India: ‘Cockroaches’ leaders arrested to prevent protests against Modi

The crackdown has also extended to the CJP’s allies. Among those detained on Saturday were Mamata Banerjee, former chief minister and now a member of the opposition in West Bengal; the former chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal; and the economist Jean Drèze.

“Mr Modi,” said opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in a video message, “do whatever you like. Deploy as many police officers as you like: 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 – as many as you like. Arrest all the leaders. Arrest all the young people. Arrest all of us. We are closing in on you and we will not back down,” he concluded.

By the time evening had fallen in New Delhi, the government had still not commented on the day’s events.

“India is no longer a democracy. It is a dictatorship ruled by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah,” said Priyanka Gandhi, referring to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. Gandhi – who is an MP for the Indian National Congress and the sister of opposition leader Rahul – added that “anyone who is colluding” with Modi and Shah “to subvert democracy is committing an act of treason against the nation”.

Representatives of two online news outlets stated on X that the police had detained four of their journalists whilst they were covering the protest. A number of lawyers who were demonstrating outside the Supreme Court were also detained, according to a report on X by the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

The atmosphere in the Indian capital has been tense since Friday, when – with tens of thousands of police and paramilitary personnel on the streets – orders were given to close 45 metro stations, the suspension of several rail services to New Delhi and the blocking of mobile phone services in the city centre.

Barricades and concrete blocks have brought traffic to a standstill, whilst riot control vehicles fitted with tear gas launchers have been deployed along the main roads.

The demonstration organised by the Cockroach Janta Party, a youth protest movement founded a few months ago, aimed to mobilise thousands of people against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, over a revision of the electoral roll which, according to critics, would favour Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Election Commission of India has been at the centre of controversy for over a year due to a contentious reorganisation of the electoral roll, which was hastily launched on the eve of a busy election cycle.

To date, more than 130 million names have been removed from the electoral roll. Some of these are voters who have died or who have been counted more than once after moving from villages to towns; others are people whom the Electoral Commission has asked to produce documents that are not always easy to obtain and who, until the Supreme Court intervened, were refused acceptance of other commonly used documents.

The opposition accuses the Electoral Commission of having rigged the most recent election results by excluding millions of Muslim citizens and members of the working classes from voting – two traditional constituencies of the Indian National Congress led by the Gandhi family.