Mysuru: Congress activists led by former MLA MK Somashekhar held a protest at Ramaswamy Circle in Mysuru, demanding the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged differences among the poll panel’s top officers on key electoral decisions.They raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of misusing the Election Commission (EC) for his political advantage, and said that he was involved in the murder of democracy.The protesters accused the CEC of autocratic and unilateral decisions, even though two election commissioners—Sukbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi—had objected to them.The two commissioners had recorded objections on at least 14 occasions over the past 10 months, on issues concerning voter additions and deletions, changes to Form 6 used for new voter registration and centralisation of electoral systems, they stated.Congress activists are protesting to protect the sanctity of the Election Commission, they stated.Congress activists accused the CEC of helping the ruling BJP to come back to power at the Centre, besides helping the saffron party to win various assembly polls held in different states, by deleting more than 13 crore voters from the electoral list. The protesters demanded that the CEC take responsibility and resign from his post.Somashekhar said that thousands of voters belonging to backward classes, scheduled castes and Muslims were deleted from the electoral list of his constituency. Congress will prove the deleted voters are genuine voters, by providing supporting documents, he said.
