New Delhi police detained on Saturday (10) more than a thousand people, including protesters, opposition politicians, journalists, student leaders, lawyers, and the founders of the youth movement Cockroach Janta Party (CJP, or Cockroach People’s Party). The action apparently prevented a large protest demanding the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.
The Indian capital woke up under lockdown, with thousands of police and paramilitary forces on the streets, trains into the city canceled, mobile internet suspended, and metro stations and markets closed. Up to 60,000 officers were placed on standby on Friday (9), according to a source familiar with the matter. According to the agency, authorities also asked telecom operators to suspend internet service in areas near the protest site for about 24 hours.
The CJP had planned to gather thousands of people at Jantar Mantar, the area officially designated for protests in central Delhi, but the site was cordoned off by security forces before the rally began.
Leaders Detained on a Plane
The founder of the movement, Abhijeet Dipke, and two collaborators were detained inside an Air India aircraft shortly after landing in New Delhi, coming from Mumbai. In a video posted on Instagram, Dipke appears before the officers as they enter the aircraft. “I came to be arrested. I am not afraid of you,” he says.
Also detained were YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, a critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Neha Bora, president of the All India Students Association (AISA), Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, and activist Yogendra Yadav, among others. Small protests continued at other points in the city, but journalists and protesters were taken away on police buses.
Government and Opposition
The spokesperson for the Indian People’s Party (BJP), Modi’s party, Sambit Patra, labelled the protesters as “anarchic elements.” “What is happening at Jantar Mantar, what you see on TV and on some social media profiles, is not India’s story. India is calm and moving forward under good governance,” he said.
The Congress Party president, Mallikarjun Kharge, criticized the detentions. “The Modi government has turned the ‘Mother of Democracy’ into a ‘Muzzled Democracy’,” he wrote on X.
Amnesty International called for the immediate release of all those detained merely for exercising their right to free expression and peaceful assembly, and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged the release of the journalists.
Understand the Crisis
The protesters accuse the BJP of using the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls to influence results, in collusion with government-appointed names on the commission, including Kumar. Opposition parties say that the removal of voters affected the outcome of recent state elections won by the BJP.
The wave of protests gained momentum on October 2, after the Indian Express revealed, the previous month, internal disagreements within the commission over updating the lists. On Tuesday (6), opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and his sister, Priyanka, were briefly detained during a march of MPs to the commission’s headquarters, according to TV networks. On Wednesday (7), Gandhi and other MPs were detained again, the third time in two days. The Supreme Court agreed on Monday (5) to hear challenges to the revision and Kumar’s conduct.
The Election Commission denies irregularities, and Kumar has not commented. The protests are seen as one of Modi’s gravest tests so far and occur on the eve of a series of state elections that begin in early 2027.
(with Reuters, AFP and Al Jazeera)
