In brief
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) saw its leaders – Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das – detained early Tuesday after they slipped past police barricades to protest at Jantar Mantar. The move comes after Delhi’s home ministry revoked the site’s status as an official protest location, directing demonstrators to three alternative venues. While the CJP accuses the Election Commission of unduly favouring the ruling party in a controversial voter‑roll revision, the police say the leaders’ entry was unlawful and they were not given permission to protest from the landmark. The incident has intensified nationwide calls for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and increased scrutiny of the Union government’s handling of electoral reforms.
Leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) were hauled off by police after daring a fence breach and staging a protest at Jantar Mantar, Delhi’s iconic observatory used for demonstrations for decades. The two – Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das – had attempted to occupy the site early Tuesday morning, chanting slogans demanding that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar step down over a disputed voter‑roll revision.
Video footage posted by party founder Abhijeet Dipke shows Ranka and Das clutching the Indian flag as they climb over barricades before police take them away. Dipke, active on X, warned that “you cannot denotify the resistance” and that the CJP would not stop its actions if denied permission to protest.
The clamp‑down follows a decision by the Home Ministry to deprive Jantar Mantar of its protest status, instead sanctioning three other sites where demonstrations may occur with prior notice. Last week the police had blocked several metro stations and bus routes and deployed thousands of officers to prevent demonstrators from reaching the observatory on an earlier planned march.
The CJP’s campaign, which began as a satirical movement after a comments by Chief Justice Surya Kant, has steadily grown into a pressure group addressing unemployment, exam irregularities and government accountability. Their latest protest is part of a broader wave of dissent over a voter‑list revision that has erased tens of millions of names from rolls, a move the opposition says edges the ruling party’s advantage.
In the immediate aftermath, Ranka appeared on an Instagram Live broadcast from a police bus, maintaining that the party would not back down. The detention of CJP leaders has sparked renewed protests in Delhi, with opposition parties marching from Connaught Place to the Supreme Court and filing petitions challenging the Election Commission’s decisions.
The episode underscores Delhi’s tense atmosphere as the government tightens control over protest sites amid escalating demands for electoral transparency and political accountability.
