Wire reporting: (AP, via Arab News)

Thousands of people gathered in New Delhi on Sunday for an opposition rally demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a nationwide revision of voter lists^1,8,12.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi led the INDIA alliance demonstration to Ramlila Maidan after a short march from central Delhi, with youth group Cockroach Janta Party backing the event^1,8,12.

The Election Commission of India says the Special Intensive Revision is meant to drop people who have died, moved or cannot be traced, with about 130 million names removed from draft rolls^1,2.

Opposition parties say the deletions could help Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party and have accused Kumar of vote theft, claims the BJP and the commission reject^1,2,12.

BBC reported that an Indian Express investigation in September said Kumar made key SIR decisions without agreement from the other two commissioners, who had objected more than a dozen times; the commission said internal disagreement was normal¹.

Delhi police allowed the rally under conditions including an end by 5 p.m. and no marches beyond the designated ground, and DW cited officials putting about 4,000 personnel and more than 200 cameras at the site^1,8.

At the rally, Gandhi said Kumar would be removed and jailed, according to DW⁸.

Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda told ANI the gathering was not respect for democracy but "a calculated conspiracy to plunge the nation into anarchy," Al Jazeera reported¹².

Home Minister Amit Shah, speaking in Chandigarh, condemned holding the rally on the anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, DW reported, while the BJP ran its own events under a "Save Democracy, Remove Anarchy" banner⁸.

The next general election is due in 2029^2,12. Independent confirmation of crowd size and of opposition claims about who was removed from the rolls was not in the reports reviewed^1,8.