Having played a central role in the Jantar Mantar agitation against exam paper leaks only weeks ago, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has largely remained in the background in Ranchi as students continue to protest against alleged irregularities in state government exams. The CJP’s well-known faces from the Delhi protests — national convener Abhijeet Dipke and co-conveners Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka — have been absent from the protest. And that, the CJP claims, is by design.
A week ago, on August 9, Dipke had a video chat with Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha (JLKM) leader Devendra Nath Mahato, who has been on a hunger strike in support of the demands. The following day, asked if he would travel to Ranchi, Dipke told reporters in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar in Maharashtra: “Mahato is leading the protest in Jharkhand. He was leading the protest effectively. We don’t want to hijack the protest.”
Dipke said he was in touch with Mahato and other student leaders and that a CJP team was in Jharkhand. Leading the 25-member delegation is Mukesh Allrounder, an activist from Rajasthan with a past in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) like many in the CJP, including Dipke and Ranka.
However, despite its publicly stated reason, questions have been raised about why the outfit that recently led one of the largest student agitations of the past few years — and is now looking to establish its presence across the country —has stayed away from the Ranchi demonstrations.
“We have seen that students here have not supported the CJP … If they want to come, they can come, but they should follow the right way of protesting. They should not repeat what the Left organisations did at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, where the protest turned violent,” ABVP leader Satyam Mishra told The Indian Express. The RSS’s student wing is one of the participants in the protests against the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-Congress government.
Mishra said the ABVP does not want outsiders to interfere with the protest and that the protest should remain peaceful. “Slogans like ‘Azadi’ are not required here. We don’t need such an agenda in Jharkhand. We can protest peacefully.”
Do not want to lead: CJP
The Indian Express reached out to both Abhijeet Dipke and Saurav Das to ask them about their absence from Ranchi, but they did not respond.
However, the CJP’s legal affairs lead Ratna Singh told The Indian Express, “We have been saying our protest at Jantar Mantar was also supposed to be a leaderless movement and now, going forward, the CJP is supposed to act like a political pressure group. We don’t want people to hero-worship or think of the CJP as having three faces and expect everything from them. Since the July 25 victory (Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation), the youth have been empowered. They are capable of organising and fighting in their own way towards seeking accountability from any government.”
“The people who are protesting over there should feel empowered, not hijacked. We should not feel that they are not capable of bringing that change. The CJP wants that all of them should feel empowered and think that they are capable of organising the protest and demanding accountability from the government,” she said.
Singh said she, along with the other top CJP leaders, was in touch with the students in Jharkhand and would join them if their presence was required. “Our 20 to 25-member delegation has already met with them and later more joined. They are posting updates regularly. They have been with the students who were beaten up badly by the police on August 10. If our presence is required, we will be there for sure,” she said.
Mukesh Allrounder said that upon arriving in Ranchi, the CJP delegation first met students and volunteers to understand their demands and what they expect from the outfit. He said the students wanted to know primarily about managing security and keeping the protests peaceful. “Everyone’s common response was: how did you win such a big fight at Jantar Mantar? We need your management and your experience,” he said.
After receiving feedback from the protesters, the delegation conferred with the CJP’s national leadership, which instructed them that its support would be “from below the stage, not from the stage”
The person behind the outfit’s Jharkhand chapter is Amit Singh, an advocate at the Jharkhand High Court who knows Dipke and Ranka through their association with the AAP. The Jharkhand chapter, however, remains limited to Ranchi at the moment and has not yet developed district-wise teams.
Politics at the protest site
The protest in Ranchi started on July 25 at the Bapu Vatika, a prominent public park, before shifting to the Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium on July 29, with all the students united at that time over their demand for a CBI investigation into the exam irregularities. However, within a couple of days, the protesters divided into two groups: the JPSC-JSSC Reform Manch and the JPSC-JSSC Abhyarthi Nyay Manch.
The JPSC-JSSC Reform Manch split from the other group, alleging that students associated with the other group were mostly linked to the JLKM. The Nyay Manch labels the other group the “BJP faction”, as BJP leaders and workers have regularly visited it. The split was also visible in their public negotiations with the government, as both separately met representatives of the JMM-Congress administration.
Umme Habiba, a 27-year-old who is one of the faces of the Ranchi protests, told The Indian Express that she had also spoken to Dipke. “He said that he stood with us but that his health was not good at the time and he would come once he recovered,” said Habiba, one of the students on hunger strike. While many students allied to the BJP do not want the CJP’s presence at the protest, Habiba said the outfit’s role in building this momentum could not be denied.
Chandan Rajak, one of the organisers of the JPSC-JSSC Abhyarthi Nyay Manch, said the protesters would welcome CJP’s continued solidarity but did not necessarily want its leaders to take a more leading role in the movement. “We welcome the solidarity from the CJP as it has sparked that enthusiasm in India to fight against injustice and corruption. However, we do not want anyone to hijack the stage,” he said.
Mukesh Allrounder (in black) is leading the CJP delegation in Ranchi. (Express photo) 
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