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Rahul Gandhi calls 'Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao' rally for 1 November; Kharge wants ballot papers, polls annulled
Rahul Gandhi has invited students, farmers, workers, women, youth and traders to a march and rally at Ramlila Maidan on 1 November. In Patna, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge demanded an end to the revision of electoral rolls, ballot papers and annulment of two years of assembly polls.
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Rahul Gandhi has called on people from across the country to join a 'Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao' march and mega rally at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi on 1 November, and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has set out the demands behind it in a speech in Patna. Both men spoke on Sunday, 25 October, and both framed the campaign around the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which the Congress calls 'vote chori', or vote theft.
Rahul Gandhi's call
The Special Intensive Revision is a house-to-house re-verification of the electoral rolls, in which each elector has to fill in a form and, in many cases, give documents, and names that cannot be verified are left out of the draft roll. The Election Commission says the exercise removes dead, duplicate and shifted voters, while the opposition says that many genuine voters, mostly poor and migrant, are being struck off.
In a post on X, Gandhi said that voters' names were being removed from the rolls and that democratic rights were under attack. He invited students, farmers, workers, women, youth and traders to the people's march and the rally, and said the country would respond. He is the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The Delhi Police have given permission for the rally at Ramlila Maidan, according to reports, and the event is part of the INDIA bloc's campaign against the revision and for a return to ballot paper voting.
There is some pushback. A traders' body has urged him to defer the rally, warning of a business loss of Rs 10,000 crore during the festive season, and the Supreme Court has asked Gandhi to explain his actions in connection with a march on 12 October. The BJP had not given a detailed response to the call at the time of the reports.
What Kharge said in Patna
Kharge spoke at a function marking the 139th birth anniversary of Krishna Singh, Bihar's first Chief Minister, known as Sri Babu. He called the protests against the revision a 'second war of independence' and urged people to take to the streets to protect the Constitution. His demands were:
- an immediate end to the revision of electoral rolls;
- restoration of the names of voters who, he said, were removed illegally;
- paper ballots in all future elections;
- annulment of all assembly elections held in the last two years;
- dismissal of the state governments that he says were formed through vote theft.
He named West Bengal, Haryana, Bihar and Maharashtra. He also said that there would be no peace in the country as long as the ideology of the RSS persisted. Responding to Home Minister Amit Shah's claim that the Congress would not come to power for 30 years, he argued that such a claim depends on voting machines and loyalists in key positions. Reports from the meeting also said that the INDIA bloc leaders who met President Droupadi Murmu earlier had asked for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and for the repeal of a 2023 law that gives him lifelong legal protection.
The demands run well ahead of anything the law allows. The Election Commission is not bound to switch to ballot papers because a party asks for it, and the Constitution has no provision for annulling an assembly election after a government has been formed, other than through a court's ruling on an election petition. The dismissal of state governments that hold a majority in their assemblies would be a drastic step that courts have repeatedly restricted. The demands are therefore best read as political positions meant to energise supporters before the rally.
The ruling side rejects the charge of vote theft and says the revision is a clean-up of the rolls. The Election Commission has defended the exercise in the same terms, while the opposition says too many genuine voters are being struck off.
The first measure is the size of the crowd on 1 November. The INDIA bloc has also announced a symbolic 'public impeachment' of the Chief Election Commissioner on 30 October, so the two events will be read together. The second is whether the other parties in the alliance send leaders to the rally, since Kharge has written to them asking for their presence. The third is whether the campaign shifts any votes in the states going to the polls next, which is the test that matters to the parties.
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