How Home Ministry prevented a repeat of CJP’s July agitation

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), under Amit Shah, mounted an extensive preventive operation to ensure that the Cockroach Janata Party’s (CJP’s) proposed protest at Jantar Mantar to seek the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Saturday did not acquire the scale and organisational momentum of the July agitation, which had put the government under pressure and culminated in the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The operation involved advance intelligence gathering, coordination with police forces in neighbouring states, surveillance of entry points into Delhi, restrictions on accommodation for potential protesters and preparations for mass preventive detentions. The strategy was designed to stop demonstrators before they could assemble, rather than manage a large crowd after it had gathered at the protest site.

The preparations began as soon as the CJP announced that its supporters would converge on Delhi on 10 October, according to sources familiar with the security arrangements. The July agitation had exposed two shortcomings in the police response: an underestimation of the number of protesters and the deployment of multiple police units and districts at the same location. This time, the authorities sought to address both concerns through a more structured, intelligence-led operation.

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The Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Delhi Police’s Local Intelligence Unit coordinated closely with police forces in neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Agencies examined records of people who had participated in the earlier protest and used artificial intelligence to analyse the areas from which the largest numbers of demonstrators had travelled, the sources said.

The police also had records of around 2,000 people with criminal backgrounds who had attended the previous demonstration. These individuals were identified, and police personnel contacted them to warn them against returning to the protest site, according to the sources.

The preventive measures extended to accommodation arrangements. Resident Welfare Associations, paying guest accommodation operators and hotels where protesters arriving from outside Delhi were expected to stay were sensitised against providing accommodation to them. They were also asked to alert local police if they encountered visitors considered suspicious, the sources said.