The public impeachment of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar was not an event designed for television airwaves. Nor was it meant to feed social media reels and memes. It gave voice to a collective anguish. An institution entrusted with the most sacred task of our republic has stopped discharging its constitutional duties. Worse, it is using its humongous powers to undermine democracy itself.The charge sheet is long. Consider it count by count.The charge sheetOver the last two years, voluminous evidence has been placed before the Election Commission (EC) about unauthorised access to its servers and software. In Maharashtra, evidence was submitted that electoral rolls were being altered through a private app. There has been no investigation to date. Rahul Gandhi demonstrated at a press conference how the commission’s OTP-based system was being misused to tamper with voter lists in Aland, Karnataka. Again, the commission did not bother to investigate.There are hundreds of documented cases of misuse of Form 7 by unauthorised persons to delete the names of bona fide voters. Filing a false objection is a criminal offence punishable with up to a year in prison. Yet not a single inquiry has been initiated by the EC which is the sole authority to do so. When the Karnataka CID began an investigation into mass deletions in Aland, it sent the commission 18 reminders over 18 months seeking basic data. The commission didn’t cooperate. It never wanted to uncover the crime.Media reports have recorded several instances of software loopholes and irregularities in the commission’s systems. None received a meaningful response. A reasonable citizen can draw only one conclusion. The software was allowed to remain porous and insecure, while powers that the constitution vests in district and local officers were steadily centralised in Nirvachan Sadan.An SIR that surrendered its own purposeWhen Rahul Gandhi exposed the commission’s failure to protect the sanctity of the rolls, Gyanesh Kumar did not order an inquiry. He ordered a Special Intensive Revision (SIR). What had been done clandestinely was now given a legitimate design.The SIR set out, ostensibly, to verify citizenship. When challenged in the Supreme Court, the commission conceded that it does not have the power to conclusively determine citizenship. The facade was surrendered. The charade continued.Also read: The ECI Software Deleted 5.38 Lakh Bengal Voters With Auto-Generated Rejections Without Citing a ReasonA hundred crore citizens were sent scrambling for documents, mapping names in voter lists that were decades old. About 15% were struck off. And now, with the summary revision announced in October, the commission has quietly returned to the old system of enrolment. No answers. No explanation. No remorse.Nor does it engage with political parties in a manner befitting a constitutional body. When the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha placed evidence before the nation, the commission did not set out to verify it. It questioned his standing to raise it, and dared him to file an affidavit or apologise. When a high court directed that polling records be shared with a candidate, the rules were amended to restrict access. Then the commission ordered that CCTV and webcast footage of polling be destroyed 45 days after results, unless challenged in an election petition. Evidence that might have settled the dispute is being erased by design.An institution that will not investigate itself cannot complain when the people do.Beyond the reach of lawAll this happens behind a wall of legal protection. The 2023 law gave complete immunity to election commissioners from civil and criminal proceedings for official acts. CEC can’t be impeached, as it has full protection of Modi’s government. For all practical purposes, the CEC answers to no one.Also read: ‘Treason Against Constitution’: Opposition Holds Symbolic Public Impeachment of CEC Gyanesh KumarSo what is an opposition to do? Sit quietly and accept the demolition of democracy as a fait accompli? The Congress conceptualised democracy in India, made it functional and nurtured it through a century of struggle. It cannot stand by while that inheritance is hollowed out. It has led the opposition and the people onto the streets. It has marched to the President. It has petitioned the Supreme Court. And now it has held a public impeachment.The inquiry the Raj could not controlThis is not a new idea. It is woven into our freedom struggle. In April 1919, General Dyer’s troops fired into a peaceful crowd at Jallianwala Bagh. The colonial government appointed the Hunter Committee to inquire into the “disturbances”. The Congress refused to accept an inquiry run by the very power that had pulled the trigger. It set up its own Punjab Inquiry Committee. Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, Abbas Tyabji and M.R. Jayakar went from town to town, recording the statements of ordinary Punjabis.Their report had no legal power. It could not punish a single officer. Yet more than a century later, it is largely through those testimonies that we remember Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The official inquiry gave the Raj its version. The people’s inquiry gave India its memory.Two years earlier, Gandhi had done the same in Champaran. Ordered to leave the district, he refused. He and his colleagues wrote down the complaints of thousands of indigo cultivators, one statement at a time. The evidence was so overwhelming that the government had to appoint its own committee, with Gandhi as a member. The tinkathia system was abolished soon after. A people’s hearing had forced an official one.In the 1990s, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan held jan sunwais in the villages of Rajasthan. Muster rolls were read aloud before the very labourers who were supposed to have been paid. Officials had no answer. Those hearings grew into the right to information movement, and finally into the RTI Act of 2005. Beyond India, the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam had no court behind it, yet it shaped how the world judged that war. In each case, the hearing drew its strength not from the law but from the evidence and the public it spoke to.It worksThe pressure is already telling. The evidence placed before the public by Rahul Gandhi, and the protests that followed, have exposed what was meant to stay hidden. Cracks have appeared within the system itself. The two election commissioners recorded objections to the CEC’s decisions on the SIR. The Maharashtra chief electoral officer (CEC) has sought discretion for field staff on ECINET. Officials in Goa have contradicted the commission’s own claims.Also read: The BJP Forgets That a Protest Is Also About JoyFor eight years, the Congress asked for machine readable voter lists, which were available until 2018, so that the rolls could be properly scrutinised. The commission refused, citing privacy. After the protests, it has meekly agreed to provide searchable rolls. Two electoral registration officers (EROs) in Pilibhit have been suspended and named in an FIR, and a statewide re-examination of the rolls in Uttar Pradesh has been ordered. The edifice of non accountability is beginning to crumble.It is worth recalling that the opposition was never irrational. In March 2025, the commission itself proposed linking voter IDs with Aadhaar. The Congress supported it. The commission then dropped the idea without explanation and moved to a dubious SIR instead.But these corrections are too little and too late. Minor fixes cannot paper over what has happened. Mandates have been distorted. Parties have been decimated. Crores have been disenfranchised. And the institution meant to prevent it all stood by, and also facilitated it.Recalling the prophecy by Dr Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly, the system so laboriously built by the founders is being dismantled by the EC headed by Gyanesh Kumar.This cannot be allowed to lapse. The public impeachment has recorded the public sentiment. The public verdict will follow.Gurdeep Singh Sappal is a Permanent Invitee to the Congress Working Committee and former editor/CEO of Rajya Sabha Television.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.