NEW DELHI: Indian police detained more than 2,000 protesters on Saturday to block a rally demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, a Home Ministry official told Reuters.
Security forces sealed Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, where organisers had planned to gather thousands of people. Police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across the capital. Authorities suspended mobile internet in the central business district and closed dozens of metro stations and markets.
United Nations (UN) human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan expressed concern about detentions before and during the protests. He urged authorities to respect the right to peaceful assembly. Al-Kheetan called for dialogue to address demonstrators’ concerns.
India’s mission to the UN in Geneva rejected the criticism as interference in the country’s internal affairs. Its response cited constitutional protections for peaceful assembly. The mission added that those rights are subject to reasonable restrictions to maintain public order.
Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke and senior leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were among those detained. Officers approached them after their flight from Mumbai arrived in Delhi, according to a statement from the movement.
“I am not afraid of you guys,” Dipke told officers on the aircraft. Television footage showed an officer asking him to cooperate and denying that he was being arrested.
CJP condemned the detentions as authoritarian and demanded the release of its leaders. Movement leader Ajinkya Shinde promised continued street protests until Kumar resigned.
The group accused authorities of withholding information about the leaders’ whereabouts and health, even after Dipke’s grandmother died. Police said they had informed him of her death. They offered to help him return home for the funeral.
Television coverage showed the detention of former chief ministers Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal and Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi. Police also detained Pinarayi Vijayan, a former chief minister of Kerala.
Representatives of two digital news outlets said police briefly detained four reporters covering the Delhi protests.
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At checkpoints on major roads and entry points, officers boarded buses to search for protesters and inspected vehicles. Barricades and concrete blocks disrupted traffic. Anti-riot vehicles with tear-gas launchers guarded key routes.
Opposition parties accuse election authorities of revising voter lists to benefit India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They claim the deletions affected the party’s recent state election wins.
An Indian Express investigation found that two election commissioners had questioned Kumar’s handling of the voter-roll revisions. Kumar has not commented on the allegations. Both the Election Commission of India (ECI) and BJP deny wrongdoing.
BJP attributes its electoral success to Modi’s popularity and economic growth, and accuses opposition parties of spreading misinformation. Senior party member Ravi Shankar Prasad argued that opponents had used street demonstrations as a political weapon after electoral defeats. He maintained that BJP did not oppose protests.
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Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Congress party, pledged that Modi’s opponents would not back down.
ECI data show that authorities removed around 130 million voter entries, including 63 million for people who had relocated, 30 million for people they could not trace, and another 28 million for people who had died.
The commission says these deletions form part of the draft revision process. Eligible voters whose names were removed by mistake can re-enrol.
