New Delhi, September 24: The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has put forth three key demands amid the ongoing row with the Election Commission of India (ECI). At a press conference on Thursday, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke called for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar within 48 hours. The group also demanded that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise be frozen and that all upcoming elections be put on hold.
“Jantar Mantar 2.0 will definitely happen if CEC Gyanesh Kumar doesn’t resign,” Dipke said during the press conference, warning that the group would launch a protest if Kumar did not step down within the 48-hour deadline. The group’s first demand is “immediate accountability”, including Kumar’s resignation and the initiation of criminal proceedings, along with an answer to the question of who allegedly gave him the orders.
Under its second demand, the CJP has called for all upcoming polls to be put on hold, the SIR exercise to be frozen and the January 2025 voter list to be restored. It has also sought an independent inquiry commission to examine how decisions related to SIR were taken and demanded that the Supreme Court seize files related to the exercise and its decision-making process.
The group’s third demand seeks “independent leadership”. It has called for the repeal of the 2023 law governing the appointment of Election Commissioners and a new law with active participation from civil society.
The demands come a day after an investigative report by The Indian Express said Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections to decisions taken in the commission’s name at least 14 times over 10 months. According to the report, four of these objections were recorded on the same day. The disagreements reportedly involved changes to Form 6, centralisation of the ERONet system and appeals against voter deletions, among other issues.
The report also said Sandhu and Joshi separately wrote to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan over changes to the EC’s IT work, expressing concerns that the changes could reduce oversight of systems used to manage voter lists. In a clarification responding to the report, the Election Commission said that all decisions taken by it were unanimous in nature.
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