Opposition rally at Ramlila Maidan demands Chief Election Commissioner's removal
INDIA bloc leaders gathered in Delhi on Sunday over the revision of electoral rolls, while the BJP called the rally a drama and disputed the Congress's turnout claim.
The Global Sun Desk ·
Opposition parties in the INDIA bloc held a "Chalo Dilli" rally at Ramlila Maidan in the capital on Sunday, 1 November, demanding that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar be removed over the SIR, the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists. The ruling BJP dismissed the event as political theatre and disputed the Congress's assertion of a 10 lakh turnout.
The rally
Among those present, The Hindu reported, were Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, as well as Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and the Left party heads M A Baby (CPI-M), D Raja (CPI) and Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPI-ML Liberation). They moved towards the venue in an open vehicle as supporters marched alongside.
Kharge accused the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and the Home Minister, Amit Shah, of shielding the Chief Election Commissioner and said the opposition would keep fighting until he was removed. Rahul Gandhi said Kumar "will go to jail", according to The Hindu's live coverage. Mamata Banerjee said Bengal had been a victim of the SIR. Al Jazeera described the crowd as thousands and said hundreds of police were deployed.
On Saturday the bloc had held a symbolic "public impeachment" of Kumar at Kharge's residence, a mock hearing presided over by former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. It adopted a motion with six charges, including conspiring with the BJP to steal elections and striking 13.2 crore voters off the rolls in the SIR. A Congress MP told The Indian Express that motions to impeach him in Parliament had been submitted but not accepted. Under the Constitution, a Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only in the way a Supreme Court judge is, a deliberately high bar.
The government's response
Union Health Minister J P Nadda called the rally a "foolish and designed drama" and accused Rahul Gandhi of insensitivity towards Sikhs for holding it on 1 November, a date tied to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Amit Shah made the same argument at an event in Chandigarh. BJP MP Sambit Patra said that of 28,000 chairs at the venue, 5,000 to 7,000 were empty around 3.30 to 4 pm, which he offered as evidence against the 10 lakh figure. No independent crowd count was available.
What the Election Commission has said
The Commission rejects the charge of favouring any party, Al Jazeera reported, and says voters wrongly removed can enrol again. On 2 October it described the "13 crore deleted" figure as misleading, saying it counts people flagged in draft rolls as dead, absent, relocated or listed twice, not names struck off the final lists. It put those categories at about 2.8 crore deceased, 3 crore absent or untraceable, 6.3 crore permanently shifted and nearly 1 crore registered in more than one place.
The dispute is also in the Supreme Court. In a counter-affidavit last week, replying to a petition that asks the court to examine how the Commission functions, the Commission said every SIR decision had been unanimous, The Indian Express reported. The petition rests on that newspaper's investigation, which reported that two other members of the Commission, Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, wrote 14 notes over ten months raising concerns about processes linked to the SIR.
On the ground
Attendees told The Hindu they had travelled from states including Telangana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, some by sleeper bus. Several said they were angry at having been left off the rolls. After the rally, slogans such as "Vote chor, gaddi chor" were spray-painted along Minto Road, and the muddy ground was littered with discarded bottles.