Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s sit-in outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence on Tuesday set off a chain of reactions running from the government to the AAP, to the BJP’s IT cell chief, and a Congress snapback — even as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), whose Monday march was at the nub of the escalation, said nothing on it at least in the immediate.
Event Context
Rahul Gandhi’s absence from the CJP protest — while he ran his own campaign on similar issues — was back at the centre of it all.
Before the protest was forcible ended by cops who detained Rahul and others, Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh arrived and asked them to relocate, telling Rahul the government was ready to take up education-related issues in Parliament. Rahul Gandhi maintained it was his prerogative to protest wherever he chose, which Jitendra later called “not in keeping with democratic principles”. Among those detained later was Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and several others.
AAP leaders were quick to describe Rahul’s dharna as a “jugalbandi” (duet) between the Congress and the BJP government. AAP Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj said Congress’s senior leadership had stayed silent through weeks of the “GenZ movement” even as party-aligned social media accounts had been “trying to weaken the Cockroach Movement from the very first day”.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh alleged that PM Modi had arranged for Gandhi to sit in protest specifically “to weaken the CJP’s dharna”. Delhi’s Leader of Opposition Atishi contrasted a month of Sonam Wangchuk’s fast, which she said had bought no government engagement at all, with Rahul Gandhi’s protest, which drew a ministerial visit within the hour.
Congress leader Srinivas BV responded to Sanjay Singh directly, asking, “Why are you fuming? Did Malviya write this tweet or Chadha?” — invoking BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya and Raghav Chadha, the AAP Rajya Sabha MP who defected to the BJP with six colleagues in April.
Amid rising buzz over why Rahul never visited the protest site, Dipke turned the question around, saying on X that people should instead be asking why the Prime Minister was refusing dialogue and why the education minister had not been held accountable — “the questions that actually matter”.
Gandhi did not visit Wangchuk or the site at all through the length of his fast. But Gandhi ran a separate, parallel campaign, ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’, addressing the same paper-leak grievances. Gujarat Congress leader Jignesh Mevani defended the party’s record at the time, describing its engagement with the protesting youth as “consistent solidarity without turning grief into spectacle”.
Congress as a party stayed largely silent on the CJP for more than two weeks before Pawan Khera visited Jantar Mantar on July 17 to meet Wangchuk in person — a day after Kejriwal and Samajwadi Party leader Dimple Yadav had made similar visits — in the party’s first official participation in the protest.
Team Analysis
On Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi walked from Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence towards PM residence, 7 Lok Kalyan Marg; he was joined by Kharge, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, KC Venugopal, Karnataka CM DK Shivakumar and other party MPs to demand that not just education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, but Modi and home minister Amit Shah also, step down over NEET paper leak and other such issues. Rahul appealed to “every patriotic Indian who believes that our students should get justice” to join the protest.
BJP’s Malviya, however, claimed that no party besides the BJP stood for students. He said the cycle of protests was never been about students. “So, AAP admits that CJP is not an apolitical student movement. It has sponsored it,” he said, apparently referring also to Dipke’s past association with Arvind Kejriwal’s party.
Through all of this, founder Abhijeet Dipke’s posts stayed focused entirely on Monday’s crackdown and on CJP’s own supporters.
Dipke, formerly an AAP social media strategist, said the movement would continue even as he called off further marches to Parliament to avoid more injuries. None of his posts referred to Gandhi’s dharna.
This is consistent with how CJP has positioned itself since its founding, though with some tweaks at times. Dipke has repeatedly said the movement “does not depend on any political party”.
After Sonam Wangchuk, the face of the movement who was on a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, said it would “greatly petty” if Rahul did not visit them, Dipke said they would welcome anyone as long as they did not come under their respective party flags.
Match Outlook
Lyricist-singer-actor Swanand Kirkire also replied to Sanjay Singh’s post, arguing that “the movement belongs to the children” rather than to any one party, and that AAP could have stood with the Congress dharna as well.
Writer-activist Meena Kandasamy posted on X: “The more AAP opens its mouth, the more it ends up discrediting any claim about the CJP top-rung being genuinely autonomous, youth-led or independent.”
A former AAP leader, journalist Ashutosh, asked why AAP was behaving this way. “Interesting!! Arvind Kejriwal is trying to fight with Rahul!!! Whose politics he is doing and whom he is trying to help!!!” Ashutosh, who served as an AAP spokesperson until he quit politics in 2018, posted on X.
Speaking to HT, he added, “Instead of showing unity against a totalitarian regime, AAP is criticising the Congress. This is petty politics, is what I feel.”
The Congress, meanwhile, posted a video of Rahul and others being picked up by cops, and wrote: “Arrest us, throw us in jail, it doesn’t matter — the power of our Satyagraha is greater than the might of the Modi government’s authority. The account for the atrocities committed against our children must be settled.”
