TMC warns impeachment against CEC Gyanesh Kumar after Delhi showdown; Is is possible arithmetically?

Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday warned of an impeachment motion against Gyanesh Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner - after a ‘bitter’ meeting with Election Commission of India (ECI) in New Delhi on Monday. During a press conference, joined by victims of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) - she said “even we want to move an impeachment motion. we don’t have numbers but at least we will get the motion registered.” The threat - made after a 90-minute meeting that ended in public acrimony - sharply escalates this long confrontation over the revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal. Trinamool Congress’s parliamentary committee has now decided to push the move, reach out to other opposition parties and take them on board.

What happened in Delhi

A 15-member TMC delegation led by Mamata Banerjee met the CEC at the Election Commission headquarters to press grievances over the SIR exercise in Bengal. The meeting ended acrimoniously; Banerjee publicly accused the CEC of insulting the delegation and of working on the BJP’s instructions, and said the TMC had been effectively “humiliated.” “He threatened us, never heard our grievances. He shouted at me and I countered stating that we are not bonded labours. He is arrogant and insulted us”, Mamata Banerjee explained during the press conference. TMC has been long alleging that SIR has been carried out with the motive to target West Bengal politically and has led to wrongful intentional deletions and disenfranchisement of voters, and argue it targets the state politically. TMC leaders have characterised the process as harassment and say it disproportionately flags voters from Bengal as “infiltrators” or “deceased”.

How does impeachment work?

The Chief Election Commissioner is a constitutional office. Importantly, a CEC can be removed only “in the same manner and on the same grounds” as a Supreme Court judge - i.e., by parliamentary proceedings that are deliberately exacting. The initiation rules for such a removal (drawn from the Judges (Inquiry) Act and constitutional practice) require the support of at least 100 Lok Sabha MPs or 50 Rajya Sabha MPs to submit a notice; if admitted by the Speaker/Chair, a three-member inquiry committee is set up to investigate. If the committee upholds charges, the motion then has to be passed by a two-thirds majority of members present and voting in each House of Parliament before the President acts to remove the officer. No Chief Election Commissioner has ever been removed to date; the threshold is intentionally high to protect institutional independence.

Practically speaking, the success of any impeachment drive depends on raw parliamentary arithmetic and cross-party support. The broad INDIA opposition bloc holds roughly the low-to-mid 200s of Lok Sabha seats (estimates vary by source and by how “INDIA” membership is counted), while the ruling NDA and its allies control the remainder. The TMC by itself has a much smaller parliamentary presence with 29 MPs in Lok Sabha, even though they are the fourth largest party. That means to gather the 100 Lok Sabha signatures or to win a two-thirds floor majority later, the TMC would need firm backing from the wider opposition (and possibly some cross-bench support). In short: registering a notice is straightforward and could be possible with support of Congress, Samajwadi Party and others but delivering a removal is a far taller task and falls short in the arithmetic game.

Parliament has rarely carried out successful removals. The most notable recent case is Justice Soumitra Sen, a Calcutta High Court judge whose removal motion was passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2011; Justice Sen resigned before the Lok Sabha vote was held. No President or Chief Election Commissioner has ever been impeached/removed under these provisions.