation collapses under scrutiny. 2.11 lakh voters were declared “deceased” in a single day, and 15 lakh were marked “shifted” in just three days, without verifiable ground surveys or Aadhaar-linked checks. Such arbitrary deletions disproportionately targeted Muslim, Dalit, and migrant populations in districts like Gopalganj (15.1% deletions) and Kishanganj (11.8%), constituencies traditionally resistant to BJP’s dominance.

The ECI’s narrative of “vote theft prevention” is further discredited when placed against the experience of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Opposition parties across states reported mass disappearances of voters from electoral rolls, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Telangana. Independent monitors documented booths where turnouts approached 100% with more than 90% votes cast for BJP candidates, raising serious questions of inflated or manipulated rolls. Yet the ECI refused to act, dismissing objections as baseless while threatening opposition leaders such as Rahul Gandhi for exposing “vote chori.”

This selective posture exposes a grave truth: while the ECI claims to combat fake voters, it has in fact overseen vote theft by omission—through mass disenfranchisement—and by commission—through failure to investigate inflated turnouts and booth-level fraud. Instead of ensuring fairness, the Commission has institutionalized bias. Its silence on documented irregularities in 2024 stands in stark contrast to its hyperactive defense of the Modi regime’s narrative in 2025.

The replacement of machine-readable voter lists with blurred, unsearchable PDFs on August 9, 2025, following Rahul Gandhi’s allegations, only reinforces the impression of a cover-up. Coupled with the underuse of technical safeguards like the De-duplication Software Engine (DSE) and Photo Similarity Engine (PSE), the Commission’s approach reeks of deliberate complicity rather than administrative error.

The SDPI demands an independent forensic audit of Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision, immediate restoration of wrongfully deleted names, and a parliamentary inquiry into the ECI’s role in enabling electoral malpractice both in Bihar 2025 and the Lok Sabha elections of 2024. We stand with the INDIA bloc’s motion seeking the impeachment of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, whose conduct has rendered the ECI indistinguishable from a political wing of the BJP.

India’s democracy cannot endure if the very guardian of free elections becomes its saboteur. The ECI must be reclaimed for the Constitution, not left to serve as a weapon of authoritarian rule.