India’s ‘Cockroach’ party accuses government of mass detention of members ahead of weekend protest

Original article by Guardian staff and agencies

India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which began as a satirical movement but is now emerging as a political force among gen Z’s, says authorities have begun detaining its members en masse days before a major anti-government protest in Delhi.

Opposition parties, their student units, and the “Cockroach” youth movement have been holding almost daily demonstrations seeking the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a controversial revision of ⁠voter lists.

Thousands are expected to march to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in the capital, New Delhi, on Saturday, amid mounting anger in the world’s largest democracy.

A spokesperson for the CJP, Ashutosh Ranka, said in a post on X on Thursday that “at least 10,000” people from CJP demonstrations, student organisations, affiliated grassroots groups and political parties had been detained across the country.

Police authorities ⁠didn’t immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comments. Videos posted on social media platform X showed activists being taken away in vans.

The CJP said that ‌among those detained was a group ‌of students from the western city of Pune who were headed for the 10 October protest in Delhi. It said they were being ‌taken away in a bus to an unknown location.

The nationwide voter list review, known as the special intensive revision, has been carried out in most of India’s states and federally administered territories. More than 130 million names have been removed so far, a number larger than the populations of countries like Japan and Mexico. Millions of people have appealed against the deletions.

The opposition says the removals disproportionately affect voters who support them, while voters more likely to back prime minister Narendra Modi’s party have been preserved or added to the lists.

The election commission and the government reject the allegations, saying the revision is aimed at removing duplicate and ineligible entries.

The campaign has been led in part by the “Cockroach” movement, which began as an online youth campaign in May and has since organised street protests across the country.

The protests present a new political challenge to Modi midway into his third term, just months after similar demonstrations led by the CJP forced the ​resignation of his education minister over exam paper leaks.

In the lead up to Saturday’s planned demonstration, hundreds of supporters of the CJP youth movement protested in tech hub Bengaluru on Thursday.

Many of the protesters held posters that said, “Every name counts, Every vote matters” and “Stop the Murder of Democracy”.

“I think voting right is the most basic point of democracy … People who actually want to vote, who ⁠actually care about the future of India, they are just being (denied) voting rights,” said Khushi Shrivastava, a 22-year-old architecture ​student who attended the Bengaluru protest.

There were also protests over ​police action against congress party leaders and the voter lists revisions.

On Wednesday, the opposition Congress party accused police of ​using “brute force” to briefly detain ‌party leader Rahul Gandhi, his ​sister Priyanka Vadra, and other ​lawmakers as they tried to reach the Jantar Mantar protest site in New Delhi.

Delhi Police said the allegations were being used to “defame” the force.

BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said the allegations were “being levelled by an irresponsible, anarchist opposition”. The claims had “no base, not an iota of evidence”, he told reporters at a media briefing on Thursday.

Police have barricaded the area in Delhi ahead of Saturday’s planned demonstrations.