On 10 October 2026, police and security personnel were positioned at multiple points across Delhi as demonstrators assembled to demand that Gyanesh Kumar step down from his role as Chief Election Commissioner. Protesters pointed to allegations that voter rolls had been altered in ways that favoured the BJP.
Around 41,000 personnel — a figure encompassing Delhi Police officers alongside other security forces — were mobilised, according to available accounts. Among the central forces assembled were three organisations whose mandates centre on frontier protection — the Border Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and the Sashastra Seema Bal — alongside the Central Reserve Police Force, the Rapid Action Force, and the Central Industrial Security Force.
Barriers were erected at points across the city centre, metro services were suspended, rail links connecting Delhi to other destinations were cut off, and internet access was blocked. Crowd-control equipment, including water cannons and tear gas canisters, had been positioned and placed on standby.
Among those taken into custody were individuals at their residences and on public roads, including people who had set out from Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and several other states with the aim of gathering at Jantar Mantar.
Questions about the integrity of voter registration data — including documented instances of living residents recorded as deceased and valid addresses wrongly flagged as changed — had been put forward by opposition parties, independent journalists, and analysts across multiple states. No statement addressing those concerns had come from the Chief Election Commissioner by the time of publication.
Demonstrators gathered in the streets, exercising a right protected under the constitution, having found no other avenue available to them. The question at the centre of the dispute concerned how ballots are recorded and totalled — the mechanism through which any elected body establishes its authority to speak on behalf of those it governs.
On Sunday, 11 October, an extraordinary sitting of the Supreme Court convened to take up petitions filed on an urgent basis regarding the crackdown. Petitioners contended that what authorities put into practice stretched beyond the boundaries of the 9 October Supreme Court ruling — a decision that permitted oversight of metro and railway services to be introduced, yet did not authorise any outright prohibition on their operation.
Objections were raised against what petitioners described as excessive force, unlawful detentions, confinement to residences, and curbs placed on both freedom of movement and the ability to communicate. The habeas corpus filing put before the court questioned the legality of holding political figures in custody, alongside accounts pointing to thousands of people taken into detention and holding facilities set up at multiple locations across Delhi.
Some of those detained had reportedly been taken from railway carriages and locations outside the four-kilometre restricted zone. Transit stations in the city kept their doors shut and online connectivity was cut off, even as the court had issued orders to the contrary.
Attorneys put forward claims that they had been physically attacked, that protesters carrying no weapons faced force from officers, and that individuals held in custody were at times removed by police personnel who displayed no identifying markings. One lawyer contended that he had been subjected to physical force and pushed onto a bus while it was in motion.
Among the points raised, petitioners urged that defence counsel be granted entry to detention facilities and permitted to confer with those held inside, so that individuals in custody could receive legal representation. The allegations were said to raise constitutional concerns under Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution — provisions that respectively enshrine equality before the law, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and the protection of life and personal liberty.
At the heart of the cases lay a contested legal boundary: whether governmental authority to act preventively can lawfully be applied in ways that curtail the constitutional freedoms that same authority exists to uphold. Whether the restrictions imposed under the justification of maintaining public order satisfied the twin legal tests of necessity and proportionality remained a matter before the courts.
Pushback against the allegations came from the Solicitor General's office. Figures from the transit network presented a different account: while officials described operations as running without disruption, 45 of the system's 303 stations were either shut down or operating under access restrictions tied to security measures. The Solicitor General added that those named in the habeas corpus petition had been freed and that internet connectivity had been restored.
According to the account put forward by police, paperwork for the planned gathering had arrived only three days before the event rather than the ten-day window ordinarily set out in the rules, a shortfall that formed part of the basis for withholding authorisation.
Under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b), the rights to free expression and peaceful assembly are both guaranteed, though each remains open to restrictions that meet a reasonableness standard. Restricting public gatherings falls within the recognised powers of governing bodies when circumstances warrant it, though legal precedent holds that those powers cannot be deployed to suppress dissenting political voices.
The case of Himat Lal K. Shah v. Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad and Anr, decided in 1972, saw the apex court draw boundaries around how far governmental authority could extend when controlling gatherings in public spaces. In Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India (2018), the bench weighed the conflicting entitlements put forward by those staging protests at Jantar Mantar against the grievances raised by local residents whose daily lives were disrupted by the demonstrations.
In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), the Supreme Court determined that any curtailment of internet access is subject to a constitutional standard that includes proportionality, and that directives authorising such curtailment remain open to review by the courts.
The weekend court ruling set out that metro and rail operations should continue under any lawful public-order conditions, that people's ability to move about freely be protected, that existing roadblocks be assessed for removal, and that online access face no interference. The order barred unlawful detention — notably of non-violent, unarmed individuals — in areas falling outside the jurisdiction established under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.
Under the court order, a notice board placed near the Supreme Court to communicate movement restrictions was directed to come down, and those attending to professional duties — including lawyers and journalists — were entitled to pass through unimpeded.
Upon determining that a prima facie case of contempt had been established, the bench directed authorities to file affidavits along with a compliance report, setting 13 October as the deadline for their submission. A notice was additionally dispatched in connection with the habeas corpus petition.
Three questions the court left unresolved were whether blocking the gathering and invoking Section 163 had any legal basis, whether an independent body should examine the reported assaults and detentions, and what mechanisms might be put in place to hold officers accountable for allegedly unlawful use of force. The court also noted that judges and prosecutors were left without a clear picture of how the detentions unfolded — including the identities of those held, the authority under which they were taken into custody, where they were transported, whether legal representation was made available to them, and the grounds on which they were ultimately freed.
