Won’t be surprised if CJP captures power in one or two States, but may not emerge as a third force nationally: P. Chidambaram

It would not be surprising if the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) captures power in one or two States, according to former Union Minister for Finance and Home Affairs, P. Chidambaram.

“But I do not know and cannot say whether it [the CJP] will be able to emerge as a third force at the all-India level,” Mr. Chidambaram told The Hindu 360, the Tamil YouTube channel of The Hindu, at his residence in Chennai on Wednesday (August 26, 2026).

Answering a question about whether the CJP would become a third force at the national level, the former Union Minister referred to the fledgling party’s campaign under the banner ‘School Thik Karo’, focusing on the condition of government schools, and acknowledged the impact of the organisation’s drive on the powers that be. The campaign had made those in power “awake.” Announcements were being made about allocating funds to set right government schools. “Why should Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Ministers go to university campuses every day? [In the past,] when they visited colleges and universities for convocations, did they go around them?” he wondered. He added that “when a stone is thrown, it causes a ripple effect, doesn’t it?”

Giving the example of Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Mr. Chidambaram pointed out that it was the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) that led to the birth of the AGP, which captured power in Assam for the first time in 1985. Besides, in Nepal, leader of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) Balendra Shah, popularly called Balen, had become Prime Minister thanks to an agitation by Gen Z.

To another question on whether irregularities in public examinations were the only factor responsible for the recent youth agitation, the former Union Minister, who would turn 81 on September 16, referred to an editorial by The Hindu [’Root causes: On India’s youth crisis’] and said: “I wholly accept it.” The irregularities were only “a consequence.” But unemployment and lack of income were the reasons. “When I was a student, people believed that graduates would receive a four-digit salary – ₹1,000 – which was a huge sum in those days. Those who took public examinations then would get government jobs. But today, even if you write the examinations, you do not get jobs,” Mr. Chidambaram observed. The unemployed included those who had finished engineering and medical courses and students of the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.

‘Paper leak was waiting to happen’

On the paper leak in this year’s National Entrance cum Eligibility Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) held by the National Testing Agency (NTA), he said that “it was waiting to happen,” considering the small number of permanent employees in the NTA and the fact that the test had to be held throughout the country, covering thousands of centres.

Asked whether the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which had been rendered virtually friendless after the 2026 Assembly election, would inch closer towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Mr. Chidambaram answered that “there is no chance of that. If they [the DMK] did so, they would be causing a self-inflicted injury.” He also pointed out that on the issue of delimitation, the party had supported a resolution in the Assembly [urging the Centre to freeze the number of Lok Sabha seats at the existing 543 and retain the current proportion of seats among the States], despite “conflicting voices” being heard earlier.