INDIA Bloc MPs Gear Up for Another Protest Against CEC on October 8
The whole CEC row is heating up again, and the INDIA bloc isn’t letting it cool down for a second. After the big drama on Parliament Street and the sit-in near the Election Commission headquarters on Tuesday, they’re already planning the next round. Congress has called for nationwide protests on October 8, and the larger INDIA bloc is sticking to its “Save Democracy” programme that runs through that date. District-level marches and demonstrations are still on the cards, and MPs are expected to keep the pressure on Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. It all started building after that Indian Express investigation last month. The report said Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had put their objections on record at least 14 times in ten months. They were unhappy about decisions on adding and deleting voters, changes to Form 6, and the way the voter database was being handled. The opposition jumped on it, calling the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls a tool for “vote chori.” They want Kumar to resign, the SIR scrapped, deleted voters restored, and, in some cases, a return to paper ballots instead of EVMs. On September 30, leaders from 19 parties sat together for over three hours and finalised a plan. Mallikarjun Kharge announced “Save Democracy” marches in every district from October 2 to 8. MPs from both Houses were to march to the EC office on October 6. They also talked about meeting the President and filing cases in the Supreme Court against the 2023 law that gives the CEC and other commissioners certain protections. Tuesday’s protest was the first big street action. Rahul Gandhi led a few hundred MPs from Parliament towards Nirvachan Sadan. Akhilesh Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee, Supriya Sule, Sanjay Raut, and others walked with him. Police stopped them on Parliament Street. Things got noisy. Slogans like “Vote chor, gaddi chhod” and “Democracy not for sale” filled the air. Some leaders climbed barricades. Rahul even posted “Gyanesh, it’s done bro. Time to resign.” A group of Congress MPs, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, managed to enter the Akashvani Bhavan complex next door and sat there for hours. By evening, police detained Rahul, Priyanka, and several others. They were released later. Wednesday saw more of the same. Leaders met for lunch, then tried heading to Jantar Mantar in buses. Police stopped them again and detained a few more people. Rahul made it clear they won’t stop until Kumar resigns. “This is a fight to protect the most sacred thing in this country,” he said. “There is nothing that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can do that will stop us.” Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal has now written to state units asking them to organise protests at state, district, and block levels on October 8. They’ve called October 7 a “Black Day for Indian Democracy” after the detentions. The district marches under the original plan are still supposed to continue through the 8th, so expect more local actions across the country tomorrow. BJP has been pushing back hard. Leaders say this is just frustration after electoral losses. They call the opposition’s claims baseless and say the Election Commission is doing its job of cleaning up the rolls. The Commission itself has maintained that decisions were unanimous and that the SIR is a necessary exercise after years without a full revision. They’ve also said no formal meeting request came from the opposition before the October 6 march. What’s interesting is that some parties outside the strict INDIA fold have joined in. BJD MPs walked with the protesters, saying their leader Naveen Patnaik directed them because of concerns over voter deletions in Odisha. AAP has also been seen at some of the actions. The opposition is trying to project a broader front on this one issue even if they don’t always agree on other things. The demands remain the same: Kumar must go, SIR must be rolled back, genuine voters who were struck off should be put back, and some want ballot papers for future elections. They’re also talking about approaching the President and pushing cases in court. Five big rallies are planned for October and November, including one in Delhi on November 1. For ordinary people watching this, the core worry is simple. If the voter list isn’t clean and transparent, faith in the whole process takes a hit. Both sides claim to be defending democracy. One side says the Commission is compromised and lists are being manipulated. The other says the revision is overdue and the opposition is just sore about results. Tomorrow’s protests will tell us how much steam the campaign still has. Local units are being told to hit the streets at every level. In Delhi, the conversation is already about the next steps after the two days of detentions. The INDIA bloc keeps saying this is not about one man but about the institution. The government and the Commission keep saying the process is fair and the protests are political theatre. Whatever happens on October 8, the row is far from over. The MPs who marched on Tuesday and Wednesday have made it clear they intend to keep showing up. The district programmes are still running. And the demand for Kumar’s resignation is not going away quietly. It’s a messy, noisy fight that has put the Election Commission right at the centre of the political battlefield again. Sources:Indian Express, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Print, Times of India, NDTV Profit, Outlook India, Frontline, The Diplomat, ANI reports. @Rohit Manral
If Gyanesh Kumar Goes, Modi Will Have to Follow Suit: Dipke
Mumbai, October 3 – Abhijeet Dipke is not mincing words anymore. The Cockroach Janta Party founder stood at Shivaji Park in Dadar and said straight out that if Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar does not resign, then Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have to go as well. He called the whole thing “vote chori” on a massive scale. Dipke claimed nearly 13 crore names have been struck off the voter lists in the last couple of years. That number, he said, is no coincidence. It lines up with the difference between the NDA and the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. According to him, once Kumar took over as CEC, the government started deciding who gets to vote and who does not. “Is this still democracy?” he asked the crowd. Dipke did not stop at the Election Commission. He pointed the finger directly at the Prime Minister. He said Modi is the one pulling the strings. If the Centre refuses to make Kumar quit, then the protests will demand Modi’s resignation next. “If Gyanesh Kumar does not leave his post, the Prime Minister will have to resign,” he told the gathering. He warned that Jantar Mantar 2.0 is coming, and even if they lock him up for three months, he will come back. The protest itself had a mix of young faces. People held placards, did street plays, sang a bit. Dipke announced the next steps: similar protests in Goa, Karnataka, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. If nothing happens by the end of October, they will camp at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. He made it clear CJP will not join the opposition’s planned protest on October 6. They want to stay separate. He put the current mess in a longer story. After 2024 did not go as the BJP hoped, he said they turned to voter-list changes in Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Stalin and Kejriwal, he claimed, lost because so many voters simply disappeared from the rolls. At the same time, he said the party let opposition governments stay in some places while tightening its grip on the bigger states. He compared it to match-fixing. Dipke also spoke about the constant party-hopping. He said 111 sitting MLAs and MPs switched sides between 2022 and 2026. If legislators can be bought like that, why bother with elections at all? Just auction the seats like IPL players, he said. He brought up the splits in Shiv Sena, NCP and other regional parties, arguing the real aim is one country, one party. There is the internal report hanging over everything. The Indian Express had detailed how Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi put formal objections on record at least 14 times in ten months. Some of those notes said decisions were taken without them even knowing. The Commission’s line has been that different views are normal and every order is legally sound. Kumar is a 1988-batch Kerala cadre IAS officer. He became CEC in February 2025. Earlier he worked in the Home Ministry around the Article 370 decision and the Ram temple trust. He was the first CEC chosen under the 2023 law that changed how the panel is selected. Opposition parties have been after him for months over the Special Intensive Revision. CJP has now raised the stakes by tying his job to the Prime Minister’s. Dipke also made a broader appeal. He said the last twelve years have been spent dividing people on Hindu-Muslim lines. He asked people to put that aside and stand together as Indians first. Support whoever you want, he said, but right now the vote itself is under threat. Whether any of this forces a resignation is another matter. The Election Commission has given no sign that Kumar is leaving. The government has treated the internal notes as ordinary differences. Still, Dipke’s words at Shivaji Park have made the demand sharper. In his telling, Kumar and Modi are now linked. The protests are set to continue, and CJP says it will not back down until the CEC goes. Sources:ETV Bharat report on Dipke’s Mumbai statements, October 3, 2026Deccan Chronicle, Hindustan Times, Outlook India, ThePrint, Moneycontrol and PTI coverage of CJP protests and the SIR row, September 24 to October 2, 2026Indian Express investigation into objections inside the Election Commission @Rohit Manral
Congress Hits Streets Across India Demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar Quit; AISA’s Neha Among Those Picked Up at Jantar Mantar
Yesterday on Friday the Congress and a bunch of student and civil society groups went all out against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. They’re saying he has to resign, some are even calling for his arrest. The whole thing is boiling over because of that Special Intensive Revision of the voter lists and that report about two other Election Commissioners raising objections several times. In Delhi the main action was around Jantar Mantar. AISA had called a protest, and a lot of familiar faces showed up – Neha Bora (she’s the AISA president), Dipankar Bhattacharya from CPI(ML), Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Anjali Bhardwaj and others. Police said nobody had taken permission, so they started rounding people up. Neha was among those detained. They took her to Kanjhawala police station. From there she sent out a video saying basically, “We only came to demand accountability. We’ll be back tomorrow.” Altogether police picked up around 150 people from three spots near Jantar Mantar and DDU Marg. Most were released by evening. Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav was also detained when his group tried to march towards the Election Commission office. It wasn’t just Delhi. Congress workers came out in a lot of places. In Patna the police turned water cannons on them. Same thing in Chandigarh. In Imphal they used tear gas. In Guwahati they detained Gaurav Gogoi. In Lucknow the state Congress president was taken away. People burnt effigies, shouted slogans, the usual scene. K.C. Venugopal from the Congress made it clear they’re not stopping. He said the protests will continue till Kumar goes. They’re talking about moving notices in Parliament and they’ve already announced district-level protests for Monday. There’s a CWC meeting on Tuesday too. The other side is saying this is all political drama. The Election Commission maintains that internal differences are normal and the final decisions on the SIR were unanimous. Police keep repeating that no permission was given, so they had to clear the area. That’s pretty much where things stand right now. The opposition is treating this as a big fight over the fairness of the electoral process, and the government and the EC are holding their line. Looks like next week is going to be noisy as well. Sources: The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Siasat, Telegraph India, Deccan Chronicle, National Herald (25-26 September 2026 reports). @Rohit Manral