Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were detained by Delhi Police on Tuesday evening (Express photo by Gajendra Yadav)Led by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, leaders of INDIA bloc Tuesday stepped up their attack on the Chief Election Commissioner, demanding his resignation before they were detained late in the evening after staging a protest for hours near the Election Commission office in the heart of New Delhi. The leaders were released later in the night.Parliament Street shut down as Gandhi and others tried to march towards the EC office with their supporters, and climbed atop police barricades, before finding their way into the Akashvani Bhavan premises.Through much of the day, Gandhi and Vadra were holed up inside the AIR premises, demanding they be allowed to meet the CEC. They were joined by SP’s Akhilesh Yadav, TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O’Brien, and CPI(M)’s John Brittas.Also Read | Rahul Gandhi’s stand-on-barricade moment came with a Led Zeppelin track“All I want to do is meet the Chief Election Commissioner and tell him that he has done ‘vote chori’. I can continue to sit here. I am comfortable here. If they don’t want us to sit here, give us some other site,” Gandhi said.The march was the latest in a series of protests to press for CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation in the wake of a report in The Indian Express that the two Election Commissioners had objected on record 14 times in 10 months to steps taken by the Commission under the CEC, from keeping them in the dark to adding new voters and deleting names.Targeting the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister and the RSS chief, Gandhi alleged that the country had been “hijacked” with the “vote chori”.“What has been done to our country is treason. Nobody is going to escape,” he said.Story continues below this adThe day-long protest began with the march being stopped soon after it started from Parliament House around 10 am, following which the opposition MPs sat on the street outside Akashvani Bhavan, very close to the EC office.As MPs were being detained, Gandhi spoke to his sister seated inside one of the buses and both went inside the Akashvani Bhavan, taking all by surprise.Besides the Gandhi siblings, the Congress leaders who joined them inside the AIR premises included Deepender Hooda, Charanjit Singh Channi, Praniti Shinde, K C Venugopal and Pawan Khera. Several MPs returned to the protest site after being released from detention.In a post on X, Gandhi said, “Gyanesh it’s done bro. Time to resign.”Story continues below this adMPs from the BJD, which has not been part of the INDIA bloc, also joined the march. DMK and AAP leaders stayed away from the protest.