Eleven Opposition Leaders Petition India’s Supreme Court Over Electoral Roll Revision
Eleven opposition leaders filed a petition in India’s Supreme Court on Monday evening against the Election Commission and its three members
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| Image Source: @INCIndia on X |
The petitioners are the leaders of the opposition in both houses of parliament, Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge; Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party; Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal; Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar); Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (UBT); Saugata Roy of the Trinamool Congress; D Raja of the Communist Party of India; M A Baby, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist); Mahua Majhi of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha; and E T Mohammed Basheer of the Indian Union Muslim League.
Rahul Gandhi and Kharge had written asking to meet Chief Justice Surya Kant on Monday afternoon to hand him a memorandum. He declined, saying on Sunday that similar matters were already before the court on its judicial side.
The march set out in the afternoon from the Constitution Club and moved through Connaught Place and Barakhamba Road to the court, about two kilometres away. Some demonstrators climbed police barricades on Barakhamba Road.
Earlier in the day Rahul Gandhi told a conference that the opposition would not relent until the commissioner left and the electoral system was overhauled. He said about 200 government officials were passing information to the opposition, that half the police deployed in the capital privately agreed with the protesters, and that officers had been ordered to beat young demonstrators.
Separately, police removed Jantar Mantar, an eighteenth-century observatory that has served as the capital’s permitted protest ground, from the list of designated venues, naming three other sites in its place. The youth movement whose demonstrations began the current unrest wrote to police seeking permission and a date for a protest at the observatory, giving them 24 hours to reply.
लोकतंत्र की हत्या का लेने हिसाब आ गया है देशभक्तों का सैलाब #ChaloDilli https://t.co/dszQMLS16P
— Congress (@INCIndia) October 12, 2026
Meanwhile, the Kerala legislative assembly passed a resolution calling for the commissioner’s removal. At the Delhi High Court, members of the bar association wore black ribbons and advocates read the preamble to the constitution aloud on the lawn, in protest at police conduct towards lawyers during the demonstrations.
The Election Commission did not immediately comment on the petition. It has previously said that names were removed where voters had died, moved, were duplicated or could not be traced, that reasons were recorded in each case, and that all its decisions were lawful.