Over 300 Members of Parliament from 25 opposition parties, including Congress, Samajwadi Party, TMC, DMK, AAP, Left parties, RJD, NCP(SP), Shiv Sena (UBT), and National Conference, plan to march from Parliament’s Makar Dwar to the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in New Delhi.

The rally, scheduled for 11:30 AM, protests alleged “vote chori” (vote theft) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar. However, Delhi Police have not granted permission for the march, citing the absence of a formal request, according to a senior officer speaking anonymously to Hindustan Times.

The protest, organized by the INDIA bloc but held without its banner to include AAP, which recently exited the alliance, aims to highlight concerns over electoral transparency. Protesters will carry multilingual posters and banners in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and Marathi to oppose the Bihar SIR exercise and alleged vote manipulation. TMC MP Sagarika Ghose confirmed AAP’s participation, noting TMC’s role in securing their involvement.

Congress launched a web portal on August 10 to rally public support and demand digital voter roll transparency from the ECI. Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, posting on X, called vote theft an attack on democracy, urging the ECI to release auditable digital voter rolls. Last week, Gandhi alleged that 100,250 votes were manipulated in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura assembly segment during the 2024 elections, a claim the ECI dismissed as “incorrect,” challenging him to submit evidence under oath.

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