Connaught Place
New Delhi: A street vendor has moved the Delhi High Court seeking a ban on the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest scheduled for Friday, October 16, at Connaught Place in the national capital.
“This protest has to be stopped,” submitted senior advocate Sacchin Puri, representing Anil Kumar Gupta, who emphasised the need for an immediate interim measure. Puri said protests in Delhi’s business hub have caused massive disruption to normal life and traffic and mounting financial losses for shop owners.
Acting Chief Justice Nitin W Sambre noted that the Supreme Court is already hearing matters related to the protests and directed Puri to inform the apex court about the developments at 2:30 pm.
“Come back at 2:30 after Supreme Court hears the matter, we will consider,” the bench said.
Petitioner Gupta, a street vendor at Palika Bazar in Connaught Place, has filed a plea seeking a ban on protests across central Delhi, including Connaught Place. The plea requests court directions to restrain the CJP from holding agitations, demonstrations, marches or gatherings at Central Park, Connaught Place, or any non-designated venue.
CJP founder and national convener Abhijeet Dipke on Wednesday, October 14, called on “patriots” to gather on Friday at Central Park in Connaught Place, with the national flag, alleging that its members Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka have been “jailed only for unfurling the tricolour.”
“We will show that waving a tiranga is not a crime,” Dipke said on X, and asked those who cannot come to Delhi to carry out “tiranga marches” in their cities. He expressed apprehension that he may also be jailed.
The call comes on a day when Das and Ranka were sent to five-day judicial custody and lodged in Tihar Jail for allegedly violating their peace bonds and trespassing into Jantar Mantar, which has been denotified as a protest area. The arrests have been widely criticised, with Amnesty International demanding the immediate release of the leaders and raising concern over “shrinking space for peaceful protest and dissent” in the country.
This post was last modified on October 15, 2026 1:34 pm