The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) on Saturday offered support to students protesting against issues with recruitment exams conducted by the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) and Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC).
Videos from the scene showed a delegation of the CJP at the Jaipal Singh Stadium in Ranchi led by CJP core committee member Mukesh. The delegation also included Akshay Shinde, Ram Jakhar, Dr Nitin and Ayaj, among others.
Announcing the move, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka wrote on X that the self-described 'pressure group' stood "in solidarity" with the Jharkhand protesters.
However, Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the CJP and its most prominent face, was not among the list of CJP members seen at the Jharkhand protest site.
This comes after the CJP was recently accused of having a lukewarm response to the paper leak allegations in Punjab and Jharkhand, weeks after it built its identity on questioning the NEET paper leak with persistent, high-profile protests at Delhi's Jantar Mantar.
In fact, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal also recently lashed out at Arvind Kejriwal and the CJP, calling the latter the "B team" of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) because of its slow response to the alleged large-scale cheating detected in a pharmacy officers' examination on July 19.
However, Dipke dismissed those speculations as far as Jharkhand was concerned, telling ANI that he would be staying back at his home in Maharashtra's Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar for a while because he was facing some "health issues".
"I, too, intend to go ... It isn't necessary for Abhijeet to be at the forefront everywhere. They are doing the work, too, and deserve equal recognition ... We don't want the credit to go solely to CJP. We want students to step up and ... fight for their rights and for the country's education system," he said.
This comes as the Jharkhand government on Saturday held talks with various outfits amid the massive agitation over the alleged paper leaks, but failed to break the deadlock as the protesting aspirants decided to continue their protests until all their demands were met.
A five-member panel of the government, which included state ministers, first met the faction of protesters led by JLKM leader Devendra Nath Mahto, who is on the seventh day of his hunger strike over the issue. They then separately met delegations of the Congress-backed NSUI, ACS and JCM.
"Demands of protesting aspirants are genuine; we will place these before Chief Minister Hemant Soren," state minister Sanjay Prasad Yadav, who is a member of the government panel, said after the back-to-back meetings, as per a PTI report.
