India’s Opposition Tries Its Election Chief In A Garden Because Parliament Said No
India’s opposition alliance held a mock removal proceeding against the country’s chief election commissioner on Saturday in the garden of the Congress president’s official residence. This exercise carries no legal force and was staged a day before a mass rally in the national capital
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| Image Via: @RahulGandhi on X |
The charges allege that Kumar conspired with the governing party to manipulate elections, that the nationwide revision of electoral rolls deleted around 132 million voters, that enrolment rules were altered without parliamentary scrutiny, that control of the rolls was centralised through commission software, and that the other two election commissioners were excluded from decisions, recording at least fourteen objections between them. Figures cited by opposition speakers for the deletions varied by several million. The Election Commission denies partisanship and says the revision removes duplicate entries, the dead and those who have moved.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house, said the commissioner should be tried for treason, and described him as the first in a line of targets. “Mr Modi and Mr Shah might be on top,” he said. “We will deal with them, but you are their instruments.”
The proceedings were held outside Parliament because formal removal notices were rejected by the presiding officers of both houses in April. Removing a chief election commissioner requires an address passed by a majority of the total membership of each house and by two-thirds of those voting — numbers the opposition does not have.
The ruling party called the event a mockery of Parliament and said protections for the office already exist in the Constitution, with a 2023 law adding only a procedure where none had been written down. It also pointed to a Congress minister in Karnataka who has publicly defended the roll revision in his own state, where close to ten million names were removed as duplicate, deceased or relocated.
It had a sharper rebuttal available from the week before. Elections to 28 legislative council seats across four states, held on 23 October using ballot papers rather than machines, returned 16 seats to the governing alliance and 12 to opposition parties. The BJP was the largest single party, with 13. In Uttar Pradesh the Samajwadi Party, an opposition partner, took five of eleven seats against the BJP’s six. The Congress won only one, the Nagpur graduates’ seat in Maharashtra.
Saturday’s proceedings were built to be watched. They were streamed on the opposition leader’s own social media accounts, and clips were circulating within the hour: the motion being read, a student activist describing how her name had gone from the rolls, the show of hands at the end.
Both sides then took from it what they wanted. Supporters called the sitting unprecedented, and the image of the entire opposition conducting a constitutional proceeding on a lawn was the point rather than an embarrassment. The ruling party supporters called it theatre. The clip that travelled furthest among its supporters was a few seconds of Rahul Gandhi looking at his phone while the motion was being moved. By evening the argument had moved from what was said in the garden to what the footage showed, which is roughly where it will stay until the crowd at Ramlila Maidan can be counted.
The opposition alliance rallies there on Sunday. Rahul Gandhi has called supporters to march to the ground from Connaught Place at noon; police say no permission was sought for a march, and restrictions on assembly remain in force across central Delhi.
Delhi’s traffic police issued an advisory on Saturday setting out how the centre of the city will be managed. Diversions will operate between 10am and 5pm at ten points, among them Rajghat, Delhi Gate, ITO, Ajmeri Gate, Turkman Gate and the Jhandewalan roundabout. Movement is expected to be affected along Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg between ITO and Delhi Gate, along Jawaharlal Nehru Marg from Rajghat to Ajmeri Gate, and on Aruna Asaf Ali Road, Minto Road, Deshbandhu Gupta Road, Barakhamba Road and Chelmsford Road. State bus services will be regulated on four of those roads.
Much of the advisory is given over to reaching New Delhi railway station, a short distance from the venue: two recommended approaches, a third if one is blocked, and a request to allow extra time. Commuters are asked to use the Metro where possible, to avoid parking at the roadside and to keep lanes clear for emergency vehicles. The affected streets run through the wholesale markets whose traders spent the past week asking for the rally to be postponed, in the last full week of shopping before Diwali.
Rahul Gandhi addressed that on Saturday evening. In a post timed for the eve of the march, he asked those travelling to Delhi to spend money while they were in the city, noting that Diwali, Chhath and Bhai Dooj all fall in the coming days and that shopkeepers depend on the season. March, attend the rally and do some shopping as well, he added. He contended that he was confident the rally would not hurt traders and that the ruling party was spreading rumours because it was frightened. He ended with advance Diwali greetings.