Police had protest under control, then Gandhis walked into Akashvani

Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra being detained by police from Akashvani Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Photo: Gajendra Yadav)

As the INDIA bloc tried to make it to the Election Commission, its leaders ran into police barricades metres from the poll panel’s office. Soon afterwards, Opposition leaders started getting detained and herded into police buses. The march seemed all but over, and only a handful of Congress leaders remained.

Just then, the Gandhi siblings pulled off an impromptu move, upending the script and taking police and their fellow Opposition leaders by surprise. Around 8 pm, police moved in to detain the Gandhis and other Opposition leaders. It all kicked off around noon when Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi climbed a barricade near the NITI Aayog office at Sansad Marg, a few hundred metres from the ECI headquarters of Nirvachan Sadan, and waved the Tricolour as cameras clicked him.

Rahul then climbed down as police began detaining MPs sitting on the road. Minutes later, he dashed back towards a bus parked near Akashvani Bhavan, the headquarters of All India Radio, where his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was seated,  catching many Opposition MPs, including some from the Congress, by surprise. As Rahul was about to get into the bus, the siblings locked eyes with each other. Priyanka got down and, along with her brother, walked past policemen towards Akashvani Bhavan, leaving the cops also surprised.

Though the Akashvani staff tried to stop them, leading to a tense stand-off, the two eventually made their way inside. “We don’t know what happened. This was not part of the plan,” said a Congress leader. A Congress MP outside Akashvani said, “Only the two of them know what they had in mind when they walked in.”

Congress leaders credited the Gandhis with derailing police’s attempts to end the protest. “The protest would have been over had they not done this,” said a leader. Congress leaders said Rahul made the plan on the fly to use Akashvani as a shortcut to Nirvachan Sadan, which is located near the back gate of the broadcaster’s headquarters. However, police closed the gate, leaving the Congress leaders to camp on Akashvani’s premises.

Delhi Police and Rapid Action Force personnel have been stationed outside the Bhavan.

While Opposition sources claimed Priyanka was leading negotiations with senior government officials — insisting the protest will continue until they are allowed to meet Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi — the Home Ministry dismissed it as “fake”.

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Around 2.30 pm, as reporters pushed their microphones through the grille, Rahul told them from inside the premises, “I don’t care what the BJP says. I’m standing here to protect democracy. What has been done to the country is treason. Be it PM Modi, (Amit) Shah, the RSS chief, or Gyanesh Kumar, none will be spared.”

Until reports last came in, Congress leaders led by the siblings were carrying on with the sit-in, with Opposition MPs such as Derek O’Brien and Mahua Moitra of the Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress also joining them at the Bhavan. “Unmoved. Unfazed. We will not budge until our demands are met. We will not rest until our democracy is saved from the Vote Chors,” K C Venugopal posted on X.

Asad Rehman is with the national bureau of The Indian Express and covers politics and policy focusing on religious minorities in India. A journalist for over eight years, Rehman moved to this role after covering Uttar Pradesh for five years for The Indian Express. During his time in Uttar Pradesh, he covered politics, crime, health, and human rights among other issues. He did extensive ground reports and covered the protests against the new citizenship law during which many were killed in the state. During the Covid pandemic, he did extensive ground reporting on the migration of workers from the metropolitan cities to villages in Uttar Pradesh. He has also covered some landmark litigations, including the Babri Masjid-Ram temple case and the ongoing Gyanvapi-Kashi Vishwanath temple dispute. Prior to that, he worked on The Indian Express national desk for three years where he was a copy editor. Rehman studied at La Martiniere, Lucknow and then went on to do a bachelor's degree in History from Ramjas College, Delhi University. He also has a Masters degree from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. ... Read More