Beyond Ramlila stage, Opposition needs sharper script

That the ruling party of the world’s second-largest economy appears to be shifting its focus from economic planning to the discipline of its own governing apparatus is significant.

These parties will have to reconsider whether mechanically adding the name of CEC Gyanesh Kumar to their already existing villains’ gallery is enough.

3 min readNov 3, 2026 06:07 AM IST First published on: Nov 3, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST

The Congress-led Opposition’s rally at Ramlila Maidan on Sunday was a significant moment in the protests against the Chief Election Commissioner’s conduct of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. For parties pushed to the wall by the BJP’s serial electoral victories that it has regularly leveraged to squeeze spaces for opponents and to short-circuit debate, the crowds and the line-up of INDIA bloc heavyweights was a reclaiming of public space that was, arguably, cathartic. A day earlier, a similarly united Opposition, along with civil-society groups that joined hands with it on both days, had staged a “mock impeachment” of CEC Gyanesh Kumar. But the day after Ramlila Maidan, and ahead of crucial polls early next year in UP and other states, the Opposition may need to pause and take stock. Is symbolism overtaking the substance of its politics, and even undermining it? By refusing to make vital distinctions, by spreading the net too wide — from CEC-SIR, to lack of jobs, shrinking farmers’ incomes, price rise and capture of institutions in general — is it losing the issue while sounding nihilistic? Most of all, by folding into this unwieldy campaign their own electoral defeats, by using high-pitched rhetoric in place of evidence to connect dots, parties of the Opposition risk looking like defeated players in search of a fall guy.

At their joint rally, speaker after speaker sought to make a hold-all accusation of illegitimacy against the BJP-led ruling establishment their starting point. In a way, this also reflects the genuine problem that the Opposition confronts in framing the CEC-SIR issue for a larger audience. It is challenging to communicate institutional integrity in terms that touch the hearts and minds of voters. But the Opposition does itself no favours by not stepping up to that challenge. The greater danger is that it also does disservice to an issue that fundamentally affects the health of democracy. The Election Commission of India underwrites the constitutional guarantee of equal voting rights for all citizens, which is essential for democracy to renew itself through free and fair elections. As this paper’s investigation showed, there has been, under this CEC’s direct watch, a disquieting erosion of checks and balances within the ECI, which needs to be addressed urgently.

Opposition parties’ invocation of generally apocalyptic spectres is unpersuasive and self-defeating also because it has not found resonance on the ground. And because it is vulnerable to the charge that it is a thin cover for the absence of an affirmative politics — the inability of these parties to showcase alternative governance models in states where they are in power, Karnataka to Jharkhand, Himachal to Punjab. These parties will have to reconsider whether mechanically adding the name of CEC Gyanesh Kumar to their already existing villains’ gallery is enough. For the losing side in a democracy, to keep knocking the electoral process is, after a point, dispiriting for the voters they are addressing and appealing to. The energy comes from the harder labour of politics. That, for those who took the Ramlila stage on Sunday, is still work not done.