India's 'cockroach' protesters set to return despite police crackdown

India’s ‘cockroach’ protesters prepare to return despite police crackdown

Thousands of ‘cockroach’ protesters are expected back on the streets of Delhi on Friday, just days after police blocked their previous mass rally and jailed two of their leaders.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement pushing for electoral reform, has urged supporters to assemble at Central Park in Connaught Place, a crowded commercial area.

The appeal comes after two CJP leaders were jailed for five days after entering Jantar Mantar, a protest venue that police recently declared off-limits.

What started as a campaign against alleged electoral fraud has grown into a broader struggle over the right to protest. Central Park is not an authorised protest site either.

On Thursday, the Delhi High Court refused to issue an order restraining the CJP after a local trader filed a petition arguing that Friday’s protest should not be permitted because it would disrupt traffic and business.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke has named the protest Lehra Do Tiranga, or Wave the Tricolour, as many Indians informally call the country’s orange-white-green flag Tiranga. Dipke has said he is willing to risk arrest himself.

Reaching Central Park may not be easy, however. Police barricades and mass detentions kept many protesters from joining last Saturday’s demonstration. Dipke has told those unable to travel to Delhi to raise the Indian flag and protest wherever they are.

The CJP has come a long way since May, when the movement began with an insult. After India’s chief justice compared some unemployed young people to cockroaches, Dipke embraced the label and turned it into an online protest movement.

By July, he and his supporters were filling the streets over examination paper leaks, in protests that forced India’s education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. Within months, the “cockroaches” had become one of the most visible signs of youth anger at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Now they are taking on something larger — India’s elections.

The CJP leadership has said its protests will continue regardless of what happens.

The issue is a sweeping overhaul of electoral rolls, known as Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which critics say has removed more than 130 million names, putting legitimate voters at risk of losing their right to vote.

The CJP wants Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign, accusing the election body of favouring Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both the commission and the government deny the claims.

Friday’s march comes less than a week after police stopped the movement’s last mass demonstration, detaining its leaders and deploying officers across the capital before protesters could gather.

Dipke and two senior organisers, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were detained from inside the aircraft after landing in Delhi.

The capital was placed under a sweeping security lockdown. Tens of thousands of police and paramilitary personnel spread across Delhi, blocking roads, closing metro stations and intercepting protesters long before they could reach Jantar Mantar, where the CJP had planned its mass rally.

Video from across Delhi showed protesters shouting as police grabbed them by the arms, dragged them along the pavement and pushed them into waiting buses. Some resisted the officers; others, already detained, pressed toward the bus windows and waved Indian flags.

Those who managed to gather elsewhere were quickly dispersed. There were also reports of protesters being assaulted by police.

Delhi police did not answer questions about the use of violence against protesters.

The scale of the crackdown prompted accusations that the authorities were intent on stopping the protest rather than policing it. The CJP compared the police action to India’s Emergency, when civil liberties were suspended between 1975 and 1977.

Delhi police said the measures were necessary to preserve public order and prevent unauthorised gatherings.

Dipke, Das and Ranka were released on Sunday after agreeing to maintain peace and good behaviour.

Police then removed Jantar Mantar from Delhi’s list of approved protest sites, directing demonstrators instead to Ramlila Maidan, Burari Ground or CBD Ground.

But Jantar Mantar is no ordinary stretch of land. Built in the 18th Century to study the stars, the observatory stands near parliament and has long been one of India’s most recognisable stages for public dissent.

The CJP says the authorities are pushing protesters away from the seat of power to make their demonstrations less visible and easier to ignore.

They unfurled the Indian flag and shouted slogans against Kumar. Police said they had entered the restricted site without permission, some by climbing over a locked gate, and breached the conditions of their earlier release.

The next day, Das and Ranka were sent to Tihar Jail for five days in judicial custody. Another organiser, Ajinkya Shinde, was released on a bond to maintain peace and good behaviour.

With two of its key organisers in jail, the CJP heads into Friday’s protest with its leadership weakened, though Dipke insists the march will go ahead and that he does not intend to back down.

“I also may be jailed after this, but I am not worried. Tricolour is my pride and I will raise it,” he said in a video message.

Police, meanwhile, are preparing for another large gathering in central Delhi.

Senior officers met on Thursday to discuss security arrangements and possible traffic restrictions around Connaught Place, where a demonstration could disrupt one of the capital’s busiest commercial districts.

The CJP’s campaign is unfolding alongside a separate wave of protests by India’s opposition parties, which have also accused the Election Commission of manipulating voter rolls to benefit the BJP.

Last week, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and other lawmakers tried to march to the commission’s headquarters in Delhi but were stopped by police and detained. Opposition politicians have since taken their complaints to President Droupadi Murmu and marched towards the Supreme Court

Detained while leading protesters last Saturday, she was later seen marching with Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Although the CJP, student groups and opposition parties have mostly protested separately, their demands have increasingly overlapped. Gandhi has condemned the arrests of CJP organisers and called for Jantar Mantar to be reopened to peaceful demonstrators.

Home minister Amit Shah, meanwhile, has accused opposition parties of spreading falsehoods about the voter-verification exercise and defended the Election Commission’s independence.