India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has called for a nationwide march on New Delhi on Saturday, after its ultimatum demanding the resignation of the country's election chief was ignored. In the days leading up to the planned gathering, authorities have been clamping down on protesters gathering at Jantar Mantar, the 18th-century observatory that serves as the Indian capital's designated protest site. Those arrested include members of the general public, student activists and opposition leaders, including the Indian National Congress' Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke urged people to turn out in huge numbers, while adding that the police were already detaining protesters: "The more people you detain, the more people will show up!" The stakes remain high: the credibility of the body that runs the world's largest elections is on the line. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar is currently in the hot seat after the Indian Express newspaper published an investigation that revealed that fellow election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had raised at least 14 formal objections over 10 months to decisions concerning voter registrations, deletions and restorations, as well as control of electoral-roll data. In one of the objections, Sandhu complained that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had acted against the written advice of the two commissioners and claimed its action was "unauthorized and illegal." Kumar became the CEC in 2025 after being chosen by a selection panel led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Rahul Gandhi, who was also a member of the panel, had opposed Kumar's appointment. Now, Kumar, along with Sandhu and Joshi, is responsible for overseeing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a nationwide re-verification of the electoral rolls requiring voters to prove their eligibility to remain on them. The ECI says the process is meant to remove errors in India's electoral rolls, such as the names of deceased individuals or people who have permanently moved abroad and duplicate entries — as well as avoiding the "inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants." But critics say the ECI it has gone far beyond that remit.
The Indian Express report says more than 130 million names were removed from electoral rolls across the country. For scale, Germany has about 60 million eligible voters in total. A play on the name of Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the youth-led movement emerged in May after the chief justice of India, Surya Kant, referred to unemployed young people as "cockroaches" in an offhand remark during an unrelated court hearing.
The move backfired, with young people embracing the tag and turning it into an avenue for disillusionment over what they see as failings in the country's education system and its massive youth unemployment problem. The CJP has amassed nearly 25 million Instagram followers, more than double that of the BJP's 9.9 million. Modi, however, remains far ahead at 106 million.
A campaign protesting multiple competitive exam leaks launched the CJP into nationwide relevance, securing the resignation of the then-Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The CJP is not alone in its call for protests. For days ahead of the planned October 10 march to Jantar Mantar, student activists, civil society members — including former high-ranking government officials — and leaders of opposition have been taking to the streets of Delhi calling for accountability and Kumar's resignation.
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