Former Tamil Nadu BJP president and former IPS officer K. Annamalai on Wednesday posted a five-point list of questions for the Centre on X, challenging the handling of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) case, according to reports of the post carried by India Today syndication and Gulte. Annamalai, who quit the BJP in June and has since launched his own outfit, We The Leaders, sought explanations for the denotification of Jantar Mantar as a protest site, the powers of police officers acting as Special Executive Magistrates, the handling of the bail hearing of CJP members arrested on October 13, the rejection of eight sureties, and the alleged use of pellet guns and other standard-operating-procedure violations during the NEET protests — the last of these being his allegation, which the authorities have not addressed in the reports.

In the post, Annamalai noted that the detained CJP functionaries Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were released by the Special Executive Magistrate after the matter reached the Delhi High Court — the SEM court ordered their release on Wednesday, ANI reported — and asked, in his words: "Is the BJP really opposing the CJP? Or is it providing free publicity for it? Does the BJP want to split the votes of the Opposition parties by projecting the CJP as a major political force? At this rate, even if the CJP paid, they could not have had a better publicity team!" He asked the Centre to answer his questions instead of, as he put it, resorting to whataboutism.

The BJP responded sharply. The party's Tamil Nadu chief spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathy accused Annamalai of changing his position on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls after leaving the party, pointing out that Annamalai had earlier defended the revision exercise, said Tamil Nadu had a large number of fake voters who needed to be removed, and criticised the DMK for opposing it. Thirupathy also cited Annamalai's public debate with Congress leader Shashi Tharoor in May 2026, in which Annamalai had defended SIR as fair and necessary and accused the Opposition of double standards. "Today, after quitting the BJP, the same Annamalai has switched sides," Thirupathy said.

Annamalai's intervention adds a new voice to the political row around the CJP, a new protest outfit whose leaders were arrested on October 13 after entering Jantar Mantar, which had been denotified as a designated protest site. Das and Ranka were first sent to five days of judicial custody, which was later extended by two days, before the SEM court ordered their release on Wednesday after they withdrew a challenge in the Delhi High Court.