Mumbai, Oct 4: In a major show of opposition unity in Mumbai, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray and MNS chief Raj Thackeray led a joint protest march targeting Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over electoral process concerns. Addressing the demonstration, Uddhav Thackeray accused the Chief Election Commissioner of functioning as a political “weapon” for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. MNS chief Raj Thackeray called for the immediate cancellation of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists in Maharashtra and advocated for conducting all future elections nationwide using paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines.
The protest march culminated in a public rally joined by prominent alliance leaders, including Balasaheb Thorat and Vijay Wadettiwar from the Congress, alongside NCP (SP) representatives Jayant Patil, Shashikant Shinde, Jitendra Awhad, and Anil Deshmukh. Questioning the underlying rationale of the electoral revision drive, Uddhav Thackeray challenged the government to disclose the exact count of illegal cross-border residents identified and removed from voter registries through the SIR exercise. Opposition figures maintained that the ongoing voter list review threatens electoral integrity, using the unified platform to demand structural transparency from the Election Commission.
