The Delhi high court on Thursday agreed to hear a petition against the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)’s call for supporters to gather with the national flag at Central Park in Delhi's business hub Connaught Place on Friday.
This came after senior advocate Sacchin Puri mentioned the petition filed by Anil Kumar Gupta, a licensed street vendor at Connaught Place, before a bench of acting chief justice Nitin Sambre and justice Sanjay Sharma.
The development also came amid continuous protests against the Election Commission in the Capital, mainly in and around Jantar Mantar, Connaught Place and central Delhi, leading to massive deployment of security forces, rollout of prohibitory orders, traffic disruptions, internet suspensions and detentions of protesters.
“This time it is happening in the heart of CP. A protest has been called. They are going to shut down CP. The festive season has already started. It looks like we are being targeted. CP is not the site. This is Dusshera weekend,” Puri said.
The high court asked the counsel to return at 2.30pm along with the order of the Supreme Court, which is also hearing petitions related to the ongoing protests against the Election Commission, in the Capital on Thursday. “Come at 2:30. We’ll consider,” it said.
On Tuesday, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke called on "patriots" to gather on Friday at Central Park with the national flag, alleging that CJP members Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka have been "jailed only for unfurling the Tricolour".
Das and Ranka were sent to five-day judicial custody and lodged in Tihar Jail for allegedly violating their peace bonds and trespassing into Jantar Mantar, which has been denotified as a protest area.
In his petition, Gupta said Central Park is situated at the heart of Connaught Place, within the Jantar Mantar area, and does not fall within the venues designated as protest sites under a latest order. On Monday, the Delhi Police de-notified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site, ending its standing as the country’s most iconic site for dissent. The order – signed by police commissioner Anurag Kumar – also designated three new protest venues: Ramlila Maidan, Burari Ground in north Delhi and CBD Ground in east Delhi.
Gupta said Palika Bazar, where he conducts his vending activities, is located directly beneath Central Park. He said that unless action is taken in time, roads, footpaths and metro station entrances at Connaught Place are likely to be restricted on Friday, which could cost him, other street vendors and daily-wage earners in the area their livelihood.
“One of the new venues named in the order dated 11.10.2026 is the CBD Ground, East Delhi, the very part of the city in which the Petitioner resides and through which he travels every day to Palika Bazar. Unless the revised SOPs for the new venues ensure that protests there do not block the surrounding roads, the same loss will be repeated in those areas, and the roads connecting East Delhi to Central Delhi may be blocked as well,” the petition said.
It also sought for implementation of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to regulate protests and prevent disruptions to traffic and businesses.
The CJP and opposition parties have been holding protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Over the past week, tens of thousands of people have hit the streets, braving expansive metro closures, internet shutdown, prohibitory orders and 40,000 security personnel who turned the Capital into a virtual fortress and sparked controversy by dragging, manhandling and detaining many agitators. While the Opposition is seeking the removal of Kumar and scrapping the controversial SIR exercise, the Bharatiya Janata Party blames them for trying to destabilise constitutional bodies to deflect attention from their own political and electoral failures.