Three People Tried to Trademark "Cockroach Janta Party." Here's What We Know.

While the government was busy blocking CJP's social accounts and website, three individuals — apparently unconnected to the movement — were quietly filing trademark applications for the name "Cockroach Janta Party" at India's Trade Marks Registry. The filings, all under Class 45, landed between May 19 and May 20, 2026: the same window in which CJP's X account was withheld under Section 69A, its Instagram was hacked, and its website was blocked. The timing is hard to ignore.

This post names the applicants, explains what Class 45 actually covers, clarifies what "Formalities Check Pass" means (it does not mean approval), and tells you what these filings mean for the movement going forward.

Who Filed the Trademark Applications? (The Three Applicants)

India's Trade Marks Registry shows three separate applications filed in the name "Cockroach Janta Party" within a 48-hour window:

• Azim Adambhai Jam (individual) — application no. 7737937, filed approximately May 19, 2026, under Class 45. Current status: Formalities Chk Pass.
• Akhand Swaroop (individual) — application no. 7741481, filed May 20, 2026, under Class 45. Current status: Formalities Chk Pass.
• A proprietorship entity named "COCKROACH JANTA PARTY" — a third application filed May 20, 2026, also Class 45, submitted as a label mark. Current status: Sent to Vienna Codification (a standard classification stage for figurative/label marks).

None of the three applicants has been publicly confirmed to have any connection to the original CJP movement, its volunteers, or Abhijeet Dipke, CJP's founder. Multiple news outlets — including Sunday Guardian Live, Business Today, and The Federal — have noted that the identities of the filers and their relationship to the movement remain unclear.

It is equally important to state clearly: there is no confirmed link between Abhijeet Dipke and any of these filings. None of the applicants on record is Dipke. Do not assume otherwise.

Nilanshu Shekhar, founding partner at KAnalysis, described the pattern to The Federal in direct terms. Applicants seeking names across unrelated businesses looks "more like planting a flag on it just in case it becomes valuable." That framing fits what the registry data shows: three independent actors racing to claim a name that had just become one of India's most-searched political phrases.

What Is Trademark Class 45 — and Why Does It Matter for CJP?

Under India's Trade Marks Act, goods and services are divided into 45 classes. Class 45 covers legal and social services, security services, and personal social services rendered to meet the needs of individuals. All three CJP trademark applications were filed under this class.

The choice of Class 45 is significant for one specific reason: CJP is not a registered political party. It has no ECI registration, no formal party structure, and — crucially — no existing trademark registration. Class 45 is broad enough to encompass the kind of social mobilisation and civic services that CJP actually performs: membership drives, petition coordination, civic awareness campaigns. Filing in Class 45 means the applicants are staking a claim precisely in the category where CJP operates.

If any of these applications were eventually granted, the trademark holder could, in theory, demand that others stop using "Cockroach Janta Party" as a name in connection with services falling under Class 45. Whether that claim could actually be enforced against a decentralised movement is a separate legal question — but the filing stakes out the ground.

The irony is pointed. Nobody owns CJP — the movement has always insisted on that. Trademark law, by design, creates ownership. Three outsiders appear to be attempting to use that mechanism to get there first.

What "Formalities Check Pass" Actually Means (It's Not Approval)

Two of the three applications currently show the status "Formalities Chk Pass." Several news headlines have described this as a significant development. It is worth being precise about what that status actually means — and what it does not.

"Formalities Check Pass" means only that the Trade Marks Registry has completed its initial administrative review: the application form was correctly filled, the fees were paid, the required documents were attached. It is a bureaucratic gate, not a legal finding. The application has not been examined for registrability. It has not been published for opposition. No trademark has been granted.

After a formalities check pass, an application must still go through substantive examination (where an examiner can raise objections on grounds including likelihood of confusion or distinctiveness), publication in the Trade Marks Journal (which opens a window for third-party opposition), and if opposed, a hearing before the Registrar. Only if all of those stages are cleared does a trademark actually get registered.

The third application's "Sent to Vienna Codification" status is even earlier in the pipeline — it refers to the international classification of figurative elements in a logo mark, a step that happens before examination begins.

No one holds the trademark for "Cockroach Janta Party" at this stage. Anyone claiming otherwise is misleading you.

What This Means for the Movement

Read the filings alongside the crackdown timeline. Between May 19 and May 21, CJP's X/Twitter account was withheld in India, its Instagram was hacked and access was lost, and the website was blocked by MeitY directive. Three trademark applications landed in that same window — filed not by CJP, but by parties with no confirmed connection to the movement.

The pattern has a name. Intellectual property lawyers call it "trademark squatting": filing an application for a name associated with someone else's goodwill, either to sell the registration back to them later, to block them from using their own name, or simply to profit from the association. Nilanshu Shekhar's "planting a flag" formulation points at exactly this logic.

For the movement, the practical significance is limited in the near term. Trademark law does not work instantly — the process takes months to years, and any eventual registration can be opposed. More directly: India's Trade Marks Act provides that a mark cannot be registered if it is likely to cause confusion with an earlier well-known mark. A movement that had 22 million Instagram followers in a week and generated national news coverage across every major outlet has a reasonable claim to "well-known" status, even without a formal trademark of its own.

But the filings are a signal worth tracking. They show that CJP's name now has perceived commercial and legal value — enough that three separate actors moved to claim it within 48 hours of the crackdown beginning. The movement that nobody is supposed to own has become something people are trying to own.

The cockroach survives precisely because it does not centralise. Any future trademark opposition — if one becomes necessary — will need to navigate that architecture. For now, the movement continues on the only channel that was not blocked, hacked, or squatted: this one.