NEW DELHI — Thousands of demonstrators converged on India’s capital on Sunday to call for the ouster of the nation’s chief election official, escalating a confrontation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration over an extensive purge of voting registers.
Led by Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi and supported by a coalition of opposition parties known as the INDIA bloc, the demonstration brought crowds into the streets of New Delhi bound for Ramlila Maidan, a sprawling public square. Marchers carried banners and instruments while demanding the immediate resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, ABC News reported.
Massive Revision Under Fire
The unrest stems from an ongoing electoral registry update that has erased over 130 million entries since last year. Official figures show the removals include roughly 28 million deceased individuals, 63 million citizens who moved, and 30 million people who could not be located, according to The Guardian.
Opposition lawmakers argue the deletions are politically driven to weaken Modi’s opponents ahead of future contests, alleging the changes disproportionately strip voting rights from minority groups, particularly Muslims. Human Rights Watch also criticized the audit on Thursday, urging authorities to halt the process.
“The authorities should immediately scrap the voter roll revision process that has denied India’s most marginalized people their right to vote and other government services,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The Election Commission and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party have denied any wrongdoing or partisan bias. Election officials maintain the cleanup is necessary to weed out duplicate and ineligible records, noting that any eligible voters removed in error are permitted to reapply for registration.
Tight Security and Rising Dissent
Security across central New Delhi was heightened ahead of Sunday’s 1.5-kilometer march. Police and paramilitary units deployed riot vehicles, batons, and shields, while monitoring the crowds using drones, body cameras, and more than 200 surveillance cameras, ABC News reported. Authorities redirected the gathering to Ramlila Maidan after closing the historic Jantar Mantar site to demonstrations last month.
The Sunday rally followed a symbolic “public impeachment” conducted Saturday by opposition leaders, where former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar declared the election chief unfit for office, The Hindu reported. Demonstrations have also drawn substantial support from the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical youth initiative that emerged after a judicial remark comparing unemployed young people to parasites. The youth movement had previously pressured Modi’s education minister into resigning in July.
Modi has refrained from commenting on the demonstrations publicly, though several ruling party figures have dismissed the marchers as anarchists acting on behalf of external interests, according to ABC News. While political analysts view the ongoing wave of demonstrations as one of the most visible challenges to Modi during his 12 years in office, his parliamentary majority remains stable, with the next general election scheduled for 2029.
