Putting up a united front on the ‘vote chori’ issue, the opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday announced joint ‘save democracy’ marches in all districts and five major rallies, demanded that future polls be held with ballot paper and appealed to the Supreme Court to expedite cases of SIR and electoral “malpractices”.
At a meeting attended by leaders of as many as 19 political parties that lasted over three-and-a-half hours, it was decided that all opposition MPs will march to the Election Commission on October 6 and the leaders would meet the President to highlight the issues related to alleged irregularities in voter list revision.
The opposition grouping discussed the demand for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation and said they will not relent till he is ousted. The meeting held at the Constitution Club in New Delhi was attended by top party leaders -Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, besides TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, besides left leaders.
Some opposition leaders, including Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and Jharkhand Chief Minister and JMM chief Hemant Soren, participated in the meeting online, as they could not be physically present.
“With unanimity, everyone vowed to fight together,” Kharge said while addressing a joint briefing by the bloc leaders after their meeting, The Congress chief said they have decided on the joint action plan, whereby “save democracy” marches will be taken out in all districts from October 2-8 and demonstrations will be held before the district magistrate’s office, where the youth and NGOs would also be invited.
“We will hold five big rallies during October/November and date and place would be decided soon. We will tell people how the government is snatching the rights of the people to elect their government for running the country,” he said.
Rahul Gandhi said INDIA bloc leaders are the “collective defenders” of the Indian Constitution and asserted that it is their “personal commitment” to ensure that those who have “destroyed” Indian democracy are punished.
Kharge said that on November 1 a mega rally would be organised in the national capital to highlight the issue of
“vote chori”.
“Now everyone is realising that what Rahul ji was saying is correct and it is attracting attention. First Prime Minister Narendra Modi did “notebandi” and is now doing “votebandi”, taking away the people’s rights,” he said.
Meanwhile, the BJP said the outcomes of the INDIA bloc meeting on Wednesday were “zero vision, 100 per cent frustration, and an advance excuse for poll defeats”, with the leaders of the opposition grouping rejecting Rahul
Gandhi’s leadership.
“The INDI Alliance fell apart even before the meeting took place. The DMK did not attend the meeting. Akhilesh was busy elsewhere. The AAP had already declined,” Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said at a press conference
at the BJP headquarters.
