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PoliticsOpposition

'Then Rahul Gandhi is an illegal LoP too': BJP's Sambit Patra calls INDIA bloc rally a flop show

Hours after the opposition's Ramlila Maidan rally, the BJP spokesperson said anyone who thinks the 2024 election was illegal should go to court, not to a stage, and claimed thousands of chairs stood empty.

From the editorial desk · New DelhiPublished
BJP MP Sambit Patra and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi (file photos)
BJP MP Sambit Patra and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi (file photos)Photos: Government of Odisha / Wikimedia Commons; Mrhitmam / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. Sambit Patra said if the 2024 election was illegal, Rahul Gandhi is an illegal Leader of Opposition.
  2. He claimed 5,000 to 7,000 of 28,000 chairs were empty at Ramlila Maidan in the afternoon.
  3. Patra said Gyanesh Kumar was not CEC during the 2024 polls, having taken charge only in 2025.

The BJP hit back at the INDIA bloc’s Ramlila Maidan rally on Sunday evening, with national spokesperson Sambit Patra telling reporters that the opposition’s claim of a stolen 2024 election, if true, would make Rahul Gandhi an illegal Leader of Opposition.

“If the 2024 election was illegal, then Rahul Gandhi is also an illegal Leader of Opposition, and all his MPs are illegal,” said Patra, the Lok Sabha MP from Puri, at a press conference in New Delhi held soon after the opposition march ended.

At the rally, Rahul Gandhi had repeated his charge that elections, the 2024 Lok Sabha polls among them, had been manipulated. “Without Gyanesh Kumar, neither Narendra Modi would have become Prime Minister nor Amit Shah would have become Home Minister,” he told the crowd.

Patra said the place for that argument was a courtroom. “If an election is illegal, challenge it in court,” he said, asking whether Gandhi, the Congress or any INDIA bloc party had filed a single petition against the 2024 result. “You cannot declare an election illegal two and a half years later at Ramlila Maidan.”

He also pointed out that Gyanesh Kumar was not Chief Election Commissioner when the 2024 election was held. Kumar took charge in 2025.

‘A flop show’

Patra called the rally a flop show and “nothing but a spectacle of chaos”. The Congress had spoken of 10 lakh people, he said, but by his count 5,000 to 7,000 of the 28,000 chairs were empty between 3:30 and 4 pm, and about 40 per cent of the ground was vacant.

He said the opposition had failed to draw the crowd it promised even after bringing many parties together, and ended on a line about the country’s democracy. “This India belongs to the people of India,” he said, adding that it was a democracy in which a tea seller can become Prime Minister.

The Congress had not responded to Patra’s remarks by Sunday evening.