Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah of being the “real masterminds” behind what the Opposition calls “vote chori”, the INDIA bloc on Wednesday announced a nationwide campaign demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and a return to ballot-paper voting.The Opposition alliance also appealed to the Supreme Court to expedite pending cases relating to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and other alleged electoral irregularities.After a three-and-a-half-hour meeting attended by 20 Opposition parties, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said Opposition MPs will march to the Election Commission on October 6 and would meet the President in the second week of October over alleged irregularities in SIR.Announcing district-level “Save Democracy” marches from October 2 to 8, he said the bloc planned five major rallies across the country during October-November, including a major mobilisation in Delhi on November 1.Flanked by Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Kharge said the alliance had unanimously decided to “fight against the killing of democracy”.He alleged that the EC was functioning like a “puppet”, with Modi and Shah controlling the strings. He said the district-level marches between October 2 and 8 would culminate in demonstrations outside district magistrates’ offices. The October 6 march to the EC office was originally planned for Wednesday, Kharge said, but was deferred so that all Opposition MPs from both Houses could participate in short notice.The Congress president said all members of the INDIA alliance had reached a consensus on replacing EVMs with ballot papers. Every election should be conducted through ballot papers, he said, adding that the INDIA bloc would repeal laws enacted by “stolen government” formed through rigged elections.Rahul said the discussion focused on the central issue of ‘vote theft’. He asserted that the Opposition would ensure that those responsible for the destruction of Indian democracy were punished, irrespective of their position.He said the Opposition believed it had succeeded in taking its concerns about electoral manipulation to the people. Rahul said there was a “new sense of resistance” among young people who believed that what was happening needed to be corrected. He stressed Opposition parties were confident of bringing “serious changes” in the country over the next few months.Banerjee said the Opposition was “completely united” on the immediate resignation of Kumar. She alleged that vote theft had taken place in Bihar, West Bengal, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and the 2024 General Election.She alleged that more than 13 crore voters had been affected and that software had been used in a manner that compromised the reliability of EVMs. These claims were made by Banerjee and were not independently established in the material supplied. She said the Opposition would fight together to protect voting rights, democracy and the Constitution.The meeting was also attended by Omar Abdullah, Kapil Sibal and Supriya Sule, while Uddhav Thackeray and Hemant Soren joined virtually. The 20 parties named in the briefing were the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), RJD, CPM, CPI, National Conference, PDP, JMM, CPI-ML, IUML, Kerala Congress (M), MDMK, VCK, RSP, Kerala Congress (Joseph) and All India Forward Bloc.