Three CJP Leaders Released After Detention During New Delhi Protests

NEW DELHI: A New Delhi court ordered on Sunday the release of three leaders of the “cockroach” movement, including its founder Abhijeet Dipke, their lawyer said, a day after they were detained. “Executive Magistrate court releases Abhijeet, Saurav (Das) and Ashutosh (Ranka),” lawyer Ratna Singh said in a social media post. The trio were detained on Saturday ahead of a major protest against the country’s election commissioner. Indian police detained thousands of protesters trying to take part in a major demonstration in New Delhi against the country’s election commissioner, the group said Saturday. The protest is the culmination of weeks of opposition mobilisation following allegations of misconduct during a nationwide voter roll revision by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The CJP — which began in May as a satirical online movement — also said that thousands of protesters were detained in New Delhi as they attempted to march to the main Jantar Mantar protest site, defying a massive security clampdown. “More than 15,000 protesters have been detained,” Ajinkya Shinde, a CJP leader, said at a news conference in Delhi. Dozens of protesters shouted anti-government slogans as they were taken away in police vehicles, AFP reporters witnessed. The Hindu newspaper reported more than 5,000 protesters had been detained, although it was not immediately possible to verify that number. Media outlets, including the Scroll and Newslaundry, said their journalists had also been briefly detained. Calls for ECI chief Gyanesh Kumar to step down have intensified in recent weeks as opposition parties and critics said the voter roll revision could disenfranchise millions of constituents, benefitting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ECI has rejected allegations of impropriety, saying the revision was intended to remove duplicate and ineligible voters, including “foreign illegal immigrants”. Ahead of the protest, authorities in the capital deployed thousands of police, closed dozens of metro stations, cancelled more than 200 trains and temporarily shut down mobile internet around the protest site. The demonstrations are widely seen as a reprise of the “cockroach” movement’s mass mobilisation in July, which led to the education minister stepping down over an examination scandal. This time, protesters are demanding Kumar’s resignation and a halt to the voter revision exercise. The accusations are a fresh challenge for 76-year-old Modi during his third term in office. Opposition parties have long alleged that legitimate voters are being struck off lists in India, the world’s largest democracy with 1.4 billion people. The voter list overhaul, which began in 2025, has led to more than 133 million names being excluded from draft rolls, according to Indian media reports citing ECI data. The issue flared up last month when the Indian Express newspaper reported that key decisions linked to the revision were likely taken without the approval of two of the three election commissioners. The ECI, a constitutional body, says all its decisions were unanimous and legally valid. Angry demonstrators told AFP they were being denied the right to protest peacefully. Political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay told AFP the protest comes at a time when Modi appears to be “at his weakest politically and individually”. Though India’s next general elections are not slated until 2029, the country’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh will go to the polls next year. “I see this becoming a bigger challenge in the coming months,” Mukhopadhyay said. ISLAMABAD: Following approval of President Asif Ali Zardari, Governor’s rule and emergency have been enforced in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to maintain law and order. As per details, the president has signed the summary for the imposition of an emergency and Governor’s Rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under Articles 232 and 234 of the Constitution.