Scores of the elected opposition members of India’s Parliament were detained by security forces in the capital, New Delhi, on Tuesday, October 6, after they protested against the alleged rigging in the elections and demanded removal of the country’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.

The Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and several other MPs also claimed they were manhandled by the police during the detention and forcefully removed from the protests site. All of the detainees were released later.

The protests by the MPs was a part of the ongoing nationwide mobilizations which broke out on Saturday over alleged rigging and irregularities in various elections under the incumbent CEC. The protesters are demanding his immediate removal claiming he manipulated the elections in various states to benefit the ruling party.

Despite the heavyhandedness of the security forces who have refused to allow any protest gathering in the capital and repeatedly detained opposition leaders, students, and youth group protesters, people turned up on the streets of Delhi and other parts of the country for the consecutive fifth day on Wednesday.

Several protesters have claimed they were beaten up during detention while some women reporters have claimed they were molested by police personnel on duty during those protests.

Also on Tuesday, security forces allegedly attacked a cultural gathering organized around the issue by the left-wing Student Federation of India (SFI) in central Delhi.

On Wednesday, major left and progressive student organizations such as SFI, the All India Students Association (AISA), and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a movement which emerged in protests demanding reforms in the country’s education system earlier this year, announced a new joint protest beginning from October 10.

Rigging in elections is murdering democracy

Rahul Gandhi, who is also the leader of India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), claimed around 300 opposition MPs were marching from the country’s Parliament building to the office of the Election Commission of India (ECI), seeking a meeting with the CEC when the security forces stopped them and detained them.

He reiterated that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in collaboration with the CEC, has been responsible for destroying democracy in the country by rigging elections. He called the act “treason” and warned that none of the people responsible for “murdering democracy” in the country will be spared whether it is the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, or Gyanesh Kumar.

The ultra-right-wing and Hindu-supremacist BJP has been in power since 2014, winning three national elections, including the last one in 2024. It is also ruling a majority of states in India.

Speaking in a press conference in Delhi on Wednesday, Neha Bora, president of AISA and one of the leaders of the movement, claimed that the movement against the manipulations in the national elections by the CEC and the BJP will continue until the removal of Gyanesh Kumar.

Over 130 million Indians have been removed from electoral rolls in the country since the ECI, the highest body responsible for conducting elections in the country, started the so-called Special Intensive Revision (SIR) last year under Gyanesh Kumar’s leadership.

Opposition parties and legal experts have claimed that the SIR is illegal, as it is not mentioned in the ECI rule books and the process was started to manipulate election results to favor the ruling BJP.

A recent report in one of the main English daily paper’s in the country also claimed that most of the decisions taken by Gyanesh Kumar as CEC were illegal.

In the last few weeks, opposition has also alleged that the ECI and BJP collaborated to remove thousands of names, mostly Muslim voters, from the electoral rolls in various constituencies across the country.

Talking to the media on Tuesday, John Britas MP from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) claimed that protests against Gyanesh Kumar are a “historical movement to save democracy” in the country. He accused Kumar, in collaboration with the BJP, of destroying the reputation of India’s electoral process and of being the “real enemy of the nation.”

Britas called for his immediate removal as CEC and demanded he must be tried for his criminal activities.

From BT News via This RSS Feed.