NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant has rejected the INDIA bloc leaders’ request for a meeting to submit a representation on alleged “vote chori”, ANI reported on Sunday. In an email response to the opposition leaders, the CJI explained the reasons for declining their request.According to LiveLaw, the CJI said the meeting would be inappropriate as the issues raised by the opposition were already sub judice before the Supreme Court.Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Rajya Sabha LoP Mallikarjun Kharge had sought an appointment with the CJI between 4pm and 5pm on Monday to submit a memorandum demanding action over alleged electoral irregularities.Rahul had announced that opposition parties, civil society groups and young people would march to the Supreme Court, seeking Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, a halt to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and a return to paper ballots.The move to approach the CJI followed a meeting between INDIA bloc leaders and President Droupadi Murmu on Friday, during which the opposition submitted a memorandum outlining four demands. These included the CEC’s resignation, scrapping assembly elections held over the past two years, suspension of the SIR exercise and restoration of paper ballots. The memorandum also sought the restoration of 13.30 crore voters allegedly deleted from electoral rolls.After the meeting, the Lok Sabha LoP said he was surprised that Murmu had not denied the opposition’s allegations of “vote chori” and had instead asked them to provide evidence. “I was shocked that the President did not deny Vote Chori. Instead, she asked us to bring her proof. We will bring her a mountain of it,” he wrote on X.
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The BJP subsequently attacked Gandhi over his remarks, accusing him of misrepresenting the interaction and dragging the President into a political confrontation. BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra called the Congress leader a “nalayak neta” and argued that accepting a memorandum did not amount to endorsing its contents.“The anarchist Rahul Gandhi tried to pull the President of India into the anarchism which he’s trying his best to conduct on the streets of India,” Patra said.BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad also criticised the Opposition’s protests, saying the country would be governed by Parliament, not the streets. “We are not opposed to protests, but you have weaponised street protests because of your electoral defeats,” he said.
