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Snapshot of the day
October 6, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia, Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh S.K.
Unprecedented scenes unfolded in Delhi today as the state deployed barricades, buses and hundreds of police officers to stop opposition MPs from marching to the Election Commission’s premises, demanding chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation and lodging their opposition to the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Several parliamentarians including the SP’s Akhilesh Yadav and TMC’s Derek O’Brien were detained around the beginning of the march, and when Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi and other Congress MPs were stopped by the police from going beyond Akashvani Bhavan – just a stone’s throw away from Nirvachan Sadan – they set up camp right there and began a sit-in protest after a prolonged standoff. Gandhi had earlier climbed a police barricade to proceed with the march, holding the national flag, before entering Akashvani Bhavan.
After more than eight hours of sit-in at Akashvani Bhavan, the LoP – alongside Priyanka Gandhi and other parliamentarians and protesters – was forcibly removed, manhandled by the Delhi police and stuffed inside a bus, in which he was taken away to the Kingsway police lines in Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar. They have now been released. Gandhi had said that around 300 opposition MPs wanted to meet the CEC and questioned why they were being prevented from reaching the EC's headquarters.
For its part, the EC claimed that no party attempted to set up an appointment with it as of 4 pm – yet another instance of being economical with the truth – when it said the police informed it of the MPs’ move to march to Nirvachan Sadan. The poll panel also claimed that the opposition wished to meet its officials at Parliament House Annexe, and that when it offered to send a senior official there to receive the MPs’ memorandum, they refused to do so. The opposition, however, had announced its march to the EC last week, on September 30.
The standoff now raises a striking question: why were hundreds of elected MPs barred from reaching the EC, and why was the CEC unable to meet them? Speculation is also growing over whether CEC Kumar is effectively being kept from meeting the MPs by the Modi government.
Even as anti-CEC protests intensify nation-wide,
