NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — Delhi Police detained a string of opposition leaders on Saturday, including former chief ministers Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal and Pinarayi Vijayan, as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) held a protest at Jantar Mantar demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The CJP, a youth-led satirical movement founded in May by Abhijeet Dipke, called the protest to demand the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation and a halt to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Police said no permission had been granted for the gathering.
Dipke, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das and co-convener Ashutosh Ranka were detained from their flight after it landed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport from Mumbai. Police officers boarded the aircraft and met the three on board. “I have come here to be arrested. Arrest me,” Dipke told the officers, according to video of the exchange. An officer replied: “No, this is not an arrest. Please cooperate.” The CJP called the detention “authoritarian” and a “pre-planned interception” aimed at weakening the protest’s leadership. The party’s Ajinkya Shinde said he would lead the protest in their absence.
Later in the day, Delhi Police detained Mamata Banerjee, a former West Bengal chief minister, and several MPs from her faction of the Trinamool Congress, including Derek O’Brien and Dola Sen, at the South Avenue bus stand, where they were staging a sit-in. Aam Aadmi Party national convener and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was detained outside Lodhi Estate. AAP’s Atishi said he was “brutally taken into custody.”
Leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), including former Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, general secretary M.A. Baby, Brinda Karat and MP John Brittas, were detained on their way to join the protest. The party’s Polit Bureau condemned what it called “widespread repression” in Delhi. Vijayan said the protest against Gyanesh Kumar “will not end today.” All India Students’ Association president Neha Bora was also among those held.
BusinessToday reported stone pelting near Akashvani Bhavan in which two police officers were injured. That account is from police sources and has not been independently confirmed.
Actor Prakash Raj, who joined a CJP protest in Bengaluru earlier this week, criticised the detentions in a video on X. “We will continue to ask questions,” he said. He also criticised reported train cancellations affecting protesters travelling from Uttar Pradesh. Two groups linked to the All India Students’ Federation said railway police tried to stop them at Bhusawal and Itarsi stations. A reply from the railways was not available at the time of writing.
The protest follows days of action by the INDIA bloc, whose MPs marched to Rashtrapati Bhavan on Friday and gave President Droupadi Murmu a memorandum demanding the Chief Election Commissioner’s resignation. The Election Commission says the Supreme Court upheld the electoral-roll revision and that the voters struck off are mostly deceased, duplicate or ineligible.
