Delhi Police detain Rahul Gandhi as the INDIA march stops short of the Election Commission

Delhi Police stopped an opposition march on Tuesday before it reached the Election Commission and detained Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and other MPs. The march had set out from Parliament toward the commission's headquarters. Officers halted it near the NITI Aayog office. MPs sat on the road. Gandhi climbed a barricade and waved the tricolour. Police later put several of them into vehicles.

Reuters reported that the sit-in, on white mattresses under a tree, ended in the evening when police moved in. Delhi Police said Gandhi, Vadra and the others were detained under the law to keep the peace and for public safety. Gandhi said 300 lawmakers took part. Reuters said it could not independently verify that figure. The Tribune, citing police, reported that 10 MPs were among 260 people detained, and that no permission had been sought from the Delhi deputy commissioner for the march.

The demand was the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the scrapping of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, and a return to ballot papers. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters as the march began that the commission was a puppet in the hands of the government, and that the opposition was fighting to save democracy. BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said Congress lawmakers were misleading the country with baseless claims. He cited an Election Commission statement that the poll panel had not received a request from the Congress or from any other INDIA bloc party for a meeting.

The commission's own position, reported by The Hindu, was that a demand to meet MPs at the Parliament Annexe could not be accepted. Protocol, the commission said, requires meetings with political delegations to be held at its own premises. It offered to receive a memorandum through the senior-most officer on duty. The march was the opposition's answer to that offer: a walk to the premises, stopped short of the gate.

Frontline officers at the protest sites were wearing body-worn cameras. India Today, citing a police source and PTI, said the cameras had been issued to personnel on crowd management in New Delhi, Central Delhi and North Delhi, on roads leading to the commission. The stated purpose was a real-time record of contact between officers and protesters, usable if allegations were made against either side. The deployment follows complaints of excess during earlier demonstrations over the roll revision. Multilayer barricades were in place to keep marchers out of restricted roads.

The political argument is about the special intensive revision. Opposition parties say the revised lists favour the BJP. The commission rejects that. The Supreme Court, on 5 October, refused an interim suspension of Kumar and issued notice on a related plea. Tuesday's march did not change that case. It put MPs on a road the police had already decided they would not be allowed to finish.

Detention in this setting is not the same as arrest on a criminal charge, though the legal form can shift if a case is registered. Police described the removals as action to maintain peace. The opposition described them as the breakup of a protest aimed at a constitutional body. Both descriptions can be true of the same hour: a sit-in that police had not permitted, ended by officers, with the participants released or held according to the section used. The Tribune's count of 260, if it holds, is the scale. Gandhi's count of 300 lawmakers is the claim Reuters left unverified.

Five Left groups have backed a further protest in Delhi on 10 October against the chief election commissioner. Tuesday was the parliamentary party's action. Saturday is being organised as a street date. Between them sits the commission's offer to take a memorandum at its own building, and the opposition's refusal to treat that as a meeting. The body cameras are the new piece of equipment on the police side of that argument. If a complaint is filed about Tuesday's removals, the recordings are what the force has said it will rely on.

Kharge's line, that the commission is a puppet, and Trivedi's line, that the claims are baseless, are the two sentences the day produced for later quotation. Neither settles the roll revision. The verified sequence is shorter. MPs marched from Parliament. Police stopped them near NITI Aayog. A sit-in followed. Detentions followed the sit-in. The commission said it had not been asked for a meeting, and that any meeting would be at its own office.