Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, has joined a Congress-led protest in Chennai demanding the removal of India’s Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
It is the first time Chief Minister Thalapathy Vijay’s party has taken part in a protest against the CEC since it joined the opposition INDIA alliance on 3 October.
The “Save Democracy” protest was organised against irregularities in the voter rolls and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. It was jointly organised by Congress MP B Manickam Tagore and the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC).
Protests over alleged irregularities in the voter rolls are also under way in New Delhi. Leaders of seven INDIA alliance parties took part in the Chennai event.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met C Joseph Vijay, Tamil Nadu chief minister and TVK chief, in Chennai on 10 October. The party joined the Congress protest only days after that meeting.
Citing Congress leaders, the news outlet South First reported that Rahul had invited Vijay and his party to join future discussions, campaigns and protests against India’s ruling BJP.
According to the news agency PTI, Rahul met Vijay at his residence in Neelankarai, a Chennai suburb, where the two leaders discussed a number of political issues.
Rahul congratulated Vijay on TVK’s wins in the recent Dharapuram and Madurantakam by-elections. It was the two leaders’ first meeting since the Secular Social Justice Victory Alliance was formed in Tamil Nadu.
Speakers at the rally alleged that tens of millions of voters had been deliberately removed from the rolls through the SIR process, most of them Muslims, members of ethnic minorities and marginalised people. They claimed more than 9.7 million names had been struck off in Tamil Nadu alone.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report