Barricades blocked roads across New Delhi on Saturday. Police detained protesters before they could reach the planned rally at Jantar Mantar. Metro stations were shut, trains were cancelled and internet access was restricted in parts of the capital.
For many Bangladeshis, the scenes could bring back memories of July 2024, when Sheikh Hasina’s government imposed a curfew and shut down the internet to save her.
Some of the Delhi-based journalists we interviewed described the Indian capital as a war zone.
The authorities had deployed thousands of security personnel to prevent the Gen-Z protest from taking hold.
By the middle of the day, following thousands of arrests, including Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke, other top leaders and YouTuber activist Dhruv Rathee, the Modi government seemed to have succeeded in stopping the movement from taking place.
The arrests didn’t stop there.
Bollywood actor Imran Khan, Former Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal, former Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and All India Students' Association (AISA) national president Neha Bora were all taken into custody.
By the end police had detained more than 2,000 protesters.
But the crackdown raised a question: had the government stopped the movement before it could gather momentum, or had it exposed its own fear of what might come next?
The protest, led by the CJP and backed by left-wing groups, demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
It also called for the withdrawal of a voter-list revision that critics say has threatened millions of people’s voting rights.
The dispute has become a test of public trust in India’s electoral system. It has also put Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully built image of invincibility under pressure.
The CJP began as an online joke. It has since grown into a youth-led movement that has already forced a major political concession from Modi’s government. The group first mobilised over examination irregularities and failures in the education system.
Its protests called for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. He left office in July after weeks of protests.
That victory showed the movement could become a significant political headache for Modi going forward.
Now, the CJP has taken up a more sensitive issue: electoral integrity.
Prime Minister Modi is being linked to vote theft and irregularities, badly damaging his carefully built image.
The government’s response – crackdowns, internet shutdown and showing of unprecedented force against a public protest – has rarely been seen in India.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said he had “rarely seen anything like what Delhi is witnessing now”. Arvind Kejriwal, the former Delhi chief minister, said “It’s official.. we are living under an absolute dictatorship ruled by Modi.”
“This is worse than the Emergency,” he wrote on Facebook. He accused Modi of trying to crush democracy and alleged that the prime minister was seeking to protect an election victory secured through fraud.
At the heart of the protests is the revision of electoral rolls, which has removed about 130 million names.
Critics say the process risks excluding eligible voters, particularly those who struggle to prove their citizenship.
They have also raised concerns about its impact on minorities and poorer communities.
The Election Commission says the exercise is intended to identify duplicate and ineligible entries. It says the figures include people who have died, moved or could not be traced. The number of eligible voters wrongly excluded remains a key question.
Speaking to Daily Waadaa, Kallol Bhattacherjee, senior assistant editor at The Hindu, said the people affected came from different religious communities and included both men and women.
“It is not just Muslims from minority communities. There are men and women, and Hindus too, among them. People from different communities who have been part of our society are being removed from the voter lists,” he said.
He also questioned the demand for documents to prove citizenship, particularly when even a passport was reportedly being treated as insufficient evidence.
“Now they are even saying that our country's passport will not prove citizenship. A passport, they say, is merely a travel document.”
Bhattacherjee said the dispute reflected a shift away from a system in which people enjoyed rights by virtue of their citizenship.
“South Asian democracies are through a social understanding, a social contract… Now it has become a democracy where we will not give you your rights; you have to earn them.”
The scale of the security operation has raised questions about why the government felt the need to go so far to stop a protest.
A journalist covering the developments in Delhi, who requested anonymity, said Modi’s image was clearly under pressure. He built an ‘invincible’ strong character image over the years.
“His image is definitely in trouble, otherwise they wouldn't have gone to this extent,” the journalist said.
But predicting a mass uprising would be premature, the journalist added.
The CJP’s rise, Pradhan’s resignation and the investigative reporting that preceded the latest protests had all surprised observers.
Bhattacherjee also believes Modi’s public image has suffered.
“His image has been shattered. His entire business is his image,” he said.
The assessment echoes that of Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author and biographer of Modi. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said the prime minister wanted to preserve the image of a leader who never yields to public pressure.
“He wishes to retain the aura and image of a leader who never yields to public pressure, someone who is invincible,” he said.
“Modi appears at the lowest point [of his political life] in public perception. This is extremely paradoxical because he has some of the most important autonomous institutions, large sections of the bureaucracy, and state wings in tight control and acting at his behest,” he said.
In the face of growing protests, Modi is now “fast losing people’s perception of being a leader who leads them out of livelihood pits”, he added.
The events in Delhi bring to mind two recent Gen-Z upheavals in South Asia.
In Bangladesh, student protests over public-sector job quotas grew into a nationwide uprising against Sheikh Hasina.
A deadly crackdown helped turn the movement into a wider uprising against her rule.
Hasina fled the country on 5 August 2024.
Ironically, she currently sits right at the centre of the Indian capital, where protests brew against the Modi government.
In Nepal, Gen-Z protests in 2025 erupted after the government banned social media platforms. Anger over corruption, nepotism and a lack of opportunities fuelled the demonstrations.
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli resigned after a deadly crackdown.
India’s circumstances are different. Its protests centre on electoral rolls and the Election Commission.
Its political system and opposition landscape also differ from those of Bangladesh and Nepal.
But yet the pattern is familiar. A specific grievance draws young people onto the streets. A forceful state response can widen the anger. What begins as a limited protest can become a broader challenge to political authority.
Neither of the Bangladesh and Nepal protests began as an uprising against the government. But they did end up ousting the sitting regime.
The lesson is not that Modi will meet the same fate as Hasina or Nepali political establishment. It is that the outcome of a youth-led movement can be hard to predict.
Kallol Bhattacherjee sees the government's approach to education as another source of youth anger.
He argues that the education system has been under attack since Narendra Modi came to power. Educated people, he says, are often portrayed as enemies of the nation.
“Those who are educated are portrayed as anti-national. They are called Pakistani,” he said.
But his deeper concern is the impact on young people's futures. A generation wants an education because it needs jobs, yet he believes the deterioration of universities and colleges is leaving graduates less prepared for employment.
Many are turning to coaching centres to prepare for recruitment exams, he said, but these cannot replace a proper education.
“You can get coaching for a job in six months, but you cannot get an education that way,” he said.
Bhattacherjee describes education as a strategic sector that shapes the country's future. Undermining it, he argues, could backfire by pushing frustrated young people on to the streets.
“If you do not allow people to become educated, they will take to the streets,” he said.
He also warned against treating young people as potential troublemakers simply because they are out in public.
A student carrying a schoolbag on the way to a coaching centre or to meet friends is part of society, he said, and has a stake in its future.
“If you antagonise a stakeholder, where will that stakeholder go? Exactly – to the streets.”
The immediate question is whether the authorities have contained one rally or helped set the stage for a longer confrontation.
The CJP has vowed to continue its campaign. Opposition parties remain involved, and the dispute over voter lists is unresolved.
Some of the Indian journalists who are covering the CJP movement from the field warned against predicting what comes next.
Few had anticipated the CJP’s rise or its earlier victory.
The government cannot assume that preventing one demonstration will end the anger behind it. For now, the protests have exposed a challenge to Modi’s image of invincibility. Whether that challenge grows into something larger remains to be seen.
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