Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has rejected an appeal by Delhi’s business community to postpone the Opposition’s November 1 rally at Ramlila Maidan amid the festival shopping season and instead asked them to talk to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, if they wanted a quick solution.
Rahul Gandhi’s comments came days after the Chamber of Trade and Industry (CTI) asked him to defer the Opposition’s November 1 protest until after November 10
The next day, Gandhi hosted leaders of the INDIA bloc for tea at his Delhi home, after which the alliance announced it would continue the campaign against vote chori”. “To every trader in Delhi: We love you and hear you. The government shut the metro, sealed our roads and locked down our capital. With a stolen vote nothing is safe – your shop, your savings, your children’s future,” the Congress MP who’s also Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha wrote in Hindi on X. “Tell Modi to sack accused no.
4, Gyanesh Kumar, and the protests will stop in 30 seconds,” he said. Dhanteras falls on November 6, followed by Diwali on November 8 and Bhai Dooj on November 10. Delhi’s markets generate roughly Rs 25,000 crore in turnover around Dhanteras alone – spanning high-volume sectors such as gold and silver, electronics and automobiles, among others, Goyal said in his letter requesting to protect peak-season trade by rescheduling the protest. On October 12, Opposition leaders and activists had marched through heavily barricaded arterial roads to file a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the SIR exercise.
In a post on X, Gandhi said they can stop their protest in “30 seconds” only if PM Modi “sacked” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Goyal said the rally’s venue is next to Old Delhi’s busy wholesale and retail hubs, which typically record their heaviest customer footfall in the week leading up to the festival calendar.
