NEW DELHI: Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke has demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that more than 13 crore names have been deleted from draft electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
Dipke questioned whether the scale of the deletions was consistent with democratic principles and alleged that the process could affect the electoral rights of citizens. His remarks came amid a wider controversy over the SIR exercise and reported objections raised by two Election Commissioners over aspects of the poll panel’s functioning.
“In total, more than 13 crore votes have been deleted. This is not a small number,” Dipke said, alleging that the figure represented around 13-14 per cent of the total votes.
He also linked the reported deletions to the 2024 Lok Sabha election and questioned whether the exercise was intended to alter the electoral balance between the ruling alliance and the Opposition. These were allegations made by Dipke and are not established as a causal link by the reported data.
Dipke further alleged that voter deletions had affected constituencies associated with several prominent Opposition leaders, including Mamata Banerjee, M.K. Stalin and Arvind Kejriwal, and claimed that similar deletions had affected Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
The constituency-specific claims were made by Dipke and have not been independently established by the Indian Express investigation cited in reports on the issue. That investigation found that in 49 constituencies, SIR deletions exceeded the victory margin, but those seats were not uniformly won by one party.
The controversy follows reports that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised formal objections on several occasions over aspects of the SIR process, including voter additions, deletions and restoration. The Election Commission, however, has maintained that decisions relating to the exercise were approved unanimously by all three Election Commissioners.
Dipke questioned whether an electoral process could be considered free and fair if large sections of the electorate were removed from the rolls, and reiterated his demand for Kumar’s resignation.
