Delhi Police book Rahul and Priyanka over the Akashvani Bhawan sit-in

Delhi Police registered an FIR on Wednesday against Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and other INDIA bloc MPs, over their entry into Akashvani Bhawan during Tuesday's march on the Election Commission. An officer said the case was filed at Parliament Street police station and that an investigation had been opened. The sections invoked were not released on Wednesday morning. Police described the allegation as unauthorised entry and a refusal to leave.

The march had been called from Makar Dwar of Parliament toward Nirvachan Sadan, the Commission headquarters, to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Police said no permission had been sought or granted. Barricades stopped the column short of the Commission. As detentions began, Rahul Gandhi climbed a barricade and then entered the All India Radio complex, asking a security guard to let him in. The main gates were shut. A smaller entry gate was open. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other MPs followed. The sit-in inside the building lasted about seven hours.

Police said the group was told to vacate and refused, insisting a delegation be allowed to meet Commission officials. Detentions followed "to maintain law and order", in the police phrasing, and to stop the situation deteriorating. Deccan Chronicle reported that about 260 people were detained during the day, including 10 MPs. The Indian Express put the planned column at about 200 MPs. Hindustan Times, describing the wider Opposition action, said more than 250 members were detained when the march was stopped outside Nirvachan Sadan. The FIR is narrower than that detention list. It is tied to the entry into Akashvani Bhawan, not to the march as a whole.

The political sequence is already a day old. The detentions were the story on Tuesday night. The FIR is the story on Wednesday, because it moves the same facts from a police log into a criminal file. Trespass cases against sitting MPs are rarely the end of the matter. They are a record the other side can cite, and a procedure the accused can challenge. Congress has treated the march as a protest against the voter-roll revision and against Kumar. The BJP has treated it as a breach. The FIR adopts the second description for the portion of the day spent inside the radio building.

Akashvani Bhawan is not a neutral hallway. It is a central government office, home to All India Radio, on the route between Parliament and the Commission. Entering it turned a stopped march into an occupation of a third building. That is why the police file names the premises. A sit-in on the road outside Nirvachan Sadan would have been a public-order case. A sit-in inside a broadcasting headquarters is an entry case, which is what Wednesday's FIR records. The open side gate is the factual dispute waiting in the investigation: police say entry was without permission; the MPs' account, given on Tuesday, is that they were let through by staff at that gate after the main doors were closed.

The demand underneath the march has not changed. Opposition parties want Kumar to resign and the Special Intensive Revision withdrawn. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has called the Commission a puppet of the government. Rahul Gandhi, during the protest, said action would be taken against the prime minister, the home minister, the RSS chief and the chief election commissioner for what he called treason and "vote chori". Those sentences are political. They are not in the FIR. The FIR, on the details released so far, is about the building.

What happens next is procedural. Parliament Street will have to settle the sections, identify who is named beyond the two Gandhis, and decide whether the case stays with a local investigation or is transferred. The Opposition has already scheduled a further protest at Jantar Mantar on 10 October, with five Left student organisations saying they will join a "Vote Bachao" action. Kumari Selja is due in Haridwar on Wednesday for a related march. The FIR does not stop any of that. It does mean that the seven hours inside Akashvani Bhawan now have a case number, and that the open side gate is the fact both sides will argue over.