Cockroach Janta Party leaders vow to continue protests after Delhi crackdown draws Supreme Court intervention

Police boarded the plane. Cockroach Janta Party leaders Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were arrested Saturday as their flight arrived in Delhi from Mumbai, and released Sunday on condition of no breach of peace for one year. They vowed to continue their protests.

Media reports said 7,000 protesters were detained and released on Saturday. Hundreds more were detained Sunday. Protests continued for a second consecutive day. BBC reported that at least 45 metro stations were closed, Delhi’s main railway stations were shut, and major train services were cancelled, with many protesters travelling from outside the city de-boarded en route. Mobile internet was suspended in central Delhi. Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site near parliament, was sealed off by police after they refused permission for the CJP’s planned rally. More than 30,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across the city, according to local media. In Connaught Place, one of Delhi’s busiest hubs, rows of bright yellow barricades lined the streets as protesters shouted ‘Gyanesh must go!’ while being detained, BBC reported. In Mumbai, some 600 people were arrested over the protests, according to the ANI news agency.

The court intervened. India’s Supreme Court held a special hearing on Sunday to address the shutdowns and detentions, ordering the government to restore internet services and ensure metro and rail services functioned normally. The court said there should be no illegal detention. All detainees were released, police officials said. At a press conference after their release, Ranka said: ‘Peaceful protest is our constitutional right and Jantar Mantar is a desginated protest site, so this doesn’t mean we can’t do peaceful protest.’

A movement born from an insult

The CJP traces its origins to a remark by Chief Justice Surya Kant, who likened jobless young people to cockroaches and later said his comments were misinterpreted, BBC reported. In May, Dipke posted on X: ‘What if all cockroaches come together?’ The post went viral. The CJP was founded that same month, though it is not registered as a political party in India. Dipke had previously worked with the opposition Aam Aadmi Party and had just completed a master’s degree at Boston University, BBC reported. The CJP first gained prominence leading what BBC described as a five-week summer protest demanding education reforms, triggered by exam paper leaks. That protest ended in July after the resignation of the education minister. After his release, Dipke posted on X: ‘Modi, as PM, is an embarrassment to India.’

The voter roll dispute

The CJP is demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over allegations of manipulating voter lists. BBC reported that at least 130 million voter names have been purged from electoral rolls, and tens of thousands of people allege they were wrongly removed. The commission describes the revision as a routine exercise to weed out dead, duplicate, or ineligible voters. The CJP and opposition parties accuse Kumar of favouring Modi’s BJP in electoral roll updates — allegations both the Election Commission and the BJP have denied. Protests erupted across several Indian cities after an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper found that two election commissioners objected to many of Kumar’s decisions, Al Jazeera reported. India’s Election Commission is a constitutional body with three members, and decisions are taken by majority. ‘After Modi-Shah turned Delhi into a fortress and unleashed what can only be described as a war against their own citizens, one thing has become abundantly clear: Gyanesh Kumar is at the very heart of this government’s survival,’ CJP co-convenor Saurav Das said in a post on X, according to Al Jazeera.

A wide net of detentions

The net was wide. Opposition politicians including former chief ministers Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi, and Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala were detained, Al Jazeera reported. YouTuber Dhruv Rathee was detained and later said he was ‘KIDNAPPED.’ Activist Neha Bora, national president of the All India Students’ Association, a leftist group affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), was detained. Visual artist Aban Raza, 37, was detained near Jantar Mantar alongside economist Jean Dreze. Raza told Al Jazeera that police tore banners and dragged protesters into buses. She said some detained were not protesters but ordinary people going about their day — including one going to a Gurudwara and another going to meet his wife. Das described police as ‘arriving like mafia dons’ and ‘abducting’ them on the plane. Journalists from Scroll.in and Newslaundry were detained and later released, though Newslaundry said some reporters’ media equipment was seized. ‘Just as police personnel are doing their jobs, journalists are also doing theirs. A free and independent press is essential to democracy,’ Kunal Majumder, the CPJ’s Asia Pacific programme coordinator, told Al Jazeera. CPJ expressed deep concern. Small protests also took place at Dilli Haat, where police quashed demonstrations.