Loud and clear, INDIA's 'sack-PM' call over 'vote chori' at packed Ramlila Ground

Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee and other Opposition leaders at the Ramlila Maidan protest seeking chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation on Sunday.  PTI

Buoyed by tens of thousands of cheering protesters at the Ramlila Ground, the Congress on Sunday signalled that its goal was to remove Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the alleged voter list manipulation through the special intensive revision.

At the INDIA rally against "vote chori", Congress president and Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge led the crowd in chanting: "Modi hatao, loktantra bachao (Remove Modi, save democracy)."

Lok Sabha Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that after ousting chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the Opposition would come for Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, who would face "legal action" for the votes he said they had stolen.

Crowds swarmed the heart of Delhi from Connaught Place to Turkman Gate, spilling out of the Ramlila Ground and filling the air with slogans targeting the BJP. Some estimates put the combined crowd strength inside and outside the venue to about 1 lakh.

Tribespeople from Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand danced to drumbeats, youths jived to patriotic songs blaring from loudspeakers, and the hordes of police made themselves scarce when protesters sprayed graffiti on at least one of their cars.

A member of Congress student arm NSUI carried cutouts of Kharge inscribed with his jibe about Modi to a heckler -- "Baap bhi jayega (Your dad will go, too)" -- which had riled the BJP.

The Congress Working Committee had resolved on September 19 to push for the resignations of Gyanesh as well as Modi and Shah, who had appointed him.

Since then, the party's protests as part of the INDIA bloc had focused on Gyanesh's removal, with mainly civil society members speaking about a "regime change".

Kharge, in his Ramlila Ground speech, said: "We are all here to ensure that Gyanesh Kumar is removed.... Modiji and Shah are trying hard to shield him, but he will not be able to hide.

"Even if he were to bury himself deep underground, we would drag him out. Our youth possess that kind of strength -- our women and our young people have that power."

Kharge added: "Modi himself is handpicking the votes.... He selects the voters himself -- he is a self-selected Prime Minister. And today the central government, the government in Maharashtra, the government in Bihar, the government in UP -- these are all stolen governments. We must remove these thieves....

"Only if Modi is gone will democracy survive.... I will simply say: Modi hatao, loktantra bachao."

Rahul said: "Narendra Modiji and Amit Shahji, understand this -- after Gyanesh Kumar, we will stand against you and don't forget that for the 'vote chori' you have done, there will be legal action against you."

He added: "Gyanesh Kumar will be removed from the post of CEC. Gyanesh Kumar will go to jail in India. What has happened here is not some ordinary theft... this is called a 'rarest of rare' case.... This is treason.

"And without Gyanesh Kumar, Narendra Modi would not have become Prime Minister, nor would Amit Shah have become home minister. The RSS has captured every single institution in this country."

He added: "The result is that farmers are not receiving what is rightfully theirs.... As for the likes of Ambani and Adani, they are free to dream whatever dreams they wish. Loans worth thousands -- even hundreds of thousands -- of crores are written off for them in a single second.

"Yet, if a farmer's son, a labourer's son, or a small-business owner seeks a loan from a bank and is unable to repay it, they are thrown into jail within minutes."

Rahul asserted: "Whether it is Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Gyanesh Kumar, or people from the RSS -- we will not resort to violence against them.... We will work with love. But we will not allow you to destroy the Constitution."

Before arriving at the rally venue in a convoy of vehicles that included two open buses carrying Opposition leaders, Rahul said in a video: "Upon reaching Connaught Place, we learned that the BJP had forcibly shut down all the shops. The country is watching how the BJP is causing loss to the shopkeepers."

Rahul had earlier countered the narrative of some traders' groups, who had claimed that the protests would cause losses, by asking rally participants to shop for Diwali in Delhi.

While many shops in upmarket Connaught Place were shut, the textiles bargain market at Sarojini Nagar was choked with people from the rally after the programme had ended.

At the Ramlila Ground, former Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, whom Kharge described as "our most senior leader", said: "By orchestrating a central-level hijacking, you wiped out more than one crore votes in our Bengal. We didn't lose the vote; we were made to lose. We will seek revenge for this through politics. We will fight using the tools of democracy. We will fight!

"You've hijacked elections -- hijacked the voters! You've hijacked everything! Mr Kumar, when will you vanish? We are waiting for you to vanish."

Mamata has been referring to Gyanesh as "Vanish Kumar".

"Vanish, vanish, yes Papa," she said, parodying a nursery rhyme and drawing loud cheers. She also expressed solidarity with the Cockroach Janta Party, which was not present.

The venue had two stages. The larger one was for senior politicians, who included almost all the top leaders and serving and former chief ministers of the INDIA parties as well as a few activists like Neha Bora, SFI joint secretary Aishe Ghosh, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Nadeem Khan.

The smaller stage had all the other Opposition MPs, more activists and eminent personalities like author Arundhati Roy and filmmaker Sanjay Kak.

Neha, president of CPIML Liberation student wing AISA, set the tone early in the meeting, terming the agitation a "second war of Independence".

"They made us forget that freedom was won by people of all castes and religions. This hatred they spread made us forget about communal harmony. This crowd is proof that their days are numbered," she said.

Several of the speakers who followed her emphasised the same theme, on a day when some Sikh groups protested against the rally being held on the 42nd anniversary of the anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi and elsewhere.

Towards the end of the bus procession, CPI general secretary D. Raja was rushed to the Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan Hospital when he complained of dizziness. He was later discharged. The 77-year-old had recently been treated in hospital during a trip to Chennai.