Rahul Gandhi Detained in New Delhi as Opposition Protests Over Voter List Purge Intensify

NEW DELHI: Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was taken into police custody Wednesday during a demonstration directed at the nation’s top election official, as dissent across party lines mounted over a controversial overhaul of voter rolls.

Police intercepted Gandhi and fellow opposition lawmakers as they proceeded toward Jantar Mantar, the capital’s designated site for public assemblies. Footage broadcast live on the YouTube channel of Gandhi’s Congress party showed officers escorting him into a vehicle and driving him away from the scene.

Authorities also held several other lawmakers and demonstrators. The opposition has demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, accusing the institution he leads of manipulating voter registration records to favor Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Both the commission and the government have rejected these claims.

The demonstration marks a significant escalation in a broad-based campaign involving opposition parties, student organizations, and the youth-led “Cockroach” movement against the nationwide “Special Intensive Revision” of voter lists. Originally launched in the eastern state of Bihar last year ahead of local polls, the initiative has since spread to the majority of India’s states and federally administered territories.

So far, the Election Commission has deleted more than 130 million names from the electoral rolls, prompting millions of appeals. Opposition parties are urging authorities to suspend the revision and reinstate those they claim were wrongly excluded, asserting that the deletions disproportionately affected supporters of opposition parties while favoring potential Modi voters. The ruling party and the Election Commission maintain the exercise was politically neutral, intended solely to remove duplicate and ineligible entries while preserving the rights of eligible voters.

The unrest presents a fresh political hurdle for Modi, arriving months after similar protests from the “Cockroach” movement compelled his education minister to step down following exam paper leaks.

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