Over many years, Jantar Mantar has served as something well beyond a strip of pavement where crowds assemble with banners, voice demands, and stage protests. Protests staged there carried a built-in visibility that was harder to achieve elsewhere — television crews, print journalists, and the very decision-makers demonstrators sought to put on notice were all within reach.

Delhi Police withdrew the official protest-site designation that had long been attached to that well-known address, stripping it of its sanctioned role as a venue for demonstrations. Moving a demonstration to a different location does more than shift the crowd — it can strip away the public exposure that the original venue was positioned to provide.

Describing the demonstration as addressing concerns that went beyond the appointment of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, Anupam — who has organised multiple youth-focused gatherings at Jantar Mantar and now holds ties to Congress — framed the protest in broader terms. Those exercising their right to protest found themselves taken into custody before reaching the venue, he noted, adding that Jantar Mantar Road sits at the centre of Delhi, approximately 1.5 kilometres from Parliament House and within close proximity to several major ministries, government headquarters, and Connaught Place.

Protesters who assembled at that location found themselves in direct proximity to the very institutions whose actions they had gathered to hold accountable. Reporters found themselves on the receiving end of those requests. Being close to the venue gave journalists and camera crews quick access, which meant even a relatively small gathering had a better chance of attracting news coverage than a comparable event held at a greater distance from the city centre would have had.

According to Sidharth Mishra, who wrote Delhi Political, the venue drew in people whose concerns typically go unnoticed in broader public discourse. Established bodies and prominent advocacy figures retain other avenues for reaching broader audiences, platform-based networks among them.

Individuals and smaller organisations often lack access to those same avenues — a point underscored by the speaker's description of people whose concerns went unacknowledged at the state level, including those caught up in bureaucratic processes or left at a disadvantage through dealings with banks and cooperatives. Mishra noted that people's difficulties would often draw a journalist's notice, and once that happened, those problems frequently found resolution.

The rhetorical challenge embedded in his question — whether demonstrators could realistically afford to hire Ramlila Maidan or comparable venues — points toward a broader story about how Jantar Mantar came to occupy its particular place in the capital's tradition of public assembly.

For decades after Independence, the grassy expanse beside India Gate — known as the Boat Club lawns — drew those seeking to make their voices heard within proximity of Parliament and the country's central government offices. The 1988 gathering that Tikait convened under the farmers' banner pulled together a crowd substantial enough to place it at the centre of ongoing debate over whether protests of that scale belong in the heart of the capital.

Demonstrators shifted to alternative gathering spots after tightened rules took hold around key central areas, driven by concerns about order, traffic flow, and safety. Protest encampments and gatherings that had occupied the corridor now called Kartavya Path were cleared away in the early 1990s, after which Jantar Mantar took on a new role as the preferred venue for public demonstrations.

One of the earlier demonstrations at the venue took place in 1993, when Ashish Sood — at that point serving as DUSU president — coordinated with 33 civil organisations to draw thousands of students into a "Jail Bharo" action, directed at government policies that those taking part characterised as detrimental to students and to the broader economy. Over the years, that corridor became a gathering point for causes extending well beyond the boundaries of campus activism.

Large crowds gathered in 2011 behind Anna Hazare's push for a Jan Lokpal Bill, with the call for anti-corruption legislation drawing public support across the country. Former servicemembers staged hunger strikes across 2015 to press for the rollout of a long-pending equal-pension policy for veterans of different service tenures.

In 2017, farmers from Tamil Nadu held a 41-day demonstration at the site to draw attention to distress in the agricultural sector, and six years later, a group of well-known wrestlers returned to the same location to press for action on sexual harassment allegations directed at Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who had served as chief of the Wrestling Federation of India.

A noise-related complaint prompted the National Green Tribunal to place restrictions on gatherings and amplified sound in October 2017, though that ruling was later set aside by the Supreme Court in July 2018, which reinstated the entitlement to hold public demonstrations.