New Delhi: The INDIA bloc's "public impeachment" of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar will be held on Friday at 3.30 pm on the lawn of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge's residence at 10, Rajaji Marg. Former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar will preside.
The venue has moved twice. The event was first planned at the Ashok Hotel, then at Ramlila Maidan. The alliance said permission was withdrawn at the hotel after police intervention, and that police stopped workers unloading equipment at the Maidan. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh announced the shift on X.
The proceedings are being staged on the lines of a parliamentary sitting. Kharge, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, will move the motion. Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, will speak last. One leader from each alliance party will speak. Civil society representatives and voters whose names were struck off in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) have been asked to give their accounts.
Alliance leaders met at Kharge's residence on Thursday to settle the format. Those present included Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Jairam Ramesh and K C Venugopal from the Congress, the TMC's Derek O'Brien, the Samajwadi Party's Harendra Malik, the JMM's Mahua Maji, the CPI(M)'s John Brittas and the CPI's Sandosh Kumar. Kharge was in Bengaluru.
"We submitted multiple motions in both Houses to impeach Gyanesh Kumar. Despite having the required numbers, our motions were not accepted in either House. Now we have no choice but to impeach him in public," a senior Congress MP said. Presiding officers rejected the motions in April this year.
"The CEC has demonstrably violated the letter and spirit of the Constitution. He has systematically subverted the very foundations of our electoral democracy. He has, to put it bluntly, lied to the Supreme Court," Ramesh said. "He has been the willing executioner on behalf of the Diabolical Duo whose turn will come next," he added, in an apparent reference to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister.
The Congress alleged on Thursday that the SIR was built to strip large sections of Indians of the vote. Ramesh said that across Karnataka, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Kerala, Goa and Mizoram, where nearly 10 crore people went through the exercise, only about 1,600 foreign nationals were "detected and deleted". In Karnataka alone, 99.7 lakh names were deleted and 716 foreign nationals identified, 545 of them from Nepal, he said.
The Election Commission has told the Supreme Court, in a 248-page affidavit, that the SIR is authorised by law and that the orders were approved unanimously by all three members. It said Form 6 had not been amended.
Friday's event is the curtain-raiser for the alliance's "Chalo Dilli" rally at Ramlila Maidan on Sunday, November 1. Rahul Gandhi released a video message on Thursday asking students to join. "Don't worry about the police, don't worry about lathis," he said.