With the detention of top leadership of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Ajinkya Shinde, a native of Latur district in Maharashtra, has come into the spotlight as he has been entrusted with the responsibility of leading the next phase of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)’s agitation at Jantar Mantar.Shinde, the CJP organisation’s in-charge, took over the command of the “Jantar Mantar 2.0” protest on Saturday after Dipke picked him to lead the protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar as long as he and two other leaders remained in detention.Dipke and two other CJP leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were detained by the Delhi Police from inside the aircraft on Saturday as soon as their flight from Mumbai landed in the national capital. They had arrived here to lead the protest.Shinde, 35, who hails from Ujani village in Ausa tehsil of Latur, gave up a career as a computer engineer to enter the sphere of social and political activism. He is now expected to play a key role in carrying forward the organisation’s movement, his friend Suraj Dhawan said.Inspired by Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement and the campaign led by Arvind Kejriwal, Shinde gradually moved away from his professional career and immersed himself in public affairs, he said.His father is a retired teacher who is currently engaged in farming in Alibag.Shinde began his professional journey as a computer engineer but became increasingly concerned about the country’s political and social situation. The movement demanding a Lokpal and the campaigns led by Hazare and Kejriwal shaped his thinking and motivated him to participate directly in efforts to bring about change, Dhawan said.Believing that criticising the system was not enough, he resigned from his job and chose the path of social and political activism.Shinde subsequently became active in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), where he served as the Maharashtra state youth president and later took charge of the party’s organisational activities in Goa as in-charge.After gaining experience in political organisation-building in Maharashtra and Goa, he left the AAP and joined the CJP, his friend said.Although he changed political platforms, questioning the establishment and pursuing change through movements remained central to his public life.Shinde is also learnt to have played a key role in planning and coordinating the CJP’s five-week-long protest campaign at Jantar Mantar demanding the resignation of the then Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over exam paper leaks (including NEET-UG) and testing irregularities.The CJP, a youth-led, satirical movement founded by Dipke, had called for a demonstration to demand Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, accusing him of masterminding voter-list manipulation during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll and other irregularities related to Form 6, used for voter registration.The national capital was turned into a fortress on Saturday as police launched a sweeping crackdown, detaining CJP leaders, YouTuber Dhruv Rathee and nearly 500 protesters, foiling their bid to reach Jantar Mantar, with the Opposition denouncing the situation as “worse than the Emergency”.