Team Bharat members waved the Tricolour outside the Indian High Commission in London to counter protests by SFI UK. These groups demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over electoral roll changes. Many diaspora members gathered near Parliament Square to show support amid ongoing debates about voter deletions.
The counter-demonstration by Team Bharat came amid protests over allegations of vote theft and demands for changes to the electoral roll revision process in India.
Members of the Indian diaspora under the banner of Team Bharat waved the Tricolour and raised slogans of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai" in London, countering demonstrations organised by student groups, including SFI UK, and allied diaspora organisations in solidarity with the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) agitation in India.
The protesters associated with SFI UK and other groups demanded the resignation of Indian Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
CNN-News18 accessed visuals showing large numbers of Indian flags and members of the Indian diaspora gathered in central London. The demonstrations took place near the Indian High Commission, Parliament Square and Big Ben.
The counter-demonstration by Team Bharat came amid protests over allegations of vote theft and demands for changes to the electoral roll revision process in India.
YouTuber Dhruv Rathee had called for a protest in London over the allegations of vote theft and the SIR exercise. He had earlier joined protests led by CJP in India and was briefly detained ahead of a protest in New Delhi on October 10. Not just the CJP, opposition parties, mainly Congress, are spearheading the protest against the CEC and SIR.
According to statistics shared by the Election Commission of India, around 7.2 crore names were deleted from the draft rolls in the first and second phases when the SIR was held in 13 states and union territories.
During the ongoing third phase, where draft lists of 18 States and Union Territories are published, the number of deleted voters stands at 6.16 crore.
The Election Commission maintains that the exercise is intended to update electoral rolls by identifying deceased, duplicate, shifted and otherwise ineligible entries.
The Commission has said that if a genuine voter’s name was inadvertently left out during the SIR process, the voter could seek inclusion through the claims and objections process and subsequently through Form 6.