INDIA bloc Ramlila Maidan rally: Rahul Gandhi targets CEC Gyanesh Kumar over SIR
Opposition leaders packed Delhi's Ramlila Maidan on Sunday against India's election chief over voter-list cuts. What Rahul Gandhi said and how the BJP hit back.
India’s opposition parties held a big rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday, 1 November, aimed squarely at the country’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar. Rahul Gandhi told the crowd that “without Gyanesh Kumar, Narendra Modi would not have become Prime Minister” and that Kumar would be removed from his post, while the BJP called the turnout a flop and led a counter-march.
What the fight is about
The row is over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a nationwide re-check of voter lists run by the Election Commission. Opposition parties say it has been used to delete large numbers of genuine voters, and they call it “vote chori” (vote theft). The Election Commission says the revision is meant to clean up duplicate and outdated entries.
The day before the rally, 21 parties of the INDIA alliance, led by the Congress, held a “mock parliament” in which they symbolically “impeached” Kumar and passed a six-point resolution accusing him of electoral manipulation and demanding his removal.
Who spoke
Rahul Gandhi was joined on stage by Priyanka Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Bihar’s Tejashwi Yadav and Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal.
Rahul Gandhi mocked the election chief, saying he felt bad that Kumar “is scared and cannot sleep at night”. Tejashwi Yadav called it “a sham election”.
The BJP’s reply
The BJP disputed the crowd. Its MP Sambit Patra told reporters that out of 28,000 chairs at the ground, 5,000 to 7,000 were empty in the afternoon, and rejected opposition claims of a million-strong turnout. Delhi Police put attendance at around 50,000, according to media reports.
Home Minister Amit Shah, flagging off the BJP’s own march, told Rahul Gandhi that “your turn is never going to come”, and the party accused the opposition of trying to destabilise the government. Security was tight across central Delhi, with barricades and traffic diversions.
Why Pakistanis are watching
The clash over who gets to vote is shaping up as the biggest test of India’s opposition before the next round of state elections, and it was among the most-watched live streams in India on Sunday. Pakistan held its own long arguments over voter lists and the Election Commission’s role before 2024, so the debate will sound familiar.
What to watch next is the Election Commission’s reply to the six-point resolution and whether the SIR timetable changes. Under India’s constitution, a Chief Election Commissioner can only be removed the same way as a Supreme Court judge, through Parliament.
