Opposition parties are considering circulating the letter they wrote to Chief Justice Surya Kant of India last month among all the judges of the Supreme Court highlighting their grievances against the Election Commission of India (ECI) and other election-related issues.
Twenty-three opposition parties, including the DMK and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), along with Independent MP Kapil Sibal, wrote to CJI Surya Kant on June 28, raising concerns over what they described as the partisan role of the Election Commission and the flawed Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls.
In the letter, the opposition accused the IEC of acting in a “rude” and “biased” manner during the independent review process, alleging that the practice was hasty, poorly implemented, and disenfranchised thousands of voters, putting the country’s democratic process “at risk.”
Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Derek O’Brien said the opposition parties were discussing a plan to distribute the letter to all judges of the Supreme Court. He said: “We have not received any response from the International Committee of Justice, so the letter will be distributed to a wider sector of judges.”
Asked what that would be for when the opposition actually spreads the letter, O’Brien said: “There’s a big political difference between posting the letter on social media and sending a copy of the letter to every judge of the Supreme Court.”
Apart from CJI Kant, the Supreme Court currently has 34 judges.
The six-page letter criticized the SIR practice, saying the Election Commission of India had justified it as a measure to improve the integrity of electoral rolls, but the result was the opposite.
The letter also accused the IEC of arbitrarily deleting large numbers of names from the electoral rolls and criticized the deployment of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) during the elections in West Bengal.
It said around 3.5 lakh CAPF personnel were deployed during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, including around 2.4 lakh in West Bengal. “It was clear that the West Bengal government was under siege by the presence of the 2 lakh CAPF personnel,” the parties said.
Questioning the process of appointing election commissioners, the opposition claimed that “since 2014, almost all of the appointments made by the government have been to people closely associated with it, who are seen as brazenly carrying out the government’s orders to manipulate the election results.”
DMK and AAP also signing the June 28 letter is significant given that both parties have distanced themselves from the Congress-led India bloc in recent months. However, Lok Sabha MP Hanuman Beniwal’s Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) did not sign the letter.
AAP exited the All India alliance in 2025 after contesting the Lok Sabha elections as part of the opposition caucus. The DMK withdrew from the bloc last month after the Congress decided to support the C Joseph Vijay-led TVK government in Tamil Nadu.
