INDIA bloc MPs were stopped at Transport Bhawan during their protest march to the EC office.
ECI had fixed a noon meeting with Jairam Ramesh amid Rahul Gandhi’s poll fraud claims.
Opposition MPs from the INDIA bloc were marching from Parliament’s Makar Dwar towards the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in Delhi on Monday when they were stopped at police barricades near Transport Bhawan.
The march was part of a protest against the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar and allegations of “vote chori” during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Delhi Police said no formal permission had been sought for the rally, which had been expected to see the participation of more than 300 MPs from 25 opposition parties.
The ECI earlier in the day confirmed it had scheduled an interaction at 12:00 pm with Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, who had been asked to submit the names of up to 30 attendees along with their vehicle details, citing space constraints.
In its letter, the Commission stated, “EC has granted an appointment for an interaction at 12:00 pm today. It is requested that, due to the limitation of space, names of up to 30 persons may kindly be intimated.” As of the morning, there had been no public confirmation from Ramesh on whether he had replied. The agenda of the meeting was not made public.
Among the parties represented in the march were the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, DMK, Aam Aadmi Party, the Left, Rashtriya Janata Dal, NCP (Sharad Pawar faction), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the National Conference. Senior Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Gaurav Gogoi had taken part in similar demonstrations during the Monsoon session of Parliament.
The protest followed recent remarks by Congress MP and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who accused the ECI of enabling electoral malpractice. Addressing the ‘Vote Adhikaar Rally’ in Bengaluru on Friday, Gandhi said the Commission “does not work for BJP but functions under the Constitution of India.”
He alleged that patterns in voting data from the Lok Sabha, Maharashtra Assembly and Karnataka Assembly elections pointed to irregularities. In Maharashtra, he claimed, the INDIA bloc had won the Lok Sabha elections but the BJP secured the Assembly polls four months later, during which one crore new voters were added to the rolls.
At a press conference the previous day, Gandhi accused the ECI and the BJP of “large-scale vote theft” since 2024, citing inflated voter lists and unexplained spikes in turnout. He alleged that in one constituency alone there had been “vote chori” of 1,00,250 votes, including 11,965 duplicate voters in a single assembly segment, 40,009 voters with fake or invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters registered at the same address, 4,132 voters with invalid photographs, and 33,692 voters allegedly misusing Form 6 for new registrations.
In its response, the ECI asked Gandhi to either file a signed declaration substantiating his claims or issue a public apology for what it described as baseless accusations.
