INDIA Bloc Floods Ramlila Maidan to Demand CEC Gyanesh Kumar's Exit as BJP Marks 1984 Anniversary With Rival March

The opposition took its campaign against the Election Commission to the streets of the capital on Sunday. Leaders of the INDIA bloc rode in open vehicles from the Minto Road and Connaught Place junction to Ramlila Maidan for a Chalo Dilli rally. They are demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and an end to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The march, held under the slogan Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao (Save the Vote, Save the Nation), drew the bloc's top leaders together. Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, was joined by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress. Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, CPI(M) general secretary MA Baby, CPI's D Raja, Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti were also there.

What the opposition wants

The core charge is that the SIR exercise has been used to strike genuine voters off the rolls. Samajwadi Party MP Neeraj Maurya and Congress leader Ghulam Ahmad Mir both told reporters at the venue that the names of more than 13 crore people had been removed. The Election Commission has rejected the opposition's allegations. Leaders are also pressing for paper ballots to replace electronic voting machines.

The rally escalates a campaign that has moved quickly. A day earlier, opposition MPs staged a symbolic public impeachment of Kumar at Kharge's residence, in a mock parliamentary sitting chaired by former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.

Disputed numbers

How many people attended is already contested. Mir claimed 8 to 10 lakh people had gathered at the ground. Delhi Police had planned for a crowd closer to 50,000, according to earlier reports. Even the size of the alliance on stage varies: organisers spoke of 21 parties before the event, while Congress MP Manickam Tagore put the figure at 19 from the venue. Wire reports described the ground filling up by about 1.30 pm, with student and youth wings of the alliance parties carrying placards against the SIR exercise.

Security was heavy. Close to 10,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across central Delhi, more than 4,000 of them around Ramlila Maidan and the march route. Gatherings were barred at Jantar Mantar and outside the Election Commission's office.

The BJP's counter-programme

The ruling party chose to answer with a different anniversary. November 1 marks the start of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, and the BJP held a remembrance march in West Delhi from Hari Nagar bus depot to Tilak Nagar metro station. Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and Delhi BJP president Harsh Malhotra led the march.

BJP president JP Nadda called the opposition rally a foolish, orchestrated drama by parties the voters had rejected. He accused Rahul Gandhi of following a four-step model: spreading rumours, creating unrest on the streets, hurting the economy and trying to topple an elected government with foreign backing. He also accused the Congress of disrupting traders' business during the Diwali season. Congress MP Amarinder Singh Raja Warring replied that the BJP had been in power for 12 years without delivering justice to the 1984 victims, and had remembered them only because of the rally.

Why it matters

The stand-off now pits the opposition directly against a constitutional authority, not just the government. That makes the dispute harder to settle through the usual political bargaining. The next test is whether the alliance can keep 19 to 21 parties united behind a single demand once the crowds go home, and whether the Election Commission moves to answer the deletion figures in detail.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.