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Peek TV | October 24, 2026

SIRvival Of The Defiant: The Streets Are Still Speaking

The Fact: Around 300 protesters gathered in central Delhi on Friday and attempted to march towards the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters. More than 100 protesters were detained as they demanded the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

The Context: The protest brought together students, farmers, women, civil society groups and Left organisations under the ‘People Against SIR’ banner. CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat and CPI leader P. Sandosh were among the prominent participants. Women and the elderly were also visible in the gathering. Carrying national flags and banners, protesters raised slogans such as “Halt SIR” and “Gyanesh Kumar, resign”. Their demands centred on alleged voter deletions, the withdrawal of SIR and the protection of voting rights. When barricades stopped the march from proceeding towards the ECI, some demonstrators gathered near Bangla Sahib and held a sit-in before getting detained. The protest came after a relatively quiet week following the arrest of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, who were released from Tihar Jail on October 21 after spending about a week in judicial custody. They had given undertakings not to call protests at Jantar Mantar while it remained denotified as a designated protest site. The CJP leadership was missing from the protest on Friday.

The Peek Insight: With opposition parties postponing or suspending planned demonstrations, and the Cockroach Janta Party’s leadership conspicuously absent after its leaders’ release from jail and the undertakings they signed, the movement appears to have lost some of its initial momentum. Critics may see this as a movement fizzling out; others may see it as a movement being pushed off the streets through a combination of detentions, restrictions and legal coercion. Yet, despite the protests and the political cost of policing them, the government and the Election Commission have shown little sign of retreating entirely on SIR. The question, then, is not simply whether the movement has weakened, but whether the state has succeeded in containing dissent without addressing the concerns that fuelled it in the first place. Friday’s turnout suggests the resistance has not disappeared. Whether it can translate that resistance into sustained political pressure remains uncertain.