Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray used a press conference at his Mumbai residence, Matoshree, on Wednesday to demand that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar be removed immediately and jailed, that Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal be held again on ballot paper, and that future national polls abandon electronic voting machines—a escalation that ties opposition anger over voter-list revisions to an Indian Express investigation into formal objections filed by Kumar’s fellow commissioners.
What Thackeray said
According to The Hindu’s account of the briefing, Thackeray said elections in the three states should be rerun on paper ballots, that Kumar should be imprisoned without delay, and that every poll decision Kumar influenced should be reviewed. He appealed to opposition parties to unite “to save democracy” and accused Kumar of acting on instructions from Union Home Minister Amit Shah—a claim Shah’s office has not addressed in the reporting we cite.
Thackeray also thanked Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu for, in his words, exposing Kumar after media reports that the two had repeatedly objected to commission orders. The Election Commission publicly disputed portions of the Express narrative; we describe their objections only where outlets quoted official statements.
The voter-list backdrop
Opposition parties have campaigned for months against special intensive revision exercises and Form 6 rule changes they call opaque. Supreme Court hearings on Delhi’s revision notices—where benches questioned “machine-generated” mailers—keep electoral rolls in national headlines. Thackeray linked Kumar’s tenure to those fights, alleging anti-democratic decisions without presenting new forensic evidence beyond the commissioner dispute reporting.
He also repeated claims that voter additions and deletions in key states were skewed, urging the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance. Court calendars will determine whether that plea gains traction; Wednesday’s event was politics and advocacy, not a judicial filing.
Ballot paper demand
Thackeray’s call to scrap EVMs for repolls and all future elections revives a longstanding opposition demand the commission and the union government have rejected, citing security protocols and parallel counting drills. Demanding paper for three large states would imply massive logistical resets and legal challenges from seated MLAs; he did not outline a constitutional pathway, and our politics desk treats the demand as a pressure tactic tied to the commissioner controversy.
Still, the ballot-paper line signals how far trust has frayed in parts of the opposition camp: they are no longer asking only for procedural tweaks to Form 6—they are questioning the machinery of verdicts themselves.
Commission and government response
Hindustan Times reported that the Election Commission denied claims that Joshi and Sandhu had escalated concerns to the Cabinet Secretary in the manner opposition leaders described. Commission spokespeople have defended special revision as legally mandated hygiene, not partisan pruning. The BJP has portrayed opposition protests as sour grapes after state losses; Thackeray’s presser aimed to flip that narrative by centering internal commission dissents reported by the Express.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not comment publicly during the news cycle we track; Thackeray said Modi should sack Kumar immediately. NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule, quoted elsewhere, called internal commission differences “alarming” for citizen rights without endorsing every Matoshree allegation.
What happens next in Parliament politics
Opposition coordination meetings are likely before the winter session, but unity on impeachment mechanics versus street rhetoric has fractured before. Any removal of a CEC requires a rigorous parliamentary process with supermajority thresholds; jail demands are prosecutorial language outside Thackeray’s formal powers.
For Maharashtra, where his party competes in a fragmented alliance landscape, the press conference keeps voter-list grievance alive ahead of local body polls and the next state election cycle. Whether courts or the commission budge on Kumar’s tenure will turn on evidence filings, not decibel levels at Matoshree—but Wednesday showed the opposition intends to keep election administration on the front page through the festival season.
Congress spokespeople in Mumbai echoed calls for Supreme Court intervention without repeating Thackeray’s jail rhetoric verbatim, a split that may matter when parties draft joint memoranda. BJP leaders dismissed the event as desperation after electoral setbacks, pointing to past commission orders upheld in court. Our desk will track whether any opposition delegation formally petitions the President or the Rajya Sabha chair on commissioner removal this week.