United Oppn to march till ECI office against SIR, 'voter fraud'
New Delhi, Aug. 11 -- At least 25 Opposition parties, including the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), will join a mega protest march from Parliament to the office of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the national capital on Monday over the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar and allegations of voter fraud during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc, which planned the protest march, has decided not to use its banner but make the event of the entire Opposition in order to accommodate the AAP, which has 12 members in Parliament. AAP had quit INDIA bloc last month.
"This is a programme of the Opposition and we expect AAP to join it," said Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose, indicating the INDIA group will show flexibility to accommodate other parties in the Opposition-sponsored events.
According to a senior leader, the TMC played a key role in convincing the AAP to join the protest march from Parliament to ECI office on Ashoka Road in Delhi.
Over 300 MPs from 25 Opposition parties - including Congress, Samajwadi Party, TMC, DMK, AAP, Left parties, RJD, NCP(SP), Shiv Sena (UBT) and National Conference - are expected to join the march, which will start at 11.30 am.
However, there is a possibility that the Delhi Police might not allow the protest march till EC office, which is less than 2 km from Parliament. A senior officer, requesting anonymity, said no formal police permission has been sought for the planned protest.
"MPs of Opposition parties (LS & RS) to march from Makar Dwar in Parliament to Nirvachan Sadan (Election Commission), New Delhi via Transport Bhawan at 11.30 AM, tomorrow, August 11, 2025," the Congress said in a communique.
Posters and banners in multiple languages such as English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi will be displayed during the march to protest the SIR exercise in Bihar and highlight the alleged vote theft.
On Sunday, the Congress launched a web portal for people to register and demand accountability from the poll panel against what it called "vote chori" (vote theft), and express support for the demand for digital voter rolls.
"Vote Chori is an attack on the foundational idea of 'one man, one vote'. A clean voter roll is imperative for free and fair elections," leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X. "Our demand from the EC is clear - be transparent and release digital voter rolls so that people and parties can audit them. The fight is to protect the democracy."
Gandhi on Thursday cited data from the 2024 LS polls to claim over 100,000 votes were "stolen" in an assembly segment in Karnataka.
"We started examining the details and discovered that approximately 1,00,250 votes were stolen in the Mahadevapura assembly," he had claimed....
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