Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge hosted a lunch for INDIA bloc MPs at Sagar Ratna restaurant in Delhi on Wednesday. This meeting followed a high-voltage protest against CEC Gyanesh Kumar. Many opposition leaders gathered to plan their next steps after Rahul Gandhi got detained during a march on Tuesday over allegations.

A day after high-voltage protest against the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge hosted a lunch for INDIA bloc MPs at Sagar Ratna restaurant on Janpath in Delhi. The meeting comes amid heightened political tensions over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the Opposition's allegations of "vote chori". The opposition MPs met to give shape to their immediate steps as part of efforts to up the ante over the "vote chori" issue and push for the demand for CEC Gyanesh Kumar's resignation. The lunch meeting comes a day after Rahul Gandhi took the centre stage of the opposition's street protest, forcing a total lockdown of Parliament Street as he led an over eight-hour sit-in that ended with his forcible detention after opposition MPs were stopped from marching towards the Election Commission's office nearby. The Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and others were released after 10 pm after about two hours in detention. High drama unfolded throughout the day on Tuesday starting with the opposition march on the "vote chori" allegation from the Parliament House around 11 am amid heavy barricading by police. While most opposition MPs were detained and prevented from moving forward, Rahul Gandhi along with other Congress MPs, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra , entered the Akashvani Bhawan premises, barely 200 metres from the EC office, insisting that they be allowed to meet the election commissioners. Their sit-in, which began around noon, ended after 8 pm, when a large number of police personnel forcibly removed Gandhi from there and pushed him and others into police vans and buses, as the MPs resisted. There were scenes of jostling and scuffling between protesters and police, with a policeman seen locking his arms around Rahul Gandhi from behind. Rahul Gandhi, TMC's Derek O'Brien and a Samajwadi Party MP, besides Priyanka Gandhi and K C Venugopal and others were taken in different vehicles to various police stations and released after a brief detention, capping an action-packed day of opposition protests against the CEC.