India's 'Cockroach' party says 10,000 detained before Delhi protest

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) said on Thursday that authorities have detained at least 10,000 people from its demonstrations, student organisations, affiliated grassroots groups and political parties across India, days before a major anti-government protest in Delhi. CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka announced the figure in a post on X. Videos shared on social media showed activists being taken away in vans. Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Among those detained was a group of students from the western city of Pune who were travelling to the 10 October protest in Delhi, according to the CJP, which said they were being taken by bus to an unknown location. Thousands are expected to march to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in the capital, on Saturday. The demonstrations are seeking the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a controversial revision of voter lists.

The nationwide voter list review, known as the special intensive revision, has been carried out in most of India's states and federally administered territories. More than 130 million names have been removed so far, a figure larger than the populations of Japan or Mexico, and millions of people have appealed against the deletions. The opposition says the removals disproportionately affect voters who support them, while voters more likely to back prime minister Narendra Modi's party have been preserved or added. The election commission and the government reject the allegations, saying the revision is aimed at removing duplicate and ineligible entries.

The campaign has been led in part by the Cockroach movement, which began as an online youth campaign in May and has since organised street protests across the country. The protests present a new political challenge to Modi midway into his third term, just months after similar demonstrations led by the CJP forced the resignation of his education minister over exam paper leaks.

In the lead-up to Saturday's planned demonstration, hundreds of supporters of the CJP youth movement protested in the tech hub of Bengaluru on Thursday. Many held posters that said, "Every name counts, Every vote matters" and "Stop the Murder of Democracy". Khushi Shrivastava, a 22-year-old architecture student who attended the Bengaluru protest, said voting rights are the most basic point of democracy and that people who want to vote and care about India's future are being denied those rights. There were also protests over police action against Congress party leaders and the voter list revisions.

On Wednesday, the opposition Congress party accused police of using "brute force" to briefly detain party leader Rahul Gandhi, his sister Priyanka Vadra and other lawmakers as they tried to reach the Jantar Mantar protest site in New Delhi. Delhi Police said the allegations were being used to "defame" the force. BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said the allegations were being levelled by an irresponsible, anarchist opposition and had no evidence. Police have barricaded the area in Delhi ahead of Saturday's planned demonstrations.