India’s government calls the country the world’s largest democracy. The record its own police, courts and election authority have put down since July makes that description harder to defend.
The phrase is usually offered as a fact rather than a claim. With 960 million registered voters, India is the world’s largest democracy by any count. But size describes the electorate. It says little about whether that electorate can protest, report and vote without the state standing in the way.
Since July, a youth movement that began as an online joke has tested exactly that. Across two waves of protest, the most damaging evidence has not come from India’s critics abroad. It has come from India’s own institutions: police affidavits filed in the Supreme Court, state government admissions and the Election Commission’s own figures.
Again and again, the account the state gives under oath and the documented record do not match.
July: an AK-47 in Siwan
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) launched in May as online satire, after a judge’s remark likening unemployed young people to pests. It gathered millions of followers and, in July, turned a national exam paper-leak scandal into street protest.
On 20 July thousands marched on Parliament in New Delhi, and Delhi Police counted at least 178 people injured. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned within the week, a rare setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The worst came in Bihar on 25 July. During a statewide shutdown in Siwan, a police constable was filmed firing an AK-47 assault rifle near JP Chowk. Three young men were shot that day, and at least two were not protesting: one had come to town for a caste certificate, and another, a bystander, was hit in the neck.
Bihar’s affidavit to the Supreme Court said the constable fired four rounds into the air after being caught in a crowd, and that his rifle hit no one. It said police had shown “utmost restraint”. The same affidavit acknowledged that three protesters suffered what it called minor firearm injuries that day.
The constable was suspended. Siwan’s police superintendent was transferred, but no disciplinary action was taken against him.
What Amnesty verified
In August, Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab published its review of video, photographs and witness testimony from 20 to 24 July in Delhi and Siwan. It confirmed that police used pellet-firing shotguns, tear gas launchers, grenades, batons and electric shock devices. Amnesty said the weapons were deployed in breach of international standards and India’s own policing guidelines.
It also verified two instances of a police officer unlawfully using lethal force against a crowd. Amnesty India’s chair said the force had been used against peaceful protesters, children among them. The Federation of Press Clubs reported that a journalist working for Outlook was hit by pellets.
Delhi Police had publicly called its handling of the protests “professional” and repeated that before the Supreme Court. Amnesty said its evidence directly contradicted that account. A month after the march, it found, not a single Delhi officer had been held accountable.
October: the voter rolls
The second wave is about something larger than policing. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission’s review of voter lists, has excluded more than 133 million names from revised rolls. That figure has been reported by Indian media and cited by opposition parties in court. An Election Commission breakdown seen by AFP classed around 28 million entries as dead voters and 10.4 million as duplicates.
The exclusions have not fallen evenly. An analysis by The Hindu found Muslims made up about 20 percent of Delhi voters flagged for discrepancies, against 13.6 percent of the electorate. In West Bengal, the Sabar Institute found Muslims were roughly 70 percent of more than 2.7 million voters placed under review despite submitting documents, against about 27 percent of the electorate.
Three UN Special Rapporteurs have written to New Delhi about the deletions. They cited reports from Nandigram, where 95 percent of deleted voters were said to be Muslim in a constituency about a quarter Muslim.
The consequences reach beyond the ballot. Indian media have reported people in West Bengal who were removed from the rolls being detained, and in some cases pushed across the border into Bangladesh. State authorities have told officials to withhold welfare benefits from those removed, and passports have reportedly been cancelled.
The protests sharpened after The Indian Express reported that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had taken key SIR decisions unilaterally, over objections from his two fellow commissioners. The Election Commission rejects the allegations of wrongdoing. It says the revision is lawful and that omission from a draft roll is not permanent deletion. The Supreme Court has said exclusion from a voter list is not a ruling on citizenship.
Policing the press
On 3 October, three women journalists alleged that Delhi Police officers sexually harassed them during a protest at Jantar Mantar. One named an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Vivek Bhagat, saying he touched her inappropriately while she filmed detentions. The complaints were passed to the Crime Branch, and no FIR against him has been announced.
Journalists and protesters then gathered at Parliament Street police station to demand one. They were detained and taken to Delhi Cantonment police station. In a video recorded inside, one woman alleged that female constables hit them, whispered abuse and groped them. Delhi Police deny the allegations.
The following weekend was worse. Reporters Without Borders counted around 40 journalists detained over 10 and 11 October, with accounts of beatings, dragging, torn clothes and broken or confiscated cameras. A Reuters journalist was among those held. Press bodies said officers dismissed press cards, with some reportedly saying, “Everybody claims to be a journalist these days.”
Three Maktoob Media reporters said men posing as journalists surrounded them at Connaught Place and abused them with Islamophobic slurs while uniformed police stood by. Several detentions came after the Supreme Court ordered on 11 October that journalists must not be hindered in their work. The Court has since summoned a senior Delhi Police officer to explain the assault allegations.
India ranks 157th of 180 countries on RSF’s press freedom index, down from 133rd a decade ago.
The state’s version
The Supreme Court had directed on 9 October that Metro and train services in Delhi must not be completely suspended for the protest. Facing contempt proceedings over that order, Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and Delhi Police Commissioner Anurag Kumar both apologised to the Court unconditionally.
The Commissioner’s affidavit still defended the curbs. It said only mobile internet had been cut, within four kilometres of Raisina Hill. It said no one was illegally detained, and that detainees were released within two to six hours after being given “hot, fresh and good meals”. Political leaders, it said, were offered tea and coffee in station officers’ chambers.
Police also removed Jantar Mantar, Delhi’s protest site for decades, from the list of designated protest venues. A day after the change was announced, CJP leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das climbed its barricades to wave the national flag. A court sent them to five days’ judicial custody for trespass.
The state has its own account of the violence. Delhi Police say more than 240 personnel were injured during the October protests, and Siwan’s police superintendent was among officers hurt by stone-throwing in July. Prime Minister Modi has not commented publicly on the protests.
What the label rests on
None of this means India has stopped being a democracy. Its Supreme Court is working through 46 petitions on the protests, the SIR and police conduct. It has issued notice to the Election Commission and Gyanesh Kumar on a challenge brought by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and ten INDIA bloc leaders. Opposition MPs, press bodies and rights groups are contesting the state in the open.
But the pattern across both waves is consistent. Force comes first and the explanation follows, filed under oath. Those explanations keep colliding with video, forensic analysis and the state’s own figures. Visible accountability has so far amounted to one suspended constable and one transferred police chief.
The question these protests raise is not how many Indians can vote. It is how many will stay on the rolls, and what happens to those who object. For a country that leads with its size, that is now the harder number to defend.∎
