Hundreds of supporters of the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)protested in India’s financial capital Mumbai yesterday, kicking off a new nationwide campaign against changes to voter rolls they say benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing party.
The demonstration marks the latest in a series of youth-led protests that have emerged this year, putting pressure on Modi unprecedented in his 12 years in power.
Critics say a nationwide voter-verification exercise launched last year has led to millions of eligible voters being removed from electoral rolls.
The commission, long regarded as one of the country’s most trusted institutions, says the exercise is intended to remove duplicate, deceased or ineligible voters.
The chief of the Election Commission, Gyanesh Kumar, who is at the heart of the criticism, has not commented.
Hundreds of supporters of CJP in Mumbai waved the Indian flags at the protest site and shouting ‘Gyanu it’s done bro.’ Some carried placards that read ‘THE JANTA HAS A SPINE, GYANU MUST RESIGN.’
Led by Abhijeet Dipke, the CJP - which adopted the name after India’s chief justice called unemployed youth and online activists ‘cockroaches’ - gained national prominence after spearheading mass protests over exam-paper leaks; those protests led to the resignation of India’s education minister.
Pressure on Kumar intensified last month after the Indian Express newspaper reported the election chief’s two deputies had formally raised concerns at least 14 times over the past 10 months over voter-list revisions, registration procedures and the commission’s digital systems.
The Election Commission has said differing views are normal in internal deliberations.
Saurav Das, CJP’s spokesperson told Reuters, protests will continue until Kumar resigns.
“We will protest for few hours today. Apart from Mumbai, we will do Goa, Kolkata, Bangalore, this whole month,” he said.
However, in Delhi, a separate group of student protesters was not allowed to gather, with batches of them bundled into buses and taken away by the police.
Several nearby Metro stations remained shut and security was tightened.
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