Maharashtra CM Fadnavis calls Uddhav, Raj Thackeray 'Ghajinis' after Mumbai march against CEC

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday criticised the Mumbai protest led by Uddhav and Raj Thackeray against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, saying the leaders were directing their frustration over electoral rejection at the Election Commission. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a programme, Fadnavis called the leaders "Ghajinis" and questioned their attempt to link Maharashtra's 2024 elections with Kumar's subsequent appointment as CEC and the 2026 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. "The morcha was an attempt to find back their lost ground. Despite all the hype, the attendance at the march was thin," he said. Earlier on Sunday, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray led a march from Metro Cinema to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation headquarters in south Mumbai, demanding Kumar's removal. Congress leaders Balasaheb Thorat and Vijay Wadettiwar joined the protest, along with Jayant Patil, Shashikant Shinde, Jitendra Awhad and Anil Deshmukh of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP). The march also raised objections to the Election Commission's handling of the SIR exercise. Fadnavis challenged the chronology cited by the opposition. "How can the SIR of 2026 and the person who became Chief Election Commissioner in 2025 affect the 2024 elections?" he asked. His "Ghajini" reference was to the 2008 Hindi film whose protagonist suffers from short-term memory loss. Fadnavis also accused the protest leaders of making false statements and said they were venting their frustration at the poll body after being rejected by voters. According to the Election Commission's official profile, Kumar took charge as CEC on February 19, 2025. He had, however, already been serving as an election commissioner since March 2024, before the Maharashtra Assembly election. The Maharashtra election was held on November 20, 2024. Questions about voter additions, deletions and turnout reporting were raised by Congress after the polls, prompting a detailed response from the Election Commission on December 24 that year. In that response, the commission disputed Congress's allegations about voter-list changes and said there was no discrepancy in turnout figures. It said figures displayed during polling were provisional and were updated as final data arrived from polling stations. The SIR is a separate exercise to revise electoral rolls through enumeration and verification. An Election Commission directive dated May 14, 2026, included Maharashtra among the states and Union territories covered by that phase, applying guidelines originally issued on June 24, 2025. The directive cited Article 324 of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, as its legal basis.