The Mamata All India Trinamool Congress (MAITC) filed a police complaint against Chief Election Commissioner(CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday. The complaint was filed at Parliament Street police station in Delhi.
Mahua Moitra stated that Election Commissioners enjoy immunity under Section 16 of the EC and CEC Act of 2023, which says that Election Commissioners enjoy immunity from civil and criminal prosecution in the discharge of their duties. The TMC MP went on to mention details exposed by media reports regarding objections raised 14 times in the last 10 months — and even 4 times in a single day — by Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of centralising data and leaving voters off the electoral rolls.
“All the decisions taken by Gyanesh Kumar were certainly not majority decisions. The decisions conveyed by the Election Commission were falsified because they were taken by one person without the consent of the other two. Hence, he cannot enjoy immunity and is open to prosecution. That is very clear in the interpretation of the law,” said Mahua Moitra.
The TMC MP spoke about the addition of a new question on progeny mapping on Form 6, the new voters' list, which meant several voters were left off the electoral rolls. “The two other Election Commissioners said this is completely illegal. Still, the question linking parentage was put in,” added Moitra, while mentioning how ground-level Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), Booth Level Officers (BLOs), and other ground-level officials were kept out of the loop and denied access to the software.
“Seema Khanna, who was DG IT, along with Gyanesh Kumar, played with the software from the backend to manipulate the voter list while keeping EROs and block-level officials in the dark. This is a very serious charge,” said Moitra.
The question of leaving 33 lakh eligible Bengal voters off the list was brought up too. “When Mr Sandhu asked who had filed these appeals, as the EC hadn’t done it, Gyanesh Kumar had no answer.”
The TMC MP termed it ‘criminal’ and stated that focussing on other issues like healthcare and poverty does not matter unless ‘we protect the sanctity of our voting process’.
“This criminal Gyanesh Kumar has to go; he has to be prosecuted; he has to be tried,” added Moitra.
Apart from the Mamata faction, the Congress, the Left, and other opposition parties have been vocal about the findings of the media report on the SIR. A day earlier, Mamata had asked for Kumar’s arrest and a fresh election process based on the old electoral voting list. The former West Bengal CM has been crying foul over the BJP and EC being hand in glove to make her party lose the Assembly elections in her state earlier this year. Mamata had also approached the Supreme Court regarding the re-inclusion of the names of voters left off the list.
