India’s Cockroach Youth Movement Says Thousands Detained Before Delhi March

India’s Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), a youth-led movement, says authorities have detained large numbers of its members and allies days before a major antigovernment march in New Delhi planned for Saturday. Al Jazeera and The Guardian both reported the claim, which they could not independently confirm.

The protests center on a revision of India’s voter lists. Demonstrators want the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to resign, saying the process favors Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party. The commission and government deny this.

What the movement says happened on Thursday

CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said in a post on X that “at least 10,000” people had been detained across the country. He said they came from CJP demonstrations, student organizations, affiliated grassroots groups and political parties.

According to the group’s statements, national spokesman Deepak Baliyan was among those taken into police custody. The CJP also said a group of students from the western city of Pune, traveling to Delhi for the protest, was taken away on a bus to an unknown location.

Al Jazeera said it could not immediately verify the claims, though videos posted on X showed activists being put into vans. Reuters, cited by The Guardian, said police did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke responded to a video of the detentions by asking why authorities did not simply declare an emergency.

The dispute over the voter lists

The nationwide review, known as the special intensive revision, has been carried out in most Indian states and federally administered territories, according to The Guardian. The Election Commission has removed more than 130 million names so far, and millions of people have appealed. About 969 million people were eligible to vote in the 2024 election, Al Jazeera reported.

Opposition parties and protesters allege the removals disproportionately hit voters who back the opposition, while voters more likely to support Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were kept or added. The commission and government say the exercise has no political motive and is meant to remove duplicate and ineligible entries while keeping eligible voters registered.

Where the Cockroach movement came from

Al Jazeera reported that the CJP emerged in mid-May after Chief Justice Surya Kant called unemployed youth “cockroaches,” prompting nationwide outrage. The Guardian described it as a movement that began as satire and online campaigning and has since organized street protests across the country.

The Guardian reported that similar CJP-led demonstrations months ago forced the resignation of Modi’s education minister over exam paper leaks. It described the current protests as a new political challenge for Modi midway through his third term.

Opposition leaders and police trade accusations

On Wednesday, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was briefly detained for the third time in two days, according to Al Jazeera. The Guardian reported that his sister Priyanka Vadra and other lawmakers were also briefly held as they tried to reach Jantar Mantar. The Congress Party accused police of using “brute force.”

Delhi Police said the accusations were being used to defame the force. BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia called them the work of an irresponsible, anarchist opposition and said they had no evidence behind them, The Guardian reported.

Why it matters

The dispute touches on who is registered to vote in the world’s largest democracy. Protesters such as 22-year-old architecture student Khushi Shrivastava, speaking to Reuters at a Bengaluru rally, say people who want to vote are being denied that right. Officials say the revision only removes ineligible or duplicate entries. Both sides agree millions of names are affected, and millions of people have filed appeals.

The detention claims add a second issue: whether people can protest freely ahead of Saturday’s march. Police have barricaded the area in Delhi, The Guardian reported.

What happens next

Thousands are expected to march to Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in the capital, on Saturday. Whether the claimed detentions affect turnout remains unclear from the reports.

Sources: Al Jazeera, The Guardian