The Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance’s symbolic “public impeachment” of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Saturday (October 31, 2026) featured accounts from voters who alleged that their names had been deleted from electoral rolls during the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise.
She said she had voted in every election between 2012 and 2025 but was now being asked to establish her citizenship. ALSO WATCH Rahul Gandhi: Deletion of 1 in 7 voters makes 2024 election ‘illegitimate’ | INDIA bloc RTI activist Anjali Bharadwaj said that in response to an application seeking copies of files recording the decision-making process behind the SIR, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had replied that no such file existed. Nikhil Dey, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, who has been working with affected voters, introduced Kanta Prasad, who had been declared dead in the exercise.
Because of a mapping discrepancy, iftikar Ahmed, another voter from Kolkata, said he had voted in the same Chowrangee constituency for 20 years but received a notice during the SIR hearing seeking documents. Among them was Anita Jaiswal, who moved from Kolkata to Delhi. “He spoke very convincingly for a corpse! The deprivation of the right to vote is a crime against the Constitution and a blot on our democracy. All India Students’ Association (AISA) national president Neha Bora alleged that the SIR was a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise young voters and undermine democracy.
His father, too, had been voting from the same address for two decades, he said. “Our names have been removed in a planned manner,” he alleged. There must be accountability,” Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said in a post on X. Questioning the functioning of electoral registration officers (EROs), she said their statutory authority was being overridden through the use of software to exclude eligible voters. “You have abused your public office and favoured one political party,” she alleged.
