Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) and other organizations protested on Sunday against the continuation of the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists by the Election Commission in Delhi.
The strictness taken to stop this demonstration has surprised not only senior retired police officers but also political analysts.
Above all, the sheer scale of police strictness is raising political questions. More than the strict police action, more questions are being raised as to why arrangements were made on such a large scale.
About 35 thousand security personnel were deployed to stop about 20 thousand protesters. Apart from Delhi Police, soldiers of many other security forces were also included in these.
More than 50 stations of Delhi Metro were closed to completely control the movement of people. About 245 trains coming to and from Delhi from different parts of the country were delayed or stopped from entering Delhi.
Questions are also being raised on the way women police officers led the police team and entered the plane to arrest Abhijit Deepke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka.
Deepke was repeatedly saying that he had no intention of resisting the arrest and that the police should not act hastily.
Several former senior police officers told BBC News Hindi that the police crackdown was completely disproportionate to the scale of the protests.
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Former Karnataka Police Director General ST Ramesh told BBC News Hindi, "There are different methods of policing, but the current action reflects political decisions. I saw the picture of people stranded at a railway station in Bihar because their train was cancelled. So it affected not just Delhi, but the entire country."
BBC News Hindi also talked to former Special Director of Intelligence Bureau Yashovardhan Azad about this.
According to him, the Police Commissioner should have given an assessment to his political superiors that strict restrictions would be imposed on the protesters and action would be taken against their violations.
He agreed with ST Ramesh that the Police Commissioner should have taken decisions independently rather than being influenced or guided by political considerations.
Azad said, "Gen-Z youth should have been given a place to express their feelings, which is bigger than Jantar Mantar. What has happened is that the issue of NEET reform has disappeared. Due to police brutality, enmity has arisen between the protesters and the police. This eliminates the possibility of any kind of resolution of the dispute through dialogue."
However, senior retired officers also offered another point of view.
He said that the best person to assess the situation is the officer who is present at the spot.
A senior retired officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "There can be no other way to assess the situation at the ground level. It is difficult to assess whether the assessment at the ground level was wrong or it was done due to political pressure."
Gen-Z's 'political understanding'
Political analysts are seeing the large-scale deployment of security forces in the recent clash with Gen-Z as the government's surprise at the large number of youth joining the protests against the serious failure in the NEET examinations in July.
After those protests, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had to resign. Due to the failure to handle the situation at that time, it seems that this time the method of taking immediate and strict action has been adopted.
Political analyst Radhika Ramasesan told BBC News Hindi, "Understanding this generation is a completely different challenge. They have aspirations, their outlook is very different from the previous generation. BJP has not been able to understand their expectations and their approach towards politics."
Political commentator Aarti Jerath partially agreed with Ramasesan's assessment that the government had underestimated the public reaction to the examination irregularities.
Jerath said, "When a large number of people took to the streets in July, the government panicked and started using pellet guns. This made it a big movement. This time the government went to the other extreme. It reacted more harshly than necessary and created an atmosphere of panic in Delhi."
Senior political analyst Anand Sahay told BBC News Hindi, "The government should have interacted with the students to deliver a political message. Instead, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister were celebrating victory in two by-elections in West Bengal, where names of voters were removed from voter lists and added after the state elections."
Sahay said that even during the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan before Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency in the country, "the political door was always open for talks with the opponents. The right of the people to protest was never stopped at any level."
Radhika Ramasesan said that the protests by Rahul Gandhi and Congress served as a kind of awakening.
He said, "Political parties have every right to protest inside or outside the Parliament. But Rahul Gandhi chose the path of direct confrontation. Theoretically, the BJP leadership could have talked to the protesters like in July. But this time the doors were completely closed. It is clear that the Election Commission was working at the behest of the government. Otherwise why did the Election Commission not meet the Congress delegation?"
What next?
Jerath believes that the government will have to decide its strategy at some point or the other.
He said, "An atmosphere of terror cannot continue in Delhi day after day. Look at Mumbai, where even after the initial efforts of the protesters did not get a positive response, the police did nothing to stop the protest. The protest there proved to be completely peaceful. Neither the government nor the police understood that it was necessary to let the steam out to reduce the pressure of the pressure cooker."
Ramasesan believes that politically the situation has become complicated. He said, "The NEET issue was beyond caste and communal boundaries. But people generally consider SIR as an issue which probably impacts minorities and Dalits more than other communities. So it is possible that the core voters of BJP, who were very angry with the leak of NEET question papers, may appreciate the government for its current tough stance."
He further said, "If anything has changed, it is that the fronts of conflict have become more rigid. There is no hope of bridging the gap between them in the near future. The stake for the government, especially for Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Shah, is that they should maintain their very tough stance. This stance had suffered a setback in July."
However, despite the strictness and arrest of the CJP leadership, Anand Sahay pointed out that the youth managed to reach different areas of Delhi to protest and get arrested by the police.
"To their credit, it was a leaderless movement because all their leaders had already been picked up by the police," he said.
