Central Delhi was sealed on Saturday, with thousands of police and paramilitaries on patrol, metro stations shut, mobile internet suspended and markets closed to guard against a youth protest demanding India’s chief election officer quit.
The protest, called by the “cockroach” youth movement, hopes to draw thousands of demonstrators who want Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to quit over a revision of voter lists that critics say favours Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Touted by the organisers as a protest to “Save Democracy”, it aims to be the biggest of the demonstrations that were launched last week after the Indian Express newspaper reported that Kumar’s deputies had questioned and disagreed with him over the revision process that saw some 130 million voter names removed.
Opposition parties have long alleged that the government is trying to fix voter lists to its advantage and were quick to resurrect the allegations following the report.