THE WORDS IN THE caption “The Streets Do Not Have Algorithms” uttered by a Brazilian woman went viral across the world through an Instagram post as Inácio Lula da Silva registered victory over Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil’s October 2026 presidential elections. She very thoughtfully stated that in spite of money and power and the employment of technology, “You can’t algorithmically control what happens when people start talking to each other, when they organise, when they show up.”
Those words assume enormous significance for people of India when massive disenfranchisement of voters have become a new normal because algorithmically SIR (Special Intense Revision) is implemented across the country by Election Commission of India, headed by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, to prepare electoral rolls de novo. Even the term “logical discrepancy” employed by Kumar in West Bengal, while preparing electoral roll is an outcome of an algorithm which resulted in removal of 2.7 million voters from the electoral roll a few weeks before the Assembly Elections were conducted in that State. The September 23 Indian Express expose of the malfunctioning of ECI brought to light that the software controlling voter lists of crores of people across India is being operated on the basis of some algorithm which allowed the officials of ECI only to delete or add voters to the electoral roll anywhere in the country. It was being done in violation of statutory rule that only the Electoral Registration Officers of States had the legitimate authority to include or exclude voters. That expose reported that such egregious violations of statutory provisions were pointed out by two Election Commissioners Sukhbir Sandhu and Vivek Joshi who also wanted an audit to be conducted of the matter.
The labyrinth of algorithm is such that even the judges appointed by the Supreme Court to judicial tribunals in Bengal, to adjudicate appeals filed by deleted voters to restore their names in the electoral roll, could not send notices to deleted voters, conduct hearings and add the names of those whose appeals have been decided in their favour.
The details of the coordinates of the automated algorithm are never shared with the public and even with those who ask details about them by filing RTI applications. The unprecedented level of algorithmically determined manipulations of electoral rolls has led to hurling of allegations of vote theft and resulted in proven cases of mass disenfranchisement of voters never witnessed anywhere in the world. Therefore, people and opposition parties are hitting the streets to protest and mobilise the general populace to save the right to vote, democracy and above all the Constitution.
The essence embodied in the words “The Streets Do Not Have Algorithms” has been recurrently manifested in protests in defence of the right to vote, people’s demand to scrap SIR and resignation of Gyanesh Kumar.
The symbolic “Public Impeachment” session organised by INDIA Janbandhan (People’s Alliance) in the residence of Malikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, on October 1, adopted a unanimous resolution impeaching Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar holding him guilty of six charges. One such charge was that he demolished democracy and universal adult franchise guaranteed under Article 326 of the Constitution by erasing millions of voters from the electoral roll. It represented a marvellous example of protest which no algorithm can manipulate. The grave assault on the right to vote fatally strikes at the very foundation of representative Government. The resolution adopted to publicly impeach Gyanesh Kuamt described, his many acts of commission and omission to subvert voting rights and democracy, as “an act of treason against the nation and the Constitution of India.”
Next day on November 1, a mega rally was organised by INDIA alliance parties at Ramleela Maidan on the theme “Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao”. Massive participation of people, in that rally, hailing from different parts of the country, and the speeches of leaders of INDIA alliance including that of Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, that Vote Chori (Vote Theft) has been going on on a sustained basis has raised questions about the legitimacy of the Government at the centre. Such charges have reverberated across the country.
Right from the middle of 2025 Rahul Gandhi exposed the Vote Chori in several press conferences after painstaking analysis of lakhs of pages of voter lists obtained from the Election Commission of India through RTI. He even organised a 17 day long “Vote Adhikar Yatra” in Bihar in August -September 2025. In the last day of that Yatar on September 1, the concluding day of the Yatra, Rahul very strikingly sensitised thousands of people in Patna by his forceful plea that the Vote Chori (Vote Theft) meant theft of rights, theft of employment, theft of education, theft of democracy and theft of the future of the youth.
Even prior to Rahul’s charge that Vote Chori was taking place Biju Janata Dal submitted a complaint under oath to Election Commission of India on the issue of irregularities of voting process during 2024 election to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies. No action was taken by the ECI.
Even Samajwadi Party President lodged several complaints with ECI regarding vote theft and other issues concerning the unfair practices adopted to steal votes for BJP. He did so under oath and yet no action was taken by ECI.
It is against this backdrop that the public impeachment of CEC Gyanesh Kumar and the charges slapped against him that he committed treason against the nation and the Constitution of India should be seen as a gathering crisis gravely causing adverse consequences for our democracy.
Never ever in the annals of electoral democracy a Chief Election Commissioner was charged with electoral fraud and treason as it has been done in case of CEC Gyanesh Kuamr who, as reported in media, have employed algorithms to manipulate electoral rolls and strike off the names of millions of people from the voter list.
Rahul Gandhi said in his speech in Ram Leela ground that Prime Minister of India Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah would go nowhere.
“I am telling you the opposite – Narendra Modi cannot go anywhere. Even if he wants to leave, we will not let him go. After Gyanesh Kumar, we are going to stand right in front of you. Legal action will be taken against you for the vote chori [theft] that you have done,” he forcefully warned.
All these indicate that no algorithm can control protests which spontaneously enlist people to interrogate the regime and hold it accountable. When citizens exercise their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right of freedom of speech and to peacefully protest they communicate, organise themselves in streets and express themselves in manifold ways which in the present circumstances have taken the form of humour, satire and even irreverence. Therefore, the idea that “The Streets Do Not Have Algorithms” constitutes a formidable public reasoning reminding Mahatma Gandhi’s 1931 formulation that right to vote is a form of direct action, Satyagraha a more potent force than right to vote and B R Ambedkar’s clarion call embodied in his slogan, “Educate, Agitate and Organise”. When the right to vote and right to protest is under attack such robust and emancipatory visions of Gandhi and Ambedkar are now being invoked to save the Constitution from the algorithmically determined fatal attacks.
