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Opposition Bloc Calls Month Of Protests Over Voter Rolls, Demands Return To Paper Ballots

Edited by IndianRepublic.in - Location: New Delhi, Delhi, India

INDIA alliance to march to the Election Commission on 6 October and hold a Delhi rally on 1 November while the BJP says the campaign is an alibi for expected defeat

Image Source: @INCIndia on X
India's opposition alliance, led by the Indian National Congress, announced a month-long programme of protests against the Election Commission on Wednesday, after a meeting in New Delhi, and said it wanted future elections conducted with paper ballots rather than electronic voting machines.

The INDIA bloc will hold district-level "save democracy" marches and demonstrations outside district magistrates' offices from 2 to 8 October, the Congress president, Mallikarjun Kharge, noted. Opposition members of parliament will march to the Election Commission on 6 October. Leaders will seek a meeting with the president in the second week of October, five large rallies are planned, and a rally in Delhi on 1 November will focus on what the alliance has displayed its problems with the current mechanisms of the poll body.

The bloc also asked the Supreme Court to dispose of the cases before it relating to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls as quickly as possible.

The meeting ran about three and a half hours and was attended by Congress President Kharge, veteran leader Sonia Gandhi, LoP Rahul Gandhi, the Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, the Rashtriya Janata Dal's Tejashwi Yadav and the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) MP Supriya Sule. Videos circulating online also showed Kapil Sibal making his way to the crucial meeting.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, said afterwards that all parties took the view that India's democratic system had been attacked severely. He said it was a personal commitment of the opposition bloc's leaders to ensure that those who had damaged Indian democracy were punished, regardless of seniority, and told the other leaders they were the collective defenders of the Constitution.

In his opening remarks, Kharge set out six demands. That the pre-revision electoral roll be used for future elections, with constituency and booth-level detail published on every addition, deletion and correction. That no voter be removed without notice, reasons and an effective appeal. That eligible voters be protected from exclusion caused by administrative failure or lack of documentation. That voting return to ballot papers. That registration be made simpler for first-time voters. And that the Election Commission be made accountable enough to command confidence across parties.

He said 13.3 crore voters, more than 130 million, had been removed from the rolls, and argued that where an exercise of this scale requires citizens to establish their eligibility again, the burden should rest on the system to ensure no genuine voter is excluded. If names are deleted, he said, the public must know who and why.

The Congress President also called for the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to resign or be removed, citing the reported objections raised by the two other commissioners, and criticised the 2023 law that replaced the Chief Justice of India on the selection panel with a cabinet minister. He said the same law bars courts from entertaining proceedings against a serving or former commissioner for acts done in an official capacity.

The Election Commission, on the other hand, has rejected the suggestion that its decisions are taken by one person. In a press note issued after a meeting of all three commissioners, it said differing views are a normal part of deliberation in any institution and that the orders authorising the revision were approved unanimously. It said the Supreme Court upheld the revision.

The Commission describes the revision as a routine updating of the rolls, removing the dead, those who have moved and duplicate entries. It has also announced a review of its electoral roll software by a committee including an independent technical expert, and said meeting agendas will now be circulated in advance and minutes issued.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a union minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, said at a press conference later in the day that the marches were intended to protect the political interests of the Congress and its partners rather than democracy, and that the opposition was preparing an advance excuse for defeat in coming elections.

"This is not a Save Democracy March," he said. "This is a Save Dynasty March."

He questioned the alliance's cohesion, noting the absence of the Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, the DMK's M K Stalin, the Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal and others from the meeting, and said the bloc was unwilling to accept Rahul Gandhi as its leader.

Several of those parties have their own reasons for distance. The DMK has said it will not sit where the Congress is present. Congress leader and LoP Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, has been the most vocal leader raising the issue of electoral transparency on the national stage.

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