CJP Sets an October 10 March Over Voter-Roll Cuts

Abhijeet Dipke has called a Delhi march on October 10 if Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar does not resign over the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls. The Cockroach Janta Party founder set the date after a Gandhi Jayanti rally at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park, while Delhi Police detained about 550 people outside a sealed Jantar Mantar.

That date does not put the old list back. The Election Commission says SIR is already finished in 20 states and Union Territories, and it is sending booth-level officers out with Form 6 rather than restoring the January 2025 roll.

Mumbai Got the Park, Delhi the Barricades

On October 2, CJP filled Shivaji Park even after Mumbai Police refused permission. The Mumbai Police Special Branch put the crowd at 9,000 to 10,000 around 4 pm, and the gathering stayed peaceful. About 300 police were on the ground. Roads around the park were blocked and then opened once the speeches ended.

Dipke was joined by actors Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, and by Tushar Gandhi. Vishal Dadlani sang “Mera rang de basanti chola” and then changed the lines to call on Kumar to quit. Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, both strong in Dadar, backed the rally. Dipke thanked the police for their cooperation, and so did Dadlani.

Delhi ran the other way. Permission for Jantar Mantar was refused, prohibitory orders went in, and more than 4,000 police were posted in zoned rings under DCP-rank officers, with drones overhead. Delhi Metro shut entry and exit at 12 central stations. Over five hours, people walking in from Ashoka Road, Janpath and Tolstoy Road were put on buses to Fatehpur Beri and Badarpur.

WHO WAS TAKEN IN ON FRIDAY

• AAP leaders: Former Delhi chief minister Atishi, Saurabh Bharadwaj and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh were among those loaded into buses.
• Other parties: RJD MP Manoj Jha was detained, along with student leaders from AISA, SFI and NSUI.
• Civil society: Swaraj India member Yogendra Yadav and RTI activist Nikhil Dey were picked up after hundreds had already been moved.

Bharadwaj had told reporters that AAP applied for a peaceful demonstration six days earlier and was still refused. In a video from a police station, Atishi said, “We were protesting peacefully at Jantar Mantar. The Delhi Police picked AAP leaders and workers with barbarism and brutality.” Police said every detainee was released by evening and denied manhandling anyone.

On October 3, Delhi Police registered three FIRs over Friday’s attempt to reach Jantar Mantar, with organisers listed and no accused named. AISA national president Neha Bora said the sit-in would continue. Indian Youth Congress president Uday Bhanu Chib filed a writ in the Delhi High Court against the denial of permission. Former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, speaking at Kolkata airport after an INDIA bloc meeting, said she fully supported CJP, the young generation and students, and asked that the “atrocities” stop.

Draft Rolls Lost 13.3 Crore Names

The resignation chant is aimed at one man. The list that protesters want restored is already a different document. Commission data on the draft rolls put deletions so far at about 13.3 crore names. About 7.2 crore of those came in the first two phases across 13 states and Union Territories. About 6.16 crore have come in the third phase as draft lists for 18 states and Union Territories have been published.

The Commission has said that headline is a draft-stage count of people marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate, not the number struck from final published rolls. Eligible people can still file claims. That distinction is doing a lot of political work, because the street argument treats 13.3 crore as franchise taken away, and the Commission’s books treat most of it as people who died, moved, or could not be found.

WHY NAMES LEFT THE DRAFT ROLLS

Bihar is the one large state where a final SIR roll is already out. The list fell from 78.9 million electors on June 24, 2025, to 74.2 million on September 30, 2025, a net cut of about 4.7 million, or about 6%. Delhi’s draft is harsher: the electorate dropped from 1.45 crore to 97.53 lakh, a 32.8% cut, with most of the loss tagged as absent or shifted.

Pawan, a 36-year-old IT worker from Andhra Pradesh who was in the Delhi crowd, put the stake in one line. “The resignation of CEC Gyanesh isn’t the only thing. People are upset over SIR. This is about disenfranchisement of millions of voters,” he said.

Fourteen Objections From Inside Nirvachan Sadan

The street fight heated up after Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi were described as having recorded written objections on at least 14 occasions over 10 months, including four times on a single day, on voter registration, deletions, Form 6 and roll management. Advocate Shailendra Mani Tripathi has asked the Supreme Court for a special investigation team into the deletions, citing those notes.

The Commission’s reply is that internal notes are normal in a three-member body and that every SIR order had unanimous approval. That includes the June 24, 2025, order that started the exercise with Bihar, the October 27, 2025, schedule for 12 states and Union Territories, and the May 14, 2026, schedule for 19 more. The Supreme Court upheld the SIR order on May 27, 2026, the Commission said. The final elector count, it added, will be known only after final publication in the remaining 12 states of Phase III.

HOW THE SIR WAS ROLLED OUT

1. June 24, 2025: The Commission issues the pan-India SIR order, beginning with Bihar.
2. October 27, 2025: It issues the schedule for 12 states and Union Territories.
3. May 14, 2026: It issues the schedule for 19 states and Union Territories.
4. May 27, 2026: The Supreme Court upholds the SIR order.
5. September 26, 2026: All three commissioners meet at Nirvachan Sadan, extend claim windows in Delhi and Maharashtra, and order home visits for some notice cases.

On September 26 the Commission also said agendas will circulate before meetings, minutes will follow, and a committee with an independent IIT or IIIT expert will review ECINet. It did not suspend SIR. Kumar, speaking in Ahmedabad on September 10, said name-exclusion complaints would be “110 per cent” resolved before the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, and that an intensive revision had last been run in 2003-04.

Why Deleted Voters Must File Form 6

For people whose names dropped off a finished SIR roll, the Commission’s path back is not a reversal of the revision. It is a fresh Form 6 application for new voters. On October 1, Under Secretary Sandeep Kumar told every chief electoral officer to compare the current roll with the pre-SIR list, send booth-level officers house to house, and enrol eligible left-out and first-time voters on Form 6.

Officers are told to cover at least 20 to 25 such electors a week and to finish the walk in about a month, then share the booth-wise lists with party booth-level agents. Camps are to be held for people in night shelters, labour colonies, and for homeless residents. In Goa, 97 people were left off the final roll; the Commission said 81 of those 97 had already filed Form 6 after officers visited.

Delhi’s window for claims and objections now runs to October 30, with disposal extended to November 30. Maharashtra’s claims close on October 12, with disposal by November 10. From September 26, voters tagged unmapped or carrying “logical discrepancies” are not required to appear at the registration office: the booth-level officer is to collect papers at home, and hearings, if any, should be online.

WHERE THE FORM 6 FIGHT SITS

• The Commission: Anyone left out during or after SIR, including young and first-time voters, can apply through continuous updation, and officers must help them do it.
• SY Quraishi: The former chief election commissioner has said Form 6 is only for new electors, and that officials who force deleted voters onto that form are abetting a criminal offence.

That is the trap inside the cleanup. A name restored on Form 6 arrives as a new elector, not as a person put back on the January 2025 list. Congress and other Opposition parties have demanded that the deleted names be restored outright. The Commission has not agreed.

Freeze the SIR, Restore the 2025 List

CJP is a youth campaign that earlier forced a fight over exam-paper leaks. On September 24, Dipke, with co-convenors Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, gave Kumar 48 hours to quit and listed three demands. The 48 hours passed. The Mumbai rally on October 2 was the next step, and Dipke said the stir would run for three months, not three days. He told Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis that even three months in jail would not keep him off the street.

WHAT THE CJP HAS PUT ON THE TABLE

• The CEC: Kumar must resign and face a criminal case, and someone must say who ordered the revision.
• The rolls: SIR must be frozen, upcoming polls halted, and the January 2025 voter list restored.
• The law: The 2023 statute on appointing election commissioners must be repealed and rewritten with civil society in the room.

Kushal Gupte, 34, came from Pune because he said trust in the Commission is gone and that Kumar should resign to get it back. A teenager from Kurla came with her father and sister, talking about the rights of women and other groups who fall off lists first. Those are the voices a park can hold. They do not, by themselves, reopen a roll the Commission has already published in 20 states and Union Territories.

Rajya Sabha MP P. Chidambaram, writing on October 2, asked what had happened to “the 13,30,00,000 voters who were removed from the electoral rolls under S.I.R. without due process,” including people who could not vote in recent assembly elections in Bihar and West Bengal. He said the Maharashtra chief electoral officer had protested, the Odisha CEO had sought early retirement, and the two other commissioners should release their letters. The Commission still says the SIR decisions were unanimous.

The 2023 Law Changed Who Picks the CEC

CJP’s third demand is the piece that outlives any one occupant of Nirvachan Sadan. Until Parliament wrote a statute, the Supreme Court, in the Anoop Baranwal case, had said the President should appoint the chief election commissioner and the election commissioners on the advice of the prime minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and the Chief Justice of India.

Parliament then passed the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023, on December 28, 2023. It came into force in January 2024. A search committee headed by the Union law minister now sends a five-name panel to a selection committee of the prime minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and a Union Cabinet minister nominated by the prime minister. The chief justice is not on that committee. The 2023 law is already in the Supreme Court.

A CEC resignation, if it ever came, would still be filled under that statute. The January 2025 list would still be gone unless the Commission froze SIR, which it has refused to do. In Bihar, even the final cut left a residue that did not fit the usual boxes: Association for Democratic Reforms work on CEO records found 9,968 Bihar deletions with no stated reason among 366,742 names removed after the draft, on top of deaths, shifts and duplicates.

October 10 Is Already on the Calendar

Dipke used X on the night of October 2 to name the next venue. Mumbai Police, on October 3, registered an FIR over the Shivaji Park meeting held without permission, and named him in it. He said he would not be surprised if his handle disappeared before October 10, after a post thanking Banerjee was restricted.

If Gyanesh Kumar doesn’t resign, cockroaches from across India will march to Delhi and protest at Jantar Mantar on October 10. If Delhi Police tries to stop us, wherever they stop us will become our Jantar Mantar.

Abhijeet Dipke, CJP founder, on X

He has said the October 10 gathering will be peaceful and will follow Gandhi. The Commission’s parallel calendar is quieter and heavier. Booth-level officers in states where SIR is done have about a month to walk the missing names under the special drive for left-out electors. Delhi’s claim window stays open until October 30, which means the Jantar Mantar crowd, if it forms, will arrive while those forms can still be filed, and while the old list remains the one thing the Commission will not put back.