‘Open Emergency-Like Situation’ Across the Country, Says CJP; We Will Keep Protesting Till the CEC Goes
New Delhi: Just a few hours after they walked out of detention, the Cockroach Janta Party leaders stood at the Press Club of India on Sunday and spoke the way people actually speak when they’re angry and tired. Saurav Das looked at the reporters and said the whole country right now feels like an open emergency. The kind we last saw in 1975. “Delhi has been turned into a cantonment,” he said. Thirty to forty thousand security people everywhere. Fifty-seven metro stations shut. Rajdhani trains cancelled. Markets forced closed on a Sunday. Ordinary people made to suffer so that they start blaming the protestors instead of the government. He said the Modi government has put the state against its own citizens. They could have simply called a few of us for talks. Instead they locked the capital down. The CJP wants Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign. They say the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists is full of problems and the right to vote itself is under threat. The Election Commission denies everything, of course. Das, Ashutosh Ranka and founder Abhijeet Dipke had been picked up the day before as soon as they landed in Delhi. On Sunday a magistrate let them go after they put up Rs 50,000 surety each and agreed not to “breach the peace” for one year. Das almost laughed when he talked about that condition. “They say we should not breach the peace for one year. The people who breached the peace are Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Gyanesh Kumar.” Ranka was plain. “This protest will not stop till Kumar resigns.” He said Jantar Mantar is a designated protest site. Peaceful protest there cannot be called a breach of peace. “Protests will happen, not just in Delhi, but across the country,” Das added. Saturday had been heavy. Police say about 2,500 people were detained. Other numbers going around are closer to 7,000. Central Delhi sealed. Mobile networks cut in places. Force brought in from Kashmir, Bengal, Naxal areas. The CJP says phones of detained activists were taken without proper papers and they fear the phones have been compromised. Journalists covering the protests were also hassled, according to them. Opposition leaders are saying the same thing. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called it an undeclared emergency. He and Rahul Gandhi plan to meet the Chief Justice of India. Gandhi said the more they try to suppress Gen Z, the angrier the young people will get. Police keep saying everything was done by the book to keep order. The heavy deployment will stay because more protests are expected. The Supreme Court has already said no illegal detention of peaceful protestors and that metro and trains should run normally. The CJP started as a Gen Z response after a court remark about jobless youth and cockroaches. They are not a registered party. They just keep saying the same thing: free and fair elections cannot happen with this CEC. Kumar has to go. The SIR has to be fixed. At the press conference they made it clear. We did not sign any bond that stops us from coming back on the streets. The protest is on. It will not stop until the Chief Election Commissioner resigns. And right now, they say, the country is living through something that looks and feels exactly like an open emergency. Sources: Economic Times, News9live, BBC, New Indian Express, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Free Press Journal, Deccan Chronicle, PTI. @Rohit Manral
If Gyanesh Kumar Goes, Modi Will Have to Follow Suit: Dipke
Mumbai, October 3 – Abhijeet Dipke is not mincing words anymore. The Cockroach Janta Party founder stood at Shivaji Park in Dadar and said straight out that if Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar does not resign, then Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have to go as well. He called the whole thing “vote chori” on a massive scale. Dipke claimed nearly 13 crore names have been struck off the voter lists in the last couple of years. That number, he said, is no coincidence. It lines up with the difference between the NDA and the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. According to him, once Kumar took over as CEC, the government started deciding who gets to vote and who does not. “Is this still democracy?” he asked the crowd. Dipke did not stop at the Election Commission. He pointed the finger directly at the Prime Minister. He said Modi is the one pulling the strings. If the Centre refuses to make Kumar quit, then the protests will demand Modi’s resignation next. “If Gyanesh Kumar does not leave his post, the Prime Minister will have to resign,” he told the gathering. He warned that Jantar Mantar 2.0 is coming, and even if they lock him up for three months, he will come back. The protest itself had a mix of young faces. People held placards, did street plays, sang a bit. Dipke announced the next steps: similar protests in Goa, Karnataka, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. If nothing happens by the end of October, they will camp at Jantar Mantar in Delhi. He made it clear CJP will not join the opposition’s planned protest on October 6. They want to stay separate. He put the current mess in a longer story. After 2024 did not go as the BJP hoped, he said they turned to voter-list changes in Maharashtra, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Stalin and Kejriwal, he claimed, lost because so many voters simply disappeared from the rolls. At the same time, he said the party let opposition governments stay in some places while tightening its grip on the bigger states. He compared it to match-fixing. Dipke also spoke about the constant party-hopping. He said 111 sitting MLAs and MPs switched sides between 2022 and 2026. If legislators can be bought like that, why bother with elections at all? Just auction the seats like IPL players, he said. He brought up the splits in Shiv Sena, NCP and other regional parties, arguing the real aim is one country, one party. There is the internal report hanging over everything. The Indian Express had detailed how Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi put formal objections on record at least 14 times in ten months. Some of those notes said decisions were taken without them even knowing. The Commission’s line has been that different views are normal and every order is legally sound. Kumar is a 1988-batch Kerala cadre IAS officer. He became CEC in February 2025. Earlier he worked in the Home Ministry around the Article 370 decision and the Ram temple trust. He was the first CEC chosen under the 2023 law that changed how the panel is selected. Opposition parties have been after him for months over the Special Intensive Revision. CJP has now raised the stakes by tying his job to the Prime Minister’s. Dipke also made a broader appeal. He said the last twelve years have been spent dividing people on Hindu-Muslim lines. He asked people to put that aside and stand together as Indians first. Support whoever you want, he said, but right now the vote itself is under threat. Whether any of this forces a resignation is another matter. The Election Commission has given no sign that Kumar is leaving. The government has treated the internal notes as ordinary differences. Still, Dipke’s words at Shivaji Park have made the demand sharper. In his telling, Kumar and Modi are now linked. The protests are set to continue, and CJP says it will not back down until the CEC goes. Sources:ETV Bharat report on Dipke’s Mumbai statements, October 3, 2026Deccan Chronicle, Hindustan Times, Outlook India, ThePrint, Moneycontrol and PTI coverage of CJP protests and the SIR row, September 24 to October 2, 2026Indian Express investigation into objections inside the Election Commission @Rohit Manral