India: Mass Detentions Amid Protests Demanding Election Commissioner's Resignation; Supreme Court Halts; New Delhi Accuses UN of "Double Standards"

According to Deutsche Welle, India's Supreme Court convened a rare special hearing on Sunday, ordering a ban on illegal detentions of peaceful protesters and demanding the restoration of Delhi metro and rail services unless regulation was genuinely necessary for maintaining public order.

The ruling directly targeted Section 163 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which was invoked under special procedures in multiple locations across Delhi on Saturday—a provision prohibiting all gatherings and protests. The Supreme Court emphasized that peaceful assemblies should be permitted, particularly in areas outside the scope of the ban. The court also ordered the removal of notices regarding the implementation of Section 163 from the vicinity of its own building to address concerns about access to justice, and directed that lawyers and journalists must not be obstructed in the performance of their duties.

The trigger for this special hearing was the movement demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, launched by the youth-led "Cockroach Janta Party." The protests targeted the nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls overseen by Kumar. According to Deutsche Welle, approximately 130 million names have been removed from voter lists since the procedure was launched.

According to Deutsche Welle, citing The Hindu and Delhi police sources, approximately 2,500 protesters were detained in Delhi during Saturday's demonstrations, with another roughly 1,000 taken into custody in "preventive measures" the previous night. Police carried out mass detentions on the grounds of violating the assembly ban, and stated that all those detained had been released by that evening.

However, Ajeenkya Sindh, the interim protest leader of the "Cockroach" movement, claimed that more than 15,000 people nationwide—including students—were detained during the protests. The same day, reports from Mumbai indicated that approximately 600 people were detained and later released, among them Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and Bollywood actor Imran Khan.

India's Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement on Sunday rejecting a call from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Saturday for the immediate and unconditional release of those "arbitrarily detained." New Delhi described the body's concern as "entirely unwarranted," constituting "unacceptable interference in internal affairs," and accused it of adopting an "extremely selective" public stance. The statement alleged that the body applied "double standards," saying its actions would "only erode the credibility of multilateralism" and "fuel the erosion of trust in multilateralism."

India's Ministry of External Affairs counter-posed that, since the body had "remained silent" on "violent responses to protests" in "India's neighbourhood" and on law enforcement actions in "its adjacent region," it had no basis to "castigate" India. The statement simultaneously asserted that India is "the world's largest democracy," and that the right to peaceful assembly is "guaranteed by the Constitution and upheld by robust institutions, an independent judiciary and a free press."

The cost of bail for the "Cockroach" movement's leaders was not light. According to Deutsche Welle, citing India's Asian News International (ANI), police released movement founder Abhijit Dipak, co-convener Saurav Das and Ashutosh Lankesh on bail of 50,000 rupees (approximately 460 euros), with the condition of "not breaching the peace and maintaining good behaviour" for one year. Ratna Sindh, the movement's head of legal affairs, had previously stated on social platform X that the three leaders had been denied access to lawyers during detention, and that police had "kidnapped" the three from a plane "like gang bosses."

At a press conference after his release, Das described the governance system as "broken, corrupt, and serving only two people," naming Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. He reiterated the determination to struggle at the press conference: "We will not retreat, we call on all Indian citizens, we must resist. Wherever you are, you must demonstrate peacefully." Lankesh stated: "The battle has only just begun... Modi and Shah should be ashamed of treating this struggle as a war." Dipak posted on platform X that Modi was "a disgrace to India as Prime Minister," calling him a "coward" and a "bully."

As of this article's publication, Modi himself had not directly responded to the protests; on Sunday he was in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, laying the foundation for development projects worth more than 130 billion rupees. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) characterized the movement as "anarchist." According to Deutsche Welle, BJP national president Nitin Nabin said on Saturday that this was a competition to "prove who is more anarchist," listing both the INDIA alliance led by opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and the leaders of the "Cockroach" movement. BJP legislator Bansuri Swaraj also told reporters on Sunday that a competition to "manufacture anarchism" was unfolding between Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi, accusing the opposition camp of "looking for excuses for electoral defeat" after losing elections.

At the core of the controversy surrounding Kumar is an investigation by The Indian Express last month. According to Deutsche Welle, citing that report, two election commissioners within the Election Commission had raised formal objections at least 14 times over the past ten months to SIR-related decisions, concerning voter registration, deletions and restorations, and control of electoral roll data. In one of the objections, a commissioner accused the commission of acting "without authorization and unlawfully," having failed to adopt the written recommendations of the two commissioners. The Election Commission publicly responded that all decisions were lawful, emphasizing that "differences of opinion are a routine part of the decision-making process." Kumar himself has not publicly responded to the related allegations.

The opposition and critics pointed out that those removed from the electoral rolls included large numbers of minority voters, accusing the BJP of using SIR to seek advantages in future elections. The Election Commission countered that SIR merely removed deceased, migrated and duplicate voters, and that it helped prevent "foreign illegal immigrants" from being included on the rolls.

The dispute over the nature of the detentions is equally sharp: police characterized the operations as "preventive arrests," while the "Cockroach" movement accused the police of detentions approaching "kidnapping," with the two sides' accounts currently contradicting each other. YouTuber Heru Late was detained at his Gurugram residence early Saturday morning and later released; Reuters, citing an anonymous official at the Ministry of Home Affairs, reported that one of the conditions of release was that he not participate in any further protests.

The "Cockroach" movement vowed on Sunday to continue the struggle. Sindh posted on platform X: "Detain us, arrest us, do whatever you want! We will not be intimidated. This is just the beginning. We will continue to fight until all our demands are met."