'Cockroach' protesters demand India's election chief resign over voter list changes
Opposition groups and student activists say the Special Intensive Revision process has deleted voters' names and weakened the Election Commission's independence.
- On Friday, the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party staged mass protests at Mumbai's Shivaji Park, while student coalitions gathered at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar, demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation over alleged voter-roll irregularities.
- Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally recorded 14 objections over 10 months regarding the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which critics allege disenfranchised millions of eligible voters.
- The Congress alleges the process removed 34,25,078 names nationwide, with some regions seeing lists shrink by 30%. Critics claim the revision favored Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party , though officials deny this.
- Authorities responded with heavy police deployments and mass detentions in New Delhi and Mumbai, barricading protest sites and bundling demonstrators into buses for violating prohibitory orders limiting gatherings to fewer than five people.
- Led by CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, the movement intends to expand nationwide with the INDIA bloc scheduling further demonstrations for October 6. The coalition aims to sustain pressure until Kumar's resignation is achieved.
144 Articles
144 Articles
The protest organized by the political-satiric group Cockroach Janta Party (People's Party of Boats) began in Mumbai to demand the resignation of the president of the Indian electoral commission, Gyanesh Kumar: it is reported by several local media,... (ANSA)
A survey published last month by the daily The Indian Express reported irregularities during a major revision of the electoral lists, which led to the removal of millions of names. The Electoral Commission (ECI), long considered one of the country's most respected institutions often called "the largest democracy in the world", rejected any accusation of irregularity in this process. Opposition officials accused Gyanese Kumar, the president of th…
Asian youth mobilize in the face of a deployment of hundreds of police after the 48-hour ultimatum demanding the departure of Kumar for alleged voter registration irregularities
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