INDIA bloc lunch at Delhi’s Connaught Place, a hat-trick of SIR protest | Political Pulse News
A day after the INDIA bloc MPs’ lunch meet at Sagar Ratna in Janpath became the prelude to a dramatic street protest, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has again invited Opposition MPs for lunch, this time at Moets in Connaught Place on Thursday.
“I invite your good self and all your members in both LS and RS for lunch today i.e. 8 October 2026 at 1.45 pm at Moets K-14, Outer Circle, Connaught Place, New Delhi,” the invite from the Congress chief said.
The back-to-back invites suggest that the Congress and its allies want to keep the pressure on the government as it steps up its campaign for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over issues linked to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls.
Sources said there’ll be a protest after lunch, just like Wednesday. “It will be decided during lunch where we will protest and how. More MPs and parties, including the Samajwadi Party, are scheduled to join us,” said the source. The Samajwadi Party had skipped Wednesday’s lunch.
Protest timeline
MPs of the INDIA bloc took out a march to the Election Commission on Tuesday. Police stopped them midway, but Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and his sister and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra managed to enter the Akashvani Bhavan premises and stayed there for hours.
The sit-in, which the Congress said was an “impromptu” plan, eventually ended when police detained the siblings and the Congress leaders with them and shifted them to a police station. They were released later.
On Tuesday, a lunch hosted by Congress chief Kharge became a rendezvous for INDIA bloc MPs, who then headed to Jantar Mantar. The Gandhis, Mamata TMC’s Derek O’Brien, CPIM’s John Brittas and CPI’s Sandosh Kumar were among the MPs who joined the protest on Wednesday.
Police stopped them near Windsor Place, leading to dramatic scenes. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra lay on the road, clutching a copy of the Constitution. And Rahul Gandhi said the protests won’t stop till Gyanesh Kumar resigns. The protesting MPs were detained on Wednesday, too, and later released.
Wednesday’s lunch plan will be attended by more MPs, and a much larger protest than Tuesday’s may follow, sources in the Opposition have said. Also, the Cockroach Janta Party, which led the mega protest against paper leaks in Jantar Mantar in July, has called for another agitation on October 10. This will then be a week of protests in Delhi on the same issue.
A unity message through lunch
The lunch invites, besides becoming a rendezvous for Opposition MPs, are also sending a message of unity in the INDIA bloc. The Gandhis’ sit-in at Akashvani Bhavan had grabbed headlines, but left some Opposition parties grumbling.
The Indian Express reported that some Opposition leaders felt the INDIA bloc protest on Tuesday became a Rahul Gandhi show because of the siblings’ sit-in while other Opposition leaders were detained. Senior Congress leaders then reached out to INDIA bloc allies and told them that the Akashvani Bhavan sit-in was an unplanned move.
Some questions, however, remain. DMK, which broke up with Congress after the Tamil Nadu poll results, and AAP have stayed away from the INDIA bloc protests. The DMK, however, is blowing hot and cold, with one of its spokespersons praising Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday.
The AAP faces a poll fight against the Congress in Punjab and will weigh its options before deciding on joining the INDIA bloc campaign.
The Samajwadi Party joined the march on Tuesday, but was conspicuously absent on Wednesday. Party MPs have blamed Congress’s poor coordination for this. The allies are also locked in a tussle over seat-sharing for the Uttar Pradesh election, but party leaders say that was not why they skipped Wednesday’s lunch. They pointed out that many of them had left Delhi by the time the lunch was planned. Congress leaders, too, downplayed the Samajwadi Party’s absence, saying that the lunch was planned late.
