Live Hearing: Supreme Court to hear pleas against CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s functioning

The petitioner has urged the court to declare SIR, and all actions, decisions, directions, and measures taken under it, invalid from the very beginning and without legal authority.

Supreme Court Hears Plea on CEC Gyanesh Kumar Live Updates: The Supreme Court will shortly hear petitions questioning the functioning of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, calling for an SIT probe against him and seeking to declare the nationwide SIR of electoral rolls illegal. A bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana will hear the matter.

The petitions were filed days after The Indian Express reported that ECs Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders concerning the SIR of electoral rolls. The two commissioners said some of the decisions were issued without their knowledge or recommendation. The two ECs separately wrote to the country’s top bureaucrat, Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan, flagging concerns over the integrity of voter software. The ECI said the letters sent by Sandhu and Joshi to the Cabinet Secretary concerned an officer on deputation and were not related to policy or IT division matters.

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Pleas before court: One of the petitions by Patna resident Rakesh Kumar Singh referred to the alleged differences between CEC Kumar and Sandhu and Joshi and the objections raised by them. “Article 324(1) of the Constitution does not vest the superintendence, direction and control of elections in an individual Chief Election Commissioner. It vests those powers in a Commission,” said the plea. The petitioner urged the court to declare SIR, and all actions, decisions, directions, and measures taken under it, invalid from the very beginning and without legal authority. The petitioner argued that the SIR was undertaken without the necessary statutory or constitutional authority and without following the procedure required by law.

The other petition by Delhi-based lawyer Shailendra Mani Tripathi has sought a probe by an independent, high-powered judicial inquiry commission or an SIT headed by a retired judge of the top court. The petition refers to “unprecedented constitutional fractures and illegalities committed within the ECI under the CEC as exposed by documentary records published on September 23, 2026”. The plea said the alleged “act of… CEC Kumar… falls squarely outside the ambit of official immunity and constitutes distinct, personal criminal liability”.

Live Updates
Oct 5, 2026 10:39 AM IST
Supreme Court Hears Plea on CEC Gyanesh Kumar Live Updates: Plea before court

Another petition filed by Rakesh Kumar Singh referred to alleged differences between CEC Kumar and Sandhu and Joshi, and the objections they raised. “Article 324(1) of the Constitution does not vest the superintendence, direction and control of elections in an individual Chief Election Commissioner. It vests those powers in a Commission,” said the plea. Singh pointed out that Article 324(2) provides that the Election Commission comprises the Chief Election Commissioner and such number of other Election Commissioners as the President may determine from time to time. Article 324(3) further stipulates that, when other Election Commissioners are appointed, the Chief Election Commissioner shall serve as the Commission’s Chairman.

He said his grievance is not that Kumar exercised the CEC’s powers improperly, “but that he has… held out as entitled to exercise a power, the collective decision-making authority of the Commission under Article 324 and Section 18 of the 2023 Act [Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act], to which Article 324(3) gives him no individual title, he being Chairman of the Commission and not the Commission itself.”

Oct 5, 2026 10:27 AM IST
Supreme Court Hears Plea on CEC Gyanesh Kumar Live Updates: Plea before court

One of the petitions is filed by Delhi-based lawyer Shailendra Mani Tripathi, who has sought a probe by an independent, high-powered judicial inquiry commission or a special investigation team headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court.

Tripathi has urged the court to issue appropriate directions to the competent statutory authority to register complaints and initiate prosecution under Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 against Gyanesh Kumar, Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg and Director General (Information Technology) Seema Khanna and all other officers found guilty of deliberate breach of official duty.

The petition refers to “unprecedented constitutional fractures and illegalities committed within the Election Commission of India under Chief Election Commissioner Shri Gyanesh Kumar as exposed by documentary records published on September 23, 2026”.

Oct 5, 2026 10:19 AM IST
Supreme Court Hears Plea on CEC Gyanesh Kumar Live Updates: What Justice Ujjal Bhuyan said

Amid the row over the SIR of electoral rolls against which petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, a judge of the top court, said on Sunday that any process that leads to wholesale disenfranchisement of Indian citizens, making them citizens without voting rights, would be violative of the Constitution. No amount of whataboutery can justify it, he said.

Justice Bhuyan said detaching an Indian citizen from the right to vote would be akin to “taking out the soul from the body.” Speaking at the valedictory ceremony of Justice Bodh Raj Sawhney Memorial Moot Court competition at Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad, he said, “If any process results in disenfranchising millions and millions of Indian citizens, making them second-class citizens in their own country, in the sense of being citizens without voting rights, such a process is intrinsically arbitrary. No amount of whataboutery can justify it.”

Oct 5, 2026 10:14 AM IST
Supreme Court Hears Plea on CEC Gyanesh Kumar Live Updates: What the petition calls for

The plea urges the court to issue a quo warranto writ “calling upon” Kumar “to show under what authority he has acted, and continues to act, as though entitled individually to exercise the collective decision-making power vested by Article 324 of the Constitution in the Election Commission as a body, notwithstanding that Article 324(3) constitutes him only Chairman of the Commission and vests in him no individual title to the Commission’s collective authority”.

The petitioner has also asked the court to declare the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), and all actions, decisions, directions, and measures taken under it, invalid from the very beginning and without legal authority. The petitioner argued that the SIR was undertaken without the necessary statutory or constitutional authority and without following the procedure required by law.

Oct 5, 2026 10:10 AM IST
Supreme Court Hears Plea on CEC Gyanesh Kumar Live Updates: Plea against CEC

Last week, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear a plea questioning the functioning of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and seeking to declare the nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls illegal. The petition came days after The Indian Express had reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders concerning the SIR of electoral rolls. The two commissioners said some of the decisions were taken without their knowledge or recommendation.

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