Two counts, no confirmation

Two very different pictures of Saturday's mass detentions emerged around the Cockroach Janta Party's planned demonstration in the capital, and neither could be checked against an official source.

• •The movement said at a news conference in Delhi that "more than 15,000" protesters had been detained as they tried to stage the demonstration.
• •The Hindu newspaper reported that more than 5,000 protesters had been detained, a number the paper itself noted was not immediately possible to verify.
• •Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the detentions, leaving the total unconfirmed.

CJP leader Ajinkya Shinde gave the higher figure himself at the news conference in Delhi. With police silent, the gap between the two counts remains unresolved.

Leaders held before landing, lawyers refused

According to the group, founder Abhijeet Dipke and two other leaders were detained before they even disembarked from a flight into the capital. The CJP said the three were being denied access to their lawyers and cut off from all contact with others, and that the trio had been taken to an undisclosed location.

The detentions of the leadership came alongside what the movement described as thousands more protesters being held in New Delhi as they attempted to march to the main Jantar Mantar protest site, defying a security clampdown.

Movement vows to return

Despite the scale of the detentions, Shinde signalled the movement had no intention of standing down.

The pledge came as dozens of protesters shouted anti-government slogans as they were taken away in police vehicles, a scene that AFP reporters on the ground witnessed.

What the protest is about

The demonstration targeted India's election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, following allegations of misconduct during a nationwide voter-roll revision. Protesters are demanding Kumar's resignation and a halt to the revision exercise - demands the Election Commission of India rejects.

The ECI has rejected allegations of impropriety, saying the revision was intended to remove duplicate and ineligible voters. Calls for the ECI chief to resign intensified after critics said the revision could disenfranchise millions of constituents and benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The unconfirmed toll

With the CJP claiming more than 15,000 detained, The Hindu reporting more than 5,000, and police not responding to requests for comment, the true number of people held on Saturday remains unknown. The CJP said thousands of those detained were taken as they tried to reach Jantar Mantar. The last confirmed status, as of the report, is that police had not immediately responded to AFP's request for comment, leaving the total number unconfirmed.