Indian police detained several opposition party leaders, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in New Delhi on Tuesday after blocking their protest march to the headquarters of the country’s Election Commission.
Gandhi led the march while carrying a placard that read “Gyanesh, it’s done bro!” – a message to India’s chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, in a dispute over voter rolls. Capital police stopped the march near the government think tank NITI Aayog. As some opposition leaders were being detained and taken away in buses, Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka clambered on a row of police barricades and waved the national flag.
As police moved to detain them, the two lawmakers from India’s most storied political family jumped from the bus and headed toward the election panel building. Again thwarted by the police, they then entered the nearby Akashvani Bhawan government broadcasting complex and staged a sit-in, meters away from the Election Commission’s office.
The Gandhis continued their protest under a tree in the compound even as reports citing Delhi police said they had been detained. “Gyanesh Kumar and the other two election commissioners don’t want to meet us, answer our questions,” Rahul Gandhi told reporters at the site.
Tuesday’s march is seen as the second major challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, after the youth led-protests in July that led to the sacking of the federal education minister. Modi is now in his third term as prime minister.
The opposition’s anger is focused on the ongoing “special” revision of the electoral roll in the world’s most populous nation, aimed at removing duplicates and those ineligible to vote such as illegal immigrants from neighboring countries.
At the center of the issue is a newly introduced declaration which requires voters to state whether they, their parents, or grandparents were on an earlier voter list. Amid complaints that millions of citizens have been left out of the new rolls, opposition parties have demanded that the entire revision exercise be scrapped.
The controversy intensified after the Indian Express newspaper reported that decisions over electoral roll revisions were made by Kumar over the objections of the two other members in the election panel. The Election Commission has said internal differences were part of normal deliberations and that its final decisions were unanimous. It also maintained that Form 6 – used for voter enrollment – itself was not changed.
The issue is before India’s Supreme Court and Chief Justice Surya Kant has said the court would examine the records to determine whether changes had been made to the form, and who had authorized them.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has rejected the opposition allegations and accused Rahul Gandhi of misrepresenting the Supreme Court proceedings for political gain.