Indian police detained more than 1,500 people in Delhi on Saturday as the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) tried to hold a protest demanding the resignation of the country's chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, according to bdnews24.com.
Among those held were four former chief ministers of Indian states: Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party, who once led Delhi; Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress, a former chief minister of West Bengal; Pinarayi Vijayan of the CPI(M), a former chief minister of Kerala; and Manik Sarkar, a former chief minister of Tripura.
The CJP has been staging a series of demonstrations calling for Gyanesh Kumar's removal, alleging irregularities in the electoral process, bdnews24.com reported.
Why it matters
The scale of Saturday's detentions makes the protest one of the largest single-day crackdowns on political gatherings in the Indian capital in recent memory, and it placed four nationally prominent opposition figures in custody at once.
The CJP's campaign directly challenges the official overseeing India's elections, at a time when the party says the integrity of the voting process is at stake. The presence of Banerjee, Kejriwal, Vijayan and Sarkar at the attempted rally signals that the demand for Kumar's resignation has drawn support well beyond the party's own ranks, pulling in leaders from several states and different political traditions.
Conflicting accounts of how many were held
News outlets in India gave sharply different figures for the number of people detained. NDTV put the number at more than 1,500, while the Indian Express reported that at least 6,000 people had been taken into custody in Delhi, according to bdnews24.com.
Those held had been trying to reach the CJP's rally. They were picked up from various parts of the city and kept at multiple locations across New Delhi, bdnews24.com reported.
Police said the CJP had not been granted permission to hold the protest. Authorities deployed large numbers of police and paramilitary personnel across Delhi, setting up barricades on roads and restricting movement through the city.
Banerjee released in the evening
Anandabazar Patrika reported that Banerjee was released on Saturday evening, along with other Trinamool Congress leaders who had been detained with her, according to bdnews24.com.
Video circulating after her detention showed a confrontation with police as she sat in protest, and News18 Bengali carried what it described as a live broadcast from a prison van in which Banerjee compared the action to a kidnapping and sang.
Elsewhere in the city, the students' organisation AISA, led by Neha Bora, had announced it would stage a sit-in near Delhi Haat, roughly 10 kilometres from Jantar Mantar, the site of the CJP gathering. Police moved in on the people who assembled there, raising batons and loading them into vans.
Police sources later told NDTV that women and elderly people among those detained would be released. Officers deployed in the city were expected to remain in place until Sunday.
What to watch next: whether the CJP presses ahead with further demonstrations, and whether the differing detention figures reported by Indian outlets are revised as police release those held.
