New Delhi: On a day when hundreds gathered at Jantar Mantar here responding to the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) call, the Opposition stood vertically split into two camps — a sceptical Congress on one side, while the rest of the parties cheered on from the sidelines.
While a section of the Congress trashed the CJP protest, calling it “performative” and a “brainchild of the AAP”, the party’s official line was more focussed on underlining that its youth and student wings have done more in fighting for the rights of the students affected by paper leaks and creaky digital infrastructure.
In stark contrast, the rest of the Opposition — not just the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with whom CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke was associated in the past — threw its weight behind the CJP’s campaign. Many prominent faces from the Left even landed up at Jantar Mantar.
Seen from that lens, the CJP’s first ground-level campaign also laid bare, yet again, the cracks in the Opposition ranks, widening by the day ahead of the nearly-defunct INDIA bloc’s huddle on June 8 in New Delhi — its first after the DMK’s exit from the coalition following its defeat in the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls and the Congress’s decision to tie up with the ruling TVK in the southern state.
On Saturday, apart from the AAP, the CJP’s protest received support from the Samajwadi Party (SP), Trinamool Congress (TMC), Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Left parties, among others.
“The cockroach movement is an expression of the huge anger and frustration experienced by the youth of this country. Rather than terming them anti-national, Modi govt should address their issues. AAP supports their demands. The Prime Minister must sack the education minister immediately,” AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal said in a post on X.
Dipke was a key member of the core team of the AAP’s social media unit before he went to the United States to pursue higher education. He played a pivotal role in steering the AAP’s social-media campaign during the 2020 Delhi Assembly polls that the party won by a landslide, defeating the BJP.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav also voiced his support for the CJP-led protest, writing on X: “These voices must reach the ‘arrogant rulers’, now that the youth too have sparked a revolution,” while attaching a news clip carrying anti-government voices from the gathering.
In a statement, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray called the CJP protesters “the destiny-makers and future of the country”.
“It is not right to belittle them by calling them ‘cockroaches’ and deny them justice. The NEET paper leak has devastated lakhs of young people. All these aggrieved young men and women are now raising their voices by becoming cockroaches. The government will have to listen to their demands.
“Do not underestimate the cockroaches — this is the warning given by the agitation at Jantar Mantar,” Thackeray said.
Incidentally, Dipke hails from Maharashtra.
TMC MP Mahua Moitra also lauded Dipke. “Cockroaches survive even a nuclear holocaust — don’t take them lightly. Onwards and upwards,” she said in a post on X.
The Congress, meanwhile, struck a discordant note, with a large section of the party apprehensive that the AAP is holding the strings of the CJP. The Congress’s blow-hot, blow-cold relationship with the AAP traces its origins to the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement led by Kejriwal and Anna Hazare that shook the foundations of the UPA-2 government.
In a long post on X, Supriya Shrinate, chairperson of the Congress’s social media and digital platforms, listed the protests led by the party’s youth frontal organisations, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), across states over the last month against the NEET paper “leak” and the CBSE marking row.
“They have braved scorching 47°C heat, they have faced water cannons, they have been beaten mercilessly, they have been lathicharged, they have been arrested and detained. Yet, did you see this on prime-time news? Did you see the courage, the sweat, the blood and the resolve of these young Indians?
“No. You did not. And that itself tells you everything about whose voices the system wants to amplify and whose it wants to suppress,” Shrinate said.
Many other Congress leaders were more direct. For instance, Srivatsa, a member of Rahul Gandhi’s core team, called the CJP-led protest a “flop” and “performative”.
“Kejriwal today again proved that he is better at mobilising journalists and YouTubers than people. There are twice as many media personnel at Jantar Mantar as there are ‘protesters’ at this flop protest,” he said in a post on X.
Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Nabin, addressing a meeting in Ranchi, took a veiled swipe at Dipke, saying “some people sitting abroad think they will give direction to India’s youngsters”.
“India’s youngsters live in the village square with the farmer, live in coaching institutes, live on college campuses. But India’s youngsters are not going to move forward by becoming a puppet in the fist of a few people sitting in Delhi,” he said.
PTI
