Kharge hosts dinner for opposition MPs amid intensified protest against SIR, 'vote chori'

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge hosted a dinner for the I.N.D.I.A. bloc MPs on Monday that was attended by the likes of Sharad Pawar, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, amid the opposition's concerted bid to close ranks against the electoral rolls revision in Bihar and alleged poll rigging.

Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, Dimple Yadav and Jaya Bachchan, DMK's K Kanimozhi and TR Baalu, RJD's Misa Bharti, Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Sanjay Raut and Priyanka Chaturvedi, Congress' Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were among several opposition MPs who attended the dinner at the Hotel Taj Palace.

While mostly INDIA bloc MPs were at the dinner, Sanjay Singh and Sandeep Pathak of the AAP, which is not part of the grouping, also attended.

The dinner comes just days after top INDIA bloc leaders, in a show of unity, had a dinner meeting at the residence of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi where they vowed to fight against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar as well as what they described as the "vote chori model of the BJP and Election Commission".

That was the first physical meeting of top leaders of the opposition bloc since they last met in June 2024 at Kharge's residence, soon after the Lok Sabha elections.

During that meeting, Rahul Gandhi had given a presentation on the "vote chori model" being allegedly perpetrated by the BJP through the Election Commission.

Earlier on Monday, opposition MPs, including Rahul Gandhi, Kharge and Pawar, took out a protest march from the Parliament House to the Election Commission office against the revision of electoral rolls in Bihar and alleged "vote chori", but were stopped midway by the police and briefly detained amid high drama.

As opposition MPs, wearing white caps with a red cross on the words 'SIR' and "vote chori", started walking from Parliament's Makar Dwar to the EC office, carrying placards and banners, they were stopped by the police by putting up barricades outside the PTI Building.

Many of the MPs sat on the road and raised slogans while some women parliamentarians climbed the barricades. They were later whisked away by police in buses lined up along the road and taken to the Parliament Street Police Station.

All the MPs were later released.

"This fight is not political, but it is aimed at saving the Constitution. This fight is for 'one man, one vote' and we want a clean, pure voter list," Rahul Gandhi said as he was being taken away in a bus after being detained.

"They cannot talk as the truth is before the entire nation." After being released from police detention, he said, "This has not just happened in Bengaluru, but in different constituencies across the country. The Election Commission knows this; it knows that this data will explode. We will bring out in the open what it is trying to control and hide, and it will explode. The EC knows this." Gandhi on Thursday cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were "stolen" in the Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation, including duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses, and single-address voters.

The opposition is already up in arms over SIR in Bihar and has been protesting in both Houses of Parliament against it, alleging that the EC's exercise is aimed at "disenfranchising voters" in the state ahead of the assembly elections due later this year.

Their demand for a discussion on SIR in both houses has been rejected, with the government contending that no discussion on the functioning of a constitutional body can be taken up in Parliament.