A voter presents his identity card while waiting in a queue before casting his vote during the second and final phase of the urban local body elections in Rajasthan on September 11, 2026 in Jaipur, India.
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The Cockroach Janta Party, the viral pseudo-political movement behind the Gen Z protests that threw Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government into turmoil in July, has demanded the resignation of India’s election chief, saying it has undermined India’s democracy.
On Friday, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke announced that if the election chief does not resign by Saturday, the party will launch a nationwide protest from October 2.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Mr. Dipke called the country’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar “the biggest threat to democracy in India” and questioned his role in the recent electoral roll revision that led to the removal of millions of voters.
Dipke told a press conference that the exercise did not give voters the power to choose the government, but rather gave the government the power to choose who can vote.
The three members of the Election Commission are handpicked by the government and appointed by a selection committee consisting of the prime minister, the interior minister, and opposition leaders. According to local media reports, the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, opposed the election of Kumar as election commissioner last year.
Revised voter list
Last year, the Election Commission of India started implementing a ‘Special Intensive Revision’ (SIR) to update the voter list across the country. Officials said the exercise aimed to “ensure that the electoral register is accurate and up-to-date and that there are no ineligible or duplicate entries, as well as ensuring that no eligible elector is left behind.”
However, local media reported earlier this month that millions of voters had been removed from the draft electoral roll. Rahul Gandhi, the Indian opposition leader who has long complained of “vote theft”, joined the CJP on Thursday in demanding Kumar’s resignation.
Concerns raised by Mr. Modi’s political opponents over the electoral process were reinforced on Wednesday when an investigation by The Indian Express revealed that two other members of the Election Commission had lodged 14 formal complaints over inconsistencies in the SIR process in the past 10 months.
According to the report, two members, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, complained of being kept in the dark about the addition of new voters and deletion of names. They also raised concerns about the integrity of voter software and warned against access to voter databases being concentrated in Delhi, bypassing state authorities, according to The Indian Express.
In a statement Wednesday, the election commission downplayed the objections. “Different views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution,” the report said, adding that they were part of the “decision-making process.”
He has not yet commented on demands for the resignation of the head of the electoral commission and the reported deletion of 130 million voters from the draft electoral roll.
The electoral roll update process began in Bihar last year, where Prime Minister Modi and his allies won a landslide victory, winning more than 200 of the state’s 243 seats in the state assembly.
In June 2024, Mr. Modi’s popularity appeared to be waning when his party failed to win a majority in national opinion polls and had to form a coalition government for his third term as prime minister.
But his success in key state elections has since dispelled fears that Mr. Modi would lose political momentum. His Bharatiya Janata Party came to power for the first time in West Bengal after elections earlier this year.
