Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke on Thursday demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar within 48 hours, threatening a nationwide agitation if he failed to step down.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Dipke accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) under Kumar of undermining voting rights and manipulating electoral rolls. He said the CJP would continue its protest until Kumar resigned.
‘Jantar Mantar 2.0’ warning
“To ensure free and fair elections, CEC Gyanesh Kumar must resign,” Dipke said.
“If within 48 hours Gyanesh Kumar doesn’t resign, the Cockroach Janta Party will start a nationwide agitation. We won’t step back till the time Gyanesh Kumar resigns,” he added.
The party said the proposed agitation would be on the lines of its protest at Jantar Mantar in June.
The demand comes amid controversy over the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and a report that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections to several aspects of the exercise over the past 10 months.
Questions over electoral rolls
According to the report cited by the CJP, the two Election Commissioners objected 14 times to issues involving voter additions, deletions and restoration, changes to Form 6 and the handling of electoral-roll data.
The Election Commission has rejected suggestions that the reported objections reflected a division within the three-member panel. In a statement signed by all three commissioners, it said differing views, written notes and internal checks were part of normal deliberations and maintained that decisions, including those related to SIR, were taken unanimously, PTI reports.
Dipke, however, sharply attacked Kumar and accused him of posing a threat to India’s democracy.
“Chief Election Commissioner is the biggest anti-national. Gyanesh Kumar is the biggest anti-national of this country. He should resign immediately because he is the biggest threat to India’s democracy,” Dipke said.
‘Who gets to vote?’
Dipke alleged that the government was effectively being allowed to decide who could vote.
“What did democracy mean in our country? Democracy meant that the people would elect the government. Since Gyanesh Kumar became the Chief Election Commissioner, the government has been deciding who will be allowed to vote and who will not. Is this democracy? What kind of definition of democracy is this? You have turned the entire concept of democracy upside down,” he said.
Dipke further alleged that more than 13 crore votes had been deleted and questioned whether the exercise was intended to increase the electoral gap between the ruling party and the Opposition.
“In total, more than 13 crore votes have been deleted. This is not a small number. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the margin between the opposition and the ruling party (NDA) was just 2%. Deleting 13 crore votes is equivalent to deleting roughly 13% to 14% of the total votes,” he claimed.
BJP’s 2024 result cited
Dipke linked his allegations to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, saying the party had failed to secure a majority on its own after campaigning with the slogan “400 paar”.
“The panic button was pressed when they fell short of that majority. They had come down to 240 seats after raising the slogan of ‘400 paar’. After that, they realised that the mood of the country was shifting and that regional forces were emerging very strongly,” he said.
He alleged that Opposition leaders and parties that had campaigned together in 2024 were subsequently defeated one by one and claimed voter deletions had affected Mamata Banerjee, MK Stalin, Arvind Kejriwal and Pinarayi Vijayan.
“In West Bengal, 50,000 votes were deleted from Mamata Banerjee’s constituency, and she lost by around 15,000 votes. In MK Stalin’s constituency, 1 lakh votes were deleted, and he lost by around 45,000 votes. In Delhi, 40,000 votes were deleted from Arvind Kejriwal’s constituency, and he lost by around 4,000-5,000 votes,” Dipke alleged.
Symbol disputes also raised
Dipke also targeted the Election Commission over its handling of party disputes and election symbols, citing the split in Uddhav Thackeray’s party.
“Uddhav Thackeray’s party was split, and its election symbol was taken away by the Election Commission. The Election Commission very cleverly and proactively took away that election symbol and gave it to a proxy party, which you could call a shell company,” he alleged.
Dipke accused Kumar of being responsible for what he described as election “rigging” and claimed the Chief Election Commissioner had “proactively ensured that the BJP remains in power”.
He also cited Kerala while questioning the impact of voter deletions on Opposition leaders.
“Pinarayi Vijayan would have won, but due to the deletion of votes in Kerala, he did not become the Chief Minister. Was this move designed solely to eliminate strong opposition figures?” he said.
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‘No affinity for Opposition’
Dipke maintained that the CJP was not acting in support of any particular Opposition party.
“Now, we have no particular affinity for the opposition or any specific party. But in a democracy, if you wipe out the entire opposition, can it still be called a democracy? Is it a free and fair election?” he asked.
He said the demand for Kumar’s resignation was based on the CJP’s call for free and fair elections and reiterated that the organisation would continue its proposed nationwide agitation until the Chief Election Commissioner stepped down.
The announcement came a day after the CJP said it would shift its focus towards electoral reforms and the functioning of the Election Commission following the controversy over the reported objections within the poll panel.
The organisation had earlier signalled a campaign centred on “fixing” the Election Commission. It also demanded that upcoming elections be frozen and the SIR exercise rolled back.
