The state’s escalating war on Its citizens
India is seeing an ongoing crackdown by the state against mass popular mobilisations in New Delhi and across major urban centers. It represents an aggressive escalation in its long-standing assault on democratic rights. What began as scattered grievances over administrative overreach, economic stagnation, and systemic exam leaks has coalesced into a national confrontation.
A call was given for a mass protest demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, who had been exposed for his illegal activities. Kumar has overseen 13 crore (130 million) people being removed from the electoral register – which campaigners are calling a fundamental attack on democracy in India.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s response has not been one of democratic engagement, but of naked coercion: mass police detentions, preventive roundups of youth organisers, the blockade of transport networks, and the militarisation of public spaces. This has been treated as a movement for regime change, accused of being “foreign funded”, and attacked with the entire might of the coercive apparatus.
Historically designated protest grounds like Jantar Mantar, alongside public institutions such as Akashvani Bhavan, have been transformed into fortified zones surrounded by multi-layered steel barricades, riot police, and paramilitary personnel drawn from sensitive border territories. In the capital, the cancellation of long-distance passenger trains and the systematic shutdown of dozens of metro stations serve a single operational purpose: to physically sever the working masses, students, and rural migrants from the political center of the nation.
Under the pretext of preserving “public order” and ensuring “public safety,” the ruling apparatus has deployed coercive state instruments against peaceful assemblies of citizens, parliamentarians, and student activists. Yet, far from demonstrating the structural strength or self-assurance of the state, this heavy reliance on police power signals a crisis of political legitimacy. When a government must deploy thousands of armed personnel and declare vast swathes of its capital off-limits to block citizens from approaching the Election Commission of India (ECI), it implicitly reveals that the ideological consent upon which its hegemony relies has worn thin. The state is forced to govern through administrative decree and raw police force.
10 October: State repression and the defence of democracy
The events in Delhi on 10 October 2026 raise questions that go beyond the conduct of individual police officers. The state mobilised its administrative and coercive resources to prevent a political demonstration from taking place. Airport detentions, restrictions on public transport, barricades and mass preventive detention formed parts of a coordinated operation. The protest demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Instead of facilitating public scrutiny of an institution exercising enormous power over political participation, the authorities sought to prevent citizens from assembling to challenge it. More than 7000 were ‘detained’ not ‘arrested’ – a semantic joke.
The underlying issue was the credibility of the electoral system. Democracy requires opportunities to question how electoral rolls are prepared, how exclusions are corrected and how officials exercise their powers. Suppressing those questions through police action weakens the democratic legitimacy that electoral institutions are supposed to sustain.
Delhi Police defended the refusal of permission to demonstrate by referring to security concerns and the organisers’ failure to provide the required notice. According to The Indian Express, the application was submitted on 7 October against a ten-day notice requirement. That explanation deserves consideration, but it does not settle whether the subsequent measures were justified. A procedural dispute cannot by itself justify detaining organisers as their aircraft lands, obstructing travel across the city or rounding up people near possible protest sites. The Union home ministry instructed state and Union Territory governments to cooperate with Delhi Police and take preventive steps against protesters travelling to the capital. This extends responsibility beyond particular police stations. Negotiation over timing, location and practical arrangements was another available course. The authorities instead used the permission system to prevent the assembly, turning administrative regulation into a powerful restriction on political participation
A Marxist analysis must connect these actions to the state’s role in maintaining existing relations of power. The capitalist state presents itself as representing society as a whole while preserving a social order structured by unequal ownership, exploitation and concentrated economic power. This does not mean that every police decision follows an instruction from a capitalist. State institutions possess their own procedures, interests and degrees of autonomy; democratic struggles have also established rights within them. Nevertheless, those rights become vulnerable when popular mobilisation challenges established authority. The events of 10 October expose how readily the defence of public order can become the defence of political incumbency.
The range of people detained reinforces this interpretation. The supplied reports name former chief ministers Pinarayi Vijayan, Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal and Manik Sarkar, alongside students, activists, lawyers and journalists. These politicians have different programmes and records, including records of exercising state power themselves. Their right to protest must nevertheless be defended. At the same time, prominent names should not obscure the experience of ordinary detainees. For an unknown student or young worker, being taken to an undisclosed location, losing contact with relatives or struggling to obtain legal assistance can have particularly serious consequences.
The reported treatment of advocate Fidel Tom illustrates the danger to legal safeguards. According to The Wire, he went to the Sanjay Colony police post to seek the release of three detained students and was himself detained. The report records allegations that police assaulted him and the students. These allegations require independent investigation; they should not be presented as judicially established findings. But their implications are grave. If a lawyer seeking access to detainees can himself face detention and alleged violence, the means of challenging police power becomes insecure. Subsequent release does not resolve questions about what happened in custody or who should be held accountable.
The detention of journalists raises a related question about public scrutiny. Complaints from The Quint, Scroll and Newslaundry, including allegations that reporting phones were seized, have come. Journalists at protest sites document police behaviour, preserve testimony and enable official claims to be checked. Removing them weakens these forms of accountability. Press freedom consequently concerns the public’s ability to know how coercive authority is being exercised in its name. Detaining reporters during a crackdown obstructs that knowledge precisely when it is most necessary.
Reports of assaults by right-wing individuals introduce another disturbing dimension. The material available on the internet includes journalists’ accounts identifying alleged attackers and recording statements justifying violence against protesters. This establishes collusion between police and those individuals, and demands scrutiny of how far the authorities protected demonstrators and acted against their attackers.
The lesson of 10 October is that democratic rights require organised defence whenever the state obstructs their exercise.
Despite the restrictions, demonstrations emerged at several locations across Delhi, including Dilli Haat and the Safdarjung flyover. The blockade of Jantar Mantar displaced protest without extinguishing it. That persistence matters, but courage alone cannot overcome organised repression. Democratic resistance needs legal support, reliable documentation and solidarity among workers, students and other citizens. Electoral accountability must be connected to freedom of assembly, protection in custody and independent reporting. The lesson of 10 October is that democratic rights require organised defence whenever the state obstructs their exercise. Waiting for the next election leaves unanswered the immediate question of whether people can act collectively to challenge those who govern them.
The core of public anger: Institutional decay and the compromised role of the ECI
At the epicenter of this popular upheaval is a deep and pervasive anger directed at the Election Commission of India and Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar. Long celebrated by liberal constitutionalists as an impartial arbiter standing above the political fray, the ECI is increasingly recognised by workers, peasants, students, and marginalised communities as an administrative organ integrated into the ruling party’s power structure.
The catalyst for this movement is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Billed by the state as an administrative “clean-up” of voter databases, the national rollout of the SIR has resulted in the deletion of over 13 crore (130 million) names from draft voter rolls across 30 States and Union Territories. The scale of this voter disenfranchisement—exceeding the entire population of major industrial nations—has fundamentally altered the electoral landscape. In state after state, the impact of these deletions has fallen disproportionately on working-class households, migrant labor populations, Dalits, Bahujans, and religious minorities. By weaponising bureaucratic verification criteria, the state has manufactured a mechanism that strips disenfranchised populations of their basic democratic franchise under the cover of technological modernisation.
This crisis of electoral legitimacy stems directly from the implementation of the Special Intensive Revision across the country, where millions of citizens have found their names systematically purged from voter databases. The administrative drive has provoked a two-fold response: on one side, an unprecedented internal fracture within the constitutional body itself, and on the other, mass street resistance led by student groups, youth movements, and a broad opposition coalition demanding the restoration of voting rights and the removal of top election leadership.
Crucially, the anger on the streets is validated by unprecedented internal fractures within the Election Commission itself. An investigative report by The Indian Express exposed that two of the three sitting Election Commissioners—Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi—formally recorded at least 14 written dissents over ten months against decisions executed unilaterally by CEC Gyanesh Kumar. These dissents documented a pattern of administrative overreach:
- Arbitrary Alteration of Form 6: In May 2025, an unapproved field was added to Form 6—the statutory application for new voter registration—requiring applicants to state whether they or their ancestors appeared in the “electoral roll of the last SIR”. Despite written warnings from Joshi and Sandhu that changing Form 6 without statutory amendments was “unauthorised and illegal,” the change was retained, blocking countless first-time and young voters from registering.
- Centralisation of Digital Architecture: Both dissenting Commissioners warned of the “gradual centralization of the electoral roll database” via ERONet and ECINet. They recorded that state-level election officers and statutory Electoral Registration Officers (EROs)—historically the local custodians of voter rolls—were systematically denied full access to the portal. Control was consolidated within the ECI’s central IT division in New Delhi, stripping away the decentralized safeguards that had historically checked centralized electoral tampering.
- Overriding Judicial Directives: In Goa, ground-level EROs found 97 voters eligible following Supreme Court-mandated hearings regarding “logical discrepancies”. Yet, despite eight urgent communications sent by state officials to the ECI IT division requesting software access to restore these names, the central authority refused to enable the rollback option, resulting in the disenfranchisement of eligible citizens.
- Unauthorised Legal Appeals in West Bengal: In West Bengal, where judicial tribunals were formed to hear SIR appeals, Commissioner Sandhu formally queried who had authorised the ECI to file over 16 lakh appeals seeking the deletion of voters whom judicial officers had cleared for inclusion—noting that neither he, Joshi, nor the state’s Chief Electoral Officer had approved these legal actions. [1]
These internal disclosures demonstrate that the ECI’s neutral constitutional façade has broken down. The systematic override of statutory officers, the arbitrary deployment of unvetted software, and the exclusion of majority opinions within a constitutional body violate Section 18 of the 2023 Election Commissioners Act, which mandates unanimous or majority-based decision-making. The institutional referee has been converted into an administrative organ of the ruling party at the centre.
The ruling party’s rhetoric: Tacit admission of alignment
In response to the growing mass movement, the ruling BJP and its sympathetic media channels have launched a campaign to discredit the protests. Protesters, student leaders, and opposition parties have been branded as “anti-national,” “foreign-funded,” and agents of an illegal “regime change” conspiracy designed to destabilise the nation.
Yet, from a critical political perspective, this rhetorical line contains an unintentional admission. By framing protests against the Election Commission as an attempt at “regime change,” the ruling party implicitly acknowledges the complete political alignment between its government and the ECI.
If demanding the resignation of a Chief Election Commissioner or insisting on an audit of compromised voter rolls is treated as an existential threat to the government itself, then the conceptual boundary separating the ruling party from the electoral machinery ceases to exist. The state’s defence of CEC Gyanesh Kumar is not a defence of constitutional independence; it is the defence of a key operational asset. By equating criticism of the ECI with a treasonous assault on the state, the ruling party confirms the core allegation of the movement: that the Election Commission has been absorbed into the ruling regime, operating not as an independent referee, but as a guarantor of political continuity for the incumbent power structure.
Class forces, tactical strengths, and structural weaknesses
A dialectical analysis of the anti-ECI movement requires moving beyond liberal constitutionalist narratives of “saving institutions” to examine the underlying class dynamics, structural forces, and social contradictions driving the crisis.
A rigorous class analysis reveals that the movement is defined by a fundamental contradiction between its tactical strengths and its strategic limitations. While the movement excels in broad-front mobilisation, unifying diverse class interests, and channeling mass youth militancy, it remains constrained by the political hegemony of the bourgeois opposition, which maintains an instrumental view of democratic rights and an inherent propensity for compromise with the capitalist state.
The movement’s strength: Broad-based tactical mobilisation
The chief strength of the current political moment lies in the scale, breadth, and social composition of the anti-ECI front. The defence of elementary democratic rights—specifically the universal right to vote—has served as a powerful unifying axis, bringing together political forces that were historically divided:
- The Parliamentary Opposition: The coalition unites 19 political parties within the INDIA bloc, spanning national parties like the Indian National Congress to regional parties such as the Samajwadi Party (SP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC). Notably, it has drawn in long-standing non-aligned regional entities like Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), signaling a widening rift between regional bourgeois factions and the centralised federal executive.
- The Left and Student Fronts: Communist and Left parties, including the CPI(M) and CPI(M-L), alongside cadre-based student unions like the All India Students’ Association (AISA) , the Students Federation of India, have provided organisational discipline, ideological clarity, and street militancy.
- Spontaneous Youth Movements: The massive participation of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has expanded the struggle beyond traditional party cadres, drawing in hundreds of thousands of unorganised, unemployed youth, urban students, and precarious workers.
From a Marxist standpoint, this broad front demonstrates that in periods of autocratic consolidation, the fight for basic democratic freedoms—freedom of assembly, fair elections, and freedom from state harassment—can temporarily unite heterogeneous social classes. The working class and urban youth have recognised that the erosion of democratic rights directly impairs their ability to organise, demand employment, and resist economic exploitation.
The movement’s weakness: The bourgeois opposition as the political limit
However, this coalition contains deep internal class contradictions that constitute the primary strategic weakness of the movement. The leadership of the parliamentary opposition remains firmly in the hands of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties—most notably the Congress and regional capitalist parties.
A Marxist assessment highlights the structural limitations of relying on these bourgeois factions:
- Instrumental Approach to Democratic Rights: Bourgeois political parties do not view democratic rights as fundamental tools for working-class emancipation, but as instruments for securing state power. They engage with mass movements opportunistically—using street protests to gain leverage over the ruling party, secure concessions, or engineer favourable electoral outcomes.
- Fear of Uncontrolled Class Mobilisation: While the bourgeois opposition is eager to use popular outrage over voter deletions to weaken the BJP, it remains terrified of mass movements overflowing the boundaries of parliamentary politics. The moment street mobilisations threaten broader property relations, challenge industrial policy, or demand structural redistribution, the bourgeois opposition instinctively pulls back, seeking to de-escalate the conflict.
- Inability to Reform the Autocratic State: The parliamentary opposition presents the ECI crisis as a problem of individual corruption or bad appointments (i.e., replacing CEC Gyanesh Kumar) rather than a manifestation of the modern capitalist state apparatus. Because these parties themselves manage state capital at the regional level—and have historically utilised police machinery, case withdrawals, and administrative centralism when in power—they cannot and will not dismantle the structural instruments of state repression.
Consequently, the bourgeois opposition acts as a political brake on the movement. Left to their own devices, these parties will inevitably attempt to channel mass anger away from sustained street action and back into safe, legalistic, and electoral channels that leave the fundamental economic and state structures intact.
The role of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and the rise of Neha Bora
The present movement is characterised by a dynamic interplay between new, decentralised youth movements and disciplined, ideologically committed student leadership.
The emergence of these new political forces highlights two distinct models of contemporary resistance. On one side stands the Cockroach Janta Party, representing an anti-establishment youth base rooted in satirical digital activism and mass pressure-group tactics focused on systemic issues like exam leaks and electoral integrity. On the other side stands cadre-based student leadership, exemplified by Neha Bora and AISA, which brings ideological clarity, direct physical confrontation with state barricades, and a class-conscious defence of constitutional rights to the forefront of the struggle. At the same time, one perceives a problem. In today’s world, using the Social Media to get political views across is important. At the same time, as the experience with cadres who ecome media faces, both in the CPI(M) and in the CPI(ML) in the past have shown, these cadres imagine themselves more important than the organisationn and its ideology and politics. There is no guarantee such a thing will happen. But it is for the CPI(ML) to consider this seriously.
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP): Spontaneity, alienation, and its boundaries
The emergence and rapid expansion of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), founded by figures like Abhijeet Dipke alongside convenors Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, represents a significant development in contemporary Indian youth politics. Originating as a satirical social media movement sparked by judicial elitism, the CJP quickly transformed into a genuine mass pressure group.
The CJP’s trajectory demonstrates how deep structural crises in capital—specifically mass youth unemployment, the commercialisation of education, and widespread exam paper leaks—can catalyze political consciousness. After leading a weeks-long agitation at Jantar Mantar that forced the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the CJP expanded its mandate to include institutional integrity, launching the “Election Commission Thik Karo” (Reform the ECI) campaign.
From a class perspective, the CJP reflects both the strengths and vulnerabilities of petty-bourgeois and working-class youth spontaneity:
- Strengths: The CJP captures the acute alienation of a generation facing precarious employment and institutional decay. By utilising decentralised networks, pop-culture satire, and direct calls to action, it bypasses the stagnant organisational structures of traditional political parties. Its ability to mobilise thousands of non-party youth across cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi has forced the state onto the back foot.
- Boundaries: As an eclectic pressure group drawing explicit parallels to historical movements like the JP Movement of the 1970s, the CJP risks ideological diffusion. Without a clear class analysis or an organisational structure rooted in the workplace and educational institutes, non-party youth movements are vulnerable to state co-optation, exhaustion, or ideological drift. While the CJP’s refusal to enter electoral politics keeps its pressure-group identity intact, its long-term impact depends on whether its base can be linked to broader working-class struggles.
The Rise of Neha Bora: Vanguard cadre and the defense of free speech
In contrast to the spontaneous pressure-group model of the CJP, the prominent role played by student leader Neha Bora—PhD scholar at JNU and National President of the All India Students’ Association (AISA)—illustrates the vital function of disciplined, cadre-based Left politics.
Bora emerged as a national symbol of resistance through direct, physical confrontation with the security apparatus: from leading barricade-breaching acts at Jantar Mantar to enduring hunger strikes and state detentions. Her political prominence reached a flashpoint following her speech in Gorakhpur, where she directly challenged Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, accusing his administration of presiding over paper leaks, unemployment, extra-judicial bulldozer demolitions, and communal polarisation.
The state’s immediate response to Bora’s speech—multiple police complaints, FIR demands by ruling party functionaries, physical threats of “medicine” from state ministers, and coordinated online hate campaigns—demonstrates the autocratic state’s low tolerance for unyielding critique.
As political analyst Anand Teltumbde notes, Bora’s speech falls squarely within the protection of constitutional speech guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a). Her characterisation of state power was not an isolated personal insult, but a factual reference to official public records—including the Adityanath government’s controversial statutory withdrawal of pending criminal cases against its own leaders. Teltumbde highlights the stark class asymmetry of the state’s legal machinery: while executive leaders utilise public rhetoric emphasising physical force (“thok diye jayenge”, “mitti mein mila denge”), the state weaponises police powers against a young female scholar for giving voice to documented facts.
From a Marxist standpoint, Neha Bora’s leadership provides key lessons for the movement:
- The Role of the Intellectual Vanguard: Bora exemplifies the role of the organic intellectual who connects student grievances with the broader systemic crises of state capital and authoritarianism.
- Rejection of Individual Hero-Worship: While charismatic individual leaders serve as vital catalysts during moments of high drama, a Marxist assessment warns against substituting individual heroism for collective mass organisation. The ultimate power of leaders like Bora stems not from personal charisma alone, but from the cadre organisation (AISA) and class-conscious mass movements standing behind them.
- Defending Democratic Space for Class Struggle: The defense of figures like Neha Bora against state repression is not merely a matter of liberal legal defense; it is an absolute necessity for the working-class movement. If the state succeeds in criminalising harsh political dissent against executive heads, the political space required for working-class organising, unionisation, and anti-capitalist agitation will be completely shut down.
Conclusion: The horizon of the Anti-ECI movement and the road ahead
The anti-ECI movement has brought the Indian state face-to-face with a profound crisis of legitimacy. By exposing the administrative manipulation of voter rolls, the centralisation of digital systems, and the subversion of internal constitutional safeguards, the movement has stripped away the illusion of electoral neutrality. The state’s reliance on police blockades, metro closures, and mass detentions confirms that it is increasingly governing through physical force rather than political consent.
Yet, the movement stands at a critical historical crossroad. If it remains confined to the political horizons of the bourgeois opposition, its energy will inevitably be drained through legalistic appeals, minor administrative compromises, or absorption into the upcoming state electElectronic Voting Machinesoral cycles. Bourgeois political parties will attempt to use the movement as a bargaining chip, abandoning the demand for structural institutional reform the moment their immediate parliamentary objectives are secured.
To transform this moment into a lasting victory for democratic and social rights, the movement must push beyond the boundaries of bourgeois constitutionalism. The spontaneous youth energy represented by the Cockroach Janta Party must be fused with the ideological discipline and class clarity of cadre-based Left organisations. The struggle to reform the Election Commission must be recognized as part of a larger, systemic struggle against the authoritarian capitalist state.
We are all aware that the system will not be replaced by a system of workers’ democracy tomorrow. But we need to fight to widen the democratic space. Beyond getting rid of the individual Gyanesh Kumar, beyond even toppling the BJP government, we need to fight so that it becomes more difficult to reimpose an authoritarian system. For this we must demand the following:
- State funding of elections, and an end to all donaions to parties for electoral purposes
- The scrapping of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and a return to the ballot
- Replace the current First Past the Post system by an Open List Proportional representation at both Parliamentary and Assembly Level elections.
Only by constructing permanent, self-sustaining institutions of working-class, student, and peasant power—capable of mounting sustained resistance in the streets, workplaces, and educational institutions—can the masses defend their basic democratic rights, defeat state repression, and advance toward real political and economic liberation.
[1] In an earlier article, I had argued that the fraudulent SIR played a major role in the victory of the BJP in West Bengal earlier this year. See Kunal Chattopadhyay, ‘West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 and the Footfalls of Fascism – A Balance Sheet’, https://internationalviewpoint.org/West-Bengal-Assembly-Elections-2026-and-the-Footfalls-of-Fascism-A-Balance