The Pulse | Politics | South Asia

Why Are Modi Government Critics Now Targeting India’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar?

A recent investigative report strengthens opposition charges that the Modi government is using Kumar to manipulate elections in favor of the BJP.

Screenshot of a Congress party video showing its activists defacing the house of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at Agra, India, Sept. 28, 2026.

“You must have heard of Dharmendra Pradhan,” student leader Neha Bora said in a video message on September 30, two days before a series of agitations is scheduled to start in major Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata, demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation.

“Gyanesh Kumar, it’s your turn now. We are coming,” Bora said with a cheeky smile. A leftist student leader, Bora was part of the youth agitation in July that forced the Narendra Modi government’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, out of office.

Now, students and youth are rallying around the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and opposition parties against a new target: Gyanesh Kumar, who has been at the center of political controversies since his appointment as chief election commissioner about a year and a half ago.

Kumar has been accused of speaking political language and giving undue advantage to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is being compared with Adolf Eichmann, the central operational manager of the Holocaust.

The latest trigger for the nationwide protests that will begin on October 2 was an investigation by The Indian Express, which reported that two members of the Election Commission, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had raised concerns with Kumar at least 14 times in 10 months, only to be overlooked. Some decisions were reportedly taken without their knowledge. The objections concerned electoral roll decisions and orders.

Notably, Kumar is the first chief election commissioner appointed under a new law that the Modi government brought, overturning a mechanism recommended by India’s Supreme Court. This new law gives the government the authority to pick election commissioners of its choice. The law also gives immunity to the election commissioner for any action they take with regard to conducting elections.

The opposition’s challenge to the law has not made much progress in the Supreme Court yet, with a five-judge constitutional bench expected to start hearing it.

The Indian Express report dropped like a political bombshell. Opposition parties jumped in to claim that the report vindicates what they have been alleging for a long time: that the BJP government is using Chief Election Commissioner Kumar to manipulate elections in favor of the BJP, starting with the voter roll.

Trying to downplay the internal rift, the commission’s reply was measured: differences are normal in any institution. Despite the concerns raised at different stages, the final decisions were unanimous, the commission said.

Its defense has not calmed the room. The Indian Express disclosures landed amid the highly contested overhaul of the voter roll, the Special Intensive Revision, which has removed millions of names from the electoral rolls. Several opposition leaders and civil society personalities, including Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, India’s main opposition party, have alleged that the electoral roll revision process is being used to steal votes.

A dispute inside a constitutional body has thus become evidence, for........

© The Diplomat