Police in New Delhi, the Indian capital, arrested more than 1,000 protesters, opposition politicians, journalists, student union leaders, lawyers and founders of the “Cockroach” youth movement, in a bid to crush 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 on Saturday, targeting Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a review of India’s Special Intensive Review (SIR).
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The protesters accuse the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using the SIR to influence the election results, “in collusion with its appointed members of the Election Commission, including Kumar.”
Meanwhile, opposition parties say voter suppressions have also affected the outcome of some recent elections won by the BJP and cast a shadow over 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 cordoned off by security forces before the start of the demonstration.
The Indian capital was also on lockdown with thousands of police and paramilitaries deployed across the city, trains to New Delhi cancelled, mobile internet services suspended and metro stations and markets closed, in a bid to end the protests.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra called the protesters “lawless elements”.
“Their flop show was completely demolished,” Patra said. “What is happening at Jantar Mantar, what you can see on TV and some social media, is not India’s story. India is calm and moving forward under good governance,” he told reporters.
Police arrested CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, along with his associates Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, on a plane when they arrived in 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 got closer, he said, “I came to get arrested. I’m not afraid of you guys.”
In another video shared by Ranka, Dipke was seen speaking to other passengers on the flight.
“It was nice to know you all. We can see where the nation is going,” he said. “This is a dictatorship where the Delhi Police has entered into the robbery and is trying to stop us.”
The Delhi Police also arrested other CJP members, YouTuber and Modi critic Dhruv Rathee, Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), a left-wing group affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Dipankar Bhattacharya, the party’s general secretary, Prashant Bhushan, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court, politicians Yogendra Yadav and Mamata Banerjee, among others.
Despite the arrest of the youth movement’s founders, small protests took place elsewhere in the city, including at the popular “Dilli Haat” craft market.
But journalists who tried to cover these protests and people who tried to demonstrate anywhere in the capital were also arrested and taken away in police buses.
Shranaya, a state committee member of the Left Students’ Federation of India (SFI), who goes by his 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.
“This is a dictatorship live and in front of us, just to protect a bureaucrat who is stealing elections for the BJP at Modi’s behest. They are assassinating democracy in broad daylight in India’s capital,” she said.
“This government is unaware of the power of the people, and that is our advantage. We do not have weapons, but we have zeal. We will be on the streets again and we will continue to return to them,” she added. “We are students. We are unemployed. We are ‘cockroaches’ – and we will come back.”
She then climbed a barricade but was taken away by police and taken to a bus.
The president of the opposition Congress party, Mallikarjun Kharge, criticized the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the arrests.
“The Modi government has transformed the “Mother of Democracy” into a “Muzzled Democracy”! he posted on
Global condemnation
Global human rights organization Amnesty International has warned that the detentions demonstrate desperate attempts by the Indian government to “suppress critical voices”.
“The authorities must immediately and unconditionally release all those who have been detained solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and their right to peaceful assembly,” Aakar Patel, chair of the board of directors of Amnesty International India, told Al Jazeera.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has urged Indian police to “respect journalists”.
“We call on the Delhi Police to immediately release all detained journalists and media workers and allow the press to cover the ongoing protests in Delhi and the police response without interference,” Kunal Majumder, CPJ’s Asia-Pacific program coordinator, told Al Jazeera.
The protests represent one of Modi’s most serious tests yet, stemming from allegations that election authorities improperly revised voter rolls ahead of recent national polls.
The unrest also comes ahead of a series of important national elections that begin in early 2027.
Sanjay Kapoor, editor of Hard News Magazine and political analyst, told Al Jazeera it was “very strange” to see Modi’s government “so panicked and so fearful of what the protesters might do.”
“The truth is that the BJP and the Center have been very, very scared of how this is all going to play out,” he said.
Kapoor pointed out that most protesters do not want Modi’s BJP to continue ruling.
“The Modi government has started to lose a lot of credibility at the moment,” he said. “The BJP fears that the situation has radically changed against it and that it will be very difficult for it to return to power,” he added.
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