CJP Series🪳 Part 5 of 12

The CJP founder: a public relations graduate student, political communications strategist, Gen Z avatar, man on three news channels simultaneously from a Chicago apartment, person who accidentally created a 19-million-follower movement, and the most likely candidate for a government notice and a visa complication that nobody has mentioned yet but everybody is thinking about.

By Our Political Correspondent Who Has His Direct Line But He's Currently On CNN  |  May 22, 2026

CHICAGO / BOSTON (AND ALSO EVERYWHERE) — Abhijeet Dipke has been awake for approximately forty-three consecutive hours at the time of writing, fielding calls from CNN, Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, BBC, The Guardian, The Hindu, NDTV, and approximately forty regional Telugu and Marathi news channels whose reporters have found his number through networks he does not remember being part of. He is speaking to all of them from the same room in Chicago. The background is consistent: a plain wall, a laptop, a young man who looks simultaneously exhausted and energised in the way of someone who has just watched something they started become uncontrollable and is processing both the excitement and the responsibility of that simultaneously.

Before the CJP: Abhijeet Dipke worked with the Aam Aadmi Party's political communications team. He learned how political movements are built digitally — how messages spread, how memes carry ideas, how a single resonant image can do more work than ten press conferences. He then went to Boston University to study public relations formally. He was, in May 2026, completing his degree. He had plans. The plans were not this. The plans were considerably smaller than this. The CJP is the most accidental political movement any of his studies had prepared him to understand but not to predict.

"Five years ago, nobody was ready to speak up against Modi or the government. The times are changing."— Abhijeet Dipke, to multiple news organisations, this week, from Chicago, in between calls. He says this with the conviction of a young man who has just watched 19 million people demonstrate his point. The people who are speaking up are not the political establishment, not the senior journalists, not the opposition leadership. They are 18-30 year olds filling out a Google form in the middle of the night and putting a cockroach on their Instagram bio. The times are indeed changing. The cockroach is the evidence.
The Boston Problem

Abhijeet Dipke is in the United States on a student visa. The CJP cannot contest elections because it is not a registered political party under the Election Commission of India — yet. Its candidate consideration in Bihar's Bankipur by-election is aspirational. For Dipke to return to India and run the party in person, several things would need to happen: he would need to complete his degree, return to India, register the party with the Election Commission, avoid a government action that his visa situation makes him vulnerable to, and then navigate the transformation of a satirical online movement into an actual electoral force, which is the hardest part of every social movement and the part that the social media graphs do not show because it is not photogenic.

Several things must be said in Dipke's defence as a leader: he has been remarkably measured in his public statements. He has not claimed more than he has. He has called the movement accidental. He has consistently described it as the expression of real anger rather than his own design. He has not monetised it, at least not yet, which is the first thing every successful Indian political movement eventually does and which this one has so far resisted. He is 30 years old and is handling a global media moment with the composure of someone twenty years older. The cockroach chose well, as cockroaches apparently do.

Abhijeet DipkeBoston University10.5 Hours BehindFormer AAP Worker43 Hours AwakeTimes Are Changing
Disclaimer: Satire. Dipke's background, age, and statements are from documented AP, CNN, and Al Jazeera reporting. The visa complication observation is editorial. The cockroach's choice has been excellent so far. — Ed.