Police in India’s capital New Delhi have detained more than 1,000 protesters, opposition politicians, journalists, student union leaders, lawyers and the founders of the “Cockroach” youth movement in an effort to quash their demonstration demanding the resignation of the election chief. The satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and other youth groups had announced a protest in the subcontinent’s capital for Saturday, aimed at Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a revision of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The protesters accuse the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using the SIR to sway election results, in collusion with its appointees in the election commission, including Kumar.
Meanwhile, opposition parties say the voter deletions also affected the outcome of some recent state elections won by the BJP, and have cast a shadow on elections in the world’s largest democracy. The CJP had planned to gather thousands of people at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in central Delhi. But on Saturday, the area was sealed off by security forces before the demonstration began.
The Indian capital was also in lockdown with thousands of police and paramilitary personnel deployed across the city, trains to New Delhi cancelled, mobile internet services suspended and metro stations and markets shuttered, in an effort to stop the protests. BJP spokesman Sambit Patra has dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchic elements”. India is calm and going ahead under good governance,” he told reporters.
Police detained the founder of the CJP Abhijeet Dipke, as well as his associates Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, in an aeroplane upon arrival at New Delhi from Mumbai. Dipke shared a video on his Instagram channel, showing a team of police officers entering the Air India plane after it landed. As they came closer, he said: “I have come to get arrested.
I am not afraid of you guys.” In another video shared by Ranka, Dipke was seen addressing the other passengers on the flight. We can see where the nation is heading,” he said. Despite the detentions of the founders of the youth movement, small protests took place elsewhere in the city, including at the popular crafts market “Dilli Haat”.
But journalists trying to cover these protests and people attempting to protest anywhere in the capital were also detained and whisked away in police buses. Shranaya, a state committee member of the left-wing Students’ Federation of India (SFI), who goes by her first name, told Al Jazeera that their office in New Delhi had been under surveillance for hours, but members inside had managed to escape and protest. They are murdering democracy in the daylight in the Indian capital,” she said.
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