CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke demands the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, warns of nationwide protests if he doesn’t resign within 48 hours.
He said, as quoted by PTI, “Jantar Mantar 2.0 will definitely happen if CEC Gyanesh Kumar doesn’t resign.”
Noting that Kumar posed a threat to India’s democracy, he claimed the government was deciding who gets to vote and who does not since Kumar became Chief Election Commissioner.
“In total, more than 13 crore votes have been deleted. This is not a small number,” Dipke said, adding that the alleged deletion amounted to around 13-14% of the total votes.
Referring to the 2024 Lok Sabha election, he further questioned whether the alleged deletion was intended to widen the 2% margin between the opposition and the ruling party. “Is Gyanesh Kumar deleting them intentionally to widen that 2% gap so that they never lose office? Why is this being done? What was the need to delete so many votes?…” he asked.
Dipke claimed that 50,000 votes were deleted from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s constituency, 100,000 from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s constituency and 40,000 from former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s constituency.
“In West Bengal, 50,000 votes were deleted from Mamata Banerjee’s constituency, and she lost by a margin of around 15,000 votes. In MK Stalin’s constituency, 100,000 votes were deleted, and he lost by about 45,000 votes. In Delhi, 40,000 votes were deleted from Arvind Kejriwal’s constituency, and he lost by a margin of 4000-5000 votes,” he said.
He further alleged that vote deletions in Kerala prevented Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan from winning.
“This cannot be a mere coincidence; there is a clear pattern,” Dipke said.
“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 questioned.
On Wednesday, the Indian Express had reported two election commissioners had raised concerns at least 14 times in 10 months, mainly over the voter-list revision exercise that began last year.
The Election Commission of India has sought to downplay the differences, saying they are normal in any institution and that all its actions are legal.
The Congress on Thursday directed its state units to organise protest marches to their respective state election commission offices on September 25, demanding the immediate arrest and removal of Kumar, and an independent review of all decisions and electoral roll changes made under him.
All District Congress Committees (DCCs) will organise similar massive protest marches to their respective District Collectorates on September 28.
Congress general secretary in charge of the organisation, K C Venugopal, said that since day one, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has been exposing the “massive vote chori” exercise spearheaded by the “BJP-controlled CEC Gyanesh Kumar”.
After the massive revelations on Wednesday, Kumar’s “treason” is out in the open, and he must be arrested for his anti-national acts against our democracy, Venugopal said.
