Mann says Dipke left the AAP social media desk in 2020

Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann said on Thursday that Abhijeet Dipke worked on the Aam Aadmi Party's social media team and then left. Mann was speaking at India Today's Panchayat event. He was answering the charge that Dipke's Cockroach Janta Party is the AAP's B team. Mann rejected that. He said the AAP is the A team of 140 crore people in the country and of 3.5 crore people in Punjab. Of Dipke he said: that boy was earlier in the party, worked on the social media team, then left, and later went to America.

The date Mann put on the job is 2020. Dipke, born on 29 September 1995, helped build a style of political messaging that mixed humour and satire, on the account carried from the event. He has since described the Cockroach Janta Party as a platform rather than a conventional party, and he has said it is not affiliated with the AAP or with any other established party. His own line on the B-team charge, given before Thursday, was that the Maharashtra chief minister calls him the Congress B team, others call him the AAP B team, and that those people should sit together and decide. He said the outfit is the students' A team.

The protest that made the name national started as satire and became a camp. In June 2026 Dipke came back from Boston and led a demonstration at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The demand was the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over repeated examination paper leaks and other alleged irregularities in national exams. Supporters kept a camp in central Delhi through June and July. On 25 July Pradhan resigned. Reuters described the campaign as one of the largest youth-led challenges the Modi government has faced since 2014. The Financial Times called Dipke the face of the cockroach protest.

Thursday's remark does not reopen the exam file. It answers a party question. Several people around the Cockroach Janta Party have past links to the AAP, which is the fact that fed the B-team claim. The issues the camp raised, education and the state of government schools, were issues the AAP had used for years. Mann's reply separates a former staffer from the present party. A social media role in 2020, a departure, and a move to America are the three facts he offered. He did not describe any current channel between the Punjab government and the camp.

Dipke has said the platform is meant to stay a pressure group on students and education. A pressure group that can point to a minister's resignation in July has a result on the record. A chief minister who says the founder used to work for his party, and left, is drawing a line under recruitment rather than under that result. The two statements can sit together. They do not say whether other former AAP workers are still inside the Cockroach Janta Party, which is the remainder of the charge Mann was asked about.

The numbers Mann used are population figures, not membership figures. One hundred and forty crore is his description of the country. Three and a half crore is his description of Punjab. Neither is a count of people who marched at Jantar Mantar. The count that is dated is the resignation: Pradhan left the education ministry on 25 July 2026, after a camp that began in June. The new dated fact is Mann's, from Thursday: Dipke was on the AAP social media desk in 2020, and he left.