Mass Detentions Across India as CJP Rallies Push for Chief Election Commissioner’s Resignation

On a humid Saturday morning, the August Kranti Maidan in Mumbai became a flashpoint. Hundreds of activists, students and a few well‑known faces gathered after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) urged a mass protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

The police, citing a lack of permission, moved in swiftly. At the Gamdevi Police Station an FIR was lodged under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita – disobedience to an order, wrongful restraint and unlawful assembly among them. Within hours, more than four hundred people found themselves behind bars or on the way to the station.

Among those briefly detained was Tushar Gandhi, the great‑grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, who had travelled to the maidan to lead the rally. He was released after a short questioning. Bollywood actor Imran Khan, another high‑profile detainee, even posted a cheeky selfie from inside a police van, captioning it, “Apparently I’m going for a drive.”

The venue itself, August Kranti Maidan, is no ordinary ground – it’s the historic site from where the Quit India Movement was launched in 1942. That weight of history seemed to echo in the chants demanding Kumar’s resignation, a demand sparked by controversy over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

While Mumbai wrestled with the crowd, Delhi saw an even larger police operation. Nearly a thousand protesters tried to march towards Jantar Mantar, only to be stopped at multiple checkpoints. No permission had been granted for the gathering, and the authorities said they were acting pre‑emptively to avoid chaos.

Among Delhi’s detainees were AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and All India Students’ Association leader Neha Bora, alongside several CJP activists and the party’s legal head Ratna Singh. Their arrests underline how the protest has drawn a broad coalition of political and civil‑society figures.

Both city police forces have stressed that the detentions were procedural, filing formal complaints against the participants. Yet the sheer scale of the arrests – over 400 in Mumbai and around 1,000 in Delhi – has raised questions about the space for dissent in India’s bustling democracies.