The Cockroach Janta Party's protest at Jantar Mantar received two striking new faces on Tuesday — and both arrivals sent their own distinct messages to the BJP government.

Actress and activist Swara Bhasker arrived at the protest site in the afternoon, spending over two hours with students, volunteers, and CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke before visiting Sonam Wangchuk, who has now been on hunger strike for 23 consecutive days.

Hours later, Ambika Shukla — social activist and sister of former Union Minister and BJP MP Maneka Gandhi — arrived at Jantar Mantar, making her presence there one of the most symbolically charged moments of the protest so far.

Swara Bhasker: "I Have Never Seen Anything Like This in My Life"

Bhasker, who has been an outspoken voice on social and political issues, was visibly moved by what she encountered at the protest site.

"I have marched in protests before. I have attended rallies. I have spoken at events. But I have never seen anything like what is happening here," she told journalists at the site, her voice catching slightly. "These are not professional agitators. These are students — children — who just wanted a fair chance at a future. And the government cannot even send a single person to speak to them."

Standing at the wall of photographs memorialising students who died following the NEET-UG cancellation, Bhasker was silent for a long moment before saying: "Every one of these faces is a crime committed by a system that promised them a meritocracy and gave them corruption."

On Wangchuk's deteriorating health, she was direct: "This man is dying in front of the government of India. If they let something happen to him, history will not forgive this. I will not forgive this."

Bhasker announced that she would return to Jantar Mantar for the July 20 march to Parliament, and urged her followers and fellow artists to "show up, not just retweet."

"These students don't need your sympathy. They need your body. Come to Jantar Mantar. Come to the march. Be here."

— Swara Bhasker

Ambika Shukla: A Message From Within the BJP's Own Circle

The arrival of Ambika Shukla carried a weight beyond the personal. As the sister of Maneka Gandhi — one of the BJP's most prominent and long-serving MPs — her presence at an anti-government protest was read immediately as a statement that crossed family and political lines.

Shukla, who has run her own social and environmental campaigns for years, was careful to frame her visit in human rather than partisan terms — but the subtext was unmistakable.

"I am not here as a politician. I am not here as the sister of anyone. I am here as a citizen of India, as a mother, as someone who believes that when a man of Sonam Wangchuk's stature fasts until he is in danger of dying, the least a government can do is sit down and talk," she said.

Shukla spent time with both Wangchuk and Dipke. According to CJP volunteers at the site, she stayed for nearly three hours, listening to students share their experiences with the NEET-UG cancellation and the subsequent re-test.

"She wasn't performing solidarity," said one student volunteer from Bihar. "She sat with us. She listened. She asked questions. That meant something."

Shukla's presence also sent a message that the protest has moved well beyond its original left-liberal base. When a social activist connected by blood to the BJP's leadership circle is sitting at Jantar Mantar in support, the government's ability to dismiss the movement as purely "opposition-funded" becomes harder to sustain.

Growing Celebrity Support CJP's protest has now drawn public support from Swara Bhasker, Ambika Shukla, Prakash Raj, and a growing list of artists, academics and public figures who have visited Jantar Mantar or issued formal statements.

Abhijeet Dipke's Response

CJP founder Dipke thanked both visitors at a brief evening press interaction, but was careful to contextualise their support within the movement's broader identity.

"We are grateful to Swara ji and Ambika ji for being here. Their presence means that this movement has reached people across every divide — political, social, cultural," he said. "But I want the government to understand something: the people who come here are not our power. Our power is the 22 million people who follow us online and the millions more who don't have an Instagram account but whose children sat for an exam that was stolen from them."

Dipke also issued a direct challenge to Bollywood and the wider entertainment industry: "Where are the rest of you? You post about climate change from your private jets. You post about mental health from your film sets. Here are 20 students who died. Here is Sonam Wangchuk, 8 kilograms lighter, fasting in 42-degree heat. Where are you?"

The Protest Continues to Grow

As darkness fell on Jantar Mantar on Tuesday evening, the numbers at the site had not thinned. If anything, the flood of political declarations and celebrity arrivals had drawn new waves of people to the protest. Families arrived with children. A group of engineering students from IIT Bombay put up a banner that read: "We passed our exams. Our friends didn't get to sit theirs. We are all cockroaches."

The march to Parliament on July 20 is now less than five days away. CJP has called it peaceful, determined, and — in the words of Saurav Das — "the loudest silence the government has ever faced."