Of the five demands in the CJP manifesto, the second is the one that makes constitutional lawyers spill their chai: the Chief Election Commissioner of India shall be arrested under UAPA if any legitimate vote is deleted from the rolls. Forget rules-committee inquiries. Forget polite show-cause notices. The Cockroach Janta Party wants the country's most powerful unelected referee treated, on paper, the way the Indian state currently treats a militant.
It is the most provocative demand in the manifesto. It is also, the CJP would argue, the most internally consistent.
First, what is UAPA?
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, is India's primary anti-terror statute. It was originally a law to ban "unlawful associations" — meaning, in 1967, secessionist outfits. Over six amendments — most aggressively in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2019 — it has grown into a sweeping anti-terror regime that lets the state:
- Designate individuals (not just organisations) as terrorists.
- Hold an accused without bail for up to 180 days.
- Reverse the standard presumption of innocence in specific provisions.
- Restrict travel, freeze assets, and prosecute under offences that carry death or life imprisonment.
For most Indians, UAPA is the law that has been used against student protestors in the Bhima Koregaon case, against activists in the Delhi riots case, and against journalists in Kashmir. It is widely understood, even by its supporters, as a hard law. That is the point.
Why apply UAPA to vote deletion?
The CJP's argument is logical to the point of bluntness:
"If any legitimate vote is deleted from the rolls — in any state, ruled by anyone — the Chief Election Commissioner shall be arrested under UAPA. Taking away a citizen's vote is no less than terrorism."
— CJP Manifesto, point 2
Walk through the framing.
- The right to vote is a constitutional right, traceable to Article 326. In Anoop Baranwal (2023), the Supreme Court called free and fair elections part of the basic structure.
- If the state systematically removes legitimate voters from the rolls, it has stolen a constitutional right.
- The Indian state has decided — through Parliament, repeatedly — that grave attacks on constitutional rights and the unity of India can be prosecuted under UAPA.
- Therefore: stealing votes is no less serious than the other things UAPA already prosecutes. Treating it lighter is a category error.
Read alongside CJP's larger ECI accountability demand, the UAPA clause is less an actual legislative recommendation and more a rhetorical anchor — a way of saying this is how serious we think it is.
Why the CEC, specifically?
The Chief Election Commissioner sits at the top of the constitutional body responsible for electoral rolls, polling, counting, and declaration of results. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the preparation of the electoral roll is, statutorily, the ECI's job — operationally delegated to state electoral officers, but constitutionally owned at the top.
The 2024 election cycle saw widespread vote-deletion controversies reported in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and parts of UP, as publicly reported by mainstream outlets including The Hindu, Indian Express and various election-watch NGOs. The CJP's position is that under existing law, none of those alleged deletions have produced a single named, dismissed, or even publicly censured ECI officer — let alone the CEC. The accountability gap is institutional, and the CJP wants to close it loudly.
The critics — and the strongest counter-argument
Civil liberties lawyers have not been shy about replying. The strongest counter is not that vote deletion is okay; it is that UAPA itself is the problem.
- UAPA's conviction rate, by the National Crime Records Bureau's own data, hovers around 2–3%. It is a law that punishes by process — long undertrial detention — rather than by outcome.
- Extending UAPA to a new category of "offender" entrenches its legitimacy. Constitutional scholars like Gautam Bhatia have argued the right answer is to narrow UAPA, not expand its target list.
- Threatening UAPA against the CEC may also collide with the constitutional protection of CEC removal — only via the impeachment-equivalent procedure under Article 324(5).
The CJP's reply, when pushed on this, has been: yes, UAPA needs reform. So does the ECI's accountability architecture. We are not refusing to discuss either — but we will not let the political class hide behind "UAPA is bad" to dodge the question of how a CEC can preside over deleted-roll allegations across multiple states and face no personal consequence.
What this demand really is
Read carefully, demand #2 is a hostage-taking move. The CJP knows that UAPA-against-CEC is unlikely to pass. It is the lever to force a real conversation about what should happen — criminal accountability, fast-tracked tribunals, removal under Article 324(5), public published audits of every deletion. Read it alongside CJP's full manifesto and the demand becomes a maximum bid in a negotiation that has never started.
It is also fully in keeping with how the Cockroach Janta Party operates: stake the most uncomfortable position in the room, refuse to apologise for it, and let the political class haggle down from there.
Read the full manifesto. If you think the existing accountability gap is unacceptable, join CJP (free, takes a minute) and tell two friends.