Mumbai: In an abrupt development, the 110-day old Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founded by Maharashtra’s Abhijeet Dipke has reportedly split with a Gujarat-based activist Manish Brahmbhatt announcing a rival ‘CJP-Democratic’ – amid political accusations hurled at each other. Announcing the new faction in New Delhi today, Brahmbhatt claimed that the original CJP which emerged from a movement built on the blood and sweat of people subsequently transformed itself solely into a h

From Kanhaiya Kumar to Arvind Kejriwal, Indian politics offers a warning about movements that struggle to grow beyond one dominant face. Watching Abhijeet Dipke rise to prominence recently made me think of Kanhaiya Kumar. Not necessarily because of their politics, but because of a pattern. Kanhaiya did not emerge alone. During the JNU agitation of 2016, Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid and Anirban Bhattacharya were also prominent voices. Yet one person became the most recognisable

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) convenor Abhijeet Dipke’s self-styled “school movement” is beginning to look less like a campaign for educational reform and more like a political stunt in search of a scandal. The deeper he ventures into Maharashtra’s schools, the more his own methods are coming under scrutiny. And the latest episode in Latur is particularly revealing. Dipke reportedly arrived expecting to discover the kind of institutional collapse that makes for convenient Insta

Mumbai: In an unexpected surgical strike, the Cockroach Janta Party has questioned why a massive corpus of thousands of crores of rupees, lying in the Prime Minister CARES Fund, is kept idle when there are dire needs for funds in various sectors, particularly government schools – kicking off a new political storm – on Wednesday. CJP Founder Abhijeet Dipke today directly asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on what he termed as “so much of public money lying untouched and unutil

India's political history has been shaped not only by elections but also by mass movements. Time and again, public agitations have altered the country's political trajectory, influenced governments, and reshaped institutions. Yet, despite their differences in ideology and leadership, the most successful movements in independent India shared one defining characteristic: they rallied people around a clear, specific, and achievable agenda. The ongoing protest led Cockroach Janta

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena (UBT) became the first political party to openly support the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) launched by a Maharashtra youth Abhijeet Dipke who launched a huge protest in New Delhi on Saturday. In a strong statement, SS (UBT) President and ex-CM Uddhav Thackeray threw his weight behind the CJP as thousands of youngsters hit the streets of New Delhi in the scorching sun, not for politics but for their future. “Those whom we call the architects of the nation's

Mumbai: Nearly a month after unleashing a tsunami on social media, Abhijeet Dipke – who launched the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ – is likely to return home early tomorrow (June 6) from the USA where he had gone to study and hunt for a job. In a departure message before boarding the flight, Dipke said: “On my way to India… Leaving my fate in the hands of the Constitution. #JaiBhim,” amid speculation that there could be repercussions for his recent statements which have earned hi

Abhijeet Dipke’s viral rebellion looks less like a spontaneous youth uprising than India’s anti-BJP ecosystem discovering meme warfare. Indian politics has always had room for the absurd. A country that once elevated sadhus, film stars and anti-corruption crusaders into national prominence was probably destined, sooner or later, to produce a Cockroach Janta Party. What is more revealing is how quickly India’s habitual anti-Modi commentariat which includes the activist-lawyer

Mumbai: Not from kitchen sinks, toilets or gutters — these two-legged ‘roaches’ have swarmed Social Media in millions through memes, live-streams, rap anthems and viral posts… and the country has begun taking note. On May 16, an unemployed youth, Abhijeet Dipke from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar - currently job-hunting in Boston, USA, grabbed national attention after launching a digital platform called the “Cockroach Janta Party” (CJP), pitched as a democratic movement “of the