New Delhi, India – Heavy police barricades line the streets around Connaught Place, the colonial-era square near Jantar Mantar, on Saturday morning as police have begun detaining small groups of protesters arriving for planned demonstrations. They are here in support of the influential Gen-Z movement and Cockroach Janta Party, which have called for the resignation of India’s election chief, amid a bitter dispute over who gets to vote in the world’s most populous democracy. Protesters are demanding sweeping reforms and a rollback of a controversial voter revision exercise which has struck 130 million names from the voter list.
For now, an eerie silence hangs over parts of central New Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has gone to lengths to turn the city into a fortress, deploying nearly 30,000 personnel onto the streets. Police have also detained the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, Abhijeet Dipke.
Indian TV channels reported early on Saturday that officers met Dipke at the New Delhi airport after he arrived from the financial capital Mumbai and asked him to call off the protest as authorities had banned it. CJP leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were also detained from their flight upon landing, the movement said in a statement. On Friday, the government extraordinarily cancelled all trains to New Delhi; locked down more than 50 metro stations; imposed an internet shutdown; and sent personnel to thousands of students in local communities to warn them against participation in the protest.
Several students en route to New Delhi from different states of India were dragged out of trains and buses and detained by the police. Many have been placed under house arrest in cities hundreds of kilometres away from New Delhi. The Cockroach movement says thousands have been ed across India as Modi’s government intensifies its crackdown.
Yet undeterred protesters have pledged to keep returning to the streets. Current restrictions in the Indian capital and the nationwide crackdown on protesters have evoked memories of the 1975 Emergency, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties, censored the press and jailed political opponents. The youth of this country are no longer scared of you.” Neha Bora, the firebrand Gen-Z protest leader and the national president of the left student body All India Students’ Association, equated the Modi government with British colonialist forces that unsuccessfully clamped down on India’s independence movement.
She called on the masses to join the protest. On Saturday morning, young people were trying to respond to her call despite the police restrictions in place. Santosh Kumar, 29, a street sweeper in the outer circle of Connaught Place, told Al Jazeera he feels frustrated seeing teenagers detained at police barricades.
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