FEATURING VIVEK MONTEIRO - Barely three months since the world’s largest democracy was rocked by student-led protests under the satirical name of the Cockroach Janta (People’s) Party, India is facing mass protests once more. This time, public rage has focused on the mass purging of voter rolls.
Protesters are calling for the firing of Gyanesh Kumar, the chief election commissioner, who is allied with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). Through a process called the Special Intensive Revision, Kumar has overseen the deletion of 130 million voters since last year - a number equivalent to the entire population of Japan.
The purges are being done under the guise of cleaning up the voter rolls of dead and duplicate voters and have been found to disproportionately impact Muslims, migrants, women and other marginalized peoples.
At a mass rally in the capital of New Delhi on October 10th, police forces arbitrarily arrested scores of activists, journalists, and students, and prevented many leaders and members of the Cockroach Janta Party from reaching the protest location.
Vivek Monteiro was at a solidarity protest in Mumbai on October 10 where he was among those arrested. Monteiro is President of Mumbai Shramik Sangh and several organized labor unions in the sectors of tyre manufacturing, chemicals, engineering, hotels and more. He is a full-time trade unionist with the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) since 1977, he is also Vice President of CITU Maharashtra and a member of the CITU National working committee, and much more. He happens to be trained as physicist, with a masters from Caltech and a doctorate from Stony Brook University in the US.
He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar from Mumbai about the current protests in India.
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