New Delhi: Leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Friday (October 9) said that he was “shocked and stunned” that the president did not deny the opposition’s claims of vote chori (theft) in connection with the conduct of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls under the Election Commission (EC).Gandhi’s remarks on Friday came after a delegation of the opposition met President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan, and submitted a memorandum with four demands including the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.“I sat in quite an unbelievable meeting. First, we took a memorandum to the president of India. In that memorandum, we clearly stated that the prime minister, [home minister] Amit Shah and Gyanesh Kumar had conspired to destroy Indian democracy. The president in no way denied what we said, in no way questioned what we said, in no way argued [with] what we said,” Gandhi told reporters outside Rashtrapati Bhavan.“She accepted our statement and then told us that we needed to provide her with proof of ‘election chori’. I said that the evidence of ‘election chori’ is known to the whole country. State after state has been stolen. The 2024 election was stolen, and yet the president wants us to submit proof to her. This same group of people will be very happy to present the evidence of ‘election chori’ that we have collected to the president of India when she is ready to accept it.”Gandhi said that while he expected the president to say that India has a fair election system, she accepted what the opposition leaders said.“The main thing to say is I expected the president of India to deny that vote chori is taking place, to say that ‘actually India has a free and fair election system’. And I was shocked and I was stunned that the president of India accepted what we said,” he said.The memorandum given to the president and seen by The Wire has been signed by ten opposition leaders including Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee of her eponymous faction of the Trinamool Congress, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah, the Nationalist Congress Party (SP)’s Supriya Sule, the Samajwadi Party’s Rajeev Rai, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s M.A. Baby, the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Manoj Kumar Jha and Thol Thirumavalavan of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi.The two-page memorandum includes four demands, including the resignation of CEC Kumar and the repeal of the 2023 law that provides life-long immunity to the CEC and election commissioners, i.e. the CEC and Other Election Commissioners Act that was passed in parliament in 2023.The memorandum has also demanded the immediate suspension of SIR and the restoration of 13.3 crore names to the voter rolls, a return to paper ballots for all elections, and the reversal of all assembly elections over the last two years in which “conclusive evidence of vote chori has been presented”.The memorandum said that the opposition has “incontrovertible proof” that vote theft has taken place on a massive scale in “election after election” and cites the assembly elections of Haryana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Delhi and West Bengal to say that the polls were “stolen”.It also said that the MPs of the INDIA group, “representing 60% of the population” of the country, are approaching the president “with grave alarm over the manner in which the entire election system and the democratic framework of India has been subverted by Shri Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister and Shri Amit Shah, the Home Minister, stealing from crores of Indians their constitutional right to vote”.The meeting, which lasted about an hour, took place after opposition leaders met at the Central Hall in the old parliament building. They then took out a march to Rashtrapati Bhavan before meeting Murmu.The Wire has learnt that during the meeting in the Central Hall there was some discussion among the opposition leaders on whether to name Modi and Shah. The final draft mentions both by name.The meeting also saw Gandhi, Kharge and Banerjee delivering speeches. Sources said that while in Gandhi his speech referred to Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’ address delivered in the Central Hall, Banerjee raised the bypoll conducted in Bengal’s Nandigram and Rejinagar and said that in the latter, one booth had 772 registered voters under it but recorded 909 votes polled for the BJP.While the Aam Aadmi Party was not present at the meeting, the memorandum has also made a mention of the 2025 Delhi elections.Following the meeting, Congress MP and general secretary K.C. Venugopal said that the INDIA bloc leaders will approach the chief justice of India on Monday.“This delegation of senior INDIA bloc leaders will also be approaching the honourable chief justice of India on Monday, and will leave no stone unturned until the integrity of our electoral system is restored and until Modi, Shah and Gyanesh are brought to justice,” he said.Earlier on Friday, Murmu gave an appointment to the opposition to meet her at 8 pm. The opposition had first written to her on October 2, seeking time between October 7 and 9.The meeting with Murmu came after three days of protest conducted by the INDIA bloc in New Delhi. While on Tuesday, the opposition led a march from parliament to the EC, which was stopped midway and subsequently saw Gandhi sit on an eight-hour protest at Akashvani Bhavan before being detained, the protest on Wednesday saw a face-off with the police, as the MPs sought to reach Jantar Mantar before they were detained.The opposition held a silent protest on Thursday at Raj Ghat that marked a departure from their approach over the previous two days.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.