New Delhi: The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) recently sent out an invitation to volunteers who had been part of its historic Jantar Mantar protest, calling them to a national-level volunteers’ meeting in Delhi on Wednesday (August 12).The meeting, to be led by the CJP’s national executive committee had a three-point agenda: discuss the party’s roadmap, expand its organisational structure, and plan its proposed national campaign, “Kya Bolti Public (What is the public talking about)”. On Wednesday morning, however, CJP changed the venue from a banquet hall in East Delhi to one in West Delhi. By the afternoon, hundreds had gathered at a banquet hall in Naraina. CJP volunteers at the entrance carefully checked the credentials of attendees trying to ensure only those who had been invited were attending.Inside the banquet hall on the third floor, people sat in an orderly fashion on a large carpet, their shoes neatly lined up to a side, and their mobile phones deposited with CJP volunteers for the duration of the meeting. Everything seemed ready for a serious organisational meeting. And then the powers that be went into action. First the lights went out and then the air-conditioning. For about half an hour there was confusion as everyone tried to figure out what was going on.It soon emerged that the banquet hall management had come under pressure not to host the meeting. According to CJP founder, Abhijeet Dipke: “We were scheduled to hold our volunteers’ meet in Delhi today… We were looking for a hall, but no one would rent us one. Everyone kept saying there was pressure from above… We had managed to secure this hall with great difficulty. We even have the receipt for it. However, the owners received threats this morning. They were told that if they allowed the CJP meeting to take place here, they would be hung upside down… All of this is being done by the BJP… Their actions and words clearly reveal that they are afraid of the country’s youth… If they think such petty actions will frighten us, they are sorely mistaken…”“Ye toh Jantar Mantar waali feel aa rahi hai (This feels like Jantar Mantar protests),” someone joked as the gathering spilled out of the building and onto the road.“Heat, humidity, and then darkness as the electricity gets turned off!”Also read: The BJP’s Politics of the ‘Ideal’ CitizenThe several hundred volunteers then walked to a public park nearby, some of them shouting “Tanashahi nahi chalegi (Dictatorship won’t work)!” Among them was Abhishek, a young Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)’s civil services examination aspirant from Allahabad, his foot in a cast, being pushed in a wheelchair by two other young men.Abhishek had been managing the stage at Jantar Mantar on July 20, the day of the students’ Sansad march. He recalled how, at around 2.30 pm, the police and Rapid Action Force (RAF) stormed the stage and began forcing people off it, literally throwing some of them onto the road. Abhishek fell and broke his ankle. He said that even after he was injured, policemen continued to hit his leg with batons.He could barely walk, he said. But the next morning, he returned to the protest site.“I just wanted to show them that they may break my bones, but they can’t break my spirit.”In the park about a kilometer away, the volunteers sat on the grass, and in the sweltering heat, listened to Dipke speak about the need to fix India’s government schools and give India’s rural children fair opportunity to get ahead in the world.Also read: Modi Ministers Hide Behind ‘No Shots Fired’ But Govt Has Previously Used Terms ‘Firing’, ‘Bullets’ For Pellet Gun UseSoon, to no one’s surprise, the police arrived and the park filled up with policemen, some in plain clothes. And then the gates were locked. This was a public park, in the middle of the afternoon. Yet suddenly, the people inside could neither leave nor could anyone outside enter.When the volunteers began protesting, the police claimed they had not ordered the gates to be closed.“Then why would the park overseer do that?” the protesters demanded to know.The question appeared to have no immediate answer. Eventually, the gates were opened.The impromptu gathering continued for a bit till Dipke, Saurav Das, Ashutosh Ranka and others, wound up the proceedings after announcing that ‘Season 2’ of the CJP protests had begun.What was supposed to be a national-level organisational meeting about the future of a fledgling movement had begun in a banquet hall and ended on the grass of a public park, with the air-conditioning and electricity switched off at the first venue and the gates locked at the second.The CJP had set out to discuss its roadmap. Instead, they had been given a fairly vivid demonstration of the terrain they are likely to encounter along the way.