INDIA bloc MPs and citizens agitated by the SIR marched to the Supreme Court on Monday to file a petition against the voter-verification exercise that has excluded millions of eligible electors across the country.
The “Delhi Chalo” programme carried shades of a student union victory rally. Youths played wedding dholaks and several participants, including 84-year-old Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge, wore Batman masks. Religious men blew conches.
All along Barakhamba Road, Congress workers gathered from across the country mingled with communists, red-capped Samajwadi Party activists, liberals and thousands of office-goers, all of them having responded to a call for street mobilisation after a weekend-long police and vigilante crackdown on protesters.
Parliamentarians, chief ministers Sukhvinder Sukhu of Himachal Pradesh, Revanth Reddy of Telangana and D.K. Shivakumar of Karnataka, as well as former Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Bihar Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav, and other INDIA luminaries first met at the Constitution Club in the afternoon for discussions and snacks.
Left student leaders Aishe Ghosh of the SFI and Neha Bora of the AISA too had been invited along with the leaders of their parties, the CPM and the CPIML Liberation, respectively.
Mamata then left to catch her flight to Calcutta while the others, including Trinamool MPs and the student leaders, headed to Statesman House in Connaught Place, 2.2km from the Supreme Court, in a convoy of four buses. There, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav joined the group.
The march began a little before 4.30pm, around which time the Congress’s legal team was already filing the petition.
In the crowd was a former Bombay High Court judge, Justice B.G. Kolse Patil, who told The Telegraph: “For over a decade, the Supreme Court has helped the government rather than the public....
“Yet, this march is significant because thousands of people coming out on the street to go to the court sends a message that the court must do justice.”
The 84-year-old retired judge had spent a day inside a police bus, having refused to leave detention on Saturday night after being held during the protests.
“I have seen so many protests in Delhi over the course of my life, but nothing as brutal as (the suppression) last weekend,” Kolse Patil said.
After a prolonged confrontation with the police opposite the National School of Drama — where Congress leaders Kanhaiya Kumar, Anupam and Anshul Trivedi mounted the barricades before being beaten back — the bus was diverted via Copernicus Marg as the sun set.
The MPs remained on the bus, or got on a truck to wave to supporters. Crowds flocked around economist Jean Dreze — one of the few who had managed to breach the police cordon and protest at Jantar Mantar last weekend — for selfies.
Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra, Neha Bora and others got off the bus near the Supreme Court and walked to the court together.
Rahul, Kharge, Akhilesh, Tejashwi and Trinamool MP Saugata Roy were among those who entered the court premises as a huge crowd stood outside.
When they came out after visiting the court registry, Kharge told reporters: “We will not spare the ‘vote thieves’; we will fight a legal battle against them with full force.”
Aaditya Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (UBT) said: “We are against vote theft and election theft. If elections are free and fair, it does not matter who wins or loses. We have no issue with that, but we do object to vote theft.”
A Bengal MP told this newspaper that the INDIA bloc had planned no further joint protests in Delhi so far.
However, at a news conference before the march, Rahul said the protests weren’t being minutely planned and that they were like Shiva’s wedding procession, where everyone was welcome as long as they adhered to a core principle — in this instance, the Constitution.
Union minister Kiren Rijiju said on X: “Protest is the right of every citizen but brazenly abusing constitutional authorities is deplorable.
“Congress Party is direction-less now. But they can improve their numbers if they have a matured and committed leader who doesn’t enjoy spending 200 holidays in a year!”
BJP parliamentarian Anurag Thakur told reporters: “Rahul Gandhi is a ‘hawa hawai’ leader. His entire style of politics follows the same pattern: ‘hawa hawai’ — hollow statements, baseless allegations, hollow actions, hollow protests and hollow facts.”
The Aam Aadmi Party demonstrated seeking the removal of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar separately on Janpath, where MP Sanjay Singh and Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj were detained by the police.
The party has called for protests through the week.