Delhi protest: Cops caught on hop as Gandhis sit-in despite heavy presence

New Delhi: Police barricades on Tuesday afternoon prevented INDIA bloc MPs from marching to the Election Commission of India head office against CEC Gyanesh Kumar and special intensive revision, detaining most of them midway on Parliament Street. But there was a dramatic turn of events when Lok Sabha's Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and some party MPs managed to enter the vicinity of Akashvani Bhawan and stage a sit-in for about eight hours, demanding a meeting with CEC, before they were detained and taken away in police vans late in the evening.

While the earlier march ended in about an hour, with MPs taken away in police buses, Gandhi, Vadra (who stepped out of a police bus and joined her brother), KC Venugopal and some other Congress MPs managed to dodge cops and approach the area near Akashvani Bhawan. They sat under a tree raising slogans and protesting that MPs were being refused a meeting with CEC and demanding the same. Soon, many Congress and Youth Congress workers arrived near the venue and indulged in sloganeering. While some in Congress were claiming that CEC was open to meeting Gandhi and that the latter was insisting on being joined by all INDIA bloc MPs, additional cops arrived and detained Gandhi, Vadra and others and took them away in vans to Kingsway Camp.

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Earlier, when the INDIA bloc march was stopped by the police, some tried to push through the security chains. Leaders such as Akhilesh Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee and others climbed atop the barricades, waving the tricolour.

Significantly, MPs of the "neutral" Biju Janata Dal, including Manas Mangaraj and Sulata Deo, joined the march. They stated that their leader, Naveen Patnaik, had directed them to do so because of a "common cause" against SIR and the questionable deletion of voters in Odisha, though they clarified that their party is not part of the INDIA bloc or the ruling NDA. Some INDIA bloc leaders had also called upon non-bloc Opposition parties to join the campaign against SIR and CEC.

Amid a heavy security deployment, Congress leaders Gandhi, Vadra and Mallikarjun Kharge led the march alongside Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress, and Supriya Sule of NCP-SP.

Around 150 MPs were estimated to have joined the event, with some attributing the moderate turnout to the inter-session period. However, some leaders, including Gandhi, later claimed that more than 300 MPs participated.

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"About 300 MPs came here, and we wanted to meet election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and two of his colleagues. The police stopped us here. We represent the voice of the nation. If representatives can't get to meet the election commissioners, what's the meaning of democracy?" Gandhi said, adding that "treason has been committed" and action would be taken against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and the CEC.