India detains opposition leader Rahul Gandhi during massive election protest

Indian police have detained opposition leader Rahul Gandhi during a protest march demanding the resignation of the country's election chief over the large-scale deletion of millions of names from national voter lists.Police intercepted Gandhi, a senior leader of the main opposition Congress Party, along with fellow lawmakers as they marched from parliament to the Election Commission of India headquarters.Officers took Gandhi into custody after he climbed atop a police barricade waving the national flag, releasing him shortly afterwards.Gandhi and his lawmaker sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, then barricaded themselves inside the adjacent offices of the state broadcaster."The country has been hijacked by Narendra Modi through vote theft," Gandhi told reporters from behind the building's iron gates."What has been done to our country is called treason.

Nobody is going to escape."Mounting legal scrutinyThe street demonstrations follow explosive revelations published last month byThe Indian Express, which reported that two of the election commission's three panel members formally objected at least 14 times to key decisions regarding the roll revision.The report disclosed that authorities have struck roughly 130 million citizens off electoral registries since the purge began in 2025.Opposition figures argue the exercise disproportionately disenfranchises marginalised and minority communities, particularly Muslims, accusing the commission of doing the bidding of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).The Election Commission maintains the revision seeks solely to remove fraudulent registrations and eliminate "foreign illegal immigrants", though commission chief Gyanesh Kumar has declined to comment publicly.Meanwhile, youth movements and left-wing student groups have called for mass mobilisations on Saturday, as India's Supreme Court ordered the government and the election authority to formally justify the revision decisions ahead of hearings next week.