New Delhi: Accusing Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of committing “treason” by stealing the voice of citizens, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said Mr. Kumar would be removed from office and would go to jail.
Mr. Gandhi was speaking at the INDIA bloc rally at Ramlila Maidan, which saw participation from across the country, with crowds spilling beyond the ground’s boundaries and marching with drums and waving flags. Many trailed Mr. Gandhi and other leaders as they drove to the venue in an open-top vehicle.
Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal, without quantifying the number of participants, said in a post on X: “The scale of today’s uprising has never before been seen in Delhi.”
‘We Will Not Let Him Go’
Responding to Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent remarks that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “not going anywhere”, Mr. Gandhi said neither the Prime Minister nor the Home Minister would be allowed to “go anywhere” even if they wanted to.
“Amit Shah said Narendra Modi is not going anywhere… even if he wants to go, we will not let him. Narendra Modi ji and Amit Shah ji, understand this: after Gyanesh Kumar, we will stand against you. And don’t forget that for the vote chori you have done, there will be legal action against you and Narendra Modi,” he said.
Other Leaders
Akhilesh Yadav described the crowd as the “Haldighati of democracy,” which he said indicated change is in the offing. “Those who came to power through U.P. will be ousted from there. And ‘U.P. wallahs’, who are good at welcoming, are better at giving send-offs,” he said.
Mamata Banerjee described the SIR as “special intensive relief” for the BJP and said Bengal has been a victim of it.
Tejashwi Yadav, evoking Hindu mythology, said that while Ramlila Maidan is traditionally used to stage the Ramayana, today the Opposition has organised a “Mahabharata for those who steal votes.”
The ‘Illegal’ Mandate Claim
Mr. Gandhi’s 18-minute speech combined aggressive posturing towards the government with a preview of what he described as a post-Modi vision of India that would replace the politics of hatred with the politics of harmony.
He said “vote chori” has been happening for years, claiming several Assembly elections — including in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra — were stolen through the “addition” and “deletion” of voters. The 2024 mandate for the Modi government, he alleged, was “illegal.”
After the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Mr. Gandhi said 130 million voters were removed — 15% of the total electorate, or one in every seven voters. He pointed out that the difference in vote share between the BJP-led coalition and the INDIA bloc in 2024 was three percentage points.
“This is not an ordinary theft; it is not someone stealing something small from a shop… This is a theft of every citizen’s voice and expression. In legal parlance, this is called a ‘rarest of rare’ case; this is called treason,” Mr. Gandhi said, alleging that Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah would not have become Prime Minister and Home Minister without Gyanesh Kumar.
A Vision of Inclusion
Using the metaphor of “Shiv ji ki baraat,” where all kinds of creatures are allowed to participate, Mr. Gandhi said India has to be inclusive — where a farmer enjoys the fruits of his labour and where a student studying for 18 hours gets employment.
Naming industrialist Gautam Adani, he said the Opposition will not allow all resources to be owned by a single person. “The first step to bring the nation back on track is to remove Gyanesh Kumar,” he said.
‘We Do Not Hate Them’
While focusing his attack on Mr. Modi, Mr. Shah and Mr. Kumar, Mr. Gandhi drew a distinction between “us and them,” saying that despite everything, “we do not hate them.”
“Narendra Modi ji, Amit Shah ji, Gyanesh Kumar ji, you have attacked the country’s soul, our constitution, our democracy; we are not willing to accept this,” he said, adding that none of the three is his enemy. He underlined that the voice of every individual Indian was more important to him than religion.
“We have to erase hatred. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and the RSS have spread hatred. It is hurting the nation and our nation’s soul,” he said, adding that the country is screaming for love and stressing the need for a politics of harmony instead of hatred.
Who Attended
The rally was attended by senior Opposition leaders including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, National Conference patriarch Farooq Abdullah, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby, CPI general secretary D. Raja, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Sanjay Raut, NCP (SP)’s Supriya Sule and others.
