Prashant Bhushan calls regime change 'every citizen's constitutional right'

Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan said on Thursday that wanting a change of government is every citizen’s right, picking up a phrase the BJP had turned on the opposition hours earlier.

“We all want regime change, getting regime change is every citizen’s constitutional right,” Bhushan told a press conference at the Press Club of India in New Delhi, called by Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke a day before the party’s flag protest at Connaught Place. Under the Constitution, he argued, creating disaffection against a government is not an offence so long as it does not encourage violence or public disorder. He called the police action against peaceful protesters, seen in videos of lathi-charges, “gunda raj”.

BJP spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari had accused Rahul Gandhi earlier in the day of wanting “regime change” after AISA leader Neha Bora praised Bangladesh’s Gen-Z protests.

Bora, who was on the same platform, said journalists covering the protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had their cameras snatched. She said a woman journalist who complained of sexual harassment by a police officer was then named in a counter-FIR. When ordinary people seek justice, she said, the police “support a particular political party and crack down on the public itself.”

Actor Prakash Raj turned to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. He alleged that Form 7, which is used to object to a name on the rolls, is being used for the “silent erasure” of Muslim voters, and said people in 23 districts of Karnataka who could not travel to Delhi had in effect been silenced.

Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal, SFI leader Aishe Ghosh and Telangana gig workers’ union president Sheikh Salauddin also attended. The Election Commission has said that names left off the draft rolls are not final deletions.