Thousands of opposition supporters have gathered in Delhi as protests against the Narendra Modi government continue to gather momentum.
Led by the Congress party, India’s opposition alliance has brought together supporters from across the country, amid growing anger over a large-scale revision of the country’s voter roll that has seen 130 million names erased.
Opposition leaders have alleged the process gives Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) an electoral advantage, and have called for the resignation and impeachment of the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar. The BJP has denied the claims.
Addressing tens of thousands of party workers and supporters, the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said Kumar had “carried out the biggest crime. He has tried to silence the voice of people, strangulate our country.”
Gandhi said the opposition, united under the acronym India (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), would not let “democracy be finished in the country” and warned Modi: “You can’t run anywhere.”
The protest was one of the largest shows of opposition strength in years, taking place amid a wider resurgence of anti-government dissent which has been systematically crushed over the 12 years of the Modi regime.
The biggest challenge to the regime has come from youth-led protests that erupted over the summer – led by a movement that began satirically calling itself the “Cockroaches” – and forced the resignation of one of Modi’s cabinet ministers. Cockroach-led protests hit the streets again last month, also in opposition to the revision of the electoral rolls known as special intensive revision (SIR).
The opposition, in particular the Congress party, has become emboldened in the wake of the youth mobilisation. However, a significant trust deficit remains between the establishment opposition parties and the Cockroach movement. On Sunday, while Cockroach leaders had extended their support to the opposition rally, they did not attend themselves.
Congress leaders had publicly predicted that a million people would attend the rally, but in the end the numbers were in the tens of thousands and empty seats were visible in the protest arena.
The somewhat lacklustre turnout demonstrated the challenge still faced by Congress and its opposition allies in being seen as a formidable and viable challenger to the Modi government.
The opposition, led by Gandhi, has lost the last three general elections to the BJP as the parties have widely failed to counter the BJP’s muscular Hindu nationalist rhetoric. The Modi government has systematically gone after political opponents, leaving little space for dissent.
The majority of those gathered at the protest site on Sunday were party workers and organisers who had been bussed in, and there was very little evidence of a mobilisation of the young people who have been participating in the Cockroach-led protests. According to the opposition, many of their buses were stopped from entering Delhi by police barricades.
Shalini, a restaurant owner from Goa, said she was there “not for the opposition but because I am against the BJP and how they are trying to remove any avenue of dissent in this country. I’m not particularly for any opposition party.”
She said many questions still remained about the viability and support of that opposition, but she sensed a “groundswell of dissatisfaction with the BJP and the opposition is cashing in on it – good for them”.
The issue of the revision of the electoral rolls first emerged last year, but recently erupted into a national scandal after an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper revealed irregularities and discord within the election commission over its implementation.
Millions of allegedly eligible voters have discovered their names have been left off the electoral rolls, with Muslims and minorities disproportionately targeted. This week, Human Rights Watch said the accusations raised “serious questions about the fairness of future Indian elections”.
Arwind Chaudhery, 48, said he too was not aligned with any party. “I am here because SIR has undermined our democracy and the situation has got so bad, it is beyond repair or rectification,” he said. “So it is natural that people will be driven out to protest and that is a ray of hope.”
The BJP have sought to dismiss the opposition protests as anarchy. The party’s president, JP Nadda, said Sunday’s rally would be the “nail in the coffin” for the opposition alliance. He said the protest was “not an act of respect for democracy. It is a calculated conspiracy to plunge the nation into anarchy, all in the name of democracy.”
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