Rahul Gandhi Calls for November 1 Delhi Rally Over Alleged Voter Deletions

On Sunday morning, Rahul Gandhi posted a message on X asking students, farmers, workers, women, young people and traders to come to New Delhi on November 1. The occasion is a march and rally called "Save the Vote, Save the Country," planned for Ramlila Maidan. The leader of India's opposition said votes were being "stolen" by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, that names had been removed from voter lists, and that rules and laws had been broken. People, he wrote, would no longer tolerate this quietly.

The backdrop is the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision, known as the SIR, of the country's electoral rolls. So far the exercise has removed more than 130 million names from the draft rolls nationwide. The opposition argues that it could disenfranchise eligible voters and ultimately benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP. The Election Commission has defended the revision as a way to verify and update the rolls.

The pressure has been building for weeks. Earlier this month, a bloc of opposition parties protested in Delhi and demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged misconduct. Groups including the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party and the All India Students' Association are making the same demand, citing a newspaper investigation that alleged impropriety during the revision.

On Saturday, hundreds of people formed a human chain in Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana. Civil society, human rights, farmer, Dalit, youth and student groups organized it. They demanded that the SIR be scrapped, that deleted voters be restored, that Kumar be removed, and that the Chief Election Commissioner Act of 2023, under which he was appointed, be repealed. Participants alleged that the exercise could disenfranchise nearly half of Telangana's electorate, according to media reports. One protester told the Indian Express, "We refuse to be silenced by the repressive Modi Government which stands exposed." They also condemned police action against demonstrators, particularly in Delhi, and said peaceful protest is a constitutional right. The SIR is under way in Telangana, and the final rolls are due to be published on November 9.

The policing of protest has become its own thread. AISA leader Neha Bora, who uses they/them pronouns, said on Saturday they will not sign a peace bond demanded by Delhi police. A day earlier, the Delhi High Court had dismissed Bora's plea against a police notice directing them to execute a personal bond of Rs 10,000 with surety. Bora said the evidence cited was factually incorrect, that AISA had not called the Central Park protest named in the notice, and that neither Bora nor the organization would sign. In an Indian Express op-ed, Bora wrote that the concern is that people may be deprived of the right to vote, and said peaceful street protest must not be declared a breach of peace. Bora said they would challenge how such bonds are interpreted and enforced in court.

At Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University, a separate dispute has also turned tense. Students have protested since October 12, demanding the return of the student union, which was disbanded in 2006 after campus violence. After security guards reportedly tried to remove protesters' tents on Saturday, and videos appeared to show a scuffle, the university moved all classes online with immediate effect, citing student safety.

What to watch is how large the November 1 gathering at Ramlila Maidan becomes, and whether the mounting pressure alters anything before the final Telangana rolls appear on November 9. The Election Commission's position, so far, is that the revision is routine verification.