Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday, 23 September demanded the immediate arrest of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, calling him the 'principal mastermind of a gang that breaks political parties and murders democracy.' Addressing a press conference in Mumbai, Thackeray also called for scrapping recent assembly elections in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, and holding fresh polls exclusively via paper ballots.

The Internal Rift That Triggered the Outburst

Thackeray's broadside followed media reports revealing a formal complaint filed by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi to Cabinet Secretary T.V. Somanathan. The two commissioners allegedly alleged that CEC Kumar had been taking unilateral decisions on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) without consulting them or acknowledging their dissent.

'The internal whistleblowing by Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu has exposed how arbitrary this administration was,' Thackeray said, praising the two commissioners for their 'courage.' He added: 'With two out of three Commissioners revolting against his arbitrary style, the majority is now against the Chief Election Commissioner. In essence, Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi have ousted Gyanesh Kumar from the commission.'

Thackeray's Key Allegations Against the ECI

The former Maharashtra Chief Minister alleged systematic manipulation of voter rolls, claiming that more than 45 lakh names were 'arbitrarily inserted' into the state's voter list ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, only for 40 lakh of those names to be flagged or questioned during the subsequent SIR exercise. He alleged that the Election Commission of India (ECI) first struck against his party by freezing its original name and symbol during a key bye-election before transferring them to a rebel faction — a reference to the Shiv Sena split dispute.

Thackeray further claimed that identical tactics were later deployed against Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and are now, he alleged, being directed at the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. In a pointed aside, he noted that the name of BJP veteran L.K. Advani reportedly went missing from the voter list. 'Is this how they treat the man responsible for bringing them to power?' he asked.

Demand for Home Ministry Probe

Raising the stakes further, Thackeray demanded an independent investigation into whether the poll body was operating on direct instructions from the Union Home Ministry. 'If the ECI is operating on instructions from the Home Ministry, the nation has a right to know if the Union Home Minister Amit Shah himself is directing these operations,' he said, according to reports.

This comes amid a broader Opposition narrative — building for several years — that the country's constitutional institutions are being subordinated to the ruling dispensation. Notably, demands for paper ballot elections and scrutiny of the ECI's independence have intensified across Opposition parties ahead of scheduled electoral cycles.

Call to Action for Opposition and BJP Dissenters

Thackeray called on the entire Opposition to 'unitedly step up,' and unusually, also appealed to what he described as 'patriotic members within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)' to join the demand for a return to paper ballots. He warned that if democratic institutions continued to be compromised, citizens would be compelled to take to the streets. 'The media and the public must break free from fear. When democracy is being openly murdered by a gang of political dacoits, the citizens and the press must stand up to safeguard the Constitution,' he said.

As of the time of reporting, neither CEC Gyanesh Kumar nor the ECI had responded publicly to Thackeray's allegations or the reported internal complaint. The political controversy is expected to intensify as Opposition parties weigh a coordinated response ahead of upcoming state electoral cycles.