New Delhi, November 1, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said the INDIA bloc’s protest at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan was aimed at safeguarding the constitutional rights of citizens and was not about any political party.
Opposition leaders gathered at the venue to protest against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
Addressing the rally, Tharoor said the Election Commission should not take away people’s constitutional rights and called for a clean electoral register.
“This is not about parties, this is not about Congress, this is about the very simple message that the constitutional rights of the Indian people should not be taken away by the Election Commission. What they did was simply wrong, you cannot cut 130 million voters. This is not acceptable, what we need is an absolutely clean election register,” he said.
“We are trying to safeguard the constitutional rights of the people of the country,” he added.
Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda also reiterated the party’s commitment to protecting the Constitution, describing Congress as a peaceful party.
“Congress is a peaceful party…They have made a constitution, so it is the Congress’s duty to protect the Constitution,” he said.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav targeted the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister over the alleged reduction in voter numbers, claiming that the Chief Minister himself had acknowledged a decline of 1.27 crore votes.
“Even the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh himself has accepted that 1 crore 27 lakh votes have decreased. And when did he remember this? When he lost the MLC election,” Yadav said.
Taking a dig at the BJP’s ‘double-engine’ slogan, he remarked, “Those who used to talk about the double engine have themselves become double zero. And not only did they become double zero, along with double zero; they could not even accept losing once.”
Yadav further alleged that they had colluded with the Election Commission and secured a second round of counting.
Questioning the source of the data, he said, “And after all that, what is being remembered? That 1 crore 27 lakh votes are not of Hindus. Where did they learn this from? Who gave them this data? This is not the kind of data you just find lying on the street, or that any random roadside person would hand to you.”
Former Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai also called for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, asserting that he would have to step down.
The INDIA bloc organised the rally at Ramlila Maidan to oppose the SIR exercise and press for Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation. Large numbers of protesters were heading towards the venue, where security arrangements remained heightened.
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