‘Cockroach’ party rally: young Indians return to streets as Delhi braces for large protest

Police in New Delhi detained scores of protesters on Saturday as ⁠thousands of officers and paramilitaries ⁠patrolled India’s capital, metro stations ​were shut and mobile internet suspended to guard against a youth protest demanding India’s chief election officer quit.

The protest, called by the “Cockroach” youth movement, hopes to draw thousands of demonstrators ⁠who want the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to quit over a revision of voter lists that critics say favours prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party.

Television images showed police in the city’s central business district⁠ chasing down a few dozen young protesters, before they were loaded into vehicles and taken away.

About 200 protesters were detained in the area, a police source told Reuters. Those detained outside Delhi included protest supporter Dhruv Rathee, a popular figure on YouTube, a police spokesperson said.

Touted by organisers as a protest to “save democracy”, it ⁠aims to be the biggest of the demonstrations that were launched last week after the Indian Express newspaper reported that Kumar’s deputies ​had questioned and disagreed with him over the revision process ‌that saw about 130 million ‌voter names removed.

Opposition parties have long alleged the government is trying to fix voter lists to its advantage.

Kumar has not commented. The election commission and the BJP have denied the allegations.

The BJP says Modi’s popularity and India’s economic growth are some of the reasons for its electoral dominance and that opposition parties are misleading the country because they are unable to win elections.

Near daily protests by opposition groups pose a new political challenge to Modi, just months after similar demonstrations forced his education minister to quit over exam paper ‌leaks.

It also comes months before a series of important state elections starting in early 2027, including in the BJP-ruled most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

The protesters, led by the self-named Cockroach Janta party, that began ​as an online satire, said they would gather at Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning – a site designated for protests by authorities in the heart of New Delhi.

Delhi police said on Friday they had not given permission for the protest because the request did not come on time, adding that CJP had violated undertakings given during previous protests, and that authorities had ⁠to enforce the law and maintain peace.

Police said protesters would face the force of ​the law if they violated the ban.

Tens of thousands of police officers and paramilitary personnel have been deployed across the capital, with multiple layers of yellow metal barricades blocking roads leading to Jantar Mantar.

CJP ​leaders rejected the police decision and said ​they would go ahead with the protest.

Authorities have ordered the closure of dozens of metro stations, and cancelled several trains coming to New Delhi. However, the supreme court on Friday said some trains must still run and there should be no blanket closure of metro stations.

“The dictator would rather shut down the entire national capital and inconvenience millions of citizens than allow a peaceful protest at a designated protest site,” the CJP chief, Abhijeet Dipke, said on X.

“Imagine how many lives would be affected because of this shutdown by Modi.”

Mobile internet services in a radius of 4km (2.5 miles) of the protest area were ordered suspended from Friday night to Saturday night, ANI news agency reported citing a government order.

The CJP has said “at least 10,000 people”, including protesters travelling to Delhi by train, have been detained across the country.

Some people detained in the central state of Madhya Pradesh were taken to hotels, The Hindu newspaper reported.

Police have not responded to the party’s broader allegations of mass detentions.

* With Reuters and Agence France-Presse