India | Marching separately for a common goal

On October 10, police forces arrested supporters of the opposition alliance “India Block” (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) in Srinagar, Kashmir. The protesters demanded the resignation of India's chief electoral officer Gyanesh Kumar; The background is suspected irregularities in the electoral rolls. Photo: AFP/Tauseef Mustafa Normally, the chairman of a national electoral commission is a public figure, but even in his own country he is not even necessarily known by name to many people. It's different in India: Many people have now heard of Gyanesh Kumar, at least peripherally.

Since the beginning of October, the mass protests calling for the resignation or formal removal of the controversial head of the Commission have not stopped - but rather have increased in intensity from week to week. Kumar is largely responsible for the removal of over 130 million names from the voter rolls in the world's most populous country. That is almost a tenth of the total population of 1.4 billion - and in proportion to a comparatively young population, as many are not yet 18, a far larger proportion is among those of actual voting age.

It's not just the sheer number of deletions from the lists that raises many critical questions. But even more so is the fact that in areas with a large proportion of Muslims, indigenous people and other minorities, significantly more people were removed in percentage terms.

This was particularly noticeable in April, among other things, in the regional elections in the state of West Bengal, which surprisingly won the Hindu nationalists of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with a two-thirds majority of seats. In many constituencies the result was extremely close - and would probably have been different, especially in those where many Muslims live, if so many names had not been deleted from the voter lists.

The established opposition parties and a growing extra-parliamentary movement accuse the authority of manipulating the voter lists on a large scale in favor of the ruling BJP in a completely non-transparent process.

In the capital Delhi, even after the draft of the new list, almost one in three people previously listed there as eligible to vote was removed. In West Bengal, 8.4 million names were lost, and in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh alone, 20.4 million names were lost.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), as the review process is officially called in 30 Union states and Union territories, which started in June 2025, is primarily intended to sort out deceased people and correct incorrect data, for example due to moves.

However, the established opposition parties and a growing extra-parliamentary movement accuse the authority of manipulating the voter lists on a large scale in favor of the ruling BJP in a completely non-transparent process. The electoral commission rejects the allegation. But the other two members have already publicly stated that they were not involved in various decisions made by Chairman Kumar, which actually require a documented majority vote from the trio.

On the street, the Cockroach People's Party (CJP), which was initially founded on the Internet and successfully forced the resignation of the former education minister in the Modi cabinet in July, has positioned itself at the head of the movement. It is supported primarily by student associations, but increasingly also by other parts of society.

At the same time, the opposition India Alliance, which brings together two dozen liberal, left-wing and regional parties under the leadership of the traditional Congress Party (INC), has been regularly calling for protests in various cities since the beginning of October. So far, the actions have been running parallel rather than together; despite the same goal, both are still keeping their distance.

The India Alliance actually wanted to hold an "impeachment" of Kumar in Delhi this Friday as a staged special parliamentary session with numerous opposition MPs. However, the weather initially put a damper on the plan: due to massive rainfall, the effects of Cyclone Arnab, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm, the action would be postponed at short notice by one day to Saturday, Rahul Gandhi announced on behalf of the INC and his allies.

In the past few days he had encouraged large numbers to take part in the second event, the “March on Delhi”, which ends on Sunday with a grand finale in the capital, without fear of the use of batons and other police violence. One million participants are expected. The rabid and even brutal actions of the security forces, even against media workers and parliamentarians, have further fueled the anger.

The central government, which has police jurisdiction in Delhi, has stationed hundreds of additional police officers in the capital for the weekend. But the critics are not impressed by this. The Cockroach People's Party also launched a "national campaign" a week ago to increase pressure on Modi to fire Kumar. It's not just about his resignation, but also about the withdrawal of a law that explicitly excludes members of the electoral commission from criminal prosecution for "official misconduct."

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