The Congress on Friday (September 25, 2026) led nationwide protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, accusing him of compromising the integrity of India’s electoral process, with the party’s general secretary (organisation), K.C. Venugopal, seeking Mr. Kumar’s resignation and arrest for alleged electoral malpractice. Civil society groups and other organisations held parallel protests in Delhi and several States.

Congress workers took to the streets across the country, with protests in several places being stopped by the police. Water cannons were used against demonstrators in Patna, Lucknow, and Punjab, while protesters were detained in Assam, Jammu, Odisha, Manipur and other States. In Manipur’s capital, Imphal, the police fired a few tear-gas shells to disperse the protesters.

In Kerala’s Malappuram, Mr. Venugopal said the nationwide protests would continue until the CEC stepped down. Targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, the Congress leader alleged that they were using Mr. Kumar to overcome public opposition to the government through “artificial manipulation”.

“Resigning alone is not enough; he must be arrested. What he did is a criminal offence; he must be arrested,” Mr. Venugopal said, adding that all decisions taken by Mr. Kumar, including those relating to the special intensive revision, should be revoked.

In a post on X, he urged every Indian to mount “unbelievable pressure on the regime and its puppet for the daylight robbery of our vote and fix accountability”.

The party’s communication chief, Jairam Ramesh, said citizens and Congress workers hit the streets demanding accountability over the capture of their fundamental right to vote and the “Chief Election Commissioner’s diabolical mischief”. “The frightened Modi Govt has cracked down on protesters and detained Congress leaders and workers, young citizens and students, and civil society activists – in so many places across the country,” he wrote on X.

Congress leader Pawan Khera told a press conference: “We want to say to Gyanesh Kumar: it’s done bro. Heed Rahul Gandhi’s advice – resign and turn approver.”

The Congress accused the Election Commission of an “unprecedented attack” on voter equality, alleging that a specific ‘Mark VIP’ feature had been created in the BLO application.

Amid mounting pressure from the Opposition, CEC Kumar cancelled two scheduled meetings in Uttar Pradesh. Poll body sources said these were not linked to the protests and were routine decisions.

At Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, the campaign drew participation from civil society activists and organisations. The All India Students’ Association (AISA), along with civil society members, organised a protest demanding the arrest of Mr. Kumar. CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, AISA president Neha Bora, activist Yogendra Yadav, lawyer Prashant Bhushan, RJD MP Manoj Jha, activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Nandita Narain were among those who participated. Several protesters, including Mr. Bhattacharya and Mr. Yadav, were detained by the Delhi Police.

Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav, who had organised a march from the Delhi Congress office to Nirvachan Sadan, the Election Commission’s headquarters, was also detained by the police. Another protest was called by the Students’ Federation of India outside Nirvachan Sadan. The Indian Youth Congress separately staged a protest in Delhi in which demonstrators wore masks bearing Mr. Kumar’s face and displayed their hands in chains.

New Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police Sachin Sharma said protesters were detained as no permission had been sought or granted to hold the protest at these venues. Mr. Sharma said that 50-60 protesters were detained from Jantar Mantar, around 10 from the SFI protest, and around 25 from the Congress protest.

The All India Democratic Women’s Association took out a rally from Kolkata’s Esplanade to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) and later submitted a memorandum to the CEO demanding the CEC’s resignation.

The Congress has framed the protests around its “vote chori” campaign, alleging that the electoral-roll revision process could exclude legitimate voters. The protests followed Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s press conference on Thursday on the issue, after a news report that two of the three Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had repeatedly objected over a period of 10 months to decisions on the electoral rolls, saying that some of the decisions were taken without their knowledge.

In several States, party workers burnt effigies of the CEC, raised slogans demanding his arrest and called for an independent review of the electoral rolls.

In Patna, the Bihar Congress marched towards the Election Commission office but was stopped by the police using water cannons. Similar protests were reported in Lucknow, where Congress workers led by State president Ajay Rai clashed with the police after being stopped. In Assam, State Congress president Gaurav Gogoi and other leaders were detained when they attempted to march towards the Chief Electoral Officer’s office.

In Jammu, Congress MP and AICC general secretary Syed Naseer Hussain led the protest, with several senior party leaders, including former Ministers and former legislators, participating in the demonstration.

The Congress also alleged that the Narendra Modi government was trying to deny Gen Z voting rights by attempting to “snatch [them] away through underhand means”, recalling former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to lower the voting age from 21 to 18.

“One PM gave Gen Z the vote, the other is determined to snatch it away through underhand means,” Mr. Ramesh said in another post on X.

Published – September 25, 2026 10:56 pm IST

New Delhi:

Gyanesh Kumar, who was named as an Election Commissioner last year, has been appointed the next Chief Election Commissioner of India, replacing the outgoing Rajiv Kumar. Mr Kumar will oversee the conduct of the Bihar Assembly election later this year and the polls in Bengal, Assam, and Tamil Nadu next year. He took charge as the new poll chief this morning.

Mr Kumar’s appointment came in a late-night development on Monday, within hours after a meeting of a three-member panel consisting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi. However, it has sparked a row as Mr Gandhi did not approve of the appointment.

Row on Gyanesh Kumar’s appointment explained

The appointment of Mr Kumar as the poll chief was done based on the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners (ECs) under the 2023 law. According to these rules, the Chief Election Commissioners and Election Commissioners will be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a selection committee consisting of PM Modi as the Chairperson, a cabinet minister nominated by the PM – Amit Shah, and the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha.

However, the law was challenged in the Supreme Court as the three-member panel allowed the Centre a dominant role.

The top court was set to take up a hearing on a “priority basis” on February 19.

Due to this, Mr Gandhi, who was present in the meeting, had opposed Mr Kumar’s appointment and asked the government to postpone it. However, the Centre planned to press on regardless, saying that halting the process would mean leaving the key post vacant.

After Mr Kumar’s appointment, the Congress leader gave a dissent note saying the meeting was meaningless as the new law has been challenged in the Supreme Court.

“During the meeting of the committee to select the next (Chief) Election Commissioner, I presented a dissent note to the PM and HM that stated: ‘The most fundamental aspect of an independent Election Commission… free from executive interference… is the process of choosing the Election Commissioner and Chief Election Commissioner. By violating the Supreme Court order and removing the Chief Justice of India from the committee, the Modi government has exacerbated the concerns of hundreds of millions of voters over the integrity of our electoral process,” Mr Gandhi wrote in a post on X.

He added, “As the LoP, it is my duty to uphold the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar and the founding leaders of our nation and hold the government to account. It is both disrespectful and discourteous for the PM and HM to have made a midnight decision to select the new CEC, when the very composition of the committee and the process is being challenged in the Supreme Court and is due to be heard in less than forty-eight hours.”

Trinamool Congress leader Saket Gokhale also took a dig at the Centre, calling Mr Shah “India’s new Chief Election Commissioner”.

“Congratulations to Sh Amit Shah on becoming India’s new Chief Election Commissioner. The nation is confident that under your able leadership, the goal of reducing ECI to a wing of BJP will be successfully achieved,” he said, adding that the BJP would not succeed in West Bengal despite the appointment.

Who is Gyanesh Kumar

Mr Kumar is a 1988-batch IAS officer from the Kerala cadre. He is the senior of the two commissioners on the three-member panel that was led by Rajiv Kumar till he demitted office. The other commissioner on the panel is Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, an officer from the Uttarakhand cadre.

The new Chief Election Commissioner was a part of the Union Home Ministry earlier and had helped draft the bill that scrapped Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 and split the former state into two union territories.

He has also served as the Joint Secretary (Kashmir Division) and the Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry.