'Gyanesh, time to resign': Rahul, Priyanka among 260 detained as INDIA bloc march on Election Commission is stopped in Delhi
Around 260 opposition MPs and leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, were detained in New Delhi on Tuesday after police stopped the INDIA bloc's march to the Election Commission demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation over alleged voter-roll deletions.
NEW DELHI: The INDIA bloc's march to the Election Commission of India ended in detentions and a sit-in on Tuesday, as Delhi Police stopped several hundred opposition MPs a short distance from Nirvachan Sadan and took around 260 of them into custody, among them Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
The march, from Parliament towards the Commission's headquarters on Ashoka Road, was organised to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Opposition parties allege that genuine voters, disproportionately from minority, Dalit and poorer communities, have been deleted through processes including disputed Form-7 applications, and they describe the exercise as organised vote theft. The Commission and the ruling BJP reject the charge.
Stopped at barricades near Akashvani Bhavan, Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi climbed over a barrier, and the detained leaders then staged a sit-in under a tree inside the premises, refusing to disperse. Rahul Gandhi's message to the CEC was blunt: his time was up and he should resign. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accused the Commission of acting in the government's interest. Other participants included Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Trinamool's Abhishek Banerjee and MPs from Left parties; CPI(M) MPs John Brittas and V. Sivadasan were among those detained, and leaders said even the BJD joined beyond the INDIA bloc's formal limits.
The capital saw a heavy security deployment for the march: Delhi Police, Rapid Action Force and central forces with batons, tear-gas launchers, body cameras and water cannon on standby, with roads around the Commission closed. Police said the gathering lacked permission. Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera countered that MPs representing a majority of the country's population were being kept 100 metres from the Commission's door.
The confrontation lands as the Supreme Court examines questions around voter-registration forms, and as opposition-ruled states report large-scale deletion complaints. The Commission maintains the revision follows established procedure. What Tuesday established is that the dispute is no longer a paperwork argument: it is now the central street fight over the credibility of India's elections.