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The UN human rights office listed journalists among those detained during Saturday's protests in Delhi, a complaint India's own press body has made about the same protest site Representational Image The Press Club of India has said in a statement  that it was shocked and dismayed at the Delhi Police's actions against and treatment of journalists during the demonstrations at Jantar Mantar. The statement was signed by the club's president, Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, and its secretary general, Afzal Imam. Journalists from independent organisations and news portals had carried press cards and repeatedly identified themselves as media, it said, and police had still behaved violently and aggressively, detaining some alongside protesters. Behaviour of that kind could not be normalised in a democracy, the club said. That journalists were unable to work freely at the heart of the national capital did not bode well for the trajectory of media freedom in India. The UN comment...

More than 7,000 people were taken into custody across the Indian capital on Saturday as an attempt to hold a rally demanding the chief election commissioner's resignation was shut down  Representational Image Source: @AiyarYamini on X  The operation ran ahead of the protest rather than in response to it. Policemen were reported picking people up from homes, streets and an airport gate hours before the announced start time, and the running total police gave reporters climbed through the afternoon from roughly a thousand to past three thousand and finally beyond seven. A case was expected to be registered over an alleged attack on police personnel too. Behind the day was the Cockroach Janta Party, which wants Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to go. Police had rejected the application to gather at Jantar Mantar, the sanctioned protest ground a few hundred metres from Parliament, on the grounds that the organisers had not satisfied procedural requirements and that ...

A delegation of Indian opposition leaders met President Droupadi Murmu on Friday to demand the resignation of the country's chief election commissioner Image Source: @INCIndia on X The memorandum set out four demands: that CEC Kumar resign and that a 2023 law granting the chief election commissioner and election commissioners lifelong immunity be repealed; that the ongoing revision of electoral rolls be suspended immediately and all 133 million deleted voters restored; that India return to paper ballots in all elections; and that assembly elections held in the past two years "in which conclusive evidence of vote chori has been presented" be repealed. Vote chori means vote theft. The President has no power to remove a chief election commissioner at her own discretion. Under the constitution the post can be vacated only through the procedure used to remove a Supreme Court judge, which requires a parliamentary majority the opposition does not have. सबसे पहले हिंदुस्तान के ...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told members of India's team at the WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai that the country's vocational training institutions matter no less than its elite engineering and management schools, at a meeting with the competitors at his official residence in Delhi on Friday Image Source: @BJP4India on X Practical skills are as important as academic degrees, Modi said. He congratulated the competitors on representing India and urged them to act as ambassadors for skill development. He said that as technology changed rapidly, young people had to keep acquiring new skills, upgrade the capabilities they already had and adapt to emerging technologies. He asked the competitors to build skills in line with what international markets require, and to pass their experiences and suggestions to the government so that India's training system could be improved. Establishing the country as a global source of skilled labour, he said, would need coordinated e...

The BJP used a day of by-election counting on Friday to mount a sustained attack on Rahul Gandhi, with its national general secretary Smriti Irani describing the results as democracy's reply to what she called mob rule Representational Image: BJP LiveCast Screengrab The phrase referred to a week of opposition demonstrations in the capital over the revision of electoral rolls, during which the Leader of the Opposition and other MPs were stopped and detained on successive days and at least 25 police cases were registered. Irani listed the seats where the BJP was ahead. In West Bengal the party was leading in Nandigram, which she described as having once been a symbol of left-wing violence and of resistance to industrial development, and in Rejinagar, where she said close to 71 per cent of voters belong to minority communities. In Assam the party was leading in the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat. In Puducherry she welcomed the victory of a candidate of the National Democratic Alliance. Coun...

Delhi Police have refused permission for a protest planned at Jantar Mantar on Saturday by the Cockroach Janata Party, and have registered 25 cases connected with a week of demonstrations so far Representational Image Source: @IPSMadhurVerma A joint commissioner of police, Nupur Prasad, said the force received an application on 7 October from the group's co-convenor, Saurabh Das, giving notice of a protest on 10 October over what it described as the accountability of the Chief Election Commissioner. Under the rules governing the site, applications must be submitted at least ten days before the event. The application arrived three days before.  Prasad said permission was also refused because the group had been allowed to protest at Jantar Mantar on an earlier occasion and had not complied with police guidelines or with the undertakings it gave at the time.  She cited the law-and-order situation, public safety and traffic management in the New Delhi district, and said pro...

The Leaders of India's INDIA bloc held a silent protest at Rajghat, the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, on Thursday, a day after police detained them short of the capital's designated protest site.  Image Source: @INCIndia on X They said they prayed for wisdom for the government and for the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.  They alleged that the prime minister, the union home minister and CEC had hijacked the country through what they described as a criminal conspiracy involving the theft of votes.  Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, LoP Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, along with other INDIA bloc leaders, staged the protest at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial. The protest was peaceful today and police did not intervene, in contrast to the previous two days, when opposition MPs were stopped and detained on their way first to the Election Commission's headquarters and then to Jantar Mantar. चलिए शुरू करते हैं! https://t.co/kX3own1AUp — Supriya Shrinate (@...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed 25 years as head of a government on Wednesday, and drew congratulatory messages from heads of state and government across continents Image Source: @narendramodi on X Modi was sworn in as chief minister of Gujarat on 7 October 2001 and held that office until May 2014, when he became the Indian prime minister. He has held one or other post continuously since. He began the day with prayers in New Delhi, and later addressed a Seva Jyoti programme at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.  Modi said gratitude was his overriding feeling on the anniversary. "Whoever brought me victory taught me to be humble; whoever made me fall taught me to stand back up again," he said. He said critics had prompted introspection, supporters had shown him the value of trust, and opponents had demonstrated the strength of democracy. 25 वर्षों का जनविश्वास मेरे लिए और अधिक ऊर्जा के साथ काम करने की प्रेरणाशक्ति है। ईश्वररूपी जनता-जनार्दन के लिए मेरा एक ही...

Delhi Police detained the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and other opposition MPs on Wednesday evening after stopping them about a hundred metres short of Jantar Mantar, the site designated for protests in the Indian capital Image Source: INCIndia on X The MPs had set out for Jantar Mantar a day after being prevented from marching to the headquarters of the Election Commission. They are demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. I am thankful to every INDIA alliance MP standing firm in defence of our democracy - in Parliament, outside on the streets, and today near Jantar Mantar. They can stop a march. They can refuse a meeting. But they cannot stop the will of our people. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Gyanesh Kumar and the entire system will be brought to justice. — Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 7, 2026 Police had earlier detained INDIA bloc leaders and workers at ...