Ramlila Maidan Rally: What Kharge, Tejashwi, Akhilesh and Left Leaders Said

Five opposition leaders set the tone at the INDIA bloc’s Ramlila Maidan rally in New Delhi on Sunday, 1 November, and the message from each was the same: remove Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, scrap the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, and take the “vote chori” campaign into the coming Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand elections. CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI(M) general secretary M A Baby, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav spoke in that order, according to a Hindi transcript of the speeches reviewed by IPB. Rahul Gandhi’s remarks are in IPB’s earlier report. Everything below is the speakers’ own claim, translated from Hindi by IPB. No court or inquiry has upheld any of it.

“The Ground Has Been Full Since 9 AM”

The stage compère opened with slogans of “vote chor” and “cancel SIR”, and said the Maidan had been full and waiting since 9 am. That is the compère’s claim; the crowd size is still disputed, and no headcount had been reported. He welcomed Rahul Gandhi as a “Nyay Yoddha” and told the crowd the movement would continue until the SIR was cancelled. Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (UBT) was among those he named on the stage.

Dipankar Bhattacharya: “A Surgical Strike on Democracy”

Bhattacharya greeted the crowd with “Jai Bhim” and “Lal Salaam” and traced the campaign to the INDIA bloc meeting of 30 September, after which, he said, the slogans “vote chor, gaddi chhod” and “save the vote, save the country” had been heard across India through October. He called the SIR “a surgical strike on democracy by those in power” and said it was a way to snatch ordinary people’s votes.

Also read INDIA Bloc Chalo Dilli March Starts From Minto Road to Ramlila Maidan

He named two rights he said were under attack: the right to vote, and the right to protest. When the movement began, he said, Jantar Mantar was closed to protesters, and Delhi felt like a police state rather than the capital of a democracy. He said Bihar and Bengal had “suffered” the SIR, and that elections were held and governments formed after crores of votes were taken away.

His demands were three: Gyanesh Kumar must go, the 2023 law on the appointment of Election Commissioners must be repealed, and every voter struck off must be put back on the rolls. He took up an earlier speaker’s, Neha’s, description of the campaign as a “second freedom struggle”, and urged the crowd to carry the message to villages ahead of the Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand elections.

M A Baby: “The Fascist Tactics Will Not Work”

Baby said lakhs of people were speaking in one voice to Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Kumar, whom he described as someone working like their servant. “Your fascist tactics will not work in India,” he said. He recalled that Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ambedkar and Sardar Patel had all addressed crowds on the same ground, and called the present fight a second battle for independence against the RSS. His first demand was Kumar’s resignation and prosecution.

He then turned on the Prime Minister, calling him “the king of untruth”. He recalled Modi’s 2024 campaign remark that opposition rule would mean people’s mangalsutras being taken away, and said it was a lie. He also said Modi had promised to double farmers’ income, and that “farmers’ suicides have doubled instead”. Baby gave no figures for the farm-suicide claim on stage, and IPB has not verified it. He ended by pledging that the Left would stay in the struggle.

Tejashwi Yadav: Mahabharata, Shakuni and “Gyanu”

Tejashwi Yadav opened with the venue. Ramlila Maidan, he said, usually stages the Ramayana, but the opposition had arranged a Mahabharata for the “vote thieves”. He reminded the crowd that the epic began with a rigged game of dice, not a battlefield, and asked them who Shakuni was and who the dice were. Where Shakuni plays, he said, there is no level playing field.

His attacks were personal. He called Kumar “Gyanu ji”, described him as Modi’s “namuna” (specimen), and said he should face a trial for sedition and be jailed so that no one dares to crush the Constitution again. He called the government “do numbri” and the Prime Minister a “10 numbri” Prime Minister. He also mocked the RSS, saying an organisation with no part in the freedom struggle was handing out certificates of patriotism and deciding who may vote.

His sharper line was about institutions. “The most dangerous thing in a democracy is not a dictator but institutions that have become puppets,” he said, and challenged Modi to choose between the country and “your dear Gyanu”. The fight, he said, was between the country’s voters and the country’s “cheaters”. He added that the SIR began in Bihar, and so did the INDIA alliance, and told the crowd to unite against the BJP in the coming Uttar Pradesh election.

The TCS Question Behind Tejashwi’s Challenge

Tejashwi Yadav also raised what he called a software scam involving Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), asking whether a tender was ever issued for the software, and where the documents are. He offered no evidence on stage, and IPB has not seen a tender document for it.

The opposition’s question has been building for weeks. On 1 October, Rahul Gandhi asked on X who at the Election Commission ordered TCS to change the online Form 6, and who at TCS approved it, The Week reported. On 25 October, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said the Commission refused an RTI request for the name of the software it uses to flag errors in the rolls, citing commercial confidentiality, and that TCS’s role in building the ECINET platform came out through media reports. The Commission has said no new software was developed or procured specifically for the SIR, The Tribune reported. The reports IPB reviewed carried no response from TCS.

Mallikarjun Kharge: “Modi Hatao, Loktantra Bachao”

Kharge began by telling the crowd he would finish in five minutes if they sat quietly and speak for an hour if they did not. He named those on the stage, among them Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, M A Baby, Sanjay Raut and Supriya Sule, and apologised that he could not name everyone.

He accused Modi and Shah of trying to take the votes of the young, of women and of Dalits, and of seating a “disciple” in the Election Commission to do it. Kumar, he said, would not be allowed to hide. “If he has gone underground, we will pull him out,” he said. He told the government that the opposition would not be scared by the CBI, the ED or the police.

His central charge was that Modi picks his own voters. The Prime Minister, he said, was “elected” after choosing who could vote, and the governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were “governments of thieves” that must be removed. “Democracy will survive only if Modi goes,” he said, and led the crowd in the slogans “Modi hatao, loktantra bachao”. Midway through, the crowd stirred and he told them Rahul Gandhi would speak and asked them to sit.

Akhilesh Yadav and the 1.27 Crore Claim

Akhilesh Yadav’s speech, in the portion IPB reviewed, was built around Uttar Pradesh. He pointed to a statement by the BJP that 1.27 crore Hindu voters had been dropped from the state’s rolls, and did the arithmetic: spread over 403 assembly seats, that is about 31,000 voters in each. His reading was that the BJP was preparing to blame others for a defeat, and that the claim showed the opposition’s campaign was working.

The claim came from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who told a BJP state executive meeting on Friday, 30 October, that about 1.27 crore Hindu voters were missing from the rolls and asked party workers to work with booth-level officers, Outlook reported. His figures included 66 lakh names on panchayat rolls missing from assembly lists and 55 lakh welfare beneficiaries not on the rolls. The Election Commission’s own figures, as Outlook reported them, show more than 2.04 crore names deleted in Uttar Pradesh, over 84 lakh added, and a final electorate of about 13.4 crore. Outlook carried no response from the Commission or from Akhilesh Yadav.

Akhilesh Yadav also alleged that the Samajwadi Party filed affidavits after the 2022 election listing votes removed from its areas, and that the Commission took no action. He cited the Rampur by-election, saying police stopped voters, and that the BJP wants only its own members to count as citizens. He described the Commission as asleep, with a “very prestigious” company, which he did not name, helping the chief election commissioner. He coined “vote nochwa”, a play on Uttar Pradesh’s old “muh nochwa” scare, for the person he held responsible, and used the nickname “jumlu” for another leader he did not name. He called Ramlila Maidan “the Haldighati of democracy”, and said Uttar Pradesh would give the BJP a farewell in 2027.

What Has Not Been Answered

None of the speakers’ claims about deliberate vote theft was backed on stage by documents, and the reports IPB reviewed carried no Election Commission response to the rally. The Commission has said earlier that each constituency’s electoral registration officer is the statutory authority on adding and removing voters. The questions put on stage remain open: who authorised the Form 6 change, what software flags voters for deletion, and how many of those removed were dead, moved or duplicates. The BJP held its own march, “Loktantra Bachao, Arajakta Hatao”, in Rohtak on the same day. The opposition’s next test is the Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand elections, which every speaker named. IPB has set out the six charges against Kumar from Saturday’s mock Parliament, and the state-wise deletion figures behind the argument.

Source: Speeches at the INDIA bloc rally, Ramlila Maidan, New Delhi, 1 November 2026 (Hindi transcript, translated by IPB). Also based on reporting by Outlook, The Week, The Tribune and ThePrint.

Image: INC / X (@INCIndia).