India protest live: Police detain Cockroach leaders, New Delhi in lockdown

India protest updates: ‘Cockroach’ leaders detained; New Delhi in lockdown | Elections News | Al Jazeera

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India protest updates: ‘Cockroach’ leaders detained; New Delhi in lockdown

*Cockroach Janta ​Party founder Abhijeet Dipke among hundreds detained to block ​protest demanding the election chief’s resignation.*

!A supporter of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) looks out from a police van after being detained by police during a protest demanding the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged voter roll irregularities linked to the "special intensive revision" (SIR), in New Delhi on October 10, 2026.

Video Duration 05 minutes 22 seconds 05:22

India coackroach Janta party protest: Party leader arrested as thousands of police deployed



By Nadim Asrar and Priyanka Shankar

Published On 10 Oct 202610 Oct 2026

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This live page is now closed. You can continue to follow our coverage here.

* 48m ago

(13:00 GMT)

Thank you for joining us

This live page is now closed, but our round-the-clock coverage of the situation in India continues.

You can read our wrap for the day here and follow more related stories here.

* 1h ago

(12:45 GMT)

Here’s what happened today

We will be closing this live page shortly. But before we do, here’s a recap of the day’s major developments:

+ Police ⁠in ⁠the Indian capital detained the founder of ⁠the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Abhijeet Dipke, and thousands of others to block a protest demanding the resignation of ‌the chief election commissioner over alleged voter list fraud.
+ Dipke said his detention shows that India is under “a dictatorship” as thousands of police and paramilitary personnel were deployed across New Delhi, where mobile internet services were suspended in the central business district, and dozens of metro stations and markets were shut to stop the rally.
+ Police in New Delhi also detained Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) among others including journalists, lawyers and opposition politicians.
+ Opposition Congress party’s leader Rahul Gandhi said the chief election commissioner and Prime Minister Narendra Modi “will go” soon and then “the repair of democracy will begin”.
+ BJP spokesman Sambit Patra dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchic elements”.
+ Amnesty International slammed India for “suppressing critical voices”, while the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Indian authorities to “respect journalists” and allow them to work.
+ The CJP says its protest will continue despite the crackdown.
* 1h ago

(12:30 GMT)

What is controversial about India’s revision of voters’ list?

Special Intensive Revision (SIR), as the process is called, places an unusually heavy burden on existing voters to prove their eligibility.

The drive, launched in June last year, requires people to produce old records, like birth, land, and education certificates – and puts poorer, migrant, and marginalised Indians at a disadvantage, essentially drawing lines on who gets to vote in India. A minor mismatch, such as a spelling, in decades-old records could result in being struck from the voter list.

For India’s more than 1.4 billion population, a voting right does not end merely on ballots – rather, several government welfare schemes are tied to voting rights.

In some places, the SIR exercise was an alleged ploy to disenfranchise the Muslims who do not usually vote for Modi’s BJP. In West Bengal, which the BJP won for the first time earlier this year, nearly 34 percent of deleted voters were Muslims. A similar pattern has been reported from other states with a high percentage of Muslims, including Bihar, Delhi, and Assam.

So far, more than 130 million people have been removed from the electoral rolls, with the opposition parties alleging the deletions helped the BJP win several of the recent state elections. The have challenged SIR in the Supreme Court and demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for launching the exercise with little transparency.

“Today, that faith \[in the election process] has shaken. It is very shocking for the nation,” SY Quraishi, who headed India’s election commission between 2010 and 2012, told Al Jazeera last month.

“The Election Commission used to be a very reputed institution. Now, it is totally dysfunctional – and that’s an understatement.”

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* 1h ago

(12:15 GMT)

Amnesty slams India for ‘suppressing critical voices’



By Priyanka Shankar

The global human rights organisation has condemned the Indian authorities for the mass detention of protesters, saying that New Delhi is creating “a climate of fear”.

“Reports of more than 5,000 people, including opposition leaders, student union leaders, journalists, and lawyers being detained by the Delhi Police point to a desperate attempt by the government to suppress critical voices,” Aakar Patel, Amnesty International India chief, told Al Jazeera.

“The authorities must immediately and unconditionally release all those who have been detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly,” he said, urging the government to exercise “utmost restraint and take all necessary steps to protect and facilitate the right of peaceful assembly”.

“The authorities must also immediately lift all the arbitrary restrictions imposed in Delhi to restrict people’s right to protest, which violate India’s obligations under international law. The Delhi Police must not forget that the right to protest is protected in India’s constitution,” he added.

* 1h ago

(12:00 GMT)

Modi’s BJP calls protesters ‘anarchic elements’

BJP spokesman Sambit Patra has dismissed the demonstrators as “anarchic elements”.

“Their flop show has been completely demolished,” Patra said.

“What is happening at Jantar Mantar, what you can see on TV and a few social media handles, is not India’s story. India is calm and going ahead under good governance,” he told reporters.

But political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said the protest comes at a time when Modi appears to be “at his weakest politically and individually”.

“And I see this becoming a bigger challenge in the coming months,” he told the AFP news agency.

* 2h ago

(11:45 GMT)

WATCH: Is the CJP changing India’s political landscape?

India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is calling for another senior official to resign.

In July, protests by the youth-led movement saw the education minister quit. Now, it wants Gyanesh Kumar, the chief of the election commission, to step down.

Critics say Kumar oversaw an unfair review of the electoral roll. The revisions led to the removal of tens of millions of eligible voters.

The commission says reform is long overdue – and necessary to weed out duplicate entries. Protesters say it is an assault on democracy and designed to benefit the governing BJP.

So, will the “cockroach” movement be successful again?

* 2h ago

(11:30 GMT)

Timeline: CJP protests since group founded in May

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) was born in the middle of May this year as an online satirical movement in response to a comment made by India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant, who compared the unemployed youth and activists to “cockroaches” and “parasites”.

Here’s how its protests have grown since:

**June 6:** Hundreds of CJ