Rahul Gandhi vows to continue protest demanding CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s removal
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On India Today’s To The Point, the focus is on the INDIA bloc’s decision to continue protests demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders said the agitation would continue and warned that they were tightening the pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The remarks came after a high tea meeting at Gandhi’s residence. Meanwhile, civil society members questioned the urgency of shifting the protest site from Jantar Mantar.
On India Today’s To The Point, the focus is on the INDIA bloc’s decision to continue protests demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders said the agitation would continue and warned that they were tightening the pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The remarks came after a high tea meeting at Gandhi’s residence. Meanwhile, civil society members questioned the urgency of shifting the protest site from Jantar Mantar.
A major political row has erupted over Dr Seema Khanna, the Election Commission of India's Director General of Information Technology, following remarks by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi questioning her presence in Dehradun. Khanna, who joined the poll body on deputation from the National Informatics Centre in 2025, oversees digital infrastructure including ECINet and ERONet. Concerns were raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi over whether Electoral Registration Officers had adequate software access to manage and correct voter lists independently. The Election Commission clarified Khanna was in Dehradun overseeing election preparedness for Uttarakhand's upcoming assembly polls, amid opposition scrutiny over voter data transparency.
The Delhi Police has denotified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site amid ongoing demonstrations against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the SIR exercise. Protests have now been redirected to three alternative locations: Ramlila Maidan, the CBD Ground in Shahdara, and Burari Ground. However, two of these newly designated venues are situated significantly farther away from Parliament and central administrative offices, with CBD Ground approximately fourteen kilometres away and Burari Ground nearly twenty-three kilometres away. Moving demonstrations away from the corridors of power introduces logistical challenges, including massive crowd capacities ranging from fifteen thousand to eighty thousand people, expensive booking fees, and mandatory police clearance. Critics point out that shifting demonstrations far from the political centre may isolate demonstrators from policymakers, the media, and spontaneous public participation.
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