Protesters began gathering in New Delhi for a major opposition rally over voter rolls that has drawn increasingly sharp criticism from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Supporters of the INDIA bloc headed toward Ramlila Maidan — a sprawling ground in the heart of the capital that has hosted some of the nation’s biggest political demonstrations — waving flags and chanting slogans. Organizers of the “Save the Vote, Save the Country” protest are targeting a turnout of one million in the mass rally intended to mount one of the stiffest challenges to Modi in his decade-plus tenure in office.

A day earlier, Modi accused the opposition of conspiring to divide the country and obstruct its development, underscoring the political tensions surrounding the weeks-long dispute. It centers around a sweeping voter-roll revision that critics allege is disenfranchising legitimate voters after millions of names were excluded from draft lists. The Election Commission denies any wrongdoing.

“It is our misfortune that, at this time, the opposition in the country has abandoned its duty and has transformed from an opposition party into an obstructionist party,” Modi said in a speech in Gujarat. “In their frustration and despair, these people are creating obstacles in the path of the country’s development.”

Police barricades

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters poured into central Delhi on Sunday, turning streets into a sea of party flags, banners and chanting crowds. Many of them were walking through the capital as traffic came to a standstill. Police barricades lined major roads and junctions as security personnel sought to manage the crowds.

Krishna Kumar Yadav, a 68-year-old retired teacher from Rajasthan, said he has come to the protest seeking the ouster of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar but also accountability at large from the Modi government.

“We will make Gyanesh Kumar resign, because he has stolen the votes of the public, but the government will also have to answer why it is trying to save him,” Yadav said.

Opposition party workers traveled from states across India to assemble at Ramlila Maidan. Members of the Students’ Federation of India, a left-wing student organization, marched toward the venue, while Congress party youth workers turned up in white outfits to represent voters they say have been erased from electoral rolls.

Rahul Gandhi, who is spearheading the protests, addressed thousands of supporters on late Sunday afternoon in the Ramlila Maidan and claimed that 15% of voters had been removed from electoral rolls after the last general election.

“Millions of people are being disenfranchised. Their vote is being stolen from them,” Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the lower house, had said ahead of the planned demonstration.

The issue has caused “huge anger, huge emotional pain,” he said. “We are defending the vote, which is the expression of all Indians.”

The rally will bring together two strands of the agitation that had largely operated separately. The youth-led, satirical movement Cockroach Janta Party, which organized some of the largest demonstrations against Kumar last month, has formally backed the rally. The group said the poll body’s chief has lost the trust required to oversee free and fair elections and repeated its demand for his resignation.

The Election Commission has said the roll revisions were intended to remove duplicate, deceased and ineligible voters.

The Cockroach party’s earlier campaign over exam irregularities drew tens of thousands onto the streets and ended with the rare resignation of a senior minister, demonstrating the potential for public pressure to extract concessions from the government.

Members of the INDIA bloc staged a symbolic public impeachment of the election chief Saturday and stepped up demands for his removal.

“The voter is the focal point of the entire electoral process,” Meira Kumar, a former speaker of the lower house, said during the proceedings. “If even a single voter is denied the right to cast their vote, it strikes a blow to the very soul of our democracy.”

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has pushed back against the opposition’s accusations, defending the voter-roll review and accusing Gandhi and his allies of undermining constitutional institutions. The BJP has also taken its campaign to the streets and criticized the opposition for holding Sunday’s protest on the 42nd anniversary of the deadly 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

“They have made this their core politics, and they are busy tearing apart the dignity and boundaries of the Constitution,” Modi said on Saturday. “These forces are continuously engaged in conspiracies to divide the country.”

For Sunday’s gathering, the police have granted permission provided nobody marches anywhere, and it wraps up by 5 p.m.

Even as it allowed the stationary protest to proceed, Modi’s administration has more broadly tightened controls on demonstrators. On Oct. 10, his administration undertook mass detentions to prevent the Cockroach group from gathering at Jantar Mantar, a location closer to parliament, sharpening a debate over the space for dissent in the world’s largest democracy.

‘Save our rights’

Sidhyati and Bhavishya, 18-year-old Delhi University students who only shared their first name, said they were enraged by the government’s decision to de-notify Jantar Mantar as a protest site. “We have to fight to save our rights,” Sidhyati, who is pursuing a degree in physics, said. “That is why we have come.”

Ramlila Maidan has long served as a staging ground for movements that reshaped Indian politics. In 2011, an anti-corruption campaign drew tens of thousands to the venue, cementing public discontent that culminated in the defeat of the Congress-led government in 2014. Decades earlier, a 1975 rally led by Jayaprakash Narayan catalyzed the resistance to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule.

While Modi has remained India’s most popular national politician through much of his time in power, several major street agitations have challenged his administration. They include deadly protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act — which fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants — and the year-long farmers’ strike.

There are “extensive police personnel and camera coverage arrangements” for the Sunday rally, according to Deputy Commissioner of Police Rohit Rajbir.

“The sensitivity is enhanced in a way that we have to keep a check on some nefarious elements who may try and come and disrupt the whole rally,” he said. “We’re very sure that we can carry out a peaceful event.”

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(With assistance from Sudhi Ranjan Sen and Bhuma Shrivastava.)

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