TNM Interview: Union Home Minister waging a war against citizens, says CJP leadership

The founding core of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) — founder Abhijeet Dipke, Co-Convenor Ashutosh Ranka, and spokesperson Saurav Das—has demanded the ouster of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar through resignation or impeachment, alongside a complete rollback of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.

In an exclusive interview with Pooja Prasanna and Dhanya Rajendran of The News Minute, top leadership of the CJP also denounced the statutory immunity granted to the CEC and said that free and fair elections remain impossible without scrapping the SIR entirely.

Calling out the unchecked powers granted to the CEC and the commissioners, Abhijeet Dipke questioned the constitutional logic of shielding him from criminal prosecution:

"How can he have that immunity? How can he be above the Constitution of India and rule of law? He's just an ordinary citizen. He has been given something which even the president of India or the Prime Minister of India doesn't have… It's absolutely unconstitutional," he said.

Linking the issue of official immunity directly to the controversial voter roll revision, Ashutosh Ranka alleged that the legal shield was crafted specifically to protect officials executing large-scale disenfranchisement:

"If the government has given him that immunity, that somewhere means they wanted to protect him because they have already decided to do something like this where they deleted 13 crore voters in a span of 2 years. There has to be an impeachment or he has to resign by himself. It is not our job to understand technicalities. There is a law which should not have been here in the first place. We have to go back to the old electoral rolls. We just cannot think that the election would still be free and fair if Gyanesh Kumar resigns. They have to roll back the SIR because that is the core issue,” he said.

Answering a question on the deployment of 23,000 security personnel across New Delhi ahead of the October 10 protest, Abhijeet Dipke questioned the rationale of using such a scale of force against ordinary citizens trying to reach a designated protest site.

"I think I'm more scared about the fact that the Home Minister of India is waging a war on the citizens of this country. Why would you deploy such a huge force against your own citizens, your own students, the Members of Parliament? Just let them gather there. That's how democracy should function. They have made Jantar Mantar into a border area… It's like an India-Pakistan border," Dipke said.

CJP Spokesperson Saurav Das said the law enforcement agencies were displaying systematic heavy-handedness.

"Just ask any activist who has been to so many protests over the decades. They've never seen a police force molesting women systematically during the protest. This is what is happening in Delhi. They are accusing us but just look at their actions. They are creating unrest. They want to create a civil warlike situation. We are peaceful protesters. We are on the right side. We are asking we just want to be going to our designated protest. Where else will a person go to protest? But they're not allowing it because they want to create unrest," he said.

Drawing parallels between the current administration and the British colonial rule, Ashutosh Ranka said a protest against the government was once considered treason. “It was considered as anti-national and this is how this government is also behaving. Hundreds of our volunteers were detained in Bengal today and this happened today. This is not anything new. But the way the state has reacted to all of this, it's just horrible and it reminds us of the colonial times. And this idea of permission, right? What Gandhiji said is that civil disobedience becomes the sacred duty of every citizen when the state is lawless and corrupt," he said.

Ashutosh said the biggest achievement of Jantar Mantra 1.0 is that people stopped fearing this regime. “They don't fear this regime anymore. So you can maybe detain hundreds and a few thousands of us. You can detain the three of us, you can maybe detain the entire CJP leadership and people will still come because they have now understood that in a functioning democracy it is our fundamental right to dissent against the government and ask them the right questions," Ashutosh said.

Abhijeet Dipke said he always lies to his mother when she asks whether he's going to be okay. "I tell her that you are just being paranoid, you don't need to be worried about us, we are just going to be fine. But the thing that we see happening in Delhi where they are dragging the students on the streets and even the opposition MPs. That shows how brutal this government is. I don't understand what is the problem in letting people gather at a designated protest site?" Dipke said.