New Delhi: As the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) gave the Delhi Police 24-hour deadline to give them a date for holding a protest, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) de-notified Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site.
Instead, Ramlila Ground, Burari Ground and CBD ground, East Delhi were designated as new venues for organising protests.
“The MHA, Government of India, had constituted a Committee to examine alternative proper venues for citizen’s right for organizing protest/demonstrations in place of the existing “designated site”. Based on the Committee’s recommendations, Jantar Mantar as a protest venue has been de-notified,” a standing order from the Delhi Police read.
On 12 October, two days after the CJP, AISA and civil society groups gave a call for a nationwide protest seeking Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, CJP’s Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, accompanied by two other members, reached the Parliament Street police station to submit their written intimation about holding a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar.
The decision also comes on a day when the Opposition INDIA bloc was set to march from Connaught Place in central Delhi to the Supreme Court against the CEC.
Located in the heart of the national capital, Jantar Mantar has been the venue of several notable protests, be it Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption fast, Ex-servicemen’s One Rank One Pension (OROP) agitation, Tamil Nadu farmers’ drought protest, or Rohith Vemula-related protests.
Reacting to the order, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke sarcastically commented that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has denotified Jantar Mantar today as a protest site, next he will denotify democracy.
“The dictator’s problem was never the protest site. It was the very idea of people protesting,” he said in a post on X.
CJP’s demands to police
“Last time (10 October) the Delhi Police told us that we did not give them a 10-day notice about our protest. Today, we have intimated them and given them a 24-hour ultimatum to give us a date to hold our protest. If they don’t, then we will give a second call for protest,” CJP co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka said.
Another CJP co-convenor Saurav Das said that despite Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi Sachin Sharma’s presence in the Parliament Street police station, he did not meet them. “The DCP New Delhi was present at the police station but the minute they saw us, he left,” Das alleged
In its letter submitted to the police, the CJP demanded an immediate de-escalation of police deployment in Delhi, alongside ceasing the arbitrary and illegal detention and harassment of independent journalists.
(Edited by Tony Rai)