‘We All Want Regime Change’: Two Words Reshape India’s Protest Row

A phrase with a long and loaded history entered India’s street confrontation over electoral rolls on Thursday, when advocate Prashant Bhushan said a regime change was a democratic right and the ruling party said the remark proved the protests had never been about voter lists at all

Representational Image Via: @DrMeenaJangid on X

Speaking at a news conference in Delhi alongside the student leader Neha Bora and the youth organiser Abhijeet Dipke, he rejected the government’s characterisation of the campaign.

“This government keeps on saying this is the opposition’s operation of regime change. We are only appealing to save the electoral democracy in this country,” he said. Then came the conditional, and then the assertion. “If such barbarism continues, there will definitely be a regime change. We all want a regime change. Is there anything wrong with that? Regime change is a democratic right of every citizen, and creating disaffection against the government is not an offence.”

He said the BJP had itself agitated for changes of government, and cited Supreme Court rulings on sedition for the proposition that creating disaffection, without inciting violence or public disorder, is not a crime.

At the party headquarters, a BJP spokesman said the constitution already provided a method for changing governments, and listed the general elections of 2014, 2019 and 2024. The protesters’ intent, he said, was not the roll revision but the overthrow of an elected government by people who could not win votes. He accused unnamed figures of having sold themselves to foreign interests, said what had been attempted in Bangladesh and Nepal was being attempted in India, and said the movement would go no further than the ground on which it began.

Another spokesman, Pradeep Bhandari, wrote on X that Bhushan had made it clear and that the opposition was now owning its anarchy.

The exchanges came on a day when the Supreme Court issued notices to the Election Commission and its commissioners on the opposition’s petition, and on separate petitions over the policing of the protests. Jantar Mantar has been removed from the list of approved protest sites, and a flag-waving demonstration is called for Friday in Connaught Place.