INDIA bloc to hold 'public impeachment' programme against election chief today after rain delay
The opposition INDIA bloc will hold its postponed 'public impeachment' programme against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at 3:30pm on Saturday in New Delhi, a day after rain forced its rescheduling, and has called a march to Ramlila Maidan on 1 November.
The opposition INDIA bloc will hold its 'public impeachment' programme against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at 3:30pm on Saturday at the New Delhi residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, a day after rain forced the event to be postponed.
The programme was originally planned for Friday but was rescheduled because of unfavourable weather in the national capital. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi announced the new timing on Friday, saying the decision was taken by consensus to avoid inconvenience to senior leaders.
The event is part of the INDIA bloc's campaign against what it calls 'vote chori', or vote theft, centred on alleged electoral manipulation through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The bloc says the revision process has wrongly deleted or targeted voters, a charge the Election Commission has rejected.
The organisers have said the programme will avoid imagery that could be seen as mocking Parliament as an institution. The 'public impeachment' is a symbolic political protest rather than a constitutional removal process, which would require a parliamentary motion and carries a high threshold.
Gandhi has also invited political parties, civil society groups, journalists and citizens to join the opposition's march to Delhi's Ramlila Maidan on 1 November, extending the campaign beyond Saturday's programme at Kharge's residence at 10, Rajaji Marg.
The controversy over the rolls reached the Supreme Court on Friday, when the Election Commission told the court that although it had found false Form 7 applications for deletion of voters during the Uttar Pradesh SIR, none of them had been accepted. The court sought a report from the commission on the allegations of Form 7 misuse.
Form 7 is the application used to seek deletion of a name from the electoral roll, and the opposition has argued that bulk or bogus deletion requests could disenfranchise legitimate voters. The commission has maintained that its verification process catches such applications before any name is removed.
The dispute has become one of the sharpest political confrontations between the opposition and the election authorities ahead of a busy electoral calendar, with the bloc framing the rolls revision as a threat to free and fair elections and the commission insisting that the exercise is a routine clean-up of voter lists.
Saturday's programme will test how much support the campaign draws beyond the bloc's own parties, with the invitation extended to civil society and the public. The turnout and the tone of the event are likely to shape the opposition's next steps, including the planned Ramlila Maidan march on Sunday.
Attention will also be on whether the Election Commission responds further to the allegations, and on how the Supreme Court proceeds after seeking the report on Form 7 misuse. For now, the immediate focus is the afternoon programme in New Delhi, where opposition leaders are expected to press their case against the election chief in public.
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