Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday demanded that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar be removed from office and jailed after reported in an investigation that the other two Election Commissioners repeatedly objected to decisions taken by the poll panel.

Demanding a probe into the functioning of the Election Commission, Thackeray also called for the cancellation of all the “wrong decisions” taken by the poll panel and fresh elections in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu using ballot papers.

Addressing a press conference, Uddhav Thackeray said, “Gyanesh Kumar should be immediately sacked and jailed,” and thanked Sandhu and Joshi for registering their objections on record, which, he said, “exposed” Gyanesh Kumar before the country.

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The immediate trigger for Uddhav Thackeray’s remarks today was an investigation which found that Sandhu and Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over the last 10 months to decisions and orders they said were taken without their knowledge.

Their objections concerned several aspects of electoral-roll management –  the registration of new voters, deletion and restoration of names, appeals against roll decisions, changes to Form 6, and management of the Election Commission’s voter database.

‘Not unsubstantiated allegations’: Thackeray

Buoyed by the Express investigation, Uddhav Thackeray said it showed his party and other Opposition parties had not made any unsubstantiated allegations. “I thank Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi for exposing Gyanesh Kumar,” he said.

Thackeray also argued that the credibility of elections conducted under the Election Commission’s supervision had to be examined.

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The Maharashtra Assembly election was held in November 2024, while West Bengal and Tamil Nadu went to the polls in April 2026.

His demand comes amid a controversy over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. In Maharashtra, the draft SIR roll published on August 31 left out about 2.07 crore names from the previous electoral roll, which the Election Commission stressed were not final.

A subsequent analysis by found 62.48 lakh voter records with discrepancies in relatives’ details and another 59.75 lakh electors who could not be linked to a relative in the previous rolls.

Maharashtra voter increase

Thackeray also referred to the increase in the number of electors between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Maharashtra, an issue the Opposition has repeatedly raised.

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According to Election Commission data, 48,81,620 electors were added between the two elections, while 8,00,391 were deleted, significantly increasing the number of electors by 40,81,229. The EC has said the increase did not show an abnormal trend and pointed to the four qualifying dates for voter registration introduced by law.

The issue has remained politically contentious, with the Opposition parties questioning the scale and timing of the additions.

In Tamil Nadu, the revision removed nearly 70 lakh names, while in West Bengal, the electorate fell by around 61 lakh in the final roll; the Bengal process saw the removal of 27.16 lakh names.