The Cockroach Janta Party has claimed that at least 10,000 people were detained across India ahead of its planned protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on October 10, but the figure and the wider allegations have not been independently established in the supplied report.
Party spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka made the claim on Friday, saying those detained included students from Pune who were travelling to Delhi for the demonstration. The party alleged that the students were taken away in a bus to an unknown location. The report did not include a response from the police or any other authority confirming the number of detentions or the locations where people were allegedly held.
The planned protest is against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The party says the exercise has resulted in the alleged deletion of voters and is demanding accountability from Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Union government. The Election Commission’s role in the alleged deletions, and the party’s claims about coordination with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, could not be independently established from the material supplied.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke said the protest would go ahead even if party leaders were detained or arrested. At a press conference on Thursday, he criticised restrictions on public gatherings in Delhi and contrasted them with protests in Mumbai and Bengaluru. He argued that Jantar Mantar should remain accessible to citizens and political groups seeking to raise public issues.
The party said its national spokesperson Deepak Baliyan was taken into police custody on Thursday and released later that night. CJP spokesperson Saurav Das alleged that party members and young participants had faced what he described as “mass detentions” in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Delhi. These claims also require confirmation from the relevant police and administrative authorities.
The dispute places Delhi’s designated protest spaces within a broader question about how public demonstrations are regulated in the capital. Jantar Mantar is routinely used for political and civic mobilisation, but access to the site is subject to permissions, security arrangements and restrictions imposed by authorities. The supplied report does not specify whether the planned march had received permission, what conditions had been imposed, or whether any prohibitory orders were in force.
The CJP has linked the proposed mobilisation to allegations that living people were incorrectly marked as dead in electoral records despite producing documents such as Aadhaar and PAN cards. Dipke also referred to alleged deletions in constituencies associated with opposition leaders, including former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. The report does not provide electoral-roll documents, official findings or an Election Commission response independently confirming these allegations.
Actor Prakash Raj said civil society organisations in Karnataka had spent nearly a year documenting alleged irregularities in the SIR exercise. He said testimonies, including those of people allegedly declared dead in electoral records, had been presented before a tribunal and that the issue extended beyond Karnataka. The report does not identify the tribunal or provide its findings.
The immediate facts requiring confirmation are the number and location of people allegedly detained, the legal basis for any custody, the status of the Pune students, and whether the October 10 protest has been granted permission. Official responses from the Delhi Police, the concerned state police forces, the Election Commission and district administrations would be necessary to establish the central claims.
