Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and several MPs from the I.N.D.I.A bloc were detained in Delhi after police stopped their planned march to the Election Commission of India (ECI) office. The protest was staged against the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter roll in Bihar, which opposition leaders allege has removed around 6.5 million names, mostly from Muslim and migrant communities.
Police prevented the group from proceeding, keeping Gandhi and his associates inside a bus. Gandhi accused the Centre and the Modi government of undermining secular values by targeting minority voters, citing data that he said showed large-scale deletions ahead of the November elections.
The ECI, in its defence before the Supreme Court, said it is not legally required to provide a separate list of deleted names. Citing the Representation of the People Act (1950) and the Registration of Electoral Rules (1960), it stated that only a draft electoral roll must be published for claims and objections, not a deletion list. The poll body stressed that the current draft is not final and that names can be added later through due process, with some deletions possibly caused by non-submission of forms or errors in home-to-home data collection.
