The allegation of former Chief Electoral Commissioner S.E. Qureshi said that then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told him: “If that is what you think, I will commit suicide,” after he was confronted by Congress party leaders’ attacks on the Election Commission of India.
The anecdote in a chapter titled “The Day the Prime Minister Said the Unthinkable” revisits the bitter standoff between the Election Commission of India and the Congress during the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections after the poll panel admonished the then Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid for promising to strengthen reservation for Muslims during the election campaign.
According to Qureshi, he met Singh to complain that senior Congress leaders were repeatedly attacking the Election Commission of India instead of respecting its constitutional authority. A visibly distressed Singh denied he allowed such criticism, saying he would have attacked ministers if he had known, the former CEC wrote. He then allegedly said: “If that’s what you think, I’ll kill myself,” while calling ECI “the soul of our democracy.”
The revelation sparked an immediate political backlash, with BJP IT chief Amit Malviya citing the incident to attack the Congress.
Posting on X, Malviya said questioning ECI’s neutrality has long been part of the Congress’ political strategy.
“When the United Progressive Alliance was in power, its ministers repeatedly targeted the Election Commission whenever they were stopped for violating the Model Code of Conduct,” he wrote, referring to the 2012 controversy over Khurshid’s quota promise.
Malviya said Qureshi’s account showed that Singh himself acknowledged the harm caused by his colleagues’ behaviour.
“Former CEC member C Qureshi has revealed that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh later told him that he would ‘commit suicide’ due to the irresponsible statements of his ministers. That incident speaks volumes about the state of the government, a Prime Minister unable to rein in his colleagues while constitutional institutions are under attack.”
He added, “Congress’s rules of the game remained unchanged: when it came to power, it sought to intimidate the Election Commission; and when it exited, it sought to discredit the institution when the election results did not suit it.”
Congress national secretary Pranav Jha said the BJP’s attempt to revive the 2012 incident was nothing more than a distraction from the serious questions raised today. “Selective anecdotes and hearsay cannot be equated with current concerns about the integrity of the electoral process, transparency in decision-making, and the need to maintain public confidence in democratic institutions,” Jha said. “The BJP ignores the fact that it has itself questioned the Election Commission on numerous occasions whenever its decisions do not suit the party. Seeking transparency, demanding accountability, or questioning specific actions taken by a constitutional authority does not constitute an attack on the institution – rather, it is an essential feature of any healthy democracy.”
The Congress leader added that the party always respects the EC as one of the fundamental pillars of India’s constitutional democracy.
The book, which will be published by Hachette India, contains 100 episodes from Qureshi’s decades-long career in the Indian Administrative Service, where he later became the 17th Chief Election Commissioner of India. Instead of a traditional biography, the book presents independent accounts of important moments related to elections, governance, and public life.
Several chapters also address politically sensitive issues.
Qureshi says he rejected appointment as joint secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office because he feared that he would be viewed as a Muslim through a religious lens rather than judged on merit alone. A senior official later allegedly said: “We already have one Muslim,” suggesting that religion had entered into the debate over appointments.
In another chapter, he says that the Election Commission warned the Prime Minister after the 2012 Punjab Assembly elections that drugs were increasingly being used as an electoral incentive, but the issue did not receive much attention until the release of the film Udta Punjab in 2016.
The former CEC also recounts Commonwealth Games organizing committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi’s warning that inadequate financial accountability could lead to “we all end up in Tihar jail”, defends the CEC’s decision to cover up Mayawati’s elephant statues during the Uttar Pradesh polls, and recalls then Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj defending his appointment as DG Doordarshan against objections from within her party, saying: “Efficiency has no religion.”
In the introduction, Qureshi says that he deliberately avoided writing a traditional autobiography, choosing instead “one hundred excerpts” that together provide a frank account of his life in public service and the workings of Indian institutions.
