A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK
If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.
Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.
Snapshot of the day
October 13, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan, Kalrav Joshi
The Cockroach Janta Party on Tuesday refused to let the denotification of Jantar Mantar be the end of the protest against the chief election commissioner. Party leaders Saurav Das, Ashutosh Rana and Ajinkya Shinde, along with other team members, climbed over barricades and a locked gate to enter the heavily guarded protest site, unfurled the Indian Tricolour and raised slogans of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”, “Jai Bhim” and “Inquilab Zindabad”. They were detained shortly afterwards. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke declared, “You cannot denotify the resistance.” The police held them at a police station near Dwarka, miles away from where they had been detained, till 2 am and then moved them to Parliament Street police station where they formally arrested for trespass, violation of the bond they had been released on earlier, and obstruction of public official’s duty. “They’ll be produced before the SCM Court in the morning. A possibility of Judicial Custody (JC) in the Tihar Jail is possible,” Ratna Singh, the CJP’s legal affairs head tweeted just as the Cable was being released. “They were not allowed to meet their lawyers till late at night. They were brought to Parliament Street PS at 3 AM in a private van. Despite these illegal actions, their spirits are high.”
The INDIA coalition of Opposition parties met on Tuesday afternoon at Rahul Gandhi’s house to take stock of the protest against CEC Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and plan their next moves. “Though largescale Delhi protests may see a break”, the Deccan Herald quoted Rahul Gandhi as saying, based on a source’s account, he told the leaders of other parties to “be ready to be in Delhi in 24 hours notice. Anything can happen anytime. We need to be ready to react fast. Everyone has a responsibility. It is collective...”
The CJP did not join the Opposition-led mass march to the Supreme Court on Monday and Dipke today accused the government of “treating different protests differently”:
“When CJP was granted permission to protest, many were quick to float conspiracy theories that we were planted by the BJP.
Yesterday, the INDIA bloc held a massive protest, but there was no crackdown like the one we witnessed on October 10.
This is exactly how the govt plays us against each other. By treating different protests differently, they create suspicion and mistrust among people who are ultimately fighting for the same cause.
My only request to everyone is to see through these tactics. Today, they may allow one protest and crush another. Tomorrow, they could reverse the roles. The idea is to keep us doubting each other instead of questioning those in power.
Don’t let conspiracy theories divide us. Don’t fall into the trap of fighting among ourselves when we should be standing together.
The fight is against Gyanesh Kumar and those protecting him. Don’t lose sight of that.”
What he did not explain is why he spoke of “different protests” when the goal is the same and the CJP could well have mobilised its supporters for Monday’s
