Delhi braces for more protests against election chief amid crackdown
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x whatsapp-stroke copylink google Add Al Jazeera on Google info A demonstrator is detained by police during a protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, in New Delhi, India, October 4, 2026 [Adnan Abidi/Reuters] By Yashraj Sharma Published On 12 Oct 2026 12 Oct 2026 New Delhi, India — India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has returned to the streets of central New Delhi, leading dozens of members of parliament demanding the election chief’s resignation, as protests gather momentum.
Gandhi, heir to India’s most influential political dynasty, is seeking to turn a summer youth uprising into a broader challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade-long dominance of Indian politics, putting the Hindu nationalist government under growing pressure.
In a press briefing on Monday, Gandhi said the Modi government had put the capital city “in jail”.
The youth-led “Cockroach” movement that forced out the education minister in July has also threatened to protest on Tuesday if it is not allowed to rally at Jantar Mantar in central Delhi, which was the focus of summer demonstrations.
Joining Gandhi’s Congress party, other opposition forces and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) are thousands of students from left-wing organisations. As the government braces for further protests, security forces have been detaining thousands of students every day, with allegations of custodial violence casting a climate of fear over the capital.
India’s Election Commission, a supposedly autonomous body tasked with overseeing the world’s largest electorate, has been criticised after revelations that its chief, Gyanesh Kumar, frequently overruled concerns raised by the other two election commissioners about the integrity of changes to the voter database.
For months, India’s opposition parties have argued that the election commission is compromised, sabotaging elections at the behest of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its electoral benefit. The BJP denies the allegations.
Since June last year, the commission has been revising and updating statewide voter lists. It has since removed more than 130 million names, which critics say has disproportionately deprived minorities and other vulnerable groups in India of the right to vote.
Gandhi has called for the Chief Election Commissioner to be tried for treason. “We will not spare you,” he said, referring to Kumar, at his Monday press briefing.
Opposition politicians allege that protest rallies by leaders including Gandhi have been met with violent and brutal force, as seen in videos showing them being detained.
“[The protesters] came with love in their hearts, not hatred or anger,” Gandhi said, referring to a protest on Saturday. “They were beaten, both by cops and BJP goons.”
“Narendra Modi … cannot silence India’s voice. These cowards cannot intimidate us. They will have to step aside,” he wrote on X, calling on people from all walks of life to join the protest on Monday.
Analysts say circumstances this time around are starkly different to the summer protests, when CJP-led demonstrators demanded the resignation of then-Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Asim Ali, a political analyst in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera that the mobilisation of the wider opposition would not stop, but the Modi government was unlikely to back down.
“The crackdown this time on students is making it apparent that it would be tougher for young protesters this time, and students can’t get beaten up and dragged violently daily,” he said. “Going forward, the opposition parties stand to be the front face of the protests, and they need to lead from the front.”
Since 1975, when then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed a state of national emergency suspending civil liberties, “India saw more civil politics grow into mainstream, where opposition parties were allowed space,” Ali said.
He added that after five decades, “those democratic gains have vanished – and there are no constraints on this government by independent institutions.”
Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst, said he has seen New Delhi at the centre of “several big opposition political rallies, held in areas near the parliament, hosting hundreds of thousands of people,” when the police did not interfere, unlike the crackdowns this year.
Kidwai said that the violent detention of members of parliament, in particular, was worrying.
“We are seeing a big change from when politicians were more tolerant of dissent,” he added.
With an unprecedented security deployment in central New Delhi designed to prevent protest, youth leaders are turning to new tactics.
Neha Bora, the president of All India Students’ Association (AISA), a left-wing group affiliated with the Communist Party of India, has often tricked Delhi police in order to stage protests.
Bora, a post-doctoral student of theatre, came to national prominence for her fiery speeches in the July protests, becoming a leading face of the Gen Z movement challenging Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics.
Aditi Thakur, a 23-year-old student in the capital, has turned on notifications for all of Bora’s posts on social media. “A call to protest can come anytime, anywhere,” she told Al Jazeera.
Bora does not reveal when or where she is going to stage a protest until just 30 minutes before, to avoid detentions by the…
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