Security was tightened around the Election Commission headquarters on Tuesday, with police barricading roads along the route between parliament and the commission’s office.
Police officers, some carrying batons and wearing body cameras, reportedly outnumbered protesters along the route to the poll panel’s office.
In the afternoon, they detained several MPs who tried to take alternative routes to reach the commission, police official Manjeet Sheoran told the BBC.
“They were picked up in buses and taken to different police stations,” he said.
The Gandhi siblings were also detained and taken away in a police bus, but were released shortly afterwards. They then resumed their march before staging a sit-in at Akashvani Bhavan near the Election Commission headquarters.
Police did not say how many lawmakers were detained. The opposition said 237 MPs from several parties took part in the march.
Tuesday’s protest came just four days after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a Gen Z-backed online satirical movement, organised demonstrations in Mumbai and Delhi, also demanding the CEC’s resignation. The group has described those demonstrations as the beginning of a nationwide campaign and has called for another round of protests on 10 October.
At the centre of the controversy is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The exercise began in the eastern state of Bihar in June 2025 before being expanded to other parts of the country.
The commission says the revision is intended to remove duplicate and ineligible voters from electoral rolls. More than 130 million names have so far been removed from draft voter lists nationwide.
Opposition parties and activists allege that many eligible voters have been excluded and accuse the poll panel of conducting the process improperly.
The campaign against Kumar gathered momentum after an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper reported that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over a 10-month period to decisions and orders they said had been issued in the commission’s name without their knowledge.
According to the report, the objections related to issues including additions and deletions from voter rolls, access to the voter database and the security of electoral data.
The three-member commission, comprising the CEC and two election commissioners, defended its decision-making process, saying differing views were part of institutional functioning and that decisions had ultimately been taken unanimously.
The revelations nevertheless triggered a political backlash, with opposition leaders intensifying calls for Kumar’s resignation.
