Gyanesh Kumar Impeachment Call: Ex-Bureaucrats Serve 'People's Notice'

Gyanesh Kumar Impeachment Call: Why Ex-Civil Servants Say the CEC Must Go

On Monday, a group of retired senior civil servants and activists set out for Nirvachan Sadan in central Delhi with a four-page document addressed to the man who runs India's elections. They never reached his office.

The delegation, which included former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, former Union home secretary GK Pillai and political activist Yogendra Yadav, had sought a 4pm appointment with Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. According to Yadav, Delhi Police barricaded every route to the Election Commission of India, so the group moved its proceedings to the Press Club and held a press conference at 5pm instead. Yadav later wrote on X that the notice had been served, and that its message was that "constitutional authority demands constitutional accountability". 

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The document is titled "Chargesheet and Notice of Impeachment" and asks Gyanesh Kumar to "resign and avoid any further disgrace". If he refuses, "We, the People of India" demand his removal from office. The notice carries no legal force. Even so, the Gyanesh Kumar impeachment demand it sets out comes as the Supreme Court, the opposition and protesters in several cities are pressing the same questions about how India's election watchdog is being run.

The Names Behind the Notice

Seven of the signatories are former public servants. Najeeb Jung is a former lieutenant governor of Delhi, GK Pillai a former Union home secretary and Amitabha Pandey a former secretary to the Government of India. The others are retired IAS officer Jayashree Mukherjee, former ambassador Ashok Sharma, former civil servant Ashish Joshi, and former Intelligence Bureau special director and central information commissioner Yashovardhan Azad. They are joined by activists and citizens including Yogendra Yadav, transparency campaigners Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, Aishe Ghosh, N Sai Balaji, Dinesh Srirangarajan and Sandeep Yadav.

At the press conference, Jung said the group had no quarrel with the government. It had acted, he said, because it found the Election Commission's functioning and the scale of alleged disenfranchisement during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) unacceptable. Pillai said the exercise had shifted the burden of proving eligibility on to ordinary voters. "You are asking 99.9 per cent Indians to prove for potential 0.1 per cent illegals," he said.

Six Charges Against the Chief Election Commissioner

The notice invokes Article 324(5) of the Constitution, which protects the Chief Election Commissioner from removal except for "proved misbehaviour or incapacity". The signatories say their complaint concerns "a sustained pattern of wilful disregard of law and constitutional duty", and they set out six charges.

The first charge accuses Kumar of exercising the commission's powers without placing matters before the full three-member body. It says the SIR was launched without adequate deliberation or recorded proceedings, and it cites reports that the two other election commissioners objected to decisions taken without their knowledge. The commission's recent announcement that agendas would now be circulated and minutes kept is, the signatories argue, "compelling evidence of a grave departure" from collective functioning.

The second concerns Form 6, the form used to enrol voters. The notice says a modified version was used despite internal objections that it was "unauthorised and illegal", and that its later withdrawal shows the change lacked lawful authority. It also argues that voters wrongly struck off the rolls must declare they are applying for the first time, under a warning of criminal punishment for false statements. Gyanesh Kumar, it says, is guilty of "forcing crores of citizens to make a false declaration".

The third charge concerns ECINET, the commission's digital platform. The signatories say it displaced the statutory role of Electoral Registration Officers. The commission said on September 26 that it would set up a committee to review how ECINET functions. The notice calls that decision "an extraordinary admission". 

The fourth is the gravest. It says the SIR has already produced 13.3 crore deletions from pre-SIR rolls, and that by the end of the exercise the gap between India's adult population and its electorate "would be 15 crores or more". These deletions, it says, have fallen hardest on women, the poor, migrants, minorities and the elderly. It also quotes an RTI reply in which the commission said it had "so far not taken any decision" on a nationwide SIR in 2025, which the signatories say raises questions about where the decision really came from.

The fifth charge accuses Kumar of conduct that creates "a reasonable and substantial apprehension of political partisanship". "You can no longer be a referee in a game where you are widely perceived to be aligned with a player," it reads. The sixth cites Section 32(1) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which makes it an offence for an election official to breach official duty in preparing electoral rolls.

Also Read:  Election Commission Press Note Fixes What It Said Wasn't Broken

What the Election Commission Says

The commission has defended the revision. It says the SIR is meant to clear duplicate, dead and ineligible names and protect the integrity of the rolls. Last Friday it instructed officials to enrol eligible voters who had been left out by mistake.

On Form 6, it denies the form was altered, saying a declaration was attached to it during the Bihar SIR and later removed from its online portals. It has also said its orders and decisions carry full legal sanction and follow procedures laid down in the 2023 law governing the commission. 

Gyanesh Kumar himself had not publicly addressed the calls for his resignation or the protests as of the weekend. The BJP has dismissed the campaign. Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan summed up the party's view: "If they win, democracy zindabad; if they lose, Election Commission murdabad." 

What a People's Notice Can and Cannot Do

Under the Constitution, the power to remove a chief election commissioner rests with Parliament alone. Under Article 324(5), the CEC can be removed only in the same way, and on the same grounds, as a Supreme Court judge. That means a notice signed by at least 100 Lok Sabha MPs or 50 Rajya Sabha MPs, which the Speaker or Chairman may then admit or reject. If an inquiry panel finds misconduct, Parliament votes, and a two-thirds majority is needed before the President is advised to remove him. Azad himself acknowledged that the initiative had no legal sanctity, but said it reflected rising concern among citizens about how the poll panel is functioning. 

There are three reasons it still carries weight. The first is that the parliamentary route has so far gone nowhere. The opposition filed notices in both Houses in March, signed by 130 Lok Sabha MPs and 63 Rajya Sabha MPs, and both were rejected on April 6. A fresh notice with 73 signatures followed on April 24, setting out nine charges. It is still pending, and seven of those 73 MPs have reportedly since changed sides. With the formal Gyanesh Kumar impeachment process stalled, the people's notice puts a detailed charge sheet on the public record. 

The second lies in the authorship. A former home secretary, a former Intelligence Bureau special director and a former secretary to the Union government have spent decades working the machinery they now accuse the commission of bypassing. Their charges rest on administrative procedure, statutory forms and the role of registration officers, the same terms the commission uses to defend itself.

The third is accountability. Section 16 of the 2023 Act bars courts from hearing civil or criminal proceedings against the CEC for official acts, a provision the Supreme Court agreed on January 13 this year to examine. The appointment process is also contested. The notice says Kumar's appointment was made by "subverting the safeguards" set by the Supreme Court. In the 2023 Anoop Baranwal judgment, the court proposed a selection panel of the prime minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India, pending legislation. Parliament's 2023 law then replaced the chief justice with a Union minister chosen by the prime minister. Rahul Gandhi submitted a dissent note when Kumar was selected. 

That concern has now reached the bench. Speaking in Rajkot on October 4, former Supreme Court judge Rohinton Fali Nariman warned that the right to vote was in grave danger and urged the court to step in. He cited figures of about 90 lakh voters allegedly excluded in West Bengal, of whom roughly 22 lakh had appealed. Around one lakh appeals had been decided, with about 93 per cent going in voters' favour. 

Supreme Court Hearing Adds Weight to Gyanesh Kumar Impeachment Calls

On the same day the notice was released, the Supreme Court issued notices to the Centre and the commission on petitions alleging that the CEC had taken decisions without the approval of the other two commissioners. The court said it would examine those decisions and strike down any found to be unlawful. On Form 6, Chief Justice Surya Kant was direct: "Any modification to Form 6 has not been approved by us." He added that the court wanted to see the records to find out who had made the change. 

The hearing speaks directly to the first two charges in the notice. The underlying material comes from a series of Indian Express reports that commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected to, or complained about being kept uninformed on, a range of decisions, including several on the SIR. The commission has not explicitly denied those reports. 

Protests Spread From Mumbai to Delhi

Outside Parliament and the courts, the campaign has taken a more direct form. Protesters who have taken to the streets since Friday want Kumar to resign rather than wait for the Gyanesh Kumar impeachment process to run its course. On Sunday, thousands marched in Mumbai behind Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray, while in Delhi, police detained dozens over successive days and registered cases against some protesters for defying a ban on gatherings in the city centre. 

The Cockroach Janta Party, a youth movement, is driving much of the energy. It has called a major rally in Delhi on October 10, and its founder Abhijeet Dipke told supporters it was "now or never". 

The INDIA bloc has its own timetable. After a meeting of 19 parties, it announced "Save Democracy" marches from October 2 to 8, a march by opposition MPs to the Election Commission on October 6, a meeting with President Droupadi Murmu in the second week of October and a large rally in Delhi on November 1. Rahul Gandhi has said it is beyond doubt that Kumar changed Form 6 illegally and unilaterally. The demand has also drawn support from outside the bloc. The Biju Janata Dal's Naveen Patnaik has called for Gyanesh Kumar to resign and be removed.

What Happens Next

Any vote on a Gyanesh Kumar impeachment motion depends on the presiding officers of Parliament, who have so far declined to admit one. The April notice remains pending, the Supreme Court is examining how the commission reached its decisions, and the streets of Delhi will be tested again on October 10.

The people's notice ends by saying Kumar has "forfeited the moral and constitutional authority" to remain in office. Its signatories have no means of enforcing that verdict. Their notice nonetheless sets out the Gyanesh Kumar impeachment demand in detail, at a time when the commission's conduct is under scrutiny in court and on the streets.