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.
Editor’s note: This post may be cut off in your inbox due to length. Click on the title above to read it in full on Substack.
Snapshot of the day
October 1, 2026
Anirudh S.K., Kalrav Joshi
As the India Cable goes to press early on Gandhi Jayanti, opposition parties, including student-led outfits, and the Cockroach Janata Party have issued multiple protest calls against the Election Commission and its chief Gyanesh Kumar – from Jantar Mantar to Mumbai and across states. Thousands of protesters are anticipated to gather in solidarity against what activists and former election commissioners have described as the ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘illegal’ special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, as well as changes to the functioning of the poll panel.
There are many urgent questions confronting the Modi government as resistance grows and humbles it in more ways than one. But one fact already sharpens the political stakes: police in Delhi and Mumbai have denied permission for planned protests, while security is being stepped up, with the Delhi police, which comes directly under home minister Amit Shah, deploying Central Armed Police Forces personnel at Jantar Mantar and elsewhere in the capital. But the mood and resolve remain undeterred: AISA’s Neha Bora and the CJP’s Abhijeet Dipke have said they will be moving ahead and taking it to the streets. Dipke tonight was briefly detained by Mumbai police after being spotted with placards near Marine Drive.
The symbolism is difficult to miss. On Gandhi Jayanti, citizens are invoking a home-grown Gandhian tradition of solidarity, dissent and non-violent resistance. If police again use brute force to disperse protesters as pressure mounts, those images could become politically potent – domestically as well as globally – especially as the Modi government routinely invokes Gandhi’s legacy for photo ops, even while figures in the wider Hindu nationalist-RSS ecosystem have glorified his assassin Nathuram Godse and staged reenactments of Gandhi’s assassination.
The protests also unfold against a wider resurgence of street dissent. In Delhi, hundreds of women recently marched from their university gates into a city where sexual harassment, assault, catcalling and molestation remain everyday fears. Their demand was elemental and unmistakable: “We want justice.”
And if one goes by social media numbers, especially among Gen Z, which is rising against the increasingly autocratic government – redefining the political landscape in its own emblematic ways and shattering the fear of protest – the ground may well be shifting and creating shockwaves.
After Karnataka chief minister D.K. Shivakumar held a dharna outside the office of the state’s chief electoral officer today protesting the en masse and allegedly malicious submissions of Forms 7, which are used to seek deletions from the voter roll, the CEO has ordered a probe into the matter. Those who are found to have deliberately filed such forms on incorrect grounds during the SIR will be proceeded against, the official has ordered.
The Hindu‘s Rishita Khanna for instance has written about several cases where individuals filed Forms 7, largely targeting Muslim electors, in bulk. In her latest report, she details allegations that some people attempted to submit such bulk applications against Muslims with the booth-level officers of at least six polling stations in the Belagavi North constituency. Some BLOs alleged that when they refused
