INDIA bloc leaders, led by Rahul Gandhi with party members, prepare to march from Parliament to the Election Commission over ‘vote theft’ allegations (PTI)
The INDIA coalition, spearheaded by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, will confront the Election Commission of India on Monday as part of their expression against alleged electoral malpractices. The march is slated to commence from the Parliament precinct at around 11:30 a.m. and is intended to bring into focus what the Opposition is calling "vote chori" an alleged electoral heist associated with the currently ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral roll.
Floor leaders of the alliance will also be meeting with the Election Commissioners to submit a formal complaint; this escalates their demands for voter-roll transparency.
The protest followed recent remarks made by Rahul Gandhi, alleging the Election Commission of India has colluded with the BJP. Quoting from the Congress investigation into Karnataka's Mahadevapura constituency, he alleged that almost one lakh votes were illegitimately canceled or altered. "Vote chori is an attack on the very foundation of 'one man, one vote'," Gandhi wrote on X. He stated that electronic voter rolls should be made open for independent audit, positing the issue within a larger struggle to protect democracy.
The Congress MP claimed on X that vote chori is an assault on the fundamental principle of "one man, one vote," connecting the matter to a larger struggle to "protect" democracy. Free and fair elections depend on a clean voter list. We have a straightforward request for the EC: be open and make the voter rolls available digitally so that individuals and political parties can review them. The purpose of this battle is to save our democracy.
Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal has drawn comparisons between the fight against alleged voter list manipulation and Mahatma Gandhi's Quit India movement. Calling it a 'do-or-die' mission, he stressed upon the urgency to protect democratic integrity.
"To preserve Indian democracy, we must set out on a similar do-or-die mission today, just as Bapu gave us the "Do or Die" call during the Quit India movement," Venugopal wrote on X.
On August 11, the Congress top brass will meet, under the party president Mallikarjun Kharge, to take stock of the situation and finalize the next steps in its nationwide campaign against the manipulation of voters' rolls and frauds in the election processes.
For its part, the Opposition insists that the issue at stake is a question of transparency. They further argue that there can be no free and fair elections without an open, verifiable voters' list. The march and later meetings with ECI officials by the INDIA bloc is being portrayed as not just electoral protest but as a campaign to defend the constitutional right of equal suffrage.
The bloc hopes that approaching the ECI directly will encourage institutional accountability and create public awareness in time for the next elections.
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