The rot started with the 2023 Act on the appointment of Election Commissioners, which struck at the heart of the idea of a neutral Election Commission. The freedom given to the government of the day to choose a subservient Election Commission, and the lifelong immunity granted to the Election Commissioners that places them above the ambit of law, cemented an evil nexus between the government and the ECI. The ECI sheds every semblance of neutrality, transparency and accountability to favour the BJP, and the BJP in turn defends the CEC to the hilt. The Indian Express report exposed the arbitrary and unilateral functioning of the CEC, the marginalisation of the other Election Commissioners within the ECI, and the blatant centralisation of control and software manipulation in the name of cleaning up the electoral roll through the SIR. An ECI note now admits that the CEC had been acting unilaterally, with the Commission not even holding meetings with any formal record of agenda and minutes. Decisions taken in the name of the SIR therefore have no sanctity, and elections held on the basis of a doctored electoral roll by an EC functioning in such an arbitrary and opaque manner naturally lose credibility and legitimacy.
The Story of Two Forms
Nowhere is the institutionalised nature of the fraud clearer than in the way two forms, Form 6 and Form 7, have been weaponised by the BJP and the ECI to effect mass exclusion and selective inclusion of names in the electoral roll. The changes made in Form 6 have been exposed as arbitrary, unauthorised and illegal, since altering the clauses of the form is the exclusive prerogative of Parliament. The EC has now withdrawn the controversial clauses without any explanation. Its attempt to claim Supreme Court approval for the changes has been refuted by CJI Suryakant himself, exposing the EC’s lie. The changes were clearly designed to obstruct the inclusion of Gen Z voters in the electoral roll. The ECI has also misused Form 6, which is meant to be an entry route for first-time voters with a legally verifiable undertaking, by forcing excluded voters to fill it up for re-entry into the roll. This is patently illegal, and despite objections from day one the ECI has persisted with the malpractice.
More sinister has been the industrial-scale misuse of Form 7 to exclude eligible voters. There have been multiple reports of confiscation of bundles of pre-filled Form 7 targeted mostly against Muslim voters and voters likely to vote against the BJP and its allies. Wherever voters are excluded on the basis of complaints filed through Form 7, they must receive proper notices and opportunities to answer them, but this is hardly the experience of those who have been victims of mass exclusion. The most shocking pattern of targeting and victimisation has been witnessed in West Bengal. Retired Justice Indrajit Chatterjee, who has now resigned as chair of Appellate Tribunal 11, has revealed that as many as 2.54 lakh Form 7 appeals were filed before his tribunal by none other than the Additional Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, seeking exclusion of voters who had been found eligible even by judicial officers. According to the Indian Express report, Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu complained that neither he nor his fellow Election Commissioner Vivek Joshi, nor the CEO of West Bengal, had any idea about the origin or authorisation of 16,10,311 exclusion appeals before the 19 West Bengal tribunals.
Supreme Court, an Ally?
The Supreme Court, which could and should have restrained the Election Commission, has instead played a shockingly irresponsible role, showing no concern for the voting right of adversely affected electors. When millions of voters held eligible by judicial officers were referred to tribunals in West Bengal, and it became clear that the tribunals would take years to decide on the appeals, the Court did not uphold the voting right of these voters during the pendency of the appeals. It downplayed the denial of vote as only a temporary loss of right. Ahead of the forthcoming bypolls to Nandigram and Rezinagar, the Court has again trivialised the denial of vote to more than 18,000 voters whose appeals are pending before the tribunals, as though the right to vote in bypolls were dispensable. The institutional architecture of India’s parliamentary democracy, the doctrine of separation of powers and the system of checks and balances that have been central to the survival of democracy in post-colonial India, are facing their gravest test. A meeting proposed for October 6th between the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the One Nation, One Election bills and the Supreme Court would have been a shocking instance of blurring the boundaries between legislature and judiciary. It has just been shelved. With so little institutional support, the survival of democracy in India now depends almost entirely on the maturity and alertness of the people of India, and on the non-BJP political spectrum, civil society and alternative media they can count on at this critical juncture.
Too Little, Too Late
It is in this context that the ECI has suddenly woken up to the reality of mass exclusion. Now that the whole country is talking about the disenfranchisement of more than 130 million voters, the Commission issued a circular on October 1st asking all CEOs to reach out to all ‘left-out’ voters within one month. Similar circulars have since been issued in almost all SIR-bound and post-SIR states. The term ‘left-out’ is actually a euphemism for arbitrary and targeted exclusion, designed to tilt the electoral balance in favour of the BJP and its allies. Even as the EC was issuing its circular, activists of CPI(ML) were holding a public hearing of excluded voters in Patna. Between June and September, party activists had carried out a door-to-door verification survey in fifty select booths across ten of the twenty constituencies contested by the party in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections. They did precisely what the EC has now asked BLOs to do, identifying excluded voters by comparing the post-SIR electoral roll with the pre-SIR June 2025 roll. The survey revealed a shocking wrongful deletion rate of 17 percent. Every circular now being issued by the ECI only testifies to the massive institutionalised fraud inflicted on India’s electoral democracy and on the fundamental principle of universal adult franchise through the unconstitutional SIR drive.
The official response is too little, too late. The CEO of Delhi announced the resolution of around 20 lakh out of 33 lakh ‘disputed’ cases and asked Delhi voters to feel free to contact any of the 14,947 BLOs, 902 AEROs, 70 EROs, 13 DEOs or the CEO for redressal of grievances. Such announcements do not answer any of the questions concerning the unwarranted centralisation of powers within the ECI, the wrongful targeted exclusion of voters, and the impact of that exclusion, both in immediate electoral terms and in the loss of rights and security of every affected voter. The Commission’s own 26 September press note, issued amid the ‘crisis management’ and ‘damage control’ that followed the Indian Express revelations, amounts to an effective admission of guilt. Gyanesh Kumar has clearly lost every right to continue as CEC.
The Message from Delhi of October 12, 2026
The protests that began with the launch of SIR in Bihar on June 25th, 2025 gathered renewed momentum after the Indian Express report of September 2026, and have since reached a decisive phase. Never before in independent India has Gandhi Jayanti been celebrated as a day of protest by the people on this scale and in this manner this year. The legacy of Gandhi, the iconic leader who epitomised the power of peaceful mass protest by common unarmed people, came truly alive across India on his 157th birth anniversary. Scenes of hundreds of student activists and other citizens defying the massive, intimidating deployment of security forces around a fortified Jantar Mantar in Delhi, being repeatedly and brutally arrested and escaping from police buses to rejoin the protest, or of an entire crowd collectively singing the national anthem in Mumbai, will remain etched in our memory for years. While the protesting people invoked the Gandhian legacy, the government of the day resurrected the colonial model of governance by brute force. Defying the sealing of Jantar Mantar, the closing of metro stations, an unprecedented deployment of security forces and vicious violence meted out by police, paramilitary forces and state-sponsored goon squads, Delhi has since September 25th been relentless in raising the demand for the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the scrapping of SIR and the repeal of the 2023 Act. The Supreme Court, which has done so little to protect the franchise, did at least caution the government against unleashing heavy-handed repression on peaceful protests. The government still refuses to mend its ways, and on October 12th thousands marched from the Constitution Club to the Supreme Court.
That march signalled glimpses of the hitherto untapped potential of a united mass awakening against the fascist Modi-Shah regime. When Delhi saw the remarkable Shaheen Bagh protests of 2019-20 against discriminatory amendments to the citizenship law, it remained predominantly a civil society affair, with the non-Left opposition mostly staying away. When the farmers’ movement began at the end of November 2020, Delhi responded in a bigger way, but the non-Left opposition again stayed away. Early this year, unprecedented workers’ protests erupted around Delhi against the backdrop of the Iran war and a massive hike in the price of cooking gas, but there was little social support for the plight of the workers. Then came the Jantar Mantar protests of June and July. The demand for the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan became a rallying point for the larger student community and struck a chord with the entire youth. Large sections of the Left student movement and progressive civil society led and nurtured those protests, but major sections of the INDIA bloc remained somewhat aloof. It was the brutal crackdown of July 20th that triggered a bigger countrywide upheaval, with more and more parties getting directly involved, and the regime had no option but to dump Dharmendra Pradhan. The cumulative experience of the SIR assault and the growing loss of credibility of the ECI, especially of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, has now brought the country to the point of a decisive showdown. This time, the broader political opposition, civil society and the people’s movement on the ground all seem to be converging. The belated September 30th meeting of the INDIA bloc and the growing assertion of Left student activists, other Gen Z protesters, progressive citizens, alternative media activists and the non-NDA opposition parties signal the hope of a determined democratic turnaround, breaking the fascist stranglehold.
Brute Force of the System
How is the system responding? It is increasingly using brute force, but on October 12th, when people came out in such large numbers, the police had to take a step back and allow the march to happen. At the same time, the Police Commissioner of Delhi issued an order de-notifying Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site and notifying new sites miles away from the heart of the city. Ramlila Ground will of course still be available, but half the time it remains booked for religious functions and other festivities. For the remaining quarter of 2026 it is reportedly available only on December 29th, 30th and 31st, at a daily fee of Rs. 1.21 lakh. There can be no going back on free sites like Jantar Mantar for peaceful public protest. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s advice against disproportionate force and for respecting the constitutional right to peaceful protest has been treated with utter disdain by the Delhi Police. A contempt petition is now before the Court, and it remains to be seen how serious the apex court is about getting its own orders upheld.
While the systemic assault emerges from the fascist agenda of the RSS and the BJP, it encompasses even states where the BJP may be currently out of power. On the very day the people of Delhi seemed to be reclaiming their streets, ‘My Vote, My Right’ campaigners in Bengaluru were being subjected to brutal police repression and humiliation. States ruled by the Congress or other non-BJP parties cannot let the police treat protesters with the kind of brutality that defines BJP rule in the so-called ‘double engine’ states.
Clear Demand to Save Democracy
The demands before the country are therefore clear. Gyanesh Kumar must be removed from office and prosecuted for the crime of undermining the Constitution and the electoral system of India, a demand now being raised from all corners of the country. The SIR must be scrapped and the damage undone. The voting right of every wrongfully excluded voter must be restored unconditionally and without delay. The rights of Electoral Registration Officers must be restored, and the centralisation injected into the preparation of electoral rolls through the digital route must be undone. Democracy demands fresh elections in all states and constituencies where the polls have been subverted by the SIR and dubious changes in the electoral roll since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The 2023 Election Commissioners Appointment Act, including the provision of immunity for Election Commissioners, must be repealed, and in consonance with the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Election Commission, there must be a constitutional guarantee for the autonomy, neutrality and accountability of the ECI. There is no corruption bigger than electoral fraud. The absence of any fear of losing an election, and insulation from every grievance, anger and protest of the people, have made the BJP governments all the more arrogant and dictatorial. India must rise in unison to end the subversion of democracy by the Modi-Shah-Gyanesh Kumar nexus.
The message of October 12th for ‘We, the People of India’ is loud and clear. Like the July 20th Parliament March, the October 12th Supreme Court March has pushed the regime back, but for a decisive defeat of the fascist design we will need to deliver many more such blows and demonstrate still bigger unity and power of resistance. More power to the people, more victories to their united and determined struggles!
