With its top leadership in police custody ahead of its planned protest at Jantar Mantar against CEC Gyanesh Kumar, the Cockroach Janta Party has named Maharashtra’s CJP leader Ajinkya Shinde to take charge of its Delhi mobilisation, while vowing to continue civil disobedience and street protests across the country until the CEC resigns.CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke announced the succession plan in a pre-recorded video released before his detention. He said Shinde, the party’s national organisation in-charge, would lead the protest if he and other senior leaders were taken into custody.Dipke, co-convenor Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were detained by the police at Delhi airport after arriving in the Capital from inside the flight.Change in leadership places the responsibility for sustaining the agitation on Shinde, who has previously helped organise CJP demonstrations in Mumbai and emerged as one of its prominent faces.Shinde’s political career began with AAP, where he served as convenor of its Maharashtra youth wing and worked with the party’s national organisation-building team. He also played a role in strengthening AAP’s presence in Maharashtra.Since joining CJP’s activities, he has been associated with its ‘Fix the Schools’ campaign and a protest in Dadar on Gandhi Jayanti. Cases were registered against him and other leaders following the demonstrations, according to inputs provided by the party.Shinde said the party’s civil disobedience campaign would continue until Kumar resigned and accountability was established over what CJP alleges was the deletion and manipulation of 13 crore votes. The allegation has been made by the party and was not independently established in the material provided.The leaders also accused the authorities of suppressing peaceful assembly through preventive detentions, restrictions on transport and communications, and the closure of access routes to protest sites. They described the measures as an ‘undeclared emergency’ and alleged that more than 15,000 people, including students, civil society members and political figures, had faced detention or police action. These figures and allegations could not be independently verified from the information available.The CJP in a late evening development also sought to underline the participation of political parties and civil society groups in the agitation. Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP-SP) spokesperson Anish Gawande rejected the suggestion that opposition parties and civil society actors were divided, saying their participation reflected a shared demand for accountability. Srijan Bhattacharya of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) said his organisation was working towards the broadest possible unity against what he described as dictatorship.Aafreen Nawaz said demonstrations would continue in multiple states until electoral transparency and constitutional rights were safeguarded. Speaking to The Tribune she said, “the detention of our leaders would not bring protests to a halt.”The immediate test for CJP is whether Shinde can translate the party’s stated resolve into a sustained mobilisation in Delhi, with its original leadership detained and its planned Jantar Mantar protest facing restrictions.“Civil disobedience and street protests will be continued from our end relentlessly until jails are filled and the government is held accountable. Democracy can not be put for sale,” Shinde said speaking to The Tribune.