New Delhi: All India Students’ Association (AISA) president Neha Bora, Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke, Students’ Federation of India (SFI) all India join secretary Aishe Ghosh, and All India Students’ Federation (AISF) national president Viraaj Devang emphasised in a press conference in the Press Club of India (PCI), New Delhi on Thursday (October 15) that all stops are being pulled to ensure that Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar is protected. From the brute force used by the Delhi Police to the cancellation of trains to the national capital and the closure of metro stations to the preventive arrests of CJP co-convenors Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, the government has deployed state machinery and left no stone unturned to stop the ongoing protests, they mentioned.The CJP and the Left student organisations presented a united front. They spoke on similar lines, returning to the same points. This comes as the opposition, led by Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, has asserted that there are “no parallel protests.” Just a few days ago, on Monday (October 12), Bora was seen as a prominent part of Gandhi’s march to the Supreme Court.On X, Gandhi spoke against the judicial custody of Das and Ranka. “Students. Youth. Journalists. The INDIA bloc. Different banners, one cause. All protests are one: citizens demanding their constitutional rights,” he said.While Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls did dominate the discussion, the Narendra Modi government and the prime minister himself were also lambasted, particularly by CJP’s Dipke.Also read: ‘No Non-Compliance, Hot Meals at Detention’: Noteworthy Points of Delhi Top Cop’s Contempt ‘Apology’ to SC“It takes guts to declare an Emergency. But the whole world is watching Modi being a scared dictator,” he said. “They [the establishment] don’t have any freedom fighters so they co-opt [Netaji Subhas Chandra] Bose, Bhagat Singh, Sardar Patel. He doesn’t have it in him to stand with Ambedkar, Gandhi, and Nehru.”In the same breath, Dipke evoked Nehru twice, saying that when Prime Minister Modi travels abroad, it is made known to him that India exists in the world’s imagination through Nehru, Ambedkar, and Gandhi.Meanwhile, Bora, after decrying the attacks on journalists which took place as part of the larger suppression of the protests, spoke about how every single person detained or beaten up, turns into an emblem – a representative of the masses, a proxy for the 13 crore people who have been removed off the rolls.“You haven’t just sent Saurav Das to custody, you have sent everyone fighting for their rights to vote. You are dragging the 13 crore people who have been struck off the voter roles,” she said, explicitly mentioning Das.She also referred to a larger solidarity movement unfolding across the nation, including Azad Maidan, where IIT student Sahil Wakode’s parents have launched a protest. They are on hunger strike demanding that the university take accountability for their son’s suicide alleging that he was facing caste discrimination and harassment for the last three months and therefore, an FIR was registered against IIT Bombay professor Suryanarayana Doolla under the provisions of abetment to suicide and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.The overarching question on the fortress that has been formed around CEC Gyanesh Kumar was answered in part by SFI’s Ghosh.“Why did the Modi government get rid of Dharmendra Pradhan so easily? Because he only helped the BJP in Odisha. With ‘vote chori (vote theft)’, Gyanesh Kumar is helping them across the country,” she said.‘Regime change is our right’Despite the press conference’s broad based nature, there were also important moments of granularity. Transparency rights activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Nikhil Dey, who have been researching and mapping the crores affected by the SIR process, were also present, as were deleted voters from Karnataka and Telangana, who presented their testimonies.“A disproportionate number of women have been impacted by the SIR. The kinds of documents that are being asked for are those which most women do not typically have,” Bhardwaj said. “Delhi’s list had 1.56 lakh voters. When it went to the polls, 7% of voters had been deleted. What happened to them? Did they all die?”Also read: ‘Everyone Acting as Journalists Will Create Problems’: CJI While Hearing Petitions on Police ActionSupreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan highlighted the right to protest was intrinsic to democracy, as well as what seems to be an intensifying demand for regime change. He also said that the movement belongs to students and young people, and that politicians and civil society will follow their lead.“The students are going to be our leaders. And political leaders will join them for democracy and for regime change,” Bhushan said. “It is our democratic right to ask for a regime change. We will fight for that.”Meanwhile, actor-activist Prakash Raj, while also discussing the damage wreaked by the SIR, couldn’t resist a return to the levity that has defined these protests.“The man who had no fear of crocodiles as a child, is now scared of cockroaches,” he bellowed. The crocodile is a reference to Bal Narendra, a book on the prime minister’s ‘childhood adventures’.