Afternoon Pulse: No park, no court relief, and a regime-change charge before the 5 pm Tiranga call

Three hours before the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is due to raise the tricolour at Connaught Place, the state has done what it can to make sure there is nowhere to stand. Central Park is shut, Section 163 orders are in force and the Supreme Court has declined to step in. Meanwhile the Defence Minister has called the protests a bid for regime change, and the Election Commission has quietly moved most of the country onto a routine voter-roll revision. Since this morning, the argument over who may protest and who may question the referee has got louder at both ends.

The Supreme Court on Friday morning declined to give an urgent hearing to a plea against the New Delhi Municipal Council's late-night order closing Central Park on 16 and 17 October, ThePrint (via PTI) and Northeast Now reported. The petitioner's lawyer argued that the closure had effectively stopped trade at the site. The bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said it hoped "better sense" would prevail, noted the hardship to small traders, and said it could use its constitutional powers, including compensation, if the curbs proved disproportionate and caused losses. The plea may be listed on 26 or 27 October, well after the gathering.

So the CJP's 5 pm call goes ahead with no venue. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke told reporters he expected Delhi Police to detain him before the march and that he was ready to go to jail for waving the flag, ThePrint reported. He also alleged that unmarked vehicles were following him and that Intelligence Bureau staff were questioning the watchman at his home. Those are his claims; neither ThePrint nor AFP, in a report carried by Malay Mail, published a response from the police or the IB. Police have said they may allow a small group to carry the flag and sing the anthem at a place of their choosing. As of 1 pm we found no report of Dipke or others being detained today.

From this morning's watch list, two items are unchanged. CJP co-convenors Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka remain in judicial custody; ThePrint reported that a magistrate remanded them for five days on 14 October, and we found no report of a bail hearing. The other is Dushyant Kumar Gautam. We found no report that he has been sworn in as Governor of Sikkim, and no response yet from the government, the BJP or Gautam to the 24-hour ultimatum from Ankita Bhandari's parents. The Statesman reported at midday that the family will stay in Delhi, has asked to meet President Droupadi Murmu and is threatening protests across the country. Gautam has denied any role in the 2022 murder.

The government's political answer came from Lucknow. At a press conference on Friday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh accused the Congress and its allies of using young people as pawns and of seeking a "regime change" like Bangladesh's, The Week reported, citing PTI. AFP quoted him as saying the fight was not about electoral reform. The Week also noted that the CJP had distanced itself from such talk on Thursday night: Dipke said his party was not seeking regime change, only Gyanesh Kumar's removal and replacement by an independent process. We found no Congress reply to Singh by early afternoon.

A development the morning Pulse missed: late on Thursday, the Election Commission ordered a Special Summary Revision (SSR), the regular annual update, of electoral rolls in 17 states and Union Territories, ANI and The Daily Jagran reported. The list includes Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Gujarat. Draft rolls are due on 12 November and final rolls on 4 January 2027, with 1 January 2027 as the qualifying date. States where the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is under way or recently ended, among them Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, will get schedules later. Whether this marks a step back from the SIR or simply the next stage after it is now part of the political fight. The order does not say.

Markets gave back some of Thursday's surge. The Sensex swung between small losses and gains of about 350 points through the morning. Business Standard put it at 74,661, up 0.47%, at noon, while Punjab Kesari had it nearly flat at 74,341 half an hour later, with the Nifty holding above 23,000. IT stocks did the lifting: Tech Mahindra gained as much as 7% after a 32.7% rise in quarterly profit, and Infosys and TCS also rose, while banks, energy and Reliance slipped on profit-taking. PNB, LTIMindtree, Federal Bank and DLF had not reported by the time we filed.