Union Minister Jitendra Singh accused the Cockroach Janta Party of receiving illegal foreign funds to fuel unrest in India. Singh said, "There is enough evidence to show that they are being funded by unauthorised sources." Meanwhile, the Delhi Police summoned party members for questioning over recent protests and trespassing incidents.
Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and key enablers face allegations of illegal foreign funding
New Delhi:
Union Minister Jitendra Singh has accused the satirical political group Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and its key enablers of channelling illegal funds from foreign non-profits and hostile external networks to fuel unrest in India.
Singh told reporters in Bengaluru that the authorities have concrete evidence linking the outfit's founder, Abhijeet Dipke, and its strategist, Ashutosh Ranka, to overseas financiers.
"There is enough evidence to show that they are being funded by unauthorised sources, by anti-India NGOs, and anti-India organisations within and outside the country. The foreign-funded NGOs, deep state operatives and anti-India forces are manufacturing this narrative. Abhijeet Dipke has been receiving funds from US-based donors, Ashutosh Ranka, paid by Pakistani politicians," Singh said.
BJP spokesperson Tuhin A Sinha told NDTV today the CJP's recent protests were engineered to trigger chaos in the national capital during the festive season.
"Over the last one month the CJP's tactics were all about manufacturing rebellion. It was all about manufacturing anarchy in the country's capital during the festive season. Obviously there were malafide motives. There was malafide intent in it," Sinha said.
Comparing the CJP with the Congress party, the BJP spokesperson accused both outfits of targeting the judiciary around the same time. "Besides, whether it's the CJP or the Congress party, they seem to be at war with the judiciary this time: the way Rahul Gandhi marched to the Supreme Court right in the middle of a court hearing. You don't do that. You don't have a mock impeachment just before a very important hearing is due," Sinha told NDTV.
He added that the coordinated protests were designed to undermine India's democratic institutions globally. "All of these things clearly indicate that it is a very well-planned movement to ruin India's reputation locally and to cast aspersions about the robust functioning of democracy in the country..."
The political escalation comes as the Delhi Police Crime Branch summoned CJP spokespersons Saurav Das and Ranka for questioning today. Investigators are probing the two men for not complying with official prohibitory orders, entering Jantar Mantar without permission and trespassing onto another party's property.
The summons follow several acts of defiance of legal undertakings by the outfit's leadership since it began staging flash street protests in Delhi. On October 10, Das and Ranka were detained by the Delhi Police and released only after signing a formal peace bond of Rs 50,000 each and giving an undertaking not to engage in any breach-of-peace activities for a year.
Within 72 hours, however, the two men along with CJP member Ajinkya Shinde allegedly breached their bond conditions on October 13 by crossing police barricades and scaling the locked gates of Jantar Mantar, which had already been denotified as a designated protest site, to raise slogans demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
Dipke first made headlines after he set up the CJP website and its social media handles while still in the US in May, in a move the public relations graduate from Boston University called a work of satire. According to reports, Dipke was associated with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from 2020 to 2023 and volunteered with the party's social media team.
The Opposition, too, has dismissed the BJP-led Centre's foreign-hand charges. In Bengaluru, Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge took a swipe at Union Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) for making allegations without proof.
"If the BJP, including the home minister, is saying that Congress is being funded by foreign agencies and they're not able to produce a shred of paper or a shred of evidence, this shows the competence level of Amit Shah, Jaishankar and R&AW. What is the IB doing? What is R&AW doing? On what basis are these comments being made?" Kharge told reporters.
Backing Congress MP Rahul Gandhi's online poll challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a public debate, Kharge suggested that the chief of the BJP's ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, moderate a discussion on the funding of the Congress, the BJP and the RSS itself.
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