Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra reportedly entered the Akashvani Bhawan premises on Tuesday as INDIA bloc MPs marched towards the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in Delhi, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Earlier, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra continued their sit-in outside Akashvani Bhavan on Tuesday after police stopped Opposition leaders from marching towards the Election Commission of India (ECI) office. The protest was organised to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over the ongoing controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Several Opposition leaders, including Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Trinamool Congress MPs Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O’Brien, were detained after police stopped the march towards the poll panel’s office.
The Opposition has said it will continue the agitation until Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resigns. The protest comes amid a political dispute over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process and allegations of unauthorised changes to voter enrolment forms. The Election Commission, however, has rejected claims of differences within its three-member panel, stating that decisions related to the SIR were taken unanimously.
Earlier, Rahul Gandhi climbed atop heavy iron barriers near the NITI Aayog office, waving the tricolour while marching towards the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters.
BJP slammed Opposition’s protest march
Reacting to the Opposition’s three-kilometre protest march and its key demands, including the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, withdrawal of the SIR exercise and a return to ballot papers, Chouhan said the agitation amounted to a fundamental disregard for the people’s mandate.
“They are not concerned about democracy; they are bitter about defeat and insulting the mandate. Imagine 19 parties, a 3-kilometre march, and what’s the demand? To take the country back to the era of ballot papers. No machines will run, no cleaning of the voter list. Kharge ji’s three ‘non-negotiable’ demands—let me tell you what they are,” Shivraj Singh Chouhan wrote on X.
Recalling past electoral malpractices, the senior BJP leader warned against abandoning technological safeguards.
He wrote, “Resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, cancellation of SIR, and conducting elections on ballot papers. Meaning, back to that same era when, in the 80s and 90s, ballot boxes were looted in Bihar and UP, and votes were cast in the names of others. Is that the era they want to bring back?”
Meanwhile, BJP National Spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi questioned the Congress over its alleged support for giving voting rights to “absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters” without verification, asking whom the party wanted to benefit from such a move.
Trivedi accused the Congress of misleading the country with “baseless” claims, alleging that the party’s leadership had followed a dynastic system of rule while “strangling democracy” and had now attempted to “infiltrate” Akashvani.
Addressing the press conference in the national capital, Trivedi said, “They (Congress) have become so deranged by their continuous defeats in elections and are so deeply involved in misleading the entire country with baseless, nonsensical statements and false claims. They may not like hearing this, but I would like to say this to them: “Intoxicated by political defeat, their minds have become consumed by a defeated and destructive mentality.” The first family of our main Opposition party, the Congress, has, for the past four generations, ruled by strangling democracy and running a system of dynastic rule under the guise of democracy. And today, they have attempted to infiltrate Akashvani (All India Radio) as well.”
