Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, met Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in Delhi on Saturday, October 31, thanking her for her backing of the outfit's youth-led protests and voicing solidarity with the INDIA bloc's campaign against alleged "vote chori", even as he ruled out joining the opposition's Sunday rally at Ramlila Maidan.
Dipke said he had called on Banerjee to express gratitude for her support to the CJP's first protest at Jantar Mantar over the NEET paper leak, and for the stand she took when two of its leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were reportedly arrested by Delhi Police. "I came to say thank you to Didi," he told reporters, describing her backing for the youth movement as firm throughout.
Asked whether the outfit would be present at Sunday's demonstration, he said the CJP backed the cause but intended to remain politically unattached. He said the party stood in solidarity with the protest but was an independent organisation and "a neutral platform", and that it wanted to keep it that way. Anyone campaigning against what he described as vote theft would have the CJP's support, he added, irrespective of political affiliation.
Banerjee, who is in the capital and is due to attend the rally, credited the young activists with building the agitation against the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and against the Election Commission. "They are the pioneers and the founders of this movement," she told reporters, saying she was glad to meet them and admired how they had sustained the protests through difficulties. She invited Dipke and his colleagues to West Bengal to hold programmes, but said a Kolkata event was a matter for them: "That they will decide."
The meeting came a day before the INDIA bloc's mobilisation, which reports said was to feature a "Chalo Dilli" march starting at noon from the Minto Road-Connaught Place junction and ending at Ramlila Maidan, where the rally was scheduled from 10 am to 5 pm. A tricolour canopy was erected over the main stage, with separate arrangements for alliance representatives, and leaders were expected to travel in open buses from the residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Opposition parties are set to use the platform to raise alleged irregularities in the electoral roll exercise, press the Election Commission for accountability and demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Students, youth groups, women's organisations, workers and civil society members have been invited to join, and the CJP is among those extending support to the November 1 programme without formally taking part in it.
The accounts agreed on the substance of the two leaders' remarks, though the exact wording of their quotes differed slightly. The CJP has said it will keep pressing its demand for the poll panel chief's exit while guarding what it calls its independent identity.
(With inputs from media reports)