Delhi police put the Jantar Mantar detention count between 500 and 700

Delhi Police detained several hundred people on Friday, 2 October, at and around Jantar Mantar during a protest called against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Gandhi Jayanti is a public holiday. The observatory ground, the usual site for a notified protest in the capital, was sealed before most of the marchers reached it.

The number depends on which officer is quoted. By afternoon, police told the Indian Express that more than 700 people had been detained. A later police account to the same paper put the figure nearer 550. A source told CNBC-TV18 that about 700 people from the Students' Federation of India were stopped at the Ashoka Road roundabout, and that many of them were held. Another officer said about 500 people, including Aam Aadmi Party leaders and members of student groups, were detained from Jantar Mantar and the streets beside it. The spread, 500 to 700, is the range on the record. It is not a single charge-sheet total.

Who was stopped, and where

Named among those held were former Delhi chief minister Atishi, AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, AAP leaders Saurabh Bharadwaj and Sanjeev Jha, and Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha. Police said they stopped Sanjay Singh at North Avenue, so he did not reach the ground. Bharadwaj wrote on X that he and Jha had been detained during what he called a peaceful protest, and he told party workers to keep coming. By the time Neha Bora, national president of the All India Students' Association, arrived with Yogendra Yadav of Swaraj India and the RTI campaigner Nikhil Dey, the Express reported that 500 people had already been detained.

The student groups on the street included AISA, SFI and NSUI, alongside opposition parties. Their demand was Kumar's resignation over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision and over claims of mass deletion of voters. The Election Commission had not issued a fresh reply to those claims by Friday evening in the reports of the detentions. The police action was about the gathering, not about a finding on the rolls.

A ground with a recent memory

Jantar Mantar has been the default protest site since demonstrations were pushed off India Gate. In July, thousands gathered there after Abhijeet Dipke of the Cockroach Janta Party began a hunger strike, in protests that preceded the resignation of then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET-UG paper. Friday's crowd was smaller, and it was stopped earlier. Sealing the ground and picking people up at North Avenue and Ashoka Road is a different tactic from letting a rally form and then dispersing it. It produces a detention count without a long occupation.

Detention in this setting is not the same as a charge. Indian police can hold people for preventive reasons during a prohibited assembly and release them the same day. The Express and the agencies did not publish a figure for how many were still in custody on Friday night, or how many FIRs were drafted. What they did publish is the disagreement inside the police count itself. One line says 700. Another says 550. A third says 500 at the monument and a separate 700 stopped on Ashoka Road. Until a single station-house list is released, the honest figure is a range, and the political fact is who was in it: a former chief minister, two Rajya Sabha members from different parties, and the student organisations that have used this ground all year.

The revision of the rolls will not be settled by a detention tally. It will be settled by the Commission's additions and deletions, and by any court that agrees to hear them. Friday's record is the holiday, the sealed ground, and a police estimate that moves by about 200 people depending on the officer.