Ladakh activist and educationist Sonam Wangchuk on Saturday warned that he would begin a new hunger strike or a protest march against the government if leaders and Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protesters detained in Delhi were not released in a day.
This comes after a number of Opposition leaders—several of them former CMs—and protesters were detained by the Delhi Police on Saturday, en route to the Jantar Mantar to protest against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and his alleged irregular handling of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
"Yesterday when I posted a message appealing for unity & peace in today's protest I had never imagined that the biggest democracy in the world would be under an undeclared EMERGENCY," he wrote in an X post, calling for the release of the protesters.
The protests have so far seen the CJP's top brass—such as Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das, and Ashutosh Ranka—detained, due to which the pressure group's Organization In-charge, Ajinkya Shinde, will take the protests forward.
As many as 400 protesters have also been detained in Mumbai after they assembled at spots like the August Kranti Maidan without prior permission.
Actor Imran Khan was among those detained, in addition to protesters from 'Hum Bharat Ke Log', a political organisation led by activist Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.
The INDIA bloc, which submitted a memorandum to President Droupadi Murmu on October 9 listing its demands to end the anti-CEC agitation, has planned a mega protest on October 12.
This comes just months after Wangchuk went on a hunger strike for the CJP's anti-NEET protests calling for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
His 21-day hunger strike was one of the major highlights of the anti-NEET agitation, coming just a day after the pressure group's July 20 march to the Parliament that led to protesters clashing with the police in Delhi's Jantar Mantar, as well as a series of controversies afterwards.
