Delhi braces for more protests against election chief amid crackdown

Opposition parties, joined by student groups, are hitting the streets, disrupting central New Delhi with flash marches. Save Share New Delhi, India— India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has returned to the streets of central New Delhi, leading dozens of members of parliament demanding the election chief’s resignation, as protests gather momentum. Gandhi, heir to India’s most influential political dynasty, is seeking to turn a summer youth uprising into a broader challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade-long dominance of Indian politics, putting the Hindu nationalist government under growing pressure. In a press briefing on Monday, Gandhi said the Modi government had put the capital city “in jail”. The youth-led “Cockroach” movement that forced out the education minister in July has also threatened to protest on Tuesday if it is not allowed to rally at Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, which was the focus of summer demonstrations. Joining Gandhi’s Congress party, other opposition forces and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) are thousands of students from left-wing organisations. As the government braces for further protests, security forces have been detaining thousands of students every day, with allegations of custodial violence casting a climate of fear over the capital. India’s Election Commission, a supposedly autonomous body tasked with overseeing the world’s largest electorate, has been criticised after revelations that its chief, Gyanesh Kumar, frequently overruled concerns raised by the other two election commissioners about the integrity of changes to the voter database. For months, India’s opposition parties have argued that the election commission is compromised, sabotaging elections at the behest of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its electoral benefit. The BJP denies the allegations. Since June last year, the commission has been revising and updating statewide voter lists. It has since removed more than 130 million names, which critics say has disproportionately deprived minorities and other vulnerable groups in India of the right to vote. Gandhi has called for the Chief Election Commissioner to be tried for treason. “We will not spare you,” he said, referring to Kumar, at his Monday press briefing. Opposition politicians allege that protest rallies by leaders including Gandhi have been met with violent and brutal force, as seen in videos showing them being detained....