‘Citizens being silenced’: What ordinary Indians think of the crackdown on the Delhi protests

On Saturday, as the Delhi Police detained thousands of protestors trying to reach Jantar Mantar, Kirti Lal closely followed the news on social media in faraway Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

He watched videos of how leaders of the student group, Cockroach Janata Party – Abhijeet Dipke, Sourav Das and Ashutosh Ranka – were detained by the Delhi Police from inside the aircraft that had brought them to the national capital. How protestors were bundled into buses even before they could reach the protest venue and how journalists were taken into custody. How Delhi was placed under a lockdown to stop the students from gathering.

“Citizens are being silenced,” said the 69-year-old Lal.

Lal was critical of the police clampdown in Delhi against young people calling for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for spearheading the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls. The exercise has resulted in 13 crore names being struck off the draft list.

Lal said the police actions reflected the Narendra Modi government’s fear of the protests by young Indians. “This government is doing things it criticised previous governments for – in fact it is doing even worse,” he said.

Lal’s experience with the SIR was smooth, but the widespread exclusion of voters had to...

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