Hundreds of protesters marched through central Delhi on Friday demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, in one of the most visible confrontations between civil society groups and the poll body in recent months.
The march, which began near Gole Dak Khana and headed toward the Election Commission headquarters on Ashoka Road, was stopped at multi-layered barricades near Gurdwara Bangla Sahib — and ended with mass detentions by the Delhi Police.
The protest was called by the Delhi Coordination Committee of People Against SIR, a civil society collective that issued the call on Thursday, with the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) named as a participating body. The marchers were a broad coalition: farmers' organisations including the SKM and the Bharatiya Kisan Union, trade unions, student groups — the SFI, AISA, AISF and the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan — women's organisations such as AIDWA and AIDSO, and Left parties.
Among the named participants were CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat and CPI leaders P. Sandosh and Annie Raja. The organisers had also invited Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of Citizens for Justice and Peace; AISA president Neha; actor Prakash Raj; and BKU chief Rakesh Tikait. Participants came from Delhi, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
The marchers assembled around 2 pm near Gole Dak Khana, at the intersection of Kalibari Marg and Bhai Vir Singh Marg. Their demands were unambiguous: the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner and the withdrawal of the SIR exercise. Slogans of "Gyanesh Kumar, resign", "Halt SIR" and "Won't tolerate vote theft" rang out, and banners reading "Scrap SIR", "Vote Chori" and "No elections with SIR" were held aloft.
The protesters' case against the SIR exercise is that it has deleted millions of eligible voters, with a disproportionate impact on Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis. These are the protesters' claims, not independently verified findings, but they formed the emotional core of the march.
The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls has been one of the most contested administrative exercises in recent electoral politics, with opposition parties and civil society groups arguing that it risks disenfranchising vulnerable sections of the electorate.
The march never reached its destination. About 500 to 600 metres short of the Election Commission office, the procession was halted at multi-layered barricades near Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. There, the protesters sat down and held what they called a "People's Parliament" — a symbolic assembly that turned the barricade line into the venue for their protest.
The police response was swift and heavy. Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which prohibits mass gatherings, had been imposed and announced. More than 1,000 Delhi Police and Central Armed Police Force personnel were deployed, with heavy barricading at both the ECI office and Jantar Mantar.
Detentions began around 3 pm and continued onto Baba Khadak Singh Marg; at least three buses of detainees were taken to detention centres. By 4:30 pm, the area had been mostly cleared.
The numbers told a contested story. The Indian Express, which reported from the ground, said around 300 protesters had gathered at the start; other outlets described the crowd as running into the thousands. The detention figures also varied: the Indian Express reported more than 150 detentions, while the Economic Times, Rediff and Business Standard put the number at over 100, and the Telegraph described it as "several". No single official figure was available.
The Delhi march was not an isolated event. According to the People Against SIR collective, 145 organisations will hold protests in 88 cities across 18 states through November 1 — a nationwide calendar that suggests the anti-SIR movement is attempting to build sustained momentum rather than staging a one-off demonstration. If that calendar holds, the confrontation between civil society and the Election Commission is likely to escalate in the coming weeks.
Notably, there was no official response from the Election Commission to Friday's march in any of the reports — the poll body's silence on the day of the protest was itself a talking point among the marchers. The Commission has in the past defended the SIR exercise as a necessary and routine updating of electoral rolls; its critics have dismissed that defence as inadequate.
The protest also carried political undercurrents beyond the SIR issue. The presence of senior Left leaders, the participation of farmer organisations that were at the forefront of the 2020-21 farm laws agitation, and the invocation of "vote theft" as a slogan all pointed to a broader oppositional energy that goes beyond a single administrative exercise.
The march was, in effect, a coalition of the disaffected — students, farmers, trade unions, women's groups — converging on a single institution.
For the Delhi Police, the operation was a familiar drill: barricades, Section 163, preventive detentions, and a cleared road by evening. But the scale of the deployment — over a thousand personnel for a march that may have numbered in the hundreds at the start — suggested the authorities were taking no chances with a protest aimed directly at a constitutional body.
"Our struggle will continue until CEC Gyanesh Kumar resigns," Brinda Karat said, according to the Telegraph's account of the march — a line that captured the mood of a protest that framed the Election Commission itself, not just its policies, as the problem.
The choice of the "People's Parliament" as the form of protest at the barricade was deliberate. By holding a sit-down assembly within sight of the barricades — and within earshot of the institution they were protesting against — the marchers were making a point about democratic legitimacy. The barricades near Gurdwara Bangla Sahib became a stage: on one side, the state's show of force; on the other, a gathering that claimed to speak for the people's sovereignty.
The heavy police presence also extended beyond the march route. Jantar Mantar, Delhi's designated protest site, saw barricading too — a precaution that suggested the authorities anticipated the march might spill over or regroup at the traditional venue for demonstrations. The deployment of the Central Armed Police Force alongside the Delhi Police underlined how seriously the security establishment took a protest aimed at the poll body's headquarters.
Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, invoked to prohibit the gathering, is the successor to Section 144 of the old Criminal Procedure Code — the provision that has long been the state's standard tool for preventing assemblies it deems a threat to public order. Its invocation meant that the march was unlawful from the moment it began, giving the police the legal basis for the detentions that followed.
Critics of such orders argue that they are applied too readily against peaceful demonstrations; the police counter that the route toward a constitutional body's headquarters warranted preventive action.
Among the invited figures was AISA president Neha, whose own run-in with the authorities has made headlines this week — the Delhi High Court dismissed her plea against a police notice asking her to sign a peace bond. Her invitation to the march, whether or not she attended, linked the student leadership of the protest to the broader pattern of friction between activists and the police in the capital.
The march's timing, on a Friday afternoon, also ensured maximum visibility. Central Delhi's office crowds, the media presence at Gole Dak Khana, and the proximity to the capital's power corridors all guaranteed that the protest would be seen and reported. The organisers' decision to issue the call just a day earlier — on Thursday — made the turnout all the more notable: a coalition assembled at short notice, drawing participants from three states.
What happens next will depend on whether the nationwide protest calendar announced by the collective materialises. A rolling series of demonstrations across 88 cities would keep the SIR issue in the headlines through November, piling pressure on the Election Commission to respond — or to hold its line. Either way, Friday's march has ensured that the dispute over electoral rolls will not be settled quietly in committee rooms. It has been taken, quite literally, to the streets.
(Reporting based on The Indian Express and The Telegraph.)