A season of protests has shaken up Indian politics. What comes next? | Political Pulse News

However, two of the chief actors in the protests till now have hit a momentary pause. Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke had indicated that the next round of protests would be held only after Diwali, while the Congress plans to hold a rally at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, one of the three designated protest sites now, on November 1.

Jantar Mantar 1.0 brought into the open the dissatisfaction simmering under the surface over the NEET paper leaks and a compromised examination system and it led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union Education Minister. He stepped away from a government that is not given to wilting under pressure. But it was a pity that somewhere down the line, the CJP gave up its push for concrete reforms in the examination system. Rarely do moments come in the life of a country when it is possible to push for meaningful reforms.

However, one thing happened with the protests. Gen Z emerged as a new category of voters courted by political parties. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to them at midnight on Instagram, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat engaged with 2,000 of them in Mumbai, and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi took up the cudgels on their behalf through the Congress’s “Chhatron ki Goonj” programmes. Thanks to the support of the youth, actor Joseph Vijay had become Tamil Nadu Chief Minister a few months earlier, routing established Dravidian parties.

Jantar Mantar 2.0 and ‘regime change’

Jantar Mantar 2.0 was about the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, with questions being raised about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The Indian Express on September 23 reported on the internal differences in the Election Commission and the objections that the other two Election Commissioners raised.

However, lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan’s call for “regime change” and student leader Neha Bora’s words of solidarity for a group of socialist students in Bangladesh, where the government of Sheikh Hasina was violently overthrown in 2024, had the fat in the fire. Many have pointed out that “regime change” is wider than a change of “government”. But the two terms are often used interchangeably in everyday language.

In any case, India is not Bangladesh. Opposition parties naturally work for a change of government. There has been a peaceful transition of power after every election over the decades, with the defeated humbly accepting the verdict. This makes the restoration of the credibility of the electoral exercise, which has come under a cloud of late, that much more important. There was a time in 1977, hours after Indira Gandhi’s defeat, when Janata Party leaders were apprehensive that she might try to undo their victory by using the Armed Forces, but nothing of the sort happened or was even attempted. A smooth transition also took place in mid-1996 in what was a difficult period for the country. Power moved from P V Narasimha Rao to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who lasted only 13 days, and finally to a United Front government hastily cobbled together.

That is why the most urgent task before the protesters is to help restore the authenticity of the voter rolls and restore the legitimate voters whose names got deleted — and do this before the impending state elections next year that will determine the post-2027 course of politics. Everything else can wait.

Bora is highly talented, fearless, and articulate and has already become a leading figure for her generation. That is no small achievement at the age of 29. She may have her individual opinions, but as one of the leaders of the ongoing movement, her words about Bangladesh were avoidable. The controversy put Congressmen on the defensive and they had to clarify that they want “regime change” only through elections. Similarly, Dipke, too, had to clarify that the CJP was agitating for the exit of Gyanesh Kumar, not regime change.

This brought the fault lines in the movement out into the open. A movement of this kind is like running a multi-party coalition where the interests of the various groups have to be subsumed in the larger goal for it to be effective. It also requires the goals to have the largest possible consensus behind them, even if the movement is like a “Shivji ki baraat (Lord Shiva’s wedding procession)”, as Gandhi described it.

These developments point to the need for the protesters, disparate as the group is, to have a coordination mechanism for making decisions.

CJP’s moment

The headlines are likely to change now, with the festive season followed by the Winter Session of Parliament. Then will come the notifications for the state elections in early 2027. On its part, the BJP is readying its counter-offensive. Even as it prevents the protests in many places, it will have to worry about the alienation created by the heavy-handed methods, particularly amongst those who have been the party’s supporters, such as the urban middle class.

The protests against the CEC have given Gandhi the opportunity to reposition the Congress. He had seized on CJP’s anti-paper leak protests by holding a sit-in outside the PM’s residence and another dharna outside the Parliament Street police station to get an FIR registered for a pellet gun victim. The second time around, it was the Congress that was suddenly in the lead role and not the CJP, which had initially aroused interest among the youth.

The 2026 moment essentially belongs to the CJP. They have provided the fresh faces, new energies, and a fearless approach to highlighting issues that trouble the young today. In the end, the Opposition is likely to be the natural beneficiaries of the political fallout.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide.)