Ex-Home Secretary R.K. Singh accuses CEC Gyanesh Kumar of ‘illegalities’ in SIR, calls for Opposition unity

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Former Home Secretary R.K. Singh with the BJP in 2013. File | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Former Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh has accused Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of violating the law in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. In an open letter, the retired IAS officer also urged Opposition parties to boycott elections until the CEC and the Election Commissioners resign.

“Do you want India to remain a democracy?” Mr. Singh asked at the start of the letter, saying it was necessary to understand what Mr. Kumar and “his bosses” were doing.

The letter comes amid a row within the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is headed by Mr. Kumar and includes Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi as Commissioners. According to an Indian Express report, Mr. Kumar was repeatedly questioned in recent months by his two colleagues over the integrity of the voter database, changes to the way new voters are enrolled and the security of the electoral rolls. The report said Mr. Sandhu and Mr. Joshi objected to several decisions taken without their knowledge, and that they were kept in the dark at least 14 times in the past 10 months.

Mr. Singh said Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, allows a special revision only in special cases, for reasons recorded in writing and only for a constituency or part of one. An intensive revision for the whole country was therefore illegal, he said, adding that the Supreme Court order upholding the general SIR was wrong. He also asked whether the decision was taken by the full Commission or by Mr. Kumar alone.

He alleged that Section 21 requires the roll in force at the time of notification to remain valid until the revision is complete, which happens only after all appeals are disposed of. Yet, he said, the new roll with deletions was used in elections while appeals were pending.

Citing Section 22, Mr. Singh said only the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) can remove a name, on the grounds listed in the provision, after an enquiry and a hearing, and after appeals are disposed of. He alleged that Mr. Kumar removed the names of all voters listed by EROs after 2003 “without any basis”, enquiry or show-cause notice. Those removed had to apply afresh in Form 6 and prove their eligibility, which he said violated the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lal Babu Hussain and Others v. Electoral Registration Officer and Others [(1995) 3 SCC 100]. That ruling, he said, places the burden of proof on the enquiry authority or the objector, not the voter.

Mr. Singh said Mr. Kumar added an appendix to Form 6 without authority, since the form is mandated by statutory rules, and against the views of the two other Commissioners. The appendix asks applicants for the serial number of their parents’ names in the 2003 roll. He asked where an 18-year-old could access that roll in 2026 and alleged that this stopped the registration of young voters.

He questioned who filed Form 7 objections in bulk, and how they were acted upon when the signatories did not appear. He alleged that names of 16 lakh voters found valid by the ERO were not registered in West Bengal because appeals were filed against them. He said the two Commissioners had said they did not authorise the appeals and asked who did. He claimed that in the appeals decided so far, 90% of the voters left out were found valid.

On “logical discrepancy”, Mr. Singh said poor families often do not have birth certificates and give estimated years of birth. Excluding names where the gap between father and child was under 15 years, without an enquiry, was contrary to Section 21, he said. He added that a centralised digital roll refusing additions on this ground goes against the law, which names the ERO as the only authority to add or delete names. He said two Commissioners had pointed out that the ERO, the District Election Officer and the Chief Electoral Officer were not being allowed to access the voter list, and that 97 electors found valid by the ERO in Goa had still not been added to the roll.

Mr. Singh said the largest number of exclusions were among the poor, many of whom work far from home and cannot afford to return for a month to register. Illegal immigrants, he said, are unaffected, as they obtain Aadhaar and ration cards on arrival.

He said 13 crore names had been deleted so far, which he put at 13% of voters, with the SIR still incomplete. The NDA-INDIA gap in 2024 was only 3%, he said, so the deletions would have a material impact on elections. He suggested that centralisation could be used to cut voters from booths that vote against the NDA and asked: “Is this what happened?” He said a press note issued after the Commission’s meeting on September 26 confirms the illegalities he listed.

Mr. Singh said the Opposition’s plan to impeach Mr. Kumar would be futile as it lacks the numbers, and that it should file criminal cases instead. He called on all Opposition parties to jointly refuse to take part in elections until the CEC and the Election Commissioners resign, and until their successors are chosen by the earlier selection committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and a sitting Supreme Court judge. He also demanded that elections held in States while appeals were pending be set aside, and that polls be held by ballot rather than through EVMs.

Mr. Singh said the Supreme Court’s SIR judgment had besmirched its reputation and was “at par in infamy” with the judgment upholding the Emergency. He also said the delay in hearing the challenge to the law on selecting Election Commissioners was sending a bad message. “Let us unite to save our democracy,” he said.

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