NEW DELHI – India’s opposition parties on Sunday renewed their demand for the resignation of the country’s election chief, holding fresh demonstrations in the latest public challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
Thousands of people joined the protest, organized by the opposition INDIA bloc. Some demonstrators carried musical instruments and waved a range of flags as they raised slogans criticizing the central government’s policies. Several parties in the alliance, which was formed in 2023 to challenge Modi, brought supporters from across the country to the rally, held weeks after police cracked down on protesters in New Delhi.
Led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and supported by the youth “Cockroach” movement, the protesters called for India’s democracy to be protected. They also demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a disputed revision of the country’s voter rolls.
The demonstrators assembled at Ramlila Maidan, a large public ground in New Delhi, after police last month removed Jantar Mantar from the list of officially approved locations for protests. The historic observatory had long been the capital’s principal demonstration site.
Authorities deployed thousands of police and paramilitary personnel and maintained heavy surveillance around the venue and along the protest route. Officials said the security operation included more than 200 CCTV cameras, drones and body-worn cameras.
The continuing voter-list review has removed more than 130 million names since last year. Critics argue that the exercise is politically driven, could disenfranchise millions of additional voters and has had a disproportionate impact on minorities, especially Muslims.
The Election Commission and Modi’s government reject those accusations, saying the revision is designed to eliminate duplicate and ineligible entries from the electoral rolls.
Human Rights Watch said Thursday that the allegations surrounding the voter-roll revision raised “serious questions about the fairness of future Indian elections.”
“The authorities should immediately scrap the voter roll revision process that has denied India’s most marginalized people their right to vote and other government services,” Elaine Pearson, the group’s Asia director, said in a statement.
The demand for Kumar’s resignation has become a central rallying point for opposition parties and supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party, which is seeking to challenge Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Modi has not publicly addressed the demonstrations. Some leaders from his party have dismissed the protesters as “anarchists” and, without presenting evidence, claimed that foreign powers are supporting them.
In July, protests organized by the youth “cockroach” movement prompted the resignation of Modi’s education minister, marking a rare setback for the prime minister, who has held power for more than 12 years. The movement began as an online satire campaign this summer after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young people to parasites.
