Opposition leaders Mamata Banerjee and Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday condemned the arrest of three Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) leaders in Delhi, lashing out at the BJP-led Centre as two of them were lodged in Tihar Jail.
Delhi Police placed CJP leaders Ashutosh Ranka, Saurav Das and Ajinkya Shinde under preventive arrest on Tuesday for allegedly trespassing in the Jantar Mantar area, recently denotified as a designated venue for demonstrations. The trio allegedly breached barricades, raised slogans demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation and displayed the national flag.
Ranka and Das were also accused of violating peace bonds they had previously signed. Shinde was granted bail, but the other two, produced before an executive magistrate on Wednesday morning, were sent to five days’ judicial custody in Tihar Jail.
Banerjee, a former West Bengal chief minister, called the arrests an “attempt to intimidate and silence an entire generation”. “This is unacceptable. We must never surrender our constitutional rights,” she said.
“This murdering of democracy is happening in many parts of the country. At this moment, 14,000 of our people in Bengal are facing the brunt of police and political atrocities,” she claimed.
Banerjee had joined opposition protests in the capital demanding the immediate resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner. Backing an agitation initiated by the CJP and supported by the INDIA bloc, she raised concerns over “vote chori” (vote theft) and alleged manipulation of electoral rolls tied to the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.
“A government that has forgotten that ‘it is of the people, by the people, for the people’ is nearing its end,” she wrote on X. “To the millions of young people I say: Your Didi is with you – today and forever!”
Abhishek Banerjee, the Diamond Harbour MP from the Mamata-led TMC faction, mocked the BJP on X: “The so-called biggest nationalists are now arresting Indians for unfurling and waving the Tricolour in their own country, an act which, according to the Union Government, constitutes a breach of peace.”
TMC faction leaders Derek O’Brien and Mahua Moitra also criticised the Delhi Police action. Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, DMK chief and former Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin, AAP leader and ex-Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, CPI general secretary D Raja, NCP MP Supriya Sule and Shiv Sena (UBT) Maharashtra MLA Aditya Thackeray have raised concerns over the arrests.
Kharge, the Congress chief, accused the BJP of “authoritarianism”, alleging the government was suppressing dissent through protest restrictions and attempting to disenfranchise voters.
“First vote theft, then ‘theft of the right to protest’—this is proof of BJP’s authoritarianism,” he said, referring to the de-notification of Jantar Mantar as a protest site. “No one will bow before the oppressive policies of Modi-Shah anymore,” he added, saying the country would hold the BJP accountable for its actions.
He alleged that those questioning the government were being jailed, young protesters were being beaten with batons and women demonstrators were facing police brutality, and there was “open impunity for RSS thugs”.
Kharge also criticised Home Minister Amit Shah over his reported description of the 133 million people excluded during the SIR exercise as “infiltrators”. “Declaring 13.3 crore Indians outside SIR as ‘infiltrator’ by the home minister is an insult to Indianness,” he said.
The remarks came amid protests in Delhi called by the CJP and other political groups over alleged irregularities in the SIR of electoral rolls. On October 10, Delhi Police deployed around 41,000 security personnel, detained nearly 7,000 people, barricaded Jantar Mantar and restricted access to 45 Metro stations.
The matter has also reached the Supreme Court, where petitions have challenged the restrictions on protests and the detention of demonstrators and journalists.
