Opposition MPs Set to march from Parliament to EC Office, Major Show Expected

The MPs from opposition parties will march from Makar Dwar in Parliament to the Election Commission office at around 11.30 am on Monday.

Over 300 MPs from 25 opposition parties will march from the Parliament to the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in the national capital on Monday to protest against the alleged “vote chori” (vote theft) in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.

The protest will see participation from major political outfits including the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress (TMC), DMK, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Left parties, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), NCP (Sharad Pawar faction), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction), and the National Conference.

While the march is planned to proceed from Parliament to Nirvachan Sadan via Transport Bhawan, Delhi Police is unlikely to allow demonstrators to reach the EC office, which is located less than two kilometers away, and officials have indicated that no formal request for police permission has been filed.

According to a Congress statement, the rally is scheduled for August 11, 2025. Notably, the demonstration, though called by the INDIA bloc, will not feature the alliance’s banner to accommodate AAP, which withdrew from the coalition last month but still has 12 MPs in Parliament. TMC is reported to have played a significant role in persuading AAP to join the protest. Participants will carry multilingual posters and banners in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and Marathi to register opposition to the Bihar SIR exercise and highlight allegations of voter fraud.

On the eve of the protest, the Congress launched a web portal for citizens to express support and demand that the Election Commission release digital voter rolls to enable public and party audits. Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, wrote on X that “Vote Chori is an attack on the foundational idea of ‘one man, one vote” and emphasized that transparent voter lists are essential for free and fair elections. He called for the EC to release the digital rolls to ensure accountability and safeguard democracy.

This protest follows Gandhi’s recent allegations that over 100,000 votes were fraudulently manipulated in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura assembly segment within the Bangalore Central constituency during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Presenting what he described as evidence at a press conference last week, Gandhi claimed that approximately 1,00,250 votes had been “stolen” through five different methods of manipulation.

The Election Commission has categorically rejected these accusations as false, baseless and ‘incorrect’ through multiple posts on social media, urging the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi to submit the data supporting his claims under oath. The march thus seeks to draw national attention to concerns over electoral integrity, voter roll accuracy, and the perceived lack of transparency in election processes.