Abhijeet Dipke from the Cockroach Janta Party, is already talking about round two. And he says it’s coming very soon.
It was Wednesday, just a few weeks after they packed up the 36-37 day agitation at Jantar Mantar. Dipke was in Delhi’s Naraina area with a bunch of volunteers. They had planned a proper indoor meeting in a banquet hall to talk strategy. But when they reached, the booking was cancelled. The hall owners apparently backed out at the last minute. Dipke didn’t mince words. He said the pressure came “from above,” and he pointed straight at the BJP. Hall after hall refused them, he claimed, with owners saying they were getting threats or pressure. Eventually they had to gather outside in the open.
That’s when Dipke looked at the crowd and said something that has already started circulating everywhere. “Many people on Instagram were asking when Season 2 will start. I would say that season 2 at Jantar Mantar is going to start very soon.” The volunteers cheered. It felt like the old energy was back.
If you remember, the first season was intense. It started over the NEET paper leak and a whole lot of frustration about how exams are run in this country. Students were angry about leaks, delays, suicides, and the feeling that the system just doesn’t care about their future. Dipke’s group, which began as a satirical online thing calling itself the Cockroach Janta Party (a cheeky response to some comment about unemployed youth), somehow turned into a real movement. Young people from different states showed up. Opposition leaders visited. Social media kept it alive. After more than a month of sit-in, the government talked, the then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, and the protest was called off on 25 July with some assurances.
But Dipke and his team never said they were done. They said they would keep working as a pressure group. And now this.
The cancelled meeting was supposed to discuss a couple of things. One is the ongoing hunger strike by student leader Devendra Nath Mahto in Ranchi, Jharkhand. CJP volunteers are already supporting that. The other is their new push for schools in villages — they are calling it “School Thik Karo.” Dipke said they wanted to plan how to strengthen both these things.
CJP chief spokesperson Saurav Das tried to put the “Season 2” talk in perspective. He said this itself is already Season 2. Protests are happening in different places against what they call incompetent governments and officers. The group is now starting a nationwide “listening tour” to hear what people actually want. Education will be the priority, and they plan to kick that campaign off from Independence Day. So it’s not necessarily another long sit-in at the exact same spot, though Dipke’s words leave that door open.
What makes this interesting is how quickly the whole thing has moved. A few months ago CJP was mostly memes and Instagram reels. Then it became a protest that actually got a minister to resign. Now the founder is already talking about the next chapter while standing outside a hall that refused to host them. Dipke’s message was clear: if the idea was to scare them by blocking venues, it hasn’t worked. He said the actions show that some people are afraid of the country’s youth. “If they think such petty actions will frighten us, they are sorely mistaken.”
Of course, these are allegations. The other side hasn’t publicly responded in detail yet. But the fact that a volunteers’ meeting couldn’t find a hall in Delhi has become the latest talking point.
For a lot of the young people who followed the first protest, this announcement feels like a signal that the energy isn’t dying. Some are excited. Some are cautious, wondering what Season 2 will actually look like — another long dharna, a series of local protests, or this listening tour that turns into something bigger. Dipke hasn’t given a full roadmap yet. He just said it’s coming very soon and asked the crowd what they want for Season 2.
Looking back, the first protest succeeded because it stayed focused on education issues that millions of students feel in their bones. Paper leaks, unfair systems, the sense that hard work doesn’t always pay off when the system is leaky. If Season 2 stays on that track — schools in villages, exam reforms, supporting other student protests — it might keep the same momentum. If it spreads too thin, it could lose the sharp edge that made the first one effective.
Either way, Abhijeet Dipke has made it clear that the Cockroach Janta Party isn’t packing up. The outdoor meeting in Naraina, the cancelled hall, the Instagram questions, and that one sentence about Season 2 have already put the idea back in circulation. Whether it becomes another long chapter at Jantar Mantar or a different kind of campaign across the country, the founder says the next part is not far away.
For now, the volunteers are talking, the social media is buzzing again, and a lot of people are watching to see what exactly Season 2 looks like when it arrives.
Sources:
- The Indian Express
- India Today
- The Siasat Daily
- Times of India
- Rediff.com / ANI
- Moneycontrol
- Outlook India
- Deccan Chronicle
@Rohit Manral
