Listen to Kanta Prasad, Kunne Lal, Waheed and N. Sridhar on why Gyanesh Kumar must go

• Voters declared ‘dead’ by SIR walked in to show they are alive 

• Even after the ‘dead voters’ were paraded in Bijapur, the names were not restored 

• Anita Jaiswal, who arrived in Delhi in 2003 and has been voting since 2012, wants to know why her right has been taken away

"Why are we sitting in a garden, impeaching Gyanesh Kumar?" Posing the question, Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi offered the answer too, asserting that it was because other institutions had shut the doors on the proceeding.

Yes, a day before a 'public impeachment' of the chief election commissioner was held on the lawns at the residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Union home minister Amit Shah declared that the government was ready to convene a special session of Parliament to discuss the controversial SIR (special intensive revision) of electoral rolls. However, the government had not agreed to discuss the impeachment of Gyanesh Kumar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla did not accept the notice of impeachment when it was submitted during the monsoon session. Nor did he reject it. 

Two ‘dead’ voters appeared at the public impeachment on Saturday, 31 October. “He spoke very convincingly for a corpse," quipped Congress MP Shashi Tharoor while sharing a photograph of Kanta Prasad, declared dead by the SIR. Neither Tharoor nor fellow MP Mahua Moitra let go of the opportunity to get themselves photographed with another ‘dead voter’ Kunne Lal, a resident of Lal Gumbad, a slum in Delhi. No BLO ever visited him, he claimed, before he was declared dead. 

There was Waheed from Bijapur in Karnataka. He passionately declared that BJP MLA Basant Gowda Patil had no right to continue as a legislator because he had held a press briefing where he released a list of voters and produced their ‘death certificates’ while demanding that they be dropped from the electoral roll. Waheed claimed that he had produced the voters before the deputy commissioner and produced documents to prove that they were all alive. Yet, their names were not restored in Karnataka’s final list. 

He was followed by N. Sridhar, a civil society activist from Karnataka. He and his colleagues, including film actor Prakash Raj, had selected 100 random polling booths and visited voters from house to house. They had produced documents with testimonies that hundreds of voters were wrongfully dropped from the rolls under SIR. Although the list was produced at the stage of the draft roll, the names were still missing in the final roll, he maintained. 

Both Karnataka state and Bengaluru city, he pointed out, drew lakhs of migrants and the adult population of Karnataka is said to be 5.02 crore. But the final post-SIR list puts the number of voters at 4.02 crore. As many as 43 per cent voters in Bengaluru have disappeared, he maintained and asked how it was even possible in a growing city.  

Activist and former psephologist Yogendra Yadav pointed out that in 2025, India’s adult population was pegged by the government at 101 crore and the number of voters at 99 crore. By December 2026, the adult population is projected to be 103 crore but post-SIR, the number of voters will be 88 crore. As many as 15 crore voters will be missing. What is more, before SIR, the gender ratio of voters was 953 but SIR has brought down the ratio to 939. In other words, he said, as many as 49 lakh women voters are now missing from the electoral rolls.  

The Election Commission, he said, had also wronged Muslims by demonising them as infiltrators and foreigners. The SIR exercise, however, has revealed only 1,600 foreigners in six states, most of them Hindus from Nepal.     

Anita Jaiswal, a daily wage earner and single mother in Delhi, deposed that she arrived in Delhi in 2003 and had been voting in elections since 2012. She held up her voter ID and said, "From 2012 to 2025, I voted in every election. My vote made MPs and ministers; but one day at a cyber cafe, I found out that my voter ID was deleted. Who gave you the right to delete it? You can't give me a job, can't give me a house. Then who gave you the right to take my right to vote away?"  

Her court case, her bank account, her daughter's scholarship, all built around that voter ID had been wiped out; and she is now expected to forgo wages to stand in queues and fill up ‘Form 6’ to register as a new voter. 

Supreme Court lawyer Shahrukh Alam in her brief intervention said she felt SIR was an assault on her dignity as a citizen, as a woman and as a Muslim. She found it appalling that people are not consulted before deciding on policies that impact their lives. She would like to know as a citizen why SIR was initiated and what was the need for the exercise. The courts have been telling citizens to trust institutions, to fill up forms, and appeal if not satisfied. But nobody is saying who will pay for lost man-hours and productivity, and indeed, lost wages. 

Listening to others arguing that Gyanesh Kumar must go, she said, she was wondering if there was any reason why Gyanesh Kumar must stay. She had not found a single good reason for the CEC to continue in office.  

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, who presided over the public impeachment, in her concluding remarks said, “I am overwhelmed. In my long political career, and as Lok Sabha Speaker for five years, I have never attended a meeting like this." Complimenting the organisers, she extended her support to the pressure being mounted by people on public institutions.