Protests will continue until CEC Gyanesh Kumar resigns, says Rahul Gandhi

The protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar will not stop until he resigns over alleged vote chori (theft), Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said on Wednesday (October 7, 2026), after the Delhi Police detained him and other Opposition leaders for the second day in a row while on their way to Jantar Mantar for a dharna.

Mr. Gandhi, who has stressed a “politics of resistance”, his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other Opposition leaders staged an impromptu dharna at a roundabout barely a couple of hundred metres from Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in central Delhi.

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“We are not going to stop protesting till [CEC] Gyanesh Kumar resigns. This is a fight to protect the most sacred thing in this country. There is nothing that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can do that will stop us,” Mr. Gandhi said.

There were dramatic scenes during the three-hour-long bus procession and the subsequent impromptu sit-in at the roundabout in front of the Le Meridien and Shangri-La hotels, as the Opposition MPs were stopped by security personnel. A visual of Ms. Vadra lying on her back on the street, clutching a copy of the Constitution, went viral on social media.

Security personnel detain Congress party's member of Parliament Priyanka Gandhi Vadra during a protest by the opposition alliance INDIA bloc (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) in New Delhi on October 7, 2026 | Photo Credit: AFP