India: More Than 1,000 Arrested Ahead of Protest Demanding Election Commissioner Resign

Police in India's capital New Delhi have arrested more than 1,000 people — including protesters, opposition politicians, journalists, student union leaders, lawyers and the founders of a youth movement called "Cockroach" — to prevent a demonstration demanding the resignation of the country's election commissioner.

The satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), along with other youth groups, had announced a Saturday protest in the capital targeting election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over changes to India's "Special Intensive Revision" (SIR) of voter rolls.

Protesters accuse the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using the SIR to influence election results, with the help of appointees on the election commission, including Kumar.

Opposition parties, meanwhile, say the deletion of voters has affected the results of several recent state elections won by the BJP, and casts a shadow over elections in the world's largest democracy.

The CJP had planned to gather thousands of people at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in central Delhi. But by Saturday the area had been sealed off by security forces before the demonstration could begin.

The Indian capital was also locked down, with thousands of police and paramilitary personnel deployed across the city, trains to New Delhi cancelled, mobile internet services suspended, and metro stations and markets shut to prevent the protest.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra called the protesters "anarchic elements", telling reporters: "Their flop show has been completely dismissed. What is happening at Jantar Mantar, what you see on television and a few social media accounts, is not the story of India. India is peaceful and moving forward under good governance."

Police arrested CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and his associates Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka on board their plane as they flew from Mumbai to New Delhi.

Dipke shared video on his Instagram channel showing a group of police officers boarding the Air India aircraft after landing. As they approached, he said: "I have come to be arrested. I am not afraid of you." In another video shared by Ranka, Dipke is seen telling fellow passengers: "Very nice to meet all of you. We can see where the country is heading. This is a dictatorship when Delhi police board a plane and try to arrest us."

Delhi police also arrested other CJP members, YouTuber and Modi critic Dhruv Rathee, Neha Bora, national president of the left-wing All India Students' Association (AISA), which is affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the party's general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, politicians Yogendra Yadav and Mamata Banerjee, and many others.

Despite the arrests of the youth movement's founders, smaller protests took place elsewhere in the city, including at the famous crafts market "Dilli Haat". Journalists trying to report on the demonstrations, and anyone attempting to protest anywhere in the capital, were also detained and taken away in police buses.

Shranaya, a state committee member of the left-wing Students' Federation of India (SFI), told Al Jazeera that their New Delhi office had been under surveillance for hours, but members inside managed to slip out and join the protest. "This is a dictatorship unfolding right before our eyes, just to protect an official who is stealing elections for the BJP on Modi's orders," she said. "They are killing democracy in broad daylight in India's capital."

"This government does not understand the power of the people, and that is our advantage. We have no weapons, but we have zeal. We will take to the streets again, and we will keep coming back," she added. "We are students. We are unemployed. We are 'cockroaches' — and we will be back." She then climbed onto a barricade but was pulled away by police and put on a bus.

Opposition Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government after the arrests. Writing on X, he said: "The Modi government has turned the 'Mother of Democracy' into a 'Democracy with a gagged mouth'! Arrests, imprisonment, batons and rubber bullets cannot stop the people of India. Since the days of the freedom struggle, young people have always been at the forefront of shaping the nation's destiny."

Global condemnation

Global rights group Amnesty International warned that the arrests showed the Indian government's desperate effort to "crack down on critical voices". Aakar Patel, chair of Amnesty International India's board, told Al Jazeera: "The authorities must immediately and unconditionally release all those detained solely for exercising their freedom of speech and right to peaceful assembly."

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on Indian police to "respect journalists". Kunal Majumder, CPJ's Asia-Pacific programme coordinator, told Al Jazeera: "We call on Delhi police to immediately release all journalists and media workers detained, and to allow the press to report on the ongoing protests in Delhi and the police response without interference."

The protests represent one of the most serious challenges to Modi, stemming from allegations that election authorities improperly revised voter rolls ahead of recent state elections. The unrest also comes before a series of key state elections beginning in early 2027.

Sanjay Kapoor, editor-in-chief of Hard News magazine and a political analyst, told Al Jazeera it was "very strange" to see the Modi government "so panicked and so frightened of what the protesters might do". "The fact is that the BJP and the central government are very, very scared about how things will play out," he said.

Kapoor noted that most of those taking part in the protests do not want Modi's BJP to remain in power. "The Modi government has begun to lose a lot of credibility at this point," he said. "The BJP is afraid that the situation has shifted sharply against them and that it will be very difficult for them to return to power."