Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced renewed pressure as the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and a separate coalition of student and activist groups stage fresh protests, demanding the resignation of the elections commission chief over a controversial voter roll revision.
The influential CJP will rally in Mumbai and plans to expand demonstrations nationwide in the coming days, while student and civil society groups will gather at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.
A few dozen protesters gathered at the site in Delhi yesterday morning, but police bundled some into buses and took them away, while several nearby metro stations remained shut and security was tightened.
Officers repeatedly warned against gatherings of more than five people over loudspeakers as hundreds of police and paramilitary personnel surrounded the barricaded protest site.
As police pushed him onto a bus, protester Rishabh Singh said, “the right to protest is our fundamental right, and we want answers from the government on vote theft”.
The protests mark the latest escalation in a dispute that has put unprecedented scrutiny on India’s Election Commission, long regarded as one of the country’s most trusted institutions.
The protesters’ main allegation is that the commission manipulated voter rolls in ways that favour Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
The commission and the government have denied the allegations.
Pressure on Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar intensified last month after the Indian Express newspaper reported the election chief’s two deputies had formally raised concerns at least 14 times over the past 10 months over voter-list revisions, registration procedures and the commission’s digital systems.
The Election Commission has said differing views are normal in internal deliberations.
“We have been asking and demanding for a change, but nothing of that is going to happen if our only tool that is left to change anything in our society, the right to vote, is taken away from us,” Saurav Das, CJP’s convenor, told Indian news agency ANI on Thursday.
“We will only end the protest after Gyanesh Kumar resigns.”
The controversy centres on a nationwide voter-verification exercise launched last year that critics say has led to millions of eligible voters being removed from electoral rolls.
The commission said the exercise is intended to remove duplicate, deceased or ineligible voters.
Yesterday, the poll body directed officials to register newly eligible voters and those omitted from electoral rolls, the latest indication it is easing its stance. — Reuters
