NEW DELHI: Stepping up its campaign for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over alleged electoral roll irregularities, the INDIA bloc will hold a massive protest march in Delhi on Monday and send a delegation to submit a memorandum to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) seeking his intervention, the Congress said on Saturday.
The announcement came amid the detention of thousands of protesters during demonstrations called by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) in the capital. Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who was among those detained, confirmed that she would stay back in Delhi to participate in Monday’s programme.
Announcing the march, Congress general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal appealed to citizens concerned about the survival of Indian democracy to join the protest against nationwide “vote chori” orchestrated by the Modi-Shah government.
Venugopal said leaders had held a comprehensive preparatory meeting on Friday. Opposition MPs, leaders, workers and citizens would participate in the march, while a delegation of senior leaders would submit a memorandum to the CJI.
“Gyanesh must go. There will be no backing down,” he wrote on X.
The move came after a meeting between a 10-member INDIA bloc delegation and President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday. After the meeting, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said the Opposition would approach the Supreme Court on Monday to seek a meeting with the CJI and hand over a memorandum.
In their memorandum to the President, the parties demanded Kumar’s resignation, a return to ballot papers and repeal of the provision in the 2023 law that they said grants lifelong immunity to the CEC and election commissioners.
They also sought the immediate suspension of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and restoration of 13.30 crore voters whose names had been illegally deleted. The parties further demanded that Assembly elections held over the past two years be annulled wherever conclusive evidence of vote theft had been presented.
Confirming her participation, Banerjee said Rahul Gandhi had asked her to attend Monday’s programme at the Supreme Court and that she had decided to remain in Delhi.
Banerjee said she had been scheduled to fly back on Saturday but cancelled her flight after her detention disrupted her plans. Alleging that she and other protesters had been “kidnapped” and kept under illegal detention, she said she had told Abhishek Banerjee that he need not travel to Delhi as she would attend the programme herself.
“If we want to protect democracy, we must be prepared to struggle. We cannot simply abandon our struggle for democracy,” she said.
