BJP Calls INDIA Bloc Delhi Rally a Flop Show: Sambit Patra Says Rahul Gandhi’s 10 Lakh Claim Fell Flat

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday dismissed the INDIA bloc’s rally in Delhi as a flop show, saying the opposition alliance had failed to draw the massive crowd it had promised. BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra told a press conference after the rally ended that around 40 per cent of the Ramlila Maidan ground remained empty, and that of the 28,000 chairs placed at the venue, around 5,000 to 7,000 were still vacant in the afternoon.

Patra questioned the Congress claim that more than 10 lakh people had attended the rally, asking where those people were. He said the BJP had watched the rally since morning and listened to Rahul Gandhi’s address, but described it as a complete waste of time, arguing that a Prime Minister is made through sweat and hard work, not through such shows.

The BJP spokesperson also hit back at Rahul Gandhi’s claim that the 2024 Lok Sabha election was illegal. Patra pointed out that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was not even in that post when the 2024 election was held, having become Commissioner in 2025, and challenged the Congress to show a single court petition filed by it or any INDIA bloc party against the 2024 result. An election, he argued, cannot be declared illegal two and a half years later from a rally stage.

Patra further argued, in his own words, that if the election were illegal then the opposition’s own MPs, including Gandhi as Leader of Opposition, would also stand on an illegal footing. The BJP presented this as the flaw in the opposition’s argument, not as a legal finding of its own.

Alongside the press conference, the BJP organised a counter-march in west Delhi, from Hari Nagar towards Tilak Nagar, to remember the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence and to protest the opposition rally being held on 1 November, the anniversary of that violence. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta joined the march with Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and other BJP leaders, while party president Nitin Nabin described the opposition rally as an attempt to create unrest.

The INDIA bloc rally had demanded the resignation of the Election Commissioner over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The BJP rejected that demand, saying voters decide governments at the ballot box and that any grievance about an election belongs in court, not on the street.