The world bends, a bender is needed: Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Deepke said these things on Saturday after the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Dharmendra Pradhan resigned after continuous massive protests by students against the NEET-UG exam paper leak. Reacting to the resignation, Deepke said, “We did it. Dharmendra Pradhan has resigned. And this resignation is proof that if you people are not afraid, if you people do not bow down before this government, then we can take anyone’s resignation.”
Cockroach Janata Party It was made into a meme in May this year. In two months, it did what many opposition political parties could not do in the last 12 years.
The importance of Pradhan’s resignation can be gauged from the fact that Congress was demanding the resignation of some big BJP leaders to help Lalit Modi leave the country. At that time Rajnath Singh had said: “Here ministers do not resign. This is not UPA; this is NDA.”
No minister had resigned because of the movement.
The Congress-led UPA, which ruled the country from 2004 to 2014, saw several resignations of top ministers in its two terms – some on corruption charges, some to impose responsibility for administrative failures, but since 2014, the situation has been different. There have been many controversies and protests in the last 12 years, but none were strong enough to force the resignation of the ministers concerned.
Many senior Union ministers have been removed since 2014, but none of them had to resign under any “pressure of protest”. Perhaps the only pressure on Prime Minister Modi to remove his ministers was in 2021, when Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had to step down following public anger over the way he handled the Covid crisis, but his departure was part of a larger cabinet reshuffle in which 12 ministers left the Modi cabinet. Then the departure of Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar was also surprising, but neither of them was the result of any protest.
The movement got direction from Sonam Wangchuk’s fast.
In this sense, Deepke and his movement have achieved the unthinkable in recent times, but while Deepke deserves credit for rallying the students and keeping them focused, his success probably would not have been possible without the active participation of climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, whose 26-day hunger strike changed the tone of the Jantar Mantar protests.
Wangchuk, who came to the protest with a rose in his hand, gave the movement the biggest boost it initially needed. His hunger strike ensured that the focus remained on the movement, at a time when the government was reluctant to recognize or talk to the protesters at Jantar Mantar. However, it is a different matter that when Sonam Wangchuk’s fast ended on Thursday night, in the presence of two Union Ministers, or rather there was no CJP representative with her in the hospital, many questions were raised amid allegations of a deal with the Centre.
There was uproar after NEET-UG paper leak
On May 15 this year, Cockroach Janata Party was launched by Abhijeet Deepke following the remarks of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant. He started a website with the tagline “Voice of the lazy and unemployed”. Deepke described it as “a platform for all the ‘cockroaches’”, adding that the eligibility criteria were being unemployed, lazy, always online and able to do professional nonsense.
This satirical post gained momentum as anger over the NEET-UG paper leak grew, and in early June, Deepke returned to India himself to lead a protest near Jantar Mantar. Deepke’s return was viewed with great suspicion. His biggest challenge was to prove that online following could be converted into offline support at the grassroots level. Deepke also got encouragement from many other social activists and Wangchuk.
On Saturday, Deepke and his movement got its first major success when Dharmendra Pradhan had to resign due to the students’ protest, but the CJP’s movement and demonstration forced the government to take a decision which the government had not taken till now. On the other hand, the message was also given to the opposition that if there is passion in efforts, then success can be achieved.
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