At least 2,000 people waving the Tricolour filled the inner circle of Connaught Place on Friday evening after police refused them permission to gather at Central Park, the centre of the business and retail district, closed the park itself for two days, and detained Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke hours before the Tiranga Yatra began, less than a week after police detained close to 7,000 people in a sweeping crackdown on the movement, which is demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Last Saturday, protests broke out across central Delhi despite more than 40,000 police and paramilitary personnel, shuttered metro stations and a mobile internet shutdown, as police filled stadiums and police stations with detainees.
Friday’s gathering smaller than previous week’s crackdown
Friday’s protest was much smaller than last Saturday’s, and while it disrupted traffic to some extent (buses to ferry away detainees were parked on the road, reducing the space for traffic), most shops and restaurants in the area remained open.
Connaught Place remained the centre of the protest, but slogans against Kumar were raised well beyond the market, at Mandi House, Janpath Market, Firoz Shah Road and Kasturba Gandhi Marg, and small groups of protesters were still arriving at 9pm.
The march, called by the CJP, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and student organisations, was the latest in the protests demanding the resignation of CEC Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. It came two days after CJP co-conveners Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were arrested for unfurling the national flag at Jantar Mantar, a day after the site was de-notified for protests, and sent to five days’ judicial custody.
Police detain protesters during Tiranga Yatra
Police detained 100-150 protesters and activists through the day, among them Dipke and All India Students’ Association (AISA) president Neha Bora, said a senior police officer at the Police Headquarters, more than 6,000 security personnel deployed across Lutyens’ Delhi. Delhi Police declared the gathering illegal on Thursday, and with the park shut by the New Delhi Municipal Council, the protesters marched on the road around it.
Dipke was picked up in the afternoon. Around 2pm, a police team served him a notice at a friend’s house in Jhandewalan, and in a video released by the CJP an officer can be heard telling him about the march and warning that legal action could follow. Dipke signed the notice. At 4.45pm, as he left the house, he was put into a police car and taken, CJP members said, to Jafarpur Kalan police station. Senior police officers said late on Friday that he was still in custody and would not say when he would be released.
AAP had begun its own march earlier, between 12.30pm and 1pm, carrying a 270-foot tricolour in front of Rashtrapati Bhavan and raising slogans of “Inquilab Zindabad” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.
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By 4pm, hundreds were gathering at Palika Bazaar and around the inner circle of Connaught Place, students and CJP supporters, almost all of them carrying flags, alongside activists of AISA, the Indian Federation of Trade Union (IFTU) and environment activism group Himkhand. Some were pushed back by security personnel on the way but made it through, and the police, with buses parked along the road, could not hold the crowd back.
The crowd spanned generations. “This is the first time I’ve seen Connaught Place like this. I’ve never joined a protest and I’m not a CJP supporter but it’s good to see kids fighting for their rights. We have been hearing of irregularities in SIR for a long time now. I feel government should fix it now,” said Vinod Bajaj, 53, a businessman from Ghaziabad who said he had come only to watch.
Suhana Khan, 22, a student, said she had been detained more than 13 times in the past month. “Why is there so much force? There’s more of them (police) than us. We are here only to show our pride in our national flag. Each time, they take me to a far off station with no help. But I will still come back. I want change. I want fair voting rights,” she said.
A group of men who said they were shopkeepers staged a counter-protest, chanting “Modi, Modi, Modi” and religious slogans, and some threatened to “end” the students’ protest. Police did not detain them.
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AISA president Neha Bora detained at Mandi House
Bora, who had posted on X earlier in the day that “Today, all of central Delhi has become Jantar Mantar!”, called for a second protest at Mandi House, a couple of kilometres away, at 5pm. Around 5.15pm she led dozens of AISA activists from the Mandi House circle towards Central Park, but within minutes she and several others were detained at the circle.
Students accused police online of “abducting” her and taking her, without her phone, to an unknown location.
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An hour later, around 6.15pm, the Students’ Federation of India, the Democratic Youth Federation of India, the All India Students’ Federation and the All India Youth Federation set off with Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas to join the march.
More than a hundred protesters, carrying flags and posters of BR Ambedkar, walked down Kasturba Gandhi Marg and Tolstoy Marg to Palika Bazaar.
At 6.15pm, outside gate number 1 of Palika Bazaar, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi) Sachin Sharma briefed his personnel, asking them to persuade protesters to disperse because traffic had come to a standstill. Police then began pushing protesters off the road, first clearing a lane for vehicles and then removing them from Connaught Place altogether.