There Is Precedence in a CEC Leading Electoral Roll Revisions. But Gyanesh Kumar's Actions Are Still Extraordinary
New Delhi: An intensive exercise. A retinue of 2.25 lakh government employees. Eight crore names for an electoral roll. And just 30 days time for a process that can end up with some or many of them declared "illegal immigrants."
Had this been a task directly undertaken by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) or any of the Union ministries, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and a supportive media ecosystem would have lost no time in calling it another “masterstroke” by the man at the centre of it all, Narendra Modi.
But it is not.
With the constitution coming in the way here, this is a task being carried out by the Election Commission of India. This is precisely the reason why the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is coming under the radar of the opposition for unrolling this humongous exercise in too short a time before Bihar goes to polls.
This is a significant election. The Janata Dal (United) and the Lok Janshakti Party, state allies of Modi’s BJP, will not find it as easy to draw a section of minority votes, thanks, most immediately, to their support to the Modi government’s amendment of the Wakf Act. It is necessary for the alliance of the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal to pull precisely these votes in its quest to come to power.
That CEC Kumar is officially citing the need to weed out ‘illegal immigrants’ for this urgent revision of the voters’ list in Bihar clearly aligns him with the BJP and Modi's election-time proclivity – to polarise voters.
BJP’s interpretation of the term ‘illegal immigrant’ has been to entirely focus on the Muslim population.
The opposition in Bihar is also alleging that Gyanesh Kumar, who had played a key role in setting up the Ram Janambhoomi Teertha Kshetra as an IAS officer attached to the Ministry of Home Affairs prior to joining the Commission as its top boss, sanctioned the revision of electoral roles to be completed in just a month’s time in Bihar to ensure that more and more minority and poor voters are kept out of this election. This, in turn, offsets the chances of parties fighting the BJP-JD(U) combine to pull off a victory. The 2022 caste-based survey in Bihar had shown that the Muslim population is at 17.7%, though in constituencies like Kishanganj, it is pegged at 68%, underscoring its importance in an electoral exercise.
The Commission under Gyanesh Kumar has also categorically stated that if during the process, any voters in Bihar are suspected to be ‘foreign nationals’, they would be referred to the competent authority which would be the district magistrate (DM) or the state police under the Citizenship Act. If the enquiry of suspicion by the DM and the police is “confirmed”, such “illegal immigrants” would be, as per the Act, “confined” to a transit facility or detention centre in the state of his residence pending their deportation to the country of origin. Those doubtful voters would have to take their cases to the Foreigners’ Tribunals which, post the 2019 amendment by the Modi government, can now be set up across the states.
Gyanesh Kumar will go down in history for unrolling an indirect process of expanding the updation of the National Register of Citizens in Bihar. The official justification that there are "illegal immigrants" who necessitate the carrying out of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral rolls also paves the way for the creation of FTs in Bihar too.
But in his actions, Gyanesh Kumar is not without the company of some of his seniors, some who occupied the seat way back since the 1970s.
The Assam Model
The one to top that list would be former CEC S.L. Shakdher. Way back on October 24, 1978, CEC Shakdher had addressed a conference of state chief electoral officers in Ooty in Tamil Nadu. In that speech, he emphasised the need to avoid “commissions and improper additions” to electoral rolls, and referred to “large-scale” inclusion of “foreign nationals in some states, including the Northeast”.
What happened next is history.
Even though Shakdher did not specifically refer to the electoral rolls in Assam (he had said "Northeast"), that hint of a likely anomaly in the electoral rolls from the CEC himself gave the necessary credence to the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and its advisors to kickstart Assam’s "anti-foreigner, anti-Bangladeshi, and anti-illegal immigrant" movement. The fire lit by that comment of the CEC continues to burn not just Assam but evidently, other states.
Assam became perhaps the only state where the electoral rolls were revised by the Commission multiple times throughout the 1980s and the 1990s with the aim of weeding out "illegal immigrants". A writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court in 1985 by Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a party born of the movement, challenging the validity of the 1983 elections held in Assam for using the 1979 electoral rolls. This, clearly, was the Shakdher effect. The Commission had offered then to revise the rolls in that northeastern state.
People wait in queues to cast votes at a polling booth during the second phase of Panchayat elections, in Morigaon district, Assam, Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Photo: PTI.
It took Shakdher’s successor R.K. Trivedi about a year to complete the task in Assam – something that gives on an inkling into the challenges of the Bihar exercise's timeline.
The Commission’s exercise was carried out also at a time when the Indira Gandhi government was pressing the AASU to accept 1971 as the cut-off year for citizenship in Assam due to India’s commitment to the newly-formed Bangladesh to not push out anyone, Hindu or Muslim, who happened to enter India prior to its formation. During CEC Trivedi's intensive revision of rolls in Assam, the names of 1979 voters who could not establish their linkages to the 1971 rolls were deleted.
Significantly, an India Today report in July 1985 had said that a note had landed up on the desk of Gandhi saying that it should be left to the Commission to “solve the Assam problem” – meaning, no political interference was needed while carrying out the exercise. However, before the process concluded, Gandhi was assassinated.
Bihar appears to be walking in Assam's path.
If we look at the Commission’s history vis-a-vis Assam, in 1997, during the tenure of CEC T.N. Seshan, the electoral rolls were revised just four days before a by-poll was to take place in that state. The move took place after intense pressure of the AASU and the AGP on the H.D. Deve Gowda government. Still, it stands in no competition to the one being undertaken under Gyanesh Kumar, considering that move by Seshan was only in constituencies where the by-polls were due. That exercise was also a door-to-door verification of the electoral rolls.
During Seshan’s tenure though, a draft electoral roll was created for Assam which went on to create altogether a new category in the voters’ list, which may likely be the case in the Bihar list too.
Come January 1998, the Commission, under Seshan’s successor M. S. Gill, had refused to come under such political pressure anymore from AASU, and had even formed a screening committee under the then home minister Inderjit Gupta to look at the draft rolls. However, in January 1998, it decided to debar 3.7 lakh voters in Assam as the draft rolls had considered them to be doubtful or dubious voters. A ‘D’ was put against such names during Seshan’s tenure. Thus was born the concept of ‘D-voters’ in Assam’s electoral rolls. The citizenship of those voters came under a cloud, needing them to approach FTs to clear their names. On failing the test at the FT, they would be picked up to be kept at detention centres.
If what is being unrolled under Gyanesh Kumar in Bihar ends up putting a ‘D’ against the names of existing voters in the rolls for their inability to furnish the documents sought by the Commission, they would also have to knock at the doors of the FTs.
After the Emergency
The end of 1978, when Shakdher had made that comment about ‘foreign nationals’, the time was perhaps conducive for such a huge reaction among public in Assam. A considerable number of people from what was then East Pakistan had entered the state through the open international border due to the political movement for the creation of Bangladesh. This generated a fear in the host community of losing majority status in their state. However, what needs to be underlined here is also the fact that Shakdher’s comment had come in a post-Emergency scenario.
The shadow of Emergency in the 1977 elections fell in most parts of India, leading to the replacement of Gandhi’s government with that of Morarji Desai's. However, in Assam, the Congress was still formidable, and in power. Thus the CEC's remark had helped the Socialists, the Janata and the Jana Sangh – in the opposition – to form the narrative that the Congress, to remain in power in the state, had facilitated the entry of "illegal immigrants" or "foreigners" into the voters list.
That narrative is now BJP’s very own in every election in Assam.
The silence of the BJP on Gyanesh Kumar's move and Kumar’s own close association in setting up the party’s pet project in Ayodhya and also in the reading down of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, strongly indicate that the move is set to be an advantage to the ruling party and its allies. Kumar’s express order on Bihar must also be juxtaposed alongside the controversy around the electoral rolls in the recent Maharashtra assembly elections where the BJP came up trumps. Kumar has been defending those rolls without answering the pointed questions on them asked by both opposition and a section of the media.
Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi with Bihar party President Rajesh Ram, CPI (ML) Liberation General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, RJD leader Manoj Jha and other INDIA bloc leaders addresses the media after meeting the Election Commission, outside Nirvachan Sadan, in New Delhi, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. Photo: PTI.
On July 2, Kumar's controversial trajectory noted another leap. When opposition leaders protested against certain conditions imposed on them while attending a meeting to express their concerns about the SIR in Bihar, they were told that this is a “new Commission”. Interpretations of that comment can lead one to ask a flurry of questions:
Did Kumar indicate that the body under him is a Commission in BJP’s ‘New India’? After all, he is the first CEC appointed under a law brought about by the Modi government which places singular weightage on Modi's choice in the selection of election commissioners.
Did he hint that in ‘Naya Bharat’, there is scant need for the Commission to give a patient hearing to the opposition while carrying out the very job for which it exists?
Under the Constitution, however, the Election Commission is still mandated to hold elections that not only have to be free and fair, but also to be also seen as so by all participants, including the public.
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