Photo: Hemant banswal / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Tens of thousands of opposition supporters filled Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday, November 1, as top INDIA bloc leaders marched from Minto Road to the ground to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and an end to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby, CPI general secretary D. Raja and CPI(ML) Liberation’s Dipankar Bhattacharya gathered at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence and then travelled in an open bus to the Minto Road-Connaught Place junction, the starting point of the ‘Chalo Dilli’ march, which was scheduled for noon.
A city under heavy guard
Nearly 10,000 Delhi Police and paramilitary personnel, including CRPF and Rapid Action Force units, were deployed across Central and New Delhi, with more than 4,000 of them around the venue and along the march route. Prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita were in force in sensitive areas, and barricades went up near Connaught Place, Jantar Mantar, the Supreme Court and the Election Commission’s office. BSF personnel joined police checks at the Delhi-Gurugram border.
Police divided the ground into 14 zones, each under an assistant commissioner, and are using more than 200 CCTV cameras, drones, body cameras and facial-recognition systems. Permission for the rally reportedly came with conditions, including that it ends by 5 pm and that no marches are taken out beyond the designated site.
Turnout claims vary widely. Organisers have spoken of up to 10 lakh people, while police planned for about 50,000. Ramlila Maidan holds roughly 30,000 to 40,000 people once chairs and enclosures are in place, with space outside kept for overflow.
What the opposition wants
The parties allege that the SIR has wrongly struck about 13 crore names off draft rolls and accuse the CEC of acting in the BJP’s favour, a charge both the commission and the BJP deny. The commission says the exercise only removes voters who have died or moved.
We are defending the Constitution. We are defending the idea of India. We are defending the vote.
Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor summed up the message as “Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao”, saying the fight was about citizens’ constitutional rights rather than any one party.
BJP hits back
The BJP held a counter-march in West Delhi. Union Minister J.P. Nadda called the rally “a foolish, orchestrated drama” and said India was not “some banana republic”. He also criticised the choice of November 1, the anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the BJP stood with the Election Commission.
Some traders in nearby Chandni Chowk had feared losses a week before Diwali. Rahul Gandhi responded by urging people coming to the rally to shop at local markets.
How it got here, and what comes next
The rally follows a symbolic “public impeachment” of the CEC at Kharge’s residence on October 31, presided over by former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, and weeks of protests in the capital. That exercise had no legal force: a CEC can be removed only through a formal parliamentary process. Trinamool Congress leader Sagarika Ghose has said the rally’s message will “resonate in Parliament”, and Congress leader Udit Raj said the bloc would decide its next steps after the rally.
