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‘A stolen election’: Rahul Gandhi tells Ramlila rally CEC Gyanesh Kumar ‘will go to jail’
Opposition leaders filled Ramlila Maidan demanding the removal of Gyanesh Kumar over the voter-roll revision; the Election Commission had not responded.
Opposition parties of the INDIA bloc held a "Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao" (Save the Vote, Save the Country) rally at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on Sunday, demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi told the crowd that Kumar "will go to jail" and that legal action would follow against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for what he called "vote chori" (vote theft). "This is not an ordinary theft," he said, according to The Tribune.
What happened
A march from Minto Road to Ramlila Maidan took nearly three hours, The Tribune reported. The Wire described a large gathering of party cadres, with flags of the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the RJD and the Left parties.
The Congress also streamed the march itself on Rahul Gandhi's official channel:
Crowd size is disputed. The Congress claimed that more than a million people took part. The Wire described the gathering as thousands. Neither figure has been independently verified.
Besides Rahul Gandhi, the speakers included Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, and Left leaders M.A. Baby and Dipankar Bhattacharya. The Tribune also named Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra among those taking part.
What the leaders said
- Rahul Gandhi said the 2024 Lok Sabha election was "a stolen election" and claimed that more than 13 crore voters had been removed from the rolls. "Modi cannot go anywhere," he said.
- Mallikarjun Kharge said: "It is not the voters who choose Modi, it is Modi who chooses the voters."
- Akhilesh Yadav said 1.27 lakh voters had been deleted in Uttar Pradesh, The Tribune reported.
- Mamata Banerjee accused the BJP of manipulating elections through the SIR and said West Bengal had been targeted.
These are the opposition's allegations. They have not been tested by any court or inquiry.
The other side
Speaking in Chandigarh, Amit Shah said that holding the rally on the anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots was "rubbing salt into the wounds" of the victims, The Wire reported. The BJP held a separate march in Delhi led by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, the outlet said.
No response from the Election Commission to the rally had been published when this story was written. Opposition notices to remove the CEC were rejected earlier this year, as BDT reported in its coverage of the 31 October "public impeachment" event, which had no legal force.
Watch the rally
The Congress streamed the rally on its own YouTube channel. This is the party's own recording, not independent coverage.
How we verified this
VerifiedThe date, venue, speakers, demands and quotes are reported by two independent outlets (The Tribune and The Wire) that agree. Crowd size is not independently verified: the Congress claimed over a million, The Wire said thousands, and both are attributed. The voter-deletion figures are Rahul Gandhi’s claims (the two outlets report 13.5 crore and 13.3 crore, so this story says “more than 13 crore”). Amit Shah’s remarks and the BJP march are from The Wire. The embedded video is the Congress’s own recording of the rally. No Election Commission response had been published when this story was written. On 2 November the cover image and a march video were added; both come from the Congress's own official YouTube streams and are credited to the party. Headline quotes are Rahul Gandhi's words as reported by The Wire ("a stolen election") and The Tribune/The Wire ("will go to jail"); they are attributed, not BDT's own claims.
Sources
- 1.CEC will go to jail, PM & Shah can’t escape law for ‘vote chori’: Rahul at INDIA rally — The Tribune
- 2.‘Modi Cannot Escape’, Says Rahul Gandhi as Thousands Gather, Opposition Takes Anti-CEC Protests to Ramlila Stage — The Wire
- 3.LIVE: Save the Vote, Save the Nation Mega Rally, Ramlila Maidan (video) — Indian National Congress (party’s own channel)
- 4.LIVE: Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao Maha March (video) — Rahul Gandhi (official YouTube channel)
