Chandigarh, Sep 25 (PTI) Punjab Congress, led by state unit chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, staged a protest on Friday demanding the dismissal and arrest of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, with the police using water cannon on protesters as they tried to march towards the Election Commission office in Chandigarh to gherao it.
Several Punjab Congress leaders, party MLAs and workers staged a protest in Sector 17.
As they tried to jump the police barricades to march towards the state election commission office, they were stopped by the Chandigarh police.
Later, several Congress leaders and workers were detained by the police.
Before being detained, the protesting Congress leaders alleged that the electoral process had been rigged and the right to vote was being snatched from citizens.
Raising the “stop vote chori” slogan with other Congress leaders and workers, Warring demanded that Kumar be dismissed, an FIR registered against him, and he be arrested.
“Vote chori is happening in this country. The BJP is forming governments with vote chori. The SIR process must be stopped,” Warring stated.
Senior Congress leaders including Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Pargat Singh, Balbir Singh Sidhu and Rana Kaypee joined the protest.
“Democracy gives us the right to vote, but that too is being stolen. We demand immediate dismissal and arrest of the CEC,” Randhawa said.
On Thursday, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, claimed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi have endorsed what he has been saying for over a year: that the country’s electoral system has been “destroyed”, after revelations came out in an Indian Express report that they red-flagged issues of deletion and addition of votes through Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. PTI SUN VSD MPL
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