ON the occasion of celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2, 2026 widespread protests are taking place across the country demanding resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar who according to Indian Express expose has caused the downfall of the credibility and independence of Election Commission of India by conducting SIR without involving two fellow Election Commissioners. His actions in violation of the rules and the very Constitution itself has resulted in removal of 13 crores of voters from the electoral roll causing outrage across the nation.
The magnitude of the crisis is so severe that opposition parties and even the Cockroach Janata Party have chosen October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, to launch a series of protests to salvage the purity and integrity of the electoral process.
It is against this backdrop the Leaflet has decided to bring out a special issue focussing attention on Gandhi’s vision on diverse aspects of electoral democracy beginning with his 1894 struggle in South Africa in defence of voting rights of Indians who were disenfranchised by white rulers on specious grounds.
The first article contains two speeches of Gandhi, one of 1920 and the other of 1925, outlining his vision on duty of voters and to whom they should cast their votes by taking into, among others, contesting candidates’ commitment to the issues concerning, inter alia, Hindu-Muslim Unity and abolition of untouchability.
The third piece in the first article contains Gandhi’s 1937 article, “Utilising Elections” to make the issue of abolition of untouchability an electoral issue. It is significant that all such issues Gandhi took up during the freedom struggle eventually got enshrined in the Constitution.
The second article in the special issue is authored by S N Sahu and it deals with the contemporary resonance of Mahatma Gandhi’s 1894 Struggle in South Africa for Voting Rights of Indians who were disenfranchised by white rulers. It is argued that the play book of colonial rulers for taking away the voting rights of Indians in South Africa are getting replicated in the implementation of SIR causing disenfranchisement of millions of voters who suffer in losing many other rights following the removal of their names from electoral roll.
The other illuminating article by eminent writer and public intellectual Parkarala Prabhakar deals with the issue of removal of a voter’s name from the electoral roll before the election and restoring it after the poll is conducted. He argues that Gandhi described such a devious strategy of depriving voting right before elections and restoring afterwards as equivalent to granting remission after hanging. He locates Gandhi’s analysis in the context of disenfranchisement of millions of voters in Bengal before the Assembly elections and restoring 93 percent of voters in the electoral roll after their appeals were successfully adjudicated in their favour by judicial tribunals.
Ajitesh Singh’s article “What Gandhi’s Voter Owes India, and What India Owes the Voter’ is based on Mahatma Gandhi’s 1920 article “What should the Voters Do”. The contents of that 1920 article resonate in the context of the crisis India is confronting because of the erosion of the independence and integrity of the Election Commission of India.
The last piece in the special issue is based on the lesser known vision of Mahatma Gandhi who in 1937 advocated the idea of Indian National Congress that the voting age for all eligible Indian voters should be either 21 or 18 years. Eventually in 1988 Rajiv Gandhi Government amended the Constitution and reduced the voting age from 21 to 18. Now when the CEC Gyanesh Kumar introduced illegal changes to Form 16 asking the first time voters to state in that form the names of their parents or grandparents, as they existed in the 2002 electoral roll, it was interpreted that such changes would block the entry of youth to the voter list. It is in this context that the import of Gandhi’s vision is realised with added significance.
It is instructive to note that while Gandhi flagged the voting age at 21 or 18 years to allow more youth to exercise their right to vote, he recommended in 1939 that voters should possess a voter ID card so that none else could impersonate them. Gandhi’s vision was fructified by the then Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan when he introduced photo identity cards for voters to safeguard the purity of the electoral process.
Even as early as 1920’s when the franchise was highly restricted Mahatma Gandhi wrote an article dealing with corrupt practices prevailing in the elections of that time and he titled it as "A Plea for Purity." He wrote in it that, “Without purity of public life, Swaraj is an impossibility."
In the context of the Indian Express expose of impurities prevailing in the Election Commission of India our Swaraj has been endangered. The country is gripped by anxiety and desperation to deal with the sharp fall in the standard of functioning of ECI under the leadership of CEC Kumar. Never ever in the past ECI’s functioning was so badly compromised as it has been now.
Therefore, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti an attempt has been made in this special issue to unearth ideas of Gandhiji concerning his 1894 struggle for voting rights of Indians, his prescription to voters to perform their duties and above all his determination to agitate on the issue of removal of names of voters before elections and restoring them after the completion of poll process. It is hoped that the special issue would be of significance to invoke the lasting value of Gandhi’s vision for cleansing the electoral process to salvage our democracy.
