Leaders of the youth movement that calls itself "cockroach" were taken into custody on Tuesday after they crossed police barriers to reach a well-known protest venue in Delhi, where they called for the chief election commissioner to step down over changes made to voter registration rolls.
Supporters of the Congress of India Party (CJP) and various opposition factions have staged near-daily demonstrations throughout the month, pressing for the removal of election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar amid disputed changes to voter rolls that critics contend removed millions of registered names in ways that favoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Election Commission denied partisan favouritism, noting that any voter whose name had been wrongly dropped from electoral rolls retained the option to seek reinstatement. The BJP maintained that rival parties were working to undermine confidence in voting procedures it held to be lawful.
On Monday, tens of thousands took part in a march organised by opposition groups, coming days after authorities moved to block a weekend rally planned by the CJP — an operation that resulted in the detention of large numbers of protesters, among them CJP leaders. Delhi Police on Monday put forward three alternative venues, following their declaration that Jantar Mantar — the open-air observatory situated within the capital's central business district — would no longer serve as an authorised location for demonstrations.
The organisation stated that roughly 20 individuals, including its representatives Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das, and Ajinkya Shinde, entered the observatory without authorisation in what the group described as an effort to reclaim it, and that all were subsequently taken into detention. Footage from a CJP livestream captured roughly ten to fifteen individuals scaling a gate and clearing barricades to reach the location, where they displayed the Indian flag and raised vocal slogans until police took them into custody.
No comment was forthcoming from Delhi Police when approached for a response.
Demonstrations against concerns spanning school infrastructure and employment have placed the youth movement — active over recent months — among the notable political tests facing Modi and the BJP. Protests over leaked examination papers led to weeks of gatherings at Jantar Mantar by those backing Pradhan, a period of unrest that ultimately preceded his exit from the Education Ministry.
Isolated gatherings also took shape on Tuesday — among them one at Connaught Place, a commercial centre in Delhi, where broadcast footage captured officers loading dozens of students affiliated with the Congress party's youth wing onto buses as the group attempted to hold a sit-in. Demonstrators on the march through Patna — among them members affiliated with left-leaning student organisations — pushed against police barricades in an attempt to move past them.
Roughly 150 journalists gathered at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, marching through the streets to protest the detention of reporters who had been covering events on the ground that weekend.
The demonstrations followed a broadcaster's release of findings — published roughly a month beforehand — that two officials working under Kumar had separately raised internal objections covering electoral roll changes, how voters were being registered, and the integrity of digital infrastructure.
Rolled out beginning the prior year, the process stripped roughly 130 million entries from electoral registers — a figure that exceeds Japan's entire population — breaking down into approximately 28 million records belonging to deceased individuals, 63 million tied to people who had moved address, and a further 30 million where no trace of the registrant could be established.
Opposition parties argue that the deletions land disproportionately on Muslim voters and other minority communities — groups whose electoral support for the ruling nationalist party has historically been limited — a characterisation that both the election commission and the BJP have disputed.
