On 9th October, Faye D’Souza, the leftist ‘independent journalist ‘, appeared on a France 24 English program ahead of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest on the 10th of October against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Faye D’Souza spoke at length about the dubious Indian Express report that passed off internal communication of dissent by the other two Election Commissioners regarding certain decisions about the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls.
Faye D’Souza cites the Indian Express report to insinuate that some decisions of CEC Gyanesh Kumar regarding SIR might be ‘illegal’ but admits that there’s no proof any of this benefitted the BJP electorally
Interestingly, even Faye D’Souza, whose predisposition against the central government is well-known, conceded that contrary to the apocryphal narrative the CJP and Opposition parties are pushing, there is no evidence so far to back up the claim that “those voters deleted from the electoral rolls during the SIR exercise across various states in recent months, may have not voted for the BJP.”
D’Souza discussed the claims in the Indian Express report, which passed off the dissent expressed by the two other Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, about certain processes linked to the SIR exercise in internal communications as ‘evidence’ that the ECI was acting in a dictatorial fashion.
“The evidence that we do have, or the evidence that The Indian Express has said it has, is documents that, according to The Indian Express, prove that two out of three election commissioners had objections to various parts of the process; that they raised questions during the parts of the process that were not answered; that their objections were ignored; that they were actually process decisions that were made that they weren’t even involved in. Now the reason why these are these things are a problem is because the law says very clearly that the chief election commissioner is just first among equals and really has no authority to make decisions on his own,” she said.
D’Souza, however, insinuated that if the two Election Commissioners say that their objections were ignored during decision-making, then this makes certain decisions of CEC Gyanesh Kumar “illegal”. Regardless, the leftist journalist opined that there is no proof that CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s decisions, opposed by other ECs internally, benefitted the BJP in any manner.
“All decisions have to either be unanimous or by majority. So if two out of three say that they were kept in the dark or their objections were ignored or they weren’t even considered in some points, then this could arguably make some of these decisions illegal. And that is as far as, you know, the questions have been raised so far. The questions that we can ask for sure. Now whether the ruling party benefited from this or not is conjecture, and we don’t have really any evidence to, you know, say that conclusively,” D’Souza said.
The Indian Express hit job and eventual distancing from the Opposition’s ‘vote chori’ bogey
In late September 2026, The Indian Express published a dubious ‘investigative’ report casting aspersions on the integrity of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar. This series of ‘investigative reports’, however, was, in reality, a well-timed hit job against CEC Gyanesh Kumar. The Indian Express claimed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months on issues concerning the Special Intensive Revision, Form 6, electoral-roll software, voter additions and deletions and other administrative decisions. The newspaper presented these findings as proof of an unprecedented rupture within the Election Commission.
Highlighting the internal objections, the IE report wove an alarmist narrative that powers were being centralised in Delhi, that statutory Electoral Registration Officers were being bypassed, that software was overriding field-level decisions and that the Election Commission was facing an unprecedented institutional breakdown.
The Election Commission issued an elaborate clarification stating that internal objections do not mean an institutional coup.
In fact, the internal discussions and dissenting note exchanges by the CEC and the other two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, indicate that the Commission’s top officials freely and strongly express their opinions and disagreements about various issues pertaining to the electoral process and take decisions after thorough consensus, contrary to the framing that CEC Gyanesh Kumar alone holds the reins of the Election Commission.
The Indian Express was widely used by the CJP leaders and INDI bloc politicians as some sort of ‘proof of “hijacking of India’s democracy” just because they lost elections in some states and the public rejected them for the third time in Lok Sabha elections.
OpIndia reported earlier that neither the claims by The Indian Express report around the Form 6 modifications issue nor the claims about alleged “centralisation” of electoral roll databases are backed by enough evidence to support the ‘Delhi has taken over the voter database’ accusations.
Interestingly, as the backlash mounted over sensationalising internal exchange of dissent notes by Election Commissioners as some sort of evidence of ‘power centralisation’ and ‘collapse of democracy’, The Indian Express subtly created distance between their claims about SIR to the ‘vote chori’ and ‘Election Commission compromised’ claims Rahul Gandhi, the INDI bloc and the CJP are peddling.
On 10th October, the day the CJP supporters gathered in the National Capital to protest against CEC Gyanesh Kumar and demand his resignation, The Indian Express published an editorial titled: “It’s about the voter, not the party they vote for”.
The editorial claims that The Indian Express‘s ‘investigation’ raised questions about the conduct of SIR of electoral rolls, an individual’s right to vote, and CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s functioning and so on. However, it says that despite catching up with the CJP-led mobilisation, the Opposition’s narrative and approach regarding SIR and elections in recent years raise questions of their own.
The Indian Express editorial argues that the Congress party’s, particularly Rahul Gandhi’s, “stolen elections, “annulment of SIR” and “return to the ballot paper” rhetoric, though it carries appeal across the ideological spectrum, is a loser’s complaint.
The rhetoric that accompanies these scenes is of “stolen elections”, “annulment of SIR”, “going back to the ballot paper”. In other words, Congress has taken a powerful issue that cuts across the ideological spectrum, one that touches the right of every voter to shape the country of the future, to let itself off the hook for its own defeats.
It also highlighted that Congress was on an election-losing spree even before the SIR, which began only in 2025, ahead of the Bihar state assembly elections.
“Congress has not lost election after election for a decade and more because of the recent SIR or the poll referee. Nor was it that some EVMs failed to count its votes everywhere, except in Kerala or Karnataka. It needs to face up to its own deepening disconnect with the people — and that is separate from, not part of, the ECI-SIR story,” the editorial adds.
Apparently, the opposition’s EVM hacking, VVPAT tampering, and Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ bogey could not sow distrust in the minds of the Indian people against the Election Commission, its integrity and the transparency of the electoral process. Thus, the anti-BJP cabal has chosen CEC Gyanesh Kumar as their scapegoat. However, beyond charged rhetoric and on-street theatrics, their narrative is so weak and devoid of strong evidence that even their own ideological allies and fake news peddlers like Faye D’Souza are not buying it.
Faye D’Souza and her track record of anti-BJP propaganda
‘Journalist’ Faye D’Souza has earned notoriety for peddling anti-BJP propaganda and even fake news.
During the 2020 Covid pandemic, D’Souza had retweeted a debunked story about the standard of N95 masks and protective equipment being distributed by the government
D’Souza was also fact-checked over her statements on Justice S Muralidhar’s relocation from the Delhi High Court during 2020. She maintained that the Modi government executed a precipitous transfer of the justice due to his criticism directed at the Delhi Police and his orders mandating the lodging of First Information Reports (FIRs) against politicians accused of delivering inflammatory speeches.
However, it was revealed that the move was proposed by the Supreme Court Collegium days before his judgment. The Union Law Ministry simply sent out the notification in accordance with the decision. Furthermore, the Collegium controls appointments and transfers in the higher judiciary, and the government has no role in these affairs.
In early 2020, D’Souza had vehemently protested against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and accused the government of imposing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) without any clarification on the matter. Resorting to typical Marxist agitprop, D’Souza had posted a video captioned ‘Cheat Sheet for answering the WhatsApp uncles on CAA and NRC’, labelling supporters of CAA-NRC as ‘WhatsApp uncles’.
