Third day of detentions: youth-led vote-rights protests shake Delhi and Mumbai

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI, Oct 4 — Thousands of young protesters took to the streets of Delhi and Mumbai on Sunday demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and police detained demonstrators for a third consecutive day, in the sharpest youth-led challenge yet to the Modi government's handling of the electoral rolls. In Mumbai, opposition leaders Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray led marches calling for the voter-roll revision to be scrapped and for Kumar to quit. In Delhi, protesters gathered near Jantar Mantar in the evening; police detained dozens and ferried them away by bus. Police would not say how many were held across the three days. Cases were registered against some for allegedly violating orders banning mass gatherings in the capital. At the centre of the unrest is the Gen-Z-led Cockroach Janata Party, the youth movement whose agitation forced an education minister's resignation in July. Its convenor Saurav Das told ANI the protests would continue until Kumar resigns. "We have been asking and demanding for a change," he said, "but if our only tool that is left to change anything in our society, the right to vote, is taken away from us," the movement would not stop. The party has announced a major rally in Delhi on October 10. The protesters allege that a nationwide Special Intensive Revision of the rolls, launched last year, has struck millions of eligible voters off the lists in ways that favour the Bharatiya Janata Party. The Election Commission and the government deny the charge. Pressure on Kumar intensified after the Indian Express reported on September 23 that his two deputies, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally raised concerns at least 14 times over ten months about the roll revisions, registration procedures and the commission's digital systems. The commission said internal differences were a normal part of deliberations and that all its actions were lawful. Separately, the National Human Rights Commission has ordered Mumbai police to examine videos, photographs and social media posts over the alleged participation of minors in the Mumbai protest, and to register an FIR if cognisable offences emerge. X and the electronics ministry have been asked to preserve digital evidence. The INDIA bloc has called the agitation a fight to "save democracy" and plans a march to the Election Commission's headquarters on Monday, with district demonstrations on October 13 and 14. The BJP calls the allegations a fake narrative. A 75-year-old man died of a heart attack during the Shivaji Park protest in Mumbai, according to reports. The demonstrations are the latest in a series of youth-led challenges to the Modi government, unprecedented in his twelve years in power.