Delhi tightens security as opposition demands election chief quit

New Delhi — Thousands of demonstrators gathered at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on Sunday for an opposition rally demanding the resignation of India's chief election commissioner, as police and paramilitary forces mounted one of the heaviest security deployments the capital has seen in months. The protest, called by the opposition INDIA bloc and led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, targets a voter list revision that critics say favours Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.

Officials said authorities deployed thousands of police and paramilitary personnel, backed by more than 200 CCTV cameras, drones and body-worn cameras at the venue and along the protest route, France 24 reported. The Guardian reported that security personnel carrying batons and shields, accompanied by riot control vehicles, surrounded the site, with traffic diversions in place. The opposition said it expected hundreds of thousands to attend; no independent estimate of turnout was immediately available.

At the heart of the dispute is a continuing review of electoral rolls that has removed more than 130 million names since last year. Critics say the exercise is politically motivated and has disproportionately affected minorities, particularly Muslims, and could disenfranchise millions more. The Election Commission and Modi's administration deny the allegations, saying the revision removes duplicate and ineligible entries and that wrongly deleted voters can re-enrol.

Human Rights Watch said on Thursday the accusations raise "serious questions about the fairness of future Indian elections". "The authorities should immediately scrap the voter roll revision process that has denied India's most marginalized people their right to vote and other government services," said Elaine Pearson, the group's Asia director, in a statement.

The rally was also backed by the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party, a movement that began as an online satirical campaign this summer after India's chief justice compared unemployed young people to parasites. In July its protests forced the resignation of Modi's education minister, a rare setback for a prime minister who has been in power for more than 12 years. Modi has not publicly commented on the latest protests; some BJP leaders have dismissed the demonstrators as "anarchists" and suggested, without offering evidence, that they are backed by foreign powers.

The protest comes weeks after a police crackdown on demonstrators in the capital, and after police last month withdrew Jantar Mantar, the capital's long-established protest site, from the list of officially designated venues. With opposition parties, student organisations and the Cockroach movement holding near-daily demonstrations since last month, the next test will be whether the Election Commission responds to the resignation demand or the standoff hardens further.