Indian opposition MPs detained in protest against election chief

Indian opposition MPs detained in protest against election chief

Several opposition lawmakers, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, were halted partway through a march to the Election Commission headquarters.

Police in Delhi detained a number of opposition MPs as they attempted to march in protest, demanding that the chief election commissioner resign over a disputed revision of voter rolls.

Rahul Gandhi, his sister Priyanka and other MPs were put onto a police bus. They were released soon after, after which they continued their march and staged a sit-in near Election Commission headquarters.

The protest marks the latest escalation in an intensifying dispute over a nationwide voter roll revision.

Opposition parties accuse Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of overseeing a process that could favour Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), an allegation rejected by both the BJP and the Election Commission.

Security officials blocked roads from India's parliament to the election commission headquarters

"Some of the MPs tried to take some other roads to the Election Commission building. We have officers stationed at multiple points, from where the protesters were picked up in buses and taken to different police stations," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Manjeet Sheoran told the BBC. Police did not say how many lawmakers had been detained. The opposition said 237 MPs from various parties took part in the march.

Tuesday's demonstration came only four days after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a Gen Z-backed online satirical movement, held protests in Mumbai and Delhi, also calling for the CEC's resignation. The group has said those protests were the start of a nationwide campaign and has called for another round of demonstrations on 10 October.

At the heart of the dispute is the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The exercise started in the eastern state of Bihar in June 2025 before being extended to other parts of the country. The Election Commission says the revision is meant to remove duplicate and ineligible voters from electoral rolls. More than 130 million names have so far been removed from draft voter lists nationwide.

Opposition parties and activists say many eligible voters have been wrongly left out and accuse the poll body of mishandling the process.

The campaign against Kumar gained momentum after an Indian Express investigation reported that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over a 10-month period to decisions and orders they said had been issued in the Election Commission's name without their knowledge.

The report said the objections concerned matters including additions and deletions from voter rolls, access to the voter database and the security of electoral data. Some of the concerns were directly tied to the electoral roll revision programme.

The Election Commission, a three-member body made up of the chief election commissioner and two election commissioners, defended its decision-making, saying differing views were part of institutional functioning and that decisions were ultimately taken unanimously.

Even so, the revelations sparked a political backlash, with opposition leaders stepping up demands for Kumar's resignation.

India's Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is at the centre of a controversy over allegations of manipulating voter rolls

Security around the Election Commission headquarters was tightened on Tuesday, with police barricading roads along the route between parliament and the commission's office.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called three demands "non-negotiable": Kumar's resignation, cancellation of the SIR exercise and a return to paper ballot voting.

Mocking the election chief, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in India's lower house of parliament, tweeted: "Gyanesh, it's done, bro. Time to resign."

The BJP condemned the protests.

BJP MP Sambit Patra called them a "sponsored attempt" to bring about a change of power through "anarchy". He accused opposition parties of trying to weaken constitutional institutions, including the Election Commission.

The dispute has also reached India's Supreme Court, which has asked both the federal government and the Election Commission to respond to a petition alleging that Kumar made key decisions without the approval of the two other election commissioners.

The petition says Kumar used powers that belong to the commission collectively and seeks a ruling that any such actions were unauthorised.

The court said Election Commission decisions must be made either unanimously or by majority vote and suggested that decisions could be overturned if they were found to have bypassed that process. However, it declined to suspend Kumar at this stage, saying it would first hear the Election Commission's response and review the relevant records.