New Delhi — Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge will host a dinner for MPs of the INDIA bloc on Monday, as the opposition alliance intensifies its campaign against the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar and alleged poll rigging by the BJP in collusion with the Election Commission.
The dinner, scheduled at Hotel Taj Palace in Chanakyapuri, will coincide with a protest march by opposition leaders and MPs from Parliament to the Election Commission’s office over what they call “poll fraud.”
The move follows a recent show of unity, when top INDIA bloc leaders gathered at Rahul Gandhi’s residence for dinner and pledged to fight the electoral roll revision in Bihar and what they described as the BJP’s “vote chori model.” This was the bloc’s first in-person meeting since June 2024, shortly after the Lok Sabha elections at Kharge’s residence.
The earlier meeting was attended by leaders from 25 parties, including Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray, Tiruchi Siva, T R Baalu, M A Baby, D Raja, Dipankar Bhattacharya, and Kamal Haasan.
During that session, Rahul Gandhi made a detailed presentation outlining what he alleged to be a “huge criminal fraud” in elections, claiming that the BJP and Election Commission were working together to manipulate results.
Opposition parties have maintained that the ongoing SIR process in Bihar will lead to the disenfranchisement of many voters, and have vowed to mount both parliamentary and street protests to halt it.
