India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has been accused of being part of a planned regime change, with its recent protests and demands for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The movement, which began as an online joke in May, has gained momentum and forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign over leaked exam papers.
The CJP’s founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was detained by Delhi Police on October 16, for the second time in less than a week, as he set off for a “_Lehra Do Tiranga_” flag march at Connaught Place. Thousands of police and paramilitary personnel sealed off Central Park, the planned venue, and the movement’s three main leaders were taken into custody.
Planned Regime Change Alleged
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has accused the CJP of being part of a planned regime change, citing remarks made by Neha Bora, president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA). Bora congratulated Bangladeshis “for showing us the way” and called India’s protests “a movement for democratic and voting rights”, which the BJP claims is an “open admission” of a planned regime change.
The reference point is August 2024, when students in neighboring Bangladesh turned a protest over job quotas into an uprising that drove Sheikh Hasina into exile in India. Nepal’s Gen Z later protests in September 2025 brought down KP Sharma Oli’s government and went on to overturn the political order at the polls in March.
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Dipke was living in the US and studying at Boston University when he launched the CJP in May, and returned to India only in June to take it onto the streets. Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar had called the campaign a “classic cross-border influence operation” within a week of its launch.
Accusations have multiplied since, with former BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh blaming Elon Musk for the Delhi protests, and India’s ambassador in Washington, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, calling US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s comments on the anti-SIR protests “unacceptable interference” in India’s “internal affairs”.”
US Involvement Suspected
To date, no one has produced evidence that Washington funds or directs the CJP. However, the historical record shows that the US has been involved in opposition movements in other countries, such as Serbia, where US government money paid for opposition polling and training for the Otpor student movement before Slobodan Milosevic fell in 2000.
Washington also funded the exiled Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress for years before flying him back into Iraq in 2003, and in 2019 recognized Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan legislator, as his country’s interim president. The motive for US involvement in India is not hard to find, as India became Russia’s biggest buyer of seaborne crude after 2022, and Modi hosted Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in New Delhi in September.
The US has spent more than a year trying to bend New Delhi’s energy policy, first with a 50% tariff in August 2025 and now with the late Lindsey Graham’s “hellish” sanctions law, which lets the White House impose tariffs of up to 100% on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas. A Modi distracted by unrest at home would be significantly easier to deal with.
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However, the case against US involvement is at least as strong, as Washington already holds those tariffs as leverage, Indian refiners are cutting Russian purchases on price alone, and US Ambassador Sergio Gor said as recently as October 15 that a trade deal was “very close”.
Protests Continue Despite Police
As the CJP continues to defy the police and push for its demands, the movement risks handing Modi’s ministers the foreign-plot story they have already leaned on. The CJP’s protests have shown that youth anger over jobs and exams, and now over the vote, is real, and that Modi’s government can be made to give ground. On October 16, Dipke was detained, and the CJP stated that the movement would continue to protest despite the police ban.
In late July, a march on parliament turned violent, leading to the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, a significant policy win for the CJP.
The CJP’s demands, including the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls, go to the legitimacy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. The movement’s allies, including the All India Students’ Association, have been detained by police, further escalating tensions.
