Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar should “firmly respond” to the Opposition’s allegations to ensure people do not lose trust in the electoral process, Union minister Chirag Paswan has said.
National pressure group Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has also demanded the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar and announced a nationwide protest if he does not step down by Saturday.
“I want to tell Gyanesh Kumar, you are a highly educated person: the thing that you have done is an act against India. This is an attack against legal structure and Constitution. “The two ECs have done a wise thing. They have come clean. Gyanesh Kumar should think seriously and he should turn approver. That would be an act of nationalism,” he added.
The comments follow an investigative report by The Indian Express which claimed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi raised objections over the past 10 months to decisions taken by Gyanesh Kumar without their knowledge. The reported disagreements related to issues including voter registration and deletion, access to electoral-roll databases, changes to Form 6 and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. On X, Bhandari rejected Gandhi’s remarks on the absence of anti-incumbency against the BJP and said the party lost 20 elections since 2014. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke said the party would begin its protest from Mumbai on October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, and subsequently take the agitation to cities across the country. The announcement came after the party gave Kumar a 48-hour deadline to resign over the allegations.
Because if doubts arise in the public’s mind about the electoral process itself, that would be wrong, “The Election Commission must maintain the trust of the people. In such a situation, the Election Commission should firmly put forth its points so that no doubts arise in the people’s minds.
“If such questions are being raised against the Election Commission, I believe it is also the responsibility of the Election Commission, especially the CEC, to firmly present its side,” the BJP-led NDA minister told reporters. “I don’t care what the opposition says because it is their job is to do politics,” he added. The poll panel must ensure that doubts about the electoral process did not take root among voters, Paswan said. The two commissioners had, in some instances, questioned whether certain decisions had been taken without their knowledge and described some actions as “unauthorised” and “illegal”, according to the report. He also accused the CEC of undermining the constitutional and legal framework governing elections and asked Kumar to “turn approver”. Gandhi said the two Election Commissioners who raised objections had “come clean” and asked Kumar to consider cooperating with the allegations being raised against him. We are not going to let democracy be destroyed,” Gandhi said. Gandhi also questioned why the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued to win elections despite the normal “political effect of anti-incumbency”. He said that the absence of anti-incumbency against the BJP raised questions about the electoral process. Party national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari calling his press conference a “damp squib” and “ Jhoot Ki Goonj ”.
Gandhi also referred to his earlier opposition to Kumar’s appointment as CEC, arguing that the process of selecting election commissioners must be independent of executive influence. The Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief on Friday responded to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s demand for Kumar’s resignation amid a growing row over the functioning of the Election Commission (ECI) and reported differences between the three Election Commissioners.
The ECI has said that the reported differences in deliberations are part of institutional decision-making and maintained that its decisions were taken “unanimously. The poll body also defended its digital systems, saying they operated under security protocols to prevent unauthorised manipulation of electoral data. The BJP has now rejected Gandhi’s allegations and defended the ECI’s decision-making process. I think that, politically speaking, Rahul Gandhi is devoid of wisdom and devoid of knowledge.
He said the country’s elections were “fundamentally broken” and that the controversy raised questions about the functioning of the electoral system. BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the decisions of the three-member Commission were taken unanimously and questioned the basis of reports about differences within the poll panel. “Rahul Gandhi said that anti-incumbency is an established truth of this country and it happened after the BJP came to power. He doesn’t even know the political history of the country,” Trivedi said. “Did Congress under Nehru did ‘Vote Chori’, or does Congress win in Rae Bareilly 16 times in consectutive,” he wrote. “’Loktantra ki chor Congress’ is frustrated as the Gandhi-Vadra family is democratically made to sit in Opposition by the people of India.”
Lok Sabha Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded Kumar’s immediate resignation.
‘Vote chori’ allegations
In September 2025, he specifically cited Aland in Karnataka and Rajura in Maharashtra, alleging that Congress voters were targeted in Aland and that thousands of voters were fraudulently added in Rajura. The Commission also said it itself initiated an FIR in connection with the Aland matter in 2023. In August 2025, Gyanesh Kumar asked Rahul Gandhi to either substantiate his allegations of voter fraud through a sworn affidavit within seven days or apologise.
He also alleged that Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, industrialist Gautam Adani , National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and PM’s principal secretary PK Mishra were involved in a conspiracy to manipulate elections. The latest confrontation comes amid Rahul Gandhi’s long-running allegations against the ECI over electoral rolls.
In 2025, Gandhi accused the poll panel of “vote chori ” and alleged that voters were being deleted or bogus voters added in different constituencies. The ECI rejected the allegations as “incorrect and baseless”. It said voter deletions could not simply be carried out online by members of the public and that the law required affected voters to be given an opportunity to be heard.
