India court orders release of 'Cockroach' party leaders as movement calls for fresh protests. Follow DW

Leaders of the youth-led protest movement were detained ahead of a large demonstration in Delhi demanding India's election commissioner step down. Meanwhile, fresh protests have been called. Follow DW.

Here are the latest developments from India on Sunday, October 11:

The CJP said leaders Abhijeet Dipke, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das were ordered released after nearly 24 hours of detention

Indian media reports cite Delhi Police officials as saying thousands of detained protesters were released

The CJP called for a fresh protest on Sunday

The CJP is set to hold a press conference in New Delhi at 2 p.m. local time (8.30 am UTC) today, the group said Sunday.

Meanwhile, it is yet to be seen if a fresh protest in New Delhi will take place. On Saturday evening, temporary protest leader Ajinkya Shinde had called for new demonstrations.

Earlier on X, Shinde said that a protest was scheduled in Mumbai at 4 p.m. adding that more cities "will follow."

As of early afternoon in Delhi, there were no signs of any major gathering of protesters around the Jantar Mantar site in the center of the city.

On Saturday, Mumbai too saw a series of detentions at a protest against the chief election commissioner over alleged electoral roll irregularities.

According to reports, around 600 protesters were detained and later released. The detainees included Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of India's independence icon Mahatma Gandhi, and Bollywood actor Imran Khan.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) started as an online satirical movement and sprung to the mainstream as a pressure group in July after forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's then education minister amid massive youth-led demonstrations.

Now the CJP movement has Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar in its crosshairs.

Here is a ten-point breakdown of the controversy surrounding the top election official:

The protests concern a contentious, nationwide voter-verification exercise — called the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) — which began last year. Around 130 million names have been removed so far from electoral rolls under the process.

Kumar heads the three-member Election Commission of India (ECI) overseeing the SIR process.

Last Month, The Indian Express newspaper published a report alleging differences within the ECI over decisions related to the SIR.

According to The Indian Express, Kumar's two fellow election commissioners raised at least 14 formal objections over a 10-month period regarding voter registrations, deletions and restorations, as well as control of electoral roll data, but their concerns were allegedly not taken into consideration.

The report said that in one objection, one of the commissioners complained that the ECI had acted against the written advice of two commissioners and claimed its action was "unauthorized and illegal."

The report sparked a political storm with protests calling for Kumar's resignation, allegedly for undermining the poll body's credibility.

The ECI has maintained that all its decisions were lawful, saying that differing views were a routine part of the decision-making process.

Kumar is yet to address the allegations against him.

Opposition leaders and critics say that those removed from the voter lists include a large number of minority voters.

They accuse Modi's BJP party of using the exercise as a tool to secure future electoral gains and question the ECI's independence. The ECI says the SIR removes deceased, relocated and duplicate voters and helps prevent the inclusion of "foreign illegal immigrants."

The CJP is not the only group calling for Kumar's resignation.

India's bloc of opposition parties, led by Congress' Rahul Gandhi, has been carrying out a sustained campaign against Kumar in recent days, including organizing its own protest marches.

Cockroach Janta Party leaders Abhijeet Dipke, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das were released from detention on condition that they made "no breach of peace for one year," according to reports citing the movement's legal head, Ratna Singh, on Sunday.

In a post on X cited by the AFP news agency, Singh said the three had been released on the condition that they make "no breach of peace for one year."

News agency ANI reported the Delhi Police as saying the movement's leaders were placed under "preventive arrest" on Saturday, and that a bail bond of 50,000 rupees (€ 460) was filled for "maintaining peace and good behavior for a period of one year."

Social media influencer Dhruv Rathee, who was detained from his Gurugram residence on Saturday morning ahead protests in Delhi, was released overnight, reports said.

Reuters news agency cited an anonymous Interior Ministry official as saying that Rathee was released on condition that he would not take part in any further protests.

On Friday night, Rathee had uploaded a video of himself standing in front of New Delhi's iconic India Gate, where he called out the elaborate restrictions authorities had put in place to counter the protests planned by the Cockroach movement.

A rare Sunday hearing is set to take place in India's top court over a contempt petition against a set of transportation restrictions during a large-scale protest in New Delhi a day earlier.

The petition accuses authorities of closing metro stations despite a Supreme Court order against a complete shutdown of public transport ahead of the protest.

On Friday, authorities had ordered the closure of more than 50 metro stations and canceled many trains bound for two major railway stations in the capital in a bid to keep protesters from heading to central Delhi.

But the Supreme Court later directed the government to not completely stop train services and said that there should be no blanket closure of metro stations.

The court was also scheduled to hear petitions challenging the detentions of thousands of protesters, Cockroach Janta Party leaders and political leaders from India's opposition parties.

An executive court in Delhi has ordered the release of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke and other leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, the youth-led movement said on Sunday.

The three were detained ahead of a large protest in Dehli on Saturday and appeared in court earlier on Sunday after being in detention for nearly 24 hours.

Earlier, the CJP had alleged the leaders were being detained at an undisclosed location and did not have access to their lawyers.

On Saturday evening, the CJP issued a fresh call for a march to New Delhi's Jantar Mantar on Sunday.

"We're not backing down! We will march to Jantar Mantar again tomorrow," Ajinkya Shinde, the CJP's interim protest leader, said at a press conference.

The exact number of demonstrators detained during the protest could not be immediately verified.

Shinde told reporters that over 15,000 people, including students, had been detained across India.

The Hindu newspaper, citing Delhi Police sources, reported that 2,500 demonstrators were detained in Delhi on top of 1,000 people picked up in overnight preventive measures ahead of the protest.

Indian media reports cite Delhi Police as saying that all detainees had been released later on Saturday.

This is Dharvi Vaid Dhulia from DW's Studio in New Delhi, bringing you the Sunday edition of the India news blog.

We are continuing our coverage of the intensifying election protests in India over alleged manipulation of voter lists.

Here's a quick recap of what went down on Saturday:

Dramatic scenes unfolded in the streets of the capital of the world's largest democracy on Saturday as authorities tried to thwart a protest called by the "Cockroach" movement calling for the resignation of India's election chief.

Thousands of youth protesters were detained and hauled away in buses as parts of Delhi were locked down with a mammoth deployment of police and paramilitary personnel, who essentially outnumbered the demonstrators.

Mobile internet services were suspended in central Delhi in a rare move for the key power district, while dozens of metro stations were closed.

Police cited violation of a ban on the protest as basis for the mass detentions. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and student organizations supporting the demonstration maintain that they did not need permission, citing protesting as a fundamental right.

The three main faces of the CJP — Founder Abhijeet Dipke, Co-conveners Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka — were detained onboard a plane as soon as they landed in New Delhi for the protest.

Meanwhile, four former chief ministers of Indian states were also briefly detained during the protest, amid the opposition parties stepping up their calls for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Stay tuned as we bring you more.