Ahead of a planned "Lehra Do Tiranga" procession by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) on Friday, 16th October — a gathering that authorities had not authorised — a deployment of 25,000 police and paramilitary personnel was spread across New Delhi and adjoining areas, with surveillance cameras positioned at Central Park in Connaught Place and at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station. Restrictions under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) were brought into force across the affected area.
The sequence of events that followed began when Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka — both affiliated with CJP — were taken into custody after attempting to enter Jantar Mantar, a venue that had been removed from the approved list of protest sites. A rally at Central Park was subsequently organised by the group.
Neha Bora, who holds the national presidency of both Aam Aadmi Party and the All India Students Association, was among those whose attendance at the event was noted in reports. A public advisory from Delhi Police urged residents to stay away from Central Park. A notice from the New Delhi Municipal Council confirmed that both Friday and Saturday would see the area kept off-limits to members of the public, citing administrative grounds for the restriction.
A gathering of senior officers — among them the Joint Commissioner and the District Commissioner of Police for New Delhi — was convened by Delhi Police Commissioner Anurag Kumar ahead of the event. The possibility of shutting down Metro stations as a measure of last resort was raised by a police official, according to broadcast reports.
Movement restrictions were put in place across Connaught Place and the surrounding neighbourhoods, with DCP (PRO) Neha Yadav's Thursday night communiqué to news outlets citing the preservation of public order and the safeguarding of both human welfare and property — whether privately or publicly held — as the grounds for the measure. Authorisation for the gathering had not been given, the statement made clear, though officers would support a defined group of attendees wishing to sing the national anthem and raise the flag at an appropriate venue.
By Friday, a deployment of roughly 25,000 personnel across New Delhi had been arranged, with an additional 5,000 brought in to cover the march. A line of detention vehicles had been positioned along the road outside Palika Bazaar. Roughly sixteen units took up positions along the stretch running from Tolstoy Road through to Sansad Marg on Thursday, while a deployment of 220 Central Armed Police Forces companies had been set aside to cover the New Delhi district. According to the statement released, 30 of the 220 participating companies would be assigned to operate during each individual shift, with three shifts scheduled across the day.
Personnel are to be stationed across New Delhi, its surrounding districts, border zones, and other designated locations. One officer added that attendance at Central Park was projected to reach between 30,000 and 50,000 people, and that because camera coverage there had previously been limited, new units had been installed; deployment could also be scaled up to 60 companies per shift overnight if crowd numbers warranted additional security personnel.
Ten CCTV cameras positioned at and near Rajiv Chowk and Central Park were described by authorities as a documentation measure, intended to log activity at the gathering and preserve footage that could be reviewed if any rule breaches or incidents came to require it. A second officer at the scene stated that those found in violation of the rules would be pursued.
Plans for the march route and timing are being drawn up by those at the top of the command structure. Personnel from neighbouring districts are being brought in to reinforce the deployment, given that Connaught Place spans too wide an area to be managed through barricades alone. Officers noted that numerous access points exist across the venue, making it difficult to monitor all of them without causing disruption to the public or affecting order — though barricades were being considered, no road closures had been put in place.
Trader associations affiliated with Connaught Place submitted appeals to police, documented in an official release, seeking assurances of order and the prevention of unlawful gatherings across the festive period. Traders in the area told reporters that the CJP demonstrations had dealt a further blow to their businesses, with one trader noting that recovery from the July unrest over the NEET examination paper leak had barely begun before this latest disruption took hold.
A retail shop owner noted that four trading days had already been lost in the opening weeks of the festive period, adding that while the right to demonstrate is acknowledged, so too is the need to earn a livelihood. The president of the New Delhi Traders Association urged demonstrators to pursue their goals without disrupting the livelihoods that currently sustain the city's commercial community. Local commerce in the area fell to around a tenth of its usual volume when the protest campaign led by the CJP unfolded in July over the NEET paper leak, with the speaker noting that approximately 25,000 workers draw their income from that sector.
Abhijeet Dipke, who heads the CJP, announced a Tiranga Yatra for Wednesday in response to the detention of co-convenors Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, both placed in judicial custody for five days, while separately noting that Central Park was not an appropriate venue for protests. The detentions at Jantar Mantar came just two days after an executive magistrate had released CJP leaders under a one-year bond requiring them to keep the peace and conduct themselves accordingly.
On 10 October, those individuals were taken into custody after taking part in coordinating a street demonstration — one that proceeded without government clearance — where attendees voiced demands that Gyanesh Kumar, who holds the post of Chief Election Commissioner, vacate his position over disputed concerns about the reliability of voter registration data.
