BJP Brands CJP a Foreign Plot as Delhi Seals Jantar Mantar

BJP president Nitin Nabin on October 10 accused Rahul Gandhi’s INDIA bloc and Arvind Kejriwal’s associates in the Cockroach Janta Party of a foreign-backed plot to destabilise India. The people Delhi Police took off a Mumbai flight that morning were CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and two co-conveners. Gandhi was in Chennai for a student rally the Congress had already scheduled.

Nabin called the moment “highly dangerous and serious” and said two “anarchic groups” were competing to create instability. One, he said, was led by Gandhi of the “INDI Alliance”. The other, he said, was led by “Arvind Kejriwal’s associates, CJP”. He offered no name for the foreign forces and no document for the charge.

CJP Began as a Six-Word Joke

CJP is not a registered party and it is not the INDIA bloc. It started on May 16, 2026, when Dipke, then 30 and fresh from a public-relations master’s at Boston University, posted six words after Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s courtroom line about “cockroaches” in the professions. “What if all cockroaches come together?” The post pulled thousands of sign-ups in hours. A satirical site, an anthem and a manifesto followed.

Dipke, 31, grew up in a Dalit family in Aurangabad, now Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. He worked with Aam Aadmi Party social-media crews from 2020 to 2023, including meme work around the 2020 Delhi campaign, then left for study in the United States. Co-convener Ashutosh Ranka is an IIT Kanpur and London School of Economics graduate. Co-convener Saurav Das, 27, is a Delhi journalist. National organisation in-charge Ajinkya Shinde, 35, is a former AAP worker who campaigned in Goa in 2016.

That AAP past is the hook Nabin used. Dipke has said the old colleagues “worked together in AAP earlier… In AAP, not in some terrorist organisation,” and has also said he no longer works for Kejriwal’s party. A breakaway faction has already accused him of turning the joke-brand into a Kejriwal vehicle, which is the same charge the BJP now makes from the other side.

The outfit first got national heat on exam leaks. An earlier Jantar Mantar sit-in over the NEET paper leak was followed by the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. That fight had a clean grievance and a student crowd. The October 10 call, branded Jantar Mantar 2.0, aimed the same street method at the Election Commission.

The Protest Is About 13.39 Crore Names

CJP and student groups including the All India Students’ Association tied the Delhi gathering to the Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, in the post since February 2025. Organisers want his resignation, a freeze of SIR, restoration of the January 2025 voters’ list, an independent inquiry, and repeal of the 2023 law on appointing election commissioners.

The Commission’s own clarification is the figure both sides now argue over. It said 95.40 crore voters were checked across three SIR phases and 13.39 crore names were put in the ASDD bin, Absent, Shifted Permanently, Dead and Duplicate, plus other categories. More than 10 lakh booth-level officers checked those lists. More than 22 lakh party booth agents received them. Draft rolls then sat open for one month of claims and objections.

WHAT THE COMMISSION COUNTED

Opposition parties call those deletions a purge of genuine electors. The Commission says eligible people can still come back through claims and Form 6, the application used to add a name. SIR itself began in Bihar in June 2025 and later widened. On May 14, 2026 the Commission third SIR phase across 16 states and 3 Union Territories, including Delhi, with draft and final roll dates running into October.

On October 1 it told chief electoral officers to run a special drive for left-out electors and first-time young voters after SIR, by comparing current rolls with pre-SIR lists. That mop-up is the Commission’s answer to the charge that young people fell off the roll. CJP’s answer is a street deadline and a demand that Kumar go.

CJP’S THREE NON-NEGOTIABLE DEMANDS

• The commissioner: Gyanesh Kumar must resign and face criminal proceedings.
• The rolls: Freeze SIR, halt upcoming elections, restore the January 2025 voters’ list, and order an independent inquiry.
• The law: Repeal the 2023 appointments statute and build an independent selection process for election commissioners.

Das, handing the October 7 intimation to Parliament Street police station, told supporters to pack bags for a long fight and said the group would not stop even if Kumar resigned, because it wants the appointment system changed. Dipke, still in Mumbai on October 9, said Jantar Mantar is a designated protest site and asked why permission was required when, in his telling, “13 crore votes” had already been cut.

Nabin Names Two Groups While Gandhi Is in Chennai

Nabin’s press conference folded that youth campaign into a two-headed conspiracy with Gandhi, who was not in Delhi. He said the public had already rejected both camps, and that instead of accepting that verdict they had “hatched a plot to destabilize the country”. He added that they “cannot digest India’s growth, progress, and advancement” and that Indian democracy was strong enough to stop them.

I want to state clearly to both these groups that the people of India see right through your motives. Your ‘anarchist competition’, vying to see who can create more instability in the country, will not succeed.

Nitin Nabin, BJP national president, Delhi press conference

He warned that “bikau” politics pursued “in collusion with foreign forces will never succeed”, said the government would deal sternly with the situation, and used the older “urban Naxal” label on the same opposition set. He still did not name a country, a funder, or a file.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The gathering: CJP called Jantar Mantar 2.0 for October 10 against Kumar and SIR, after an October 7 letter to Delhi Police.
• The ban: Joint Commissioner of Police Nupur Prasad said on October 9 that permission was refused.
• The absences: Gandhi left for Chennai’s Chhatron Ki Goonj student event and a meeting with Tamil Nadu chief minister C. Joseph Vijay.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Foreign forces: Nabin alleged external direction and did not identify the actors or produce evidence in the remarks on record.
• Command link: BJP treats CJP as Kejriwal’s associate; Dipke calls the AAP tie historical; AAP says it is joining a CJP protest, not running one.

Bihar minister Ram Kripal Yadav, speaking in Patna, went at the registration point Nabin left implicit. “CJP is an unregistered organisation,” he said. “It is merely a group of such people who, under the leadership of a few politicians, are trying to misguide children just to establish themselves.” He said an unregistered body “cannot even be called a political party, as it lacks recognition.”

Police Denied Permission, Then Sealed Central Delhi

Prasad said Das’s October 7 paper was treated as an intimation for a protest about “the accountability of the CEC”, arrived too late under a 10-day notice rule, and followed a prior CJP protest where, police said, the group broke its own undertaking. Prohibitory orders under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 163 were already in force in New Delhi. CJP said it was informing the police, not begging leave, because Jantar Mantar is a designated site, and that Das left with an acknowledgement.

THE WEEK THE CAPITAL CLOSED

1. October 7, 2026: Das files the Jantar Mantar intimation at Parliament Street police station and tells supporters to pack bags.
2. October 8, 2026: CJP and Left groups say students and volunteers are being taken off buses in several states on the way to Delhi.
3. October 9, 2026: Prasad refuses permission; mobile internet is cut in a 4 km ring around the Janpath-Kartavya Path crossing from 10pm; Kejriwal, speaking in Goa, says he will go with his family.
4. October 10, 2026: Dipke, Das and Ranka are detained after landing in Delhi; CJP puts Shinde in charge by pre-recorded video; police sources put overnight detentions at 1,200.

Delhi was built into a closed grid around a protest that did not have a licence. Police estimated about 20,000 people might try to come. More than 40,000 Delhi Police and Central Armed Police Forces personnel were put on the streets. Entry at 45 metro stations was restricted. Trains into and out of Delhi were cancelled. Drones and body cameras went up. Spike strips went down. YouTuber Dhruv Rathee was detained from his Sector 56 house in Gurugram. Kejriwal was stopped short of the site he had promised to attend with his family.

DELHI ON OCTOBER 10

• Force on the ground: More than 40,000 police and paramilitary personnel.
• Crowd police planned for: About 20,000 people.
• Overnight detentions: 1,200, according to police sources.
• Phones: Mobile internet off in a 4 km ring from 10pm on October 9 to 10pm on October 10.

Dipke had said the night before that detention would not change the demand. “If they want to detain or arrest me, let them go ahead… Invoke the UAPA, invoke the NSA, go ahead and do it. But we will keep fighting for free and fair elections.” After the airport stop, CJP called the interception a plan to cut the head off a peaceful demonstration and demanded the three men be released. Its account told people to walk toward Jantar Mantar and treat any police stop as the new venue.

AAP and the Left Show Up, Congress Does Not

The guest list on the ground did not match Nabin’s two-group map. AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said the October 10 protest was CJP’s, not AAP’s, and that AAP members would still join. Kejriwal had already appealed nationally and alleged votes were being cut for people who do not back the BJP, with “fake votes” put in their place. After the airport detentions he wrote that arresting “cockroaches straight off their flight” showed fear, and that the country was living under “an absolute dictatorship ruled by Modi.”

WHO SAID THEY WOULD STAND WITH CJP

• Joining: AAP, CPM, CPI, CPI(ML), RSP and the All India Forward Bloc, plus student groups including AISA, SFI and AISF.
• Holding back: Congress, which kept Gandhi on a pre-set Chennai student programme rather than at Jantar Mantar.
• Unclear: Trinamool Congress, whose chief Mamata Banerjee said the party had a relationship with CJP and would decide later on showing up.

Gandhi’s Chennai day was a student outreach stop, Chhatron Ki Goonj, the sixth in a series that began June 17 in Kota, and a first sit-down since May with Vijay after TVK joined the wider opposition set. Congress managers said the Tamil Nadu trip was fixed earlier. The effect on Nabin’s story is simpler. The “INDI Alliance” leader he placed at the head of one anarchic group was on a stage 2,000 kilometres from the barricades, talking to students about exams and jobs, while the unregistered group he tied to Kejriwal was the one in custody.

That split is not a secret on the left either. Some Congress-aligned voices asked why the Leader of the Opposition was missing a fight he has himself framed as “vote chori”. The honest organisational answer is that Congress wants the SIR argument without owning a cockroach mascot, an unregistered command, and a protest police had already declared unlawful.

Youth Who Backed the NEET Fight Are Splitting

The sharper break sits inside CJP’s own audience. The NEET leak was a paper, a date, a ruined attempt. SIR is a roll revision the Commission defends as cleaning, and that opponents call a disenfranchisement project. Those are not the same grievance, and the people who laughed at the cockroach joke in May have started saying so.

Some of the same young users who backed CJP on exam leaks now treat a campaign to unseat the election chief as a different, and uglier, bet. They argue the October 10 call had a time, 10am, and almost no marching plan, the same thin script that left an earlier July mobilisation without a next step. Rival street groups were already being filmed at the protest zone on October 9. Others still see the airport arrests as proof the state fears a youth crowd it cannot file under a party symbol.

Dipke put the fear reading on the record before he landed.

Modi has accepted defeat even before our protest has begun.

The mass crackdown on protesters and the shutdown of Delhi are not signs of strength, but of a leader terrified of his own people.

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) October 10, 2026

Nabin needs that crowd to look like a single foreign-steered machine, because a satire brand plus a former AAP meme-maker plus a Congress leader in Chennai does not, on its face, look like one command. CJP needs the same crowd to look like “the youth of the entire nation,” because an unregistered outfit cannot survive a 40,000-person shutdown on volunteers alone. Gandhi needs the SIR fight without the mascot. Kejriwal needs the mascot without wearing the organiser’s badge.

By late morning on October 10 the people named in the foreign-plot charge were not in one place. Dipke, Das and Ranka were in detention. Shinde was told to hold a site police had closed. Kejriwal was blocked. Gandhi was in Chennai. Nabin had already said the plot would fail, and had still not said who abroad was paying for it.