From “Anti-National” to #ArrestCJPAntiNational: How a Counter-Campaign Took Shape Around the CJP Protest

Announced in advance, amplified across accounts and pushed through posts, replies and an X Space — OBC traces how #ArrestCJPAntiNational was built and amplified around the CJP protest.

Demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, protests over the Election Commission’s handling of electoral rolls and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process are continuing to gather momentum. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has been leading the campaign, with protests held in Mumbai and Delhi on 2 October. In Delhi, student groups, civil-society activists and opposition leaders attempting to reach Jantar Mantar were stopped by police, with hundreds of participants detained. The protests are continuing, with the campaign calling for greater scrutiny of the Election Commission and the SIR process.

Against this backdrop, #ArrestCJPAntiNational began circulating on X alongside posts targeting CJP and its associated activists. The hashtag was accompanied by repeated calls to make it trend, urging users to amplify it through posts, comments and shares. In the material reviewed by OBC, several accounts used identical or closely similar wording while sharing videos, graphics and other content under the hashtag.

The initial post regarding the campaign can be traced back to 1 October, when the account @NarendraVictory announced that the campaign would be taken to social media from 2 October and urged users to make #ArrestCJPAntiNational trend. The account subsequently posted and replied repeatedly using the hashtag, while other accounts reproduced these posts and circulated related material.

OBC examined posts from 1 to 3 October to trace how the hashtag was promoted, identify the most active accounts, examine repeated posts and media, and document the patterns visible in its amplification on X.

What happened on 1 October?

On 1 October, a day before CJP’s planned protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, founder Abhijeet Dipke held a press conference in Mumbai. It announced that the protest movement would begin from Shivaji Park on 2 October and subsequently expand to other cities. CJP was demanding Kumar’s resignation and had also called for action over what it alleged were irregularities in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The same day, a counter-campaign targeting CJP emerged on the social media platform X. The X account @NarendraVictory, in a post shared on 1 October, urged users to make #ArrestCJPAntiNational trend through posts, comments, and shares.

As of 3 October, the post had received 17,800 views, 737 likes and 352 reposts.

The account also began building narratives that would later accompany the hashtag. Posts described CJP as an organisation that needed to be exposed and repeatedly linked it to claims of being “Soros-INDI-funded”. These claims appeared in the campaign’s messaging and are presented here as claims made by the accounts rather than as facts.

Another post shared by the same account on 2 October claims that CJP is similar to Bangladeshi Jamaat and calls its supporters “parasites”. It urges users to trend the hashtag #ArrestCJPAntiNational and shares a video that, according to the post, raises concerns about issues affecting India’s image and reputation.

Our investigation found that 1 October marks the point at which both the offline political confrontation and the online counter-campaign begin to develop side by side.

The campaign goes online.

On 2 October, the hashtag appeared across a series of original posts, replies and shared media. Posts using the phrase “Let’s make #ArrestCJPAntiNational trend today!” were reproduced by multiple accounts, while videos and graphics were circulated alongside the hashtag. In several cases, the same or closely similar wording was used by different accounts, suggesting that a common campaign message was being replicated across X.

The campaign also extended beyond standalone posts. Accounts, including @vipulv06, used the hashtag in replies to posts by CJP-linked and political accounts, while other accounts repeatedly posted short versions of the same call to make the hashtag trend.

This created a pattern in which the hashtag was inserted into multiple ongoing conversations rather than being limited to a single stream of campaign posts.

By 2 October, therefore, the activity had developed into a combination of pre-announced mobilisation, repeated calls to use the hashtag, reply-based amplification and shared visual content.

Who was behind the hashtag push?

The activity around #ArrestCJPAntiNational involved more than one account. OBC identified a cluster of users that repeatedly appeared in the campaign material, either by posting original content, replying to existing posts or amplifying messages associated with the hashtag. The activity varied considerably between accounts, with some sharing campaign-related content and others primarily repeating calls to use the hashtag.

Among the accounts examined, @NarendraVictory occupies a central position in the material collected by OBC. We identified that the account shared at least 13 original posts containing #ArrestCJPAntiNational. The account’s activity extended beyond individual hashtag posts and included interactions with other accounts, campaign-related visual material and a dedicated X Space titled “Let’s trend #ArrestCJPAntiNational”. The account also publicly referred to @Banglar_Tintin and @dance_paglu as part of “our team” in a post thanking the campaign’s supporters.

The two accounts had distinct patterns: @Banglar_Tintin contributed posts containing news-style commentary and media, while @dance_paglu appeared more frequently in short promotional posts and replies. Their participation places them among the accounts that were visibly involved in sustaining the campaign alongside NarendraVictory.

We further identified that the same account, @Banglar_Tintin, was also primarily involved in spreading the false narrative that the Indian National Congress paid INR 81.45 Lakhs to Indian Express during the West Bengal Elections, a claim that OBC debunked on 29 September.

Beyond this smaller group, the hashtag was also amplified by accounts such as @Visit_Assam, @vipulv06, @ramug0137 and @rjkiranofficial, among others. Posts shared by these accounts received significant reach.

@chennaiasr and @DravidianModi: Inside the reply bursts

As the hashtag spread, a noticeable shift appeared in the way some accounts participated. Instead of creating independent posts with their own commentary, several users repeatedly used short, standardised replies, often consisting almost entirely of #ArrestCJPAntiNational.

This behaviour was particularly evident in replies from accounts such as @chennaiasr and @DravidianModi. According to the captured posts, these accounts repeatedly responded to different posts with the hashtag alone, with several replies appearing within very short intervals.

The timing of some of these replies is also notable. @chennaiasr was identified as having at least nine hashtag-only replies during a relatively short period, while @DravidianModi showed several similar replies within roughly 90 seconds.

The X Space: “Let’s trend #ArrestCJPAntiNational”

The hashtag campaign also moved into an X Space titled “Let’s trend #ArrestCJPAntiNational”. The Space provided a dedicated forum for discussing and promoting the hashtag alongside the posts circulating on the platform. The title itself explicitly linked the live discussion to the effort to make the hashtag trend.

The Space was hosted by @NarendraVictory and involved both  @Banglar_Tintin and @dance_paglu.

SpacesDashboard, a third-party tracker of X Spaces, identifies @Banglar_Tintin as the Co-host of this Space. It also indicates that the Space started at 18:24 on 1 October 2026 and ended at 00:36 on 2 October 2026.

The Spaces included 21 speakers, including @erachnid, @Satyanveshie, @invincible_M762, @amswarna7, @imblue_UI, @dance_paglu, @ritamright, @Anandamoyi_333, @VladAd4Return, @WarLord709, @UgraMechanic, @ashwathama77777, @SouvenTudu23386, @Invictus_Aria, @HaderJit93359, @turkishkangu, @IggiChiku, @Banglar_Tirina, @gargocingal, @GigachadBengali, @RafanYajnika.

It further clarifies the way the campaign moved across different formats on X. The hashtag was being promoted through original posts, replies and shared media, while the Space created a live channel for the same campaign. This suggests that the hashtag was also propagated through a dedicated live discussion centred on making it trend.

When the campaign claimed victory

By 3 October, @NarendraVictory thanked users who had supported the hashtag and wrote, “We did it, India!”.

The account described it as a “trending campaign” and urged all “Nationalists” to continue it.

The hashtag analysis by OBC shows several features that distinguish #ArrestCJPAntiNational from a purely spontaneous trending hashtag. The campaign was announced in advance, with @NarendraVictory calling on users on 1 October to take the campaign to social media starting the following day. On the other hand, A live discussion on X Spaces also provided a centralised channel for promoting the hashtag.

On 2 October, multiple accounts then used the same or closely similar wording, including the repeated call to make the hashtag trend. Some accounts also used the hashtag in replies to different users, while the same videos and campaign graphics appeared across multiple posts.

We also found a reply burst in which several users posted replies containing the hashtag to multiple posts.

The available evidence therefore strongly suggests that #ArrestCJPAntiNational was promoted through an identifiable campaign structure in which some accounts produced and distributed messaging while others repeatedly amplified it. Whether the wider network was centrally coordinated, partially coordinated or largely composed of independent participants cannot be determined from the material examined so far.