ReutersA court in the Indian capital has ordered the release of top leaders of the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) even as the city braces for protests for a second day with thousands of security personnel deployed and roads barricaded.
Abhijeet Dipke – who began the movement in May after India’s Chief Justice likened some jobless young people to “cockroaches” – and other leaders had been detained on arrival in Delhi on Saturday to lead protests seeking electoral reforms.
Police refused them permission to protest and unprecedented curbs were in place to thwart the protesters from reaching the venue.
But thousands did try – media reports said 7,000 were detained and released late at night.
It has also demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of manipulating voters’ lists – which the Election Commission has denied.
On Sunday morning, the CJP lawyer Ratna Singh said she had been informed by the police that Dipke and two other senior CJP leaders – Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka – will be produced before the magistrate by the police seeking their remand “to maintain public peace”.
She later posted on X that the three had been set free by the court “on the condition that they will not engage in breach of peace for one year” – it’s not clear what that means and whether the CJP leaders can take part in protests.
Saturday saw dramatic developments as police officials boarded the flight to detain Dipke, Das and Ranka as their plane landed.
Police had refused permission for the protest to take place at Jantar Mantar, a landmark in the Indian capital, and the city was in a virtual lockdown to prevent the protesters from reaching the venue.
At least 45 metro stations were shut and Delhi’s main railway stations were shut with major train services cancelled. Many protesters attempting to travel from outside were de-boarded en route.
Much of Delhi looked like a city under siege on Saturday, with roads barricaded and offices, shops and restaurants shut.
The day began with expectations of a major gathering at Jantar Mantar, but only a handful of protesters managed to reach the site before police swiftly removed them.
The road that the CJP had occupied for weeks earlier this summer seeking education reforms remained barricaded at both ends, guarded by thousands of police and paramilitary personnel.
The deployment continued through the day, but little happened at the site.
Elsewhere in the city, thousands of protesters still turned up, including activists and senior lawyers who were all detained.
Student leader Neha Bora tried to march from Dilli Haat to Jantar Mantar but was also stopped and taken away. They were all released later on Saturday.
One woman who managed to evade the police and reach Connaught Place told us: “In a democracy, everyone has the right to protest and to say if we are not happy.
“Peaceful protests have been there for ages. We are not living in pre-independent India. We request the government to let us protest.”
The CJP has called for more protests on Sunday.
The row centres over a mammoth exercise to update electoral rolls nationwide – the commission has said it’s a routine exercise to weed out dead, duplicate or ineligible voters.
At least 130 million voter names have been purged from the rolls so far and in many states, the exercise has been shrouded in controversy, with tens of thousands of people alleging they have been wrongly removed.
The CJP – and opposition parties – accuse Kumar of favouring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the way the electoral rolls are being updated.
The Election Commission and the BJP have denied this.
The CJP first emerged as a major protest movement during weeks of demonstrations over the summer demanding education reforms and the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The group stemmed from a joke made by Dipke in response to a remark by Chief Justice Surya Kant, who had likened jobless youngsters to “cockroaches”. He later said the comments were misinterpreted.
Dipke, who previously worked with the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), had just completed a master’s degree at Boston University when he posted a question on X in May: “What if all cockroaches come together?”
The post went viral, and the CJP was born. Momentum built around the movement which tapped into anger over unemployment, exam paper leaks and government accountability.
Their five-week-long protest ended in celebration for the protesters in July after the resignation of India’s education minister.
