Cockroach

Youth group threatens return to mass protests, sets deadline for Gyanesh Kumar to quit due to reports of meddling with voter lists.

India’s ‘cockroach’ party youth movement has threatened to launch nationwide protests unless the country’s chief election officer does not resign by Saturday.

Founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Abhijeet Dipke, announced on Friday that protests would begin in Mumbai on October 2 – if Gyanesh Kumar does not step down.

The CJP, a satirical outfit born on Instagram in May after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young Indians to “cockroaches” and “parasites”, has shaken the staunchly conservative government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On Thursday, the group demanded that Kumar quit within 48 hours, following a newspaper report linking him to altered voter lists. Opposition parties say the lists have been manipulated to benefit Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“If Gyanesh Kumar does not resign by tomorrow, CJP will begin its nationwide protest from Mumbai on 2 October, and take it to cities across India,” Dipke posted on X.

“This Gandhi Jayanti let’s pledge to save democracy,” he added, referring to the October 2 holiday marking independence leader Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday.

Report provokes political storm

On Wednesday, the Indian Express newspaper reported that two election commissioners had raised questions or voiced concern with Kumar at least 14 times in 10 months, mostly over the process of updating voter lists that began last year.

The main opposition Congress party announced protest marches on state election offices across India on Friday, demanding Kumar’s arrest, his removal and an independent review of decisions and voter-list changes made under him.

Opposition parties have long accused the commission of deleting the names of millions of voters without warning and adding new voters without verification to favour the BJP.

Election panel rejects claims

The Election Commission of India said that “differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution” and that all its actions were lawful.

The BJP has defended the commission, accusing the opposition of a smear campaign because it keeps losing elections.

“Neither the Election Commission of India nor any constitutional body in India is under dictatorial rule,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said on Wednesday.

CJP-led protests in July forced the resignation of Modi’s education minister over exam-paper leaks, one of the prime minister’s biggest political setbacks since coming to power in 2014.

In just under three months, 30-year-old Abhijeet Dipke – the founder and face of India’s Gen Z “cockroach” protests – has acquired the kind of celebrity status normally reserved for a breakout actor or cricketer.

In politics or activism, unless you come from an influential family, such recognition can take years – if it comes at all.

“It’s been a rollercoaster ride. Two-three months ago, nobody knew me. I was just in my room in Boston watching documentaries or attending lectures,” said Dipke, who recently completed a master’s in public relations at Boston University.

“Now I’m here surrounded by hundreds of people, by cameras. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

In and around his hometown of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in the western state of Maharashtra, Dipke is routinely thronged by people wanting to shake his hand or take a photo.

If the attention bothers him, it doesn’t show. Perhaps because politics isn’t entirely new to him: before moving to the US, Dipke had worked with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), an opposition party that grew out of an anti-corruption movement, for three years.

Then, on 16 May, Dipke wrote a post on X that would change his life: “What if all cockroaches come together?”

It was a response to a remark by India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant, who had likened jobless youngsters to cockroaches. Kant later said his comments had been misinterpreted and were directed specifically at young people using fake degrees, rather than the country’s youth more broadly.

But the clarification did little to quell the outrage.

Dipke said he wrote his post while playing a video game. “It was totally spontaneous. I had no idea it would become such a big movement,” he said.

Encouraged by tens of thousands of responses, he joined a handful of former colleagues and activists to launch the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), its name playing on both the chief justice’s remark and that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Alongside the support, Dipke and the campaign were fiercely trolled by government supporters. Their website and X account was briefly taken down in India.

Dipke says that when he wrote to X and to India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asking why the account had been taken down, he received a notice saying it had been withheld under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act which allows the government to block online information ‘in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State’.

The ministry did not reply to the BBC’s questions about the issue, but The Indian Express and other media reported government officials as saying the sites had been blocked because of ‘national security concerns’. Dipke says he decided to return to India in response to this.

“I took the decision to come back to India when I was called a national security threat by my own government. That really hurt me. Isn’t my government supposed to stand by me when I’m abroad?” he said.

“I decided I need to go back to my country to show I’m not a national security threat. I love my country, just not in the way that you [the government] want.”