Evening Pulse: Rahul brings the bruises, the BJP brings the rulebook, and wholesale prices hit 11.4%

Since this morning the voter-roll fight has changed ground again. On Tuesday night Amit Shah argued with election results; on Wednesday afternoon Rahul Gandhi answered with injured students. The question on the table is no longer only whether the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) wrongly removed voters, but who gets to protest about it in the capital, and at what cost. The BJP's answer was the rulebook. And while politicians argued, fresh data showed wholesale inflation jumping above 11%, a reminder that the economy is not waiting for the voter-list quarrel to settle.

Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, sat down with NSUI and Youth Congress activists at 10 Janpath who said Delhi Police beat them after detaining them at protests demanding the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, ETV Bharat, PTI and Prabhasakshi reported. Addressing the Home Minister directly, he said: "Amit Shah ji, take a good look at this." He told students to keep video records, and said that when the matter ends those responsible would be punished, naming Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah, Kumar and police constables.

The specific allegations come from the protesters and have not been independently verified. Athira, a Delhi University student from Kerala, said she was struck outside the Connaught Place police station after being detained on Tuesday; Gandhi said she has lost hearing in one ear, DNA India and Prabhasakshi reported. Another activist named a woman constable who, she alleged, grabbed her by the neck, scratched her face and slapped her. None of the reports we read carried a response from Delhi Police to these specific claims. In the Delhi High Court on Tuesday, police had questioned only the maintainability of an NSUI plea seeking an independent probe, ETV Bharat reported.

The same day, two leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were sent to five days of judicial custody, PTI and ETV Bharat reported. Police said they breached peace bonds and trespassed at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday despite prohibitory orders. Gandhi called the jailing an act of "cowardice" on X, and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote: "Stop protecting Gyanesh Kumar!"

The BJP replied through its national media convenor, Ashish Usha Agarwal. In a social media post reported by PTI, he said Jantar Mantar had been de-notified as a protest site through due legal process, and argued that public spaces cannot be turned into political battlegrounds. PTI reported that the party accused Gandhi of misleading the country and said the right to protest does not extend to breaking the law.

The 2029 sparring also went another round. Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut told reporters that neither Modi nor Shah would hold their posts by 2029, Asianet Newsable (ANI) and Patrika reported. Responding to Shah's "infiltrators" charge, Raut asked whether people struck off the rolls, including, he said, former CEC S.Y. Quraishi and some soldiers, were infiltrators too. That is his claim; we did not find a BJP reply to it.

The morning's loops: Gandhi did answer Shah, but on police conduct rather than on Shah's poll numbers. We found no BJP reply to Jairam Ramesh's rigging charge, no public word from the Election Commission or Kumar, and no report that the 14 defects in the INDIA bloc's SIR petition have been cured. Thursday's Supreme Court hearing on the batch of Delhi protest pleas and the contempt case over metro curbs, remains on track as far as we can tell.

On the economy, wholesale inflation rose to 11.39% in September from 9.92% in August, official data reported by ANI showed, with fuel and power up 25.85% and manufactured products 9.76%. Markets closed lower: the Sensex lost 251.89 points to 72,781.89 and the Nifty fell 99.25 points to 22,622.70, Kotak Neo and ETV Bharat reported, as the inflation print and Brent crude above $106 weighed and IT stocks cushioned the fall. The rupee gained for a third session to close near 95.15 to the dollar (Business Standard put it at 95.16, ETV Bharat at 95.14).