Chief Justice of India Surya Kant did not take up a request for a meeting from Opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge. The two leaders had arranged to meet with the Chief Justice on the afternoon of 12 October, between 4:00 and 5:00 PM, with the intention of handing over a memorandum, according to a television news outlet.

Among the points set out in the memorandum were calls for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar from his post, a halt to the Special Intensive Revision process for electoral rolls, a shift away from electronic voting in favour of paper ballots, and action to address what the signatories described as irregularities in vote counting.

The CJI replied to both Gandhi and Kharge by email. He noted that the matters they had sought to raise were already before the Supreme Court and therefore under active judicial consideration. He also noted that judicial authority does not extend to overseeing how the government runs its day-to-day operations, and told them that judicial proceedings remained an available path for seeking protection of their fundamental rights.

Protesters linked to the Opposition and the youth group known as Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) gathered in public spaces to demand Kumar's resignation, pointing to what they characterised as procedural irregularities in the SIR process. Gandhi described the march as a cross-party effort drawing on the broader Indian public rather than any single political organisation, and stated that its purpose was to mount pressure on the BJP-led administration under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Among the positions put forward by the INDIA bloc were: scrapping the legislation that shields the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners from legal liability, halting the Special Intensive Revision process, reinstating voters whose names were removed from rolls, returning to paper-based balloting, and nullifying recent state Assembly elections where vote-fraud evidence has been presented.

Demonstrations took place in Delhi and several other urban centres, including Mumbai. Authorities carried out widespread arrests at the gathering, an approach that drew comparisons to how a prior CJP assembly at Jantar Mantar had been handled. Petitions awaiting a hearing before the Supreme Court include matters centred on conduct by law enforcement.

A Supreme Court ruling in May found the SIR process to be lawful, yet concerns persist about the removal of voters from rolls — a figure that touches roughly 14% of those eligible to cast a ballot.

Ahead of the opposition alliance's planned visit to the Chief Justice of India to hand over its memorandum, the Bharatiya Janata Party had already voiced objections to the move. Prasad, who holds a BJP parliamentary seat, noted that reigning Chief Justices of India have traditionally kept away from meetings with political delegations. The BJP statement directed opposition figures toward the courts as the appropriate avenue for disputes, drawing a distinction between electoral outcomes and what it characterised as litigation pursued by those who had lost at the ballot box.