'Democracy in Jeopardy': 23 Opposition Parties Take Poll Malpractice Charges to the CJI

Twenty-three Opposition parties, led by the Congress, DMK, SP, RJD and TMC, have written to CJI Surya Kant alleging systematic manipulation of India's elections under BJP rule. They claim the CBI, ED and NIA are used to target rivals and topple elected governments, accuse the Election Commission of bias, and flag the Special Intensive Revision of rolls in Bihar and West Bengal as exclusionary. They also urged reconsidering paper ballots over EVMs.

Read full article

'Democracy in Jeopardy': 23 Opposition Parties Take Poll Malpractice Charges to the CJI

Twenty-three Opposition parties have jointly written to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and other Supreme Court judges, alleging systematic manipulation of India's electoral process under the BJP-led central government and warning that the results of several recent elections did not reflect the true will of voters.

The letter, signed by "like-minded" parties opposed to the BJP — including the Congress, DMK, Samajwadi Party, RJD, Trinamool Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), AAP, JMM, the CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(ML), IUML, JKNC, PDP and Forward Bloc, among others — alleges that central investigating agencies such as the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate and the NIA have become tools of the Union government, used to target Opposition leaders and topple democratically elected state governments.

The parties also questioned Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's conduct, accusing him of open partiality toward the ruling dispensation and alleging that the Election Commission has stayed silent on Model Code of Conduct violations and communal remarks made by BJP leaders during campaigns.

A significant part of the representation targets the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, first conducted in Bihar and later extended to West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The signatories called the exercise arbitrary and politically motivated, disputing the ECI's stated rationale that it was meant to weed out illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators from the rolls, and noting that no supporting data has been made public. They said the exercise's documentation demands risk disenfranchising lakhs of genuine voters, particularly Dalits, Adivasis, minorities and migrant workers, and cited reports of booth-level officers filling or uploading forms without voters' knowledge, along with entries in the names of deceased electors.

The letter further raises the pending challenge to the CEC Act, which removed the Chief Justice of India from the panel that selects Election Commissioners, and questions the fairness of recent Assembly elections in Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra. The parties also called for reconsidering a return to paper ballots in place of EVMs to restore public confidence in the process.

The Opposition leaders clarified that the letter is not meant to influence any pending case before the Supreme Court, but said they continue to repose faith in the judiciary as the institution citizens turn to when other constitutional bodies fail to act. The representation follows an INDIA bloc meeting on June 8, where 21 parties and an independent MP resolved to jointly approach the CJI over the SIR process and other election-related concerns.