Asia and Oceania

Another major protest took place in Delhi on Friday 2 October against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and the Election Commission’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Elections are taking place at Students' Councils across India and the results point to a substantial electoral presence for the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the student organisation associated with CPI(M), in a number of states and universities.

Five Left parties — the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, CPI(ML) Liberation, Revolutionary Socialist Party and All India Forward Bloc — held a protest outside the Election Commission of India headquarters in New Delhi on Tuesday, 29 September, demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and an immediate halt to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Communist Party of India (CPI) General Secretary D. Raja has criticised recent remarks by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat questioning the Western origins of secularism and contrasting it with the Indian principle of sarva-pantha-samabhava, or equal respect for different faiths.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation and Forward Bloc jointly held a protest demonstration at Mahatma Gandhi Marg in Bhubaneswar, demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar from office, the immediate halting of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, and the restoration of voting rights to all those who have been wrongfully excluded.

Massive protests were held in Koida Mining Belt in Odisha, against corporate control of Odisha’s mineral resources.