Leaders and supporters of several Opposition parties joined or expressed support for the Cockroach Janta Party protest at Jantar Mantar on Saturday.
A notable exception was the Congress, which drew attention to the fact that it had taken the lead in highlighting repeated exam fiascos, cautious not to cede ground on the issue to the CJP.
In a post on X, Congress social media and digital head Supriya Shrinate described how the party’s youth and student wings had protested the exam scandals across the country, braving the heat and facing water cannons, beatings and arrests.
“Yet, did you see this on prime-time news?... And that itself tells you everything about whose voices the system wants to amplify and whose it wants to suppress,” she wrote.
Leftist student groups contributed to the Jantar Mantar crowds with mobilisation campaigns in colleges. Since last month, these groups have held multiple protests near the education ministry and played a cat-and-mouse game with the police.
CJP founder Dipke — who was active in the AAP until 2023 — was flanked on the stage by Left student leaders: SFI joint secretary Aishe Ghosh and AISA president Neha Bora.
The CPI’s Annie Raja and CPIML Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya participated in the protest.
Pro-government enforcers tried to assault Annie and her CPI comrades, before being pushed back by plainclothes cops.
A statement from CPI general secretary D. Raja condemned “the attack on Annie Raja and Nisha Sidhu”.
Opposition leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Uddhav Thackeray, too, issued messages in support of the protesters.