From Anna Andolan to Cockroach Janata Party: The Political Chessboard of 2029
Around the 15th and 16th of May, a party is launched digitally. On Instagram, where it takes years of constant struggle to reach even one million followers, this party gained more than 22 million followers within just one week of its launch. It was precisely this extraordinary feat that drew everyone’s attention to this party, and then doubts, suspicions, and questions also began to spread their wings.
People spend ten years on Instagram to gain ten million followers. This party gained 22 million followers within just 7 days — which means this could not have happened suddenly. Years of organized planning must have taken place, and the search for the perfect opportunity must have been ongoing. This is not the work of one person or a handful of individuals. If the ball goes straight into the net the moment an opportunity arises and a goal is scored, it means that behind it lies the planning, hard work, and strategy of an entire team, an entire organization.
The search for an opportunity was already underway, and then one day, a statement by the Chief Justice of India placed the entire goal net right in front of this team, and Abhijit Depke, living in America, scored the goal. What actually happened was that the Chief Justice of India called unemployed youth who enter the legal field with fake degrees “cockroaches.” He also said that some people become media, social media, and RTI activists and begin attacking the system. The Indian media presented this statement in such a way that it appeared as though the Chief Justice of India had called all unemployed youth “cockroaches.” This opportunity was immediately seized upon, and the “Cockroach Janata Party” was born.
Whether the opportunity was found or created — you can understand this from the way the Indian media presented the Chief Justice of India’s statement. First of all, there is no longer any need to say which side the Indian media stands on. You must already know about the “Anna Andolan” that took place in 2011. Even then, although the goal may have been scored by Anna Hazare, there were Sangh-affiliated people like Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, Kumar Vishwas, and Manish Sisodia in the team. Although even at that time, many good, secular individuals, journalists, and activists were deceived by the movement because resentment against the Congress government was growing, and the media then created the entire atmosphere — and by the time the mask of Anna Andolan came off, the goal had already been scored.
The Cockroach Janata Party is also the Anna Andolan of 2026. Having achieved digital success, the Cockroach Janata Party is now ready to take to the streets. The Anna Andolan’s target was the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Cockroach Janata Party’s target is the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. Now consider the timing and the date. Cockroach Janata Party founder Abhijit Depke is coming to India on June 6th. His purpose is to hold a peaceful protest demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over paper leaks and irregularities in competitive examinations like NEET, CBSE, CUET, and SSC GD. He will arrive at Delhi airport in the morning on June 6th and will seek permission to hold a protest at Sansad Marg police station along with his social media supporters.
How simple and positive it sounds, doesn’t it! But do you know where the catch is? The catch is about the date — June 6th. Why June 6th, of all days? In fact, on June 6th, after a full two years, the opposition parties’ INDIA bloc has a meeting at the Delhi Constitution Club. Setting aside the internal rifts of the past two years, all the opposition parties are on the path of coming together to adopt a strong policy. The purpose of this meeting is to formulate a joint strategy against the central Modi government over paper leaks and irregularities in exams like NEET UG, CBSE, CUET, and SSC GD, as well as over rising inflation and the increase in diesel and petrol prices. And now the Cockroach Janata Party has also announced a protest on the very same issues, on the very same day, in Delhi itself.
From this, one can understand what kind of thinking is at work behind the Cockroach Janata Party. Was Abhijit Depke’s June 6th programme planned by Arvind Kejriwal or by the BJP? Whatever the case may be, one thing is certain — behind the Cockroach Janata Party, it is the RSS’s thinking and the RSS’s entire machinery that is at work. This is precisely the RSS’s hallmark: it attacks from multiple directions at the same time.
At this time, anger is growing among students and teachers against the current government in the country. The repeated leaking of exam papers, the incompetence of the companies responsible for conducting examinations, the awarding of tenders to those incompetent companies, and then even when exams somehow get conducted, the government’s failure to announce recruitments — leaving educated people unemployed on a massive scale — these are the issues around which an atmosphere against the government has begun to build. On these very issues, the opposition parties should have rallied students to their side and launched a major movement. But the opposition parties are still plagued by sluggishness. And now the Sangh wants to very cleverly hijack the students’ anger and opposition — which has been brewing against the Sangh’s own government — through a new name and a new party: the Cockroach Janata Party. Meaning, heads I win, tails I win too. Push whoever it wants forward whenever it wants, and knock down whoever it wants.
The Cockroach Janata Party is nothing but a trap that has been laid for students, teachers, and educated unemployed youth. Its purpose is to compromise the neutrality of a large student movement that could potentially ignite in the country and somehow imprison them within the Sangh’s camp. At this time, hard Hindutva is at its peak in the country, and after the disintegration of the Aam Aadmi Party, there is a vacuum of soft Hindutva. Perhaps the Sangh wants to fill this vacuum through the Cockroach Janata Party.
Cockroach Janata Party founder Abhijit Depke has done political consulting and work for the Aam Aadmi Party. The hidden co-founder Meghnad has also been batting furiously against the Congress. Apart from them, all the other key figures within the Cockroach Janata Party are among the staunch supporters of the Aam Aadmi Party.
The Anna Andolan was a movement backed by the RSS, whose core members were students of Sangh’s Pathshalas. The Aam Aadmi Party emerged from the Anna Andolan, and now the Cockroach Janata Party is emerging from the Aam Aadmi Party.
Consider the issues and priorities of the Cockroach Janata Party. They are talking about education, corruption, unemployment, and inflation — exactly the way the Aam Aadmi Party used to. The Aam Aadmi Party never opposed Hindutva organizations, nor did it say anything about the hate-driven actions and hate speeches of Hindutva forces against Muslims, or about the mob lynchings of Muslims. Similarly, the Cockroach Janata Party is also moving forward while ignoring the growing hatred against Muslims in the country and the hate-driven actions of Hindutva forces.
The Cockroach Janata Party is talking about women’s reservation, while there is no concern, no intention, and no planning whatsoever about how to bring along the weak, the poor, the marginalized communities — Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis — together with the upwardly mobile upper-middle-class and elite Hindus of the country.
The Aam Aadmi Party may have worn the mask of adopting secular politics, but at the same time, it has always consistently tried to convince Hindus that it is their party alone. The Aam Aadmi Party talked about corruption, inflation, unemployment, and education, and when it came to power, it did good work in the education and health sectors too — but it openly stood with the BJP on CAA, Triple Talaq, NRC, Corona, the Babri Masjid case, and the Delhi riots. Not only that — during the Corona period, when propaganda was being spread to blame Muslims and the Tablighi Jamaat, Kejriwal went even further than the godi media and the BJP in nourishing this propaganda, and separately released data attributing the spread of Corona to the Tablighi Jamaat by name. In the Delhi riots of 2020 too, Kejriwal played a negative role toward Muslims. The Cockroach Janata Party’s train is moving forward on this very same track. In the beginning, the Aam Aadmi Party also seemed good to Muslims, but later the reality became clear.
At this time in the country, SIR, vote theft, election fraud, the removal of crores of people’s names from voter lists in the name of SIR, and then declaring the Muslims whose names were removed to be Bangladeshis — this is an important and deeply troubling issue. Not only for Muslims, but these are also important issues for the survival of democracy and for free and fair elections in the country — yet the Cockroach Janata Party has completely ignored this. Should this issue not have been raised alongside the issues of students’ paper leaks and unemployment? It absolutely should have been.
The Cockroach Janata Party is only talking about the government’s shortcomings, while raising no questions about the current government’s misuse of state institutions and the transparency of those institutions. A continuous debate is ongoing about the role of the country’s key state institutions, including the judiciary, the Election Commission, the ED, the NIA, and so on. But the Cockroach Janata Party has ignored this as well. The meaning is clear: the goal may be a change of power, but it is absolutely not a change of the system. The system will remain the same — the one that dispenses injustice to the poor, the laborers, and the farmers; the one that harbors hatred toward Muslims; the one that inflicts oppression upon the marginalized communities.
Therefore, do not harbour any kind of illusions about the Cockroach Janata Party, do not hope for any change, and do not join the movement only to become a target of government crackdown.
The Cockroach Janata Party, just like the Aam Aadmi Party, is a party of the wealthy, the Banias, and the elite who hold soft Hindutva ideologies. It is now about to begin its political innings on the backs of innocent middle-class, lower-middle-class, and poor students. And there are greater chances that in 2029, it will cause more damage to the Congress alliance rather than the BJP alliance.
