Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

State vs cockroaches—who wins a protest case in India?

From TheProfesseer's dataset, we sampled 136 matters before the Bombay and Delhi High Courts between 2021 and 2026, in which the court ruled on a protest.

A month ago, the Chief Justice of India remarked, in passing, that jobless young Indians who turn to activism behave like cockroaches. He clarified soon enough that he had meant only those who enter professions on fake degrees. But the word had already skittered out of reach. Frustrated young Indians picked it up, wore it, and turned the insult into a banner. On the evening of 6 June, hundreds swarmed New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar with national flags for the first rally of the new Cockroach Janta Party. The protests have since reached Maharashtra.

That a protest of this scale was permitted at all is reassuring. Though a democracy permitting its citizens’ dissent is fulfilling a duty, not doing them a favour. When the State forgets that duty, the citizen’s recourse is a court of law. Now, the Cockroach Janta Party got its permission. Many protesters never do, and many more are dragged into court by someone bent on shutting them down. That leaves a narrower question than the week’s politics, and a more durable one: when a protest matter reaches a High Court, how does the Indian judicial system actually treat it?

From TheProfesseer’s dataset, we sampled 136 matters before the Bombay and Delhi High Courts between 2021 and 2026, in which the court ruled on a protest: its permission, its policing, its removal, or its punishment.

Who are India’s cockroaches?

Mostly, India’s protesters are singular individuals who file their own cases. Across jurisdictions, they move the court in 76 per cent of the matters. They mostly ask for a venue, for protection, or for an FIR to be quashed.

While this is unsurprising, who makes up the rest usually goes unnoticed. In Delhi, more than a third of protest cases are filed not by a protester but by someone determined to shut one down: a resident’s association, a school, liquor stores ensconced in glass, and occasionally, a political outfit disguised in NGO clothing asking the court to clear the streets. The heckler’s veto is less a clash of citizens than a trade........

© ThePrint