Indian Election Chief Accused of Bypassing Fellow Commissioners in Mass Voter Roll Purge

India's Election Commission is facing the most serious credibility test in its history after a newspaper investigation alleged its chief made unilateral calls on a nationwide voter roll purge that critics say has stripped millions of legitimate voters from the rolls.

The Indian Express reported that Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar overruled objections from his two fellow commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, at least 14 times over the past ten months, according to Courthouse News Service, citing AFP. Indian law requires the three-member commission to act on majority agreement. If Kumar acted alone on matters the other two contested, those decisions could be unlawful, the newspaper's investigation found.

The Numbers Don't Match Cleanly

How many voters were actually affected depends on which figure you read. AFP's account, carried by Courthouse News Service, ties the disputed 14 decisions to the removal of about 130 million voters. Al Jazeera, in a separate account of the same controversy, put the figure at "more than 13 million names" struck off since the commission began its state-by-state Special Intensive Revision in June 2025.

Those are two very different scales of disenfranchisement, and neither source reconciles the gap. What's consistent across the reporting is the direction of the complaint: opposition parties and rights groups say the purge has disproportionately hit economically weaker Indians, religious minorities and other vulnerable groups.

What the Commission Says

Gyanesh Kumar has not personally responded to the Indian Express investigation. The commission itself pushed back in a statement Wednesday, saying the report presented "only one part of the picture" and that "all these decisions are an outcome of the unanimous decisions of the full Commission in the past one year," according to Courthouse News Service.

That is a direct rebuttal of the newspaper's central claim, not a peripheral dispute. The Indian Express says the record shows overruled objections; the commission says the record shows unanimity. Both cannot be fully true, and there is no independent adjudication of that specific factual conflict.

The commission's stated rationale for the revision itself is that it removes duplicate registrations and prevents undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh, many of whom are Muslim, from appearing on voter rolls, according to Courthouse News Service. That is a legitimate election-integrity goal on its face. Countries around the world, including the United States, maintain that dead voters, duplicate registrations and non-citizens should not be on the rolls, and cleaning up voter lists is a normal function of any election authority. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has made this argument publicly and consistently.

The opposition's counter is that the process, not the stated goal, is the problem: names are being removed through a chief-driven process that two of his own co-equal commissioners reportedly contested, without the transparency or appeal mechanisms that would let a wrongly-removed voter easily get back on the rolls before an election.

Opposition Demands

Congress spokesman Pawan Khera said the findings show "just how messy, dysfunctional and, frankly, disturbing things had become," according to Courthouse News Service. Senior Congress leader K.C. Venugopal demanded Kumar's "immediate removal" and a Supreme Court-monitored investigation. Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal accused Kumar of "vote-rigging" and argued that any commission order issued without agreement among all three members should be considered illegal.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has publicly called for Kumar's resignation, alleging the commission's conduct amounts to rigging recent elections, according to Al Jazeera.

None of these are findings from a court, an independent audit, or a formal investigative body. They are allegations from opposition politicians and a newspaper investigation. No criminal charges have been filed against Kumar, and no government or judicial body has opened a formal probe into the specific claim that his decisions were unlawful.

A Reputation Built Over Decades

S.Y. Quraishi, who chaired the Election Commission from 2010 to 2012, told Al Jazeera the institution's global standing has taken a direct hit. "Today, that faith in the election process has shaken," Quraishi said. "The Election Commission used to be a very reputed institution. Now, it is totally dysfunctional, and that's an understatement."

India's election machinery, despite the country's deep caste, religious and economic divides, has for decades been treated as functionally clean by domestic and international observers, according to Al Jazeera. Opposition leaders questioning the count itself, rather than just individual results, is a break from that pattern.

According to Al Jazeera, opposition parties already challenged the voter roll revision in India's Supreme Court, which largely allowed the process to continue.

What's Unresolved

Kumar has still not addressed the Indian Express findings directly. Whether the Supreme Court will revisit the process now that internal commission dissent has surfaced publicly, and whether the 13 million or 130 million figure better reflects the scale of removals, remain open questions heading into India's next round of state elections.