Cockroach Janta Party: A Movement & Revolution Started by CJI Surya Kant & Promoted on Pan India Basis by BJP

Chapter 1: The accidental founder

Every great Indian party has a founding father. This one has a founding bench.

On 15 May 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi heard a plea about delays in senior-advocate designations. It was the sort of matter that normally excites eleven lawyers and a stenographer.

Then came the observation. While scolding the petitioner’s lawyer, the Chief Justice spoke of “parasites” who attack the system, and of jobless youngsters “like cockroaches” who drift into media, social media and RTI activism.

Marketing agencies charge crores for a brand name that sticks. The country’s highest court delivered one for free, in open court, before lunch.

By 16 May the Chief Justice had clarified. He said the media had misquoted him, that he meant people who entered noble professions on fake degrees, and that he holds India’s youth in high regard. The clarification was dignified, prompt and roughly twenty-four hours too late. The youth had already read the first draft and ordered the T-shirts.

Let the record show he has claimed neither credit nor royalty. Founders are often modest like that.

Chapter 2: A tweet, a Google Form and a videogame

The paperwork was handled by Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old from Aurangabad with a Boston University PR degree and a past on the Aam Aadmi Party’s social media team. On 16 May he posted a question on X: “What if all cockroaches come together?”

He later told reporters he then went back to his videogame. The nation did not.

Within a day there was a website, a Google Form and a name: Cockroach Janta Party, CJP for short. Any resemblance to another three-letter party ending in JP is entirely intentional. The whole thing was assembled with AI tools in about 24 hours, which is faster than most parties print a banner.

The tagline was “Voice of the Lazy & Unemployed”. The eligibility criteria were strict:

• Unemployed, by force, by choice or by principle
• Lazy, though only physically
• Chronically online, at least 11 hours a day including bathroom breaks
• Able to rant professionally

Religion, caste and gender were not asked. This alone made it the most radical membership form in Indian politics.

The manifesto was a joke with suspiciously good aim:

1. No Rajya Sabha seat for a Chief Justice as a retirement gift.
2. If a legitimate vote is deleted, the Chief Election Commissioner is arrested under the UAPA.
3. Fifty percent reservation for women in Parliament and in the Cabinet.
4. Licences of Ambani- and Adani-owned media houses cancelled.
5. Any MP or MLA who defects is barred from office for 20 years.

Remember point 2. It returns in Season 2 with a lead role.

The numbers then misbehaved. The form crossed 40,000 sign-ups by 18 May. Instagram crossed 3 million followers in 78 hours, 10 million in under five days and about 20 million by 22 May. Somewhere around the 10 million mark it overtook the official BJP handle, a party that had spent a decade and a fortune building its own.

Chapter 3: The world’s most generous publicity department

A joke left alone dies in a week. This one was not left alone. The establishment adopted it, fed it and drove it to every state in the Union.

Step one: ban it. On 21 May, five days into the joke, the CJP’s X account was withheld in India. The IT Ministry acted under Section 69A on Intelligence Bureau inputs citing national security and the sovereignty of India. A meme page run by a student sitting in America was now officially a threat to the Republic. The account had about 90,000 followers when the order went out. It returned within minutes as “Cockroach is Back”, and Instagram hit 20 million the next day.

Step two: blame Pakistan. Union minister Kiren Rijiju, naming no one, pitied those who find followers from Pakistan and the George Soros gang. Union minister Sukanta Majumdar went further and claimed 49 percent of CJP followers were Pakistani and 9 percent Indian. Dipke posted his analytics showing over 94 percent Indian. Independent checks agreed. Pakistan has not yet commented on being credited with India’s largest youth movement.

Step three: litigate. A plea reached the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe into the party’s activities. It was dismissed, with the Chief Justice advising the lawyer not to take things so sentimentally. A BJP worker from Karnataka asked the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench for an NIA and ED probe and Dipke’s extradition. The court declined and suggested he try Karnataka.

Step four: name-call. When the protests reached Delhi, the Education Minister called the protesters a B-team of disruptive elements. Nothing mobilises a 19-year-old NEET aspirant like being told he is a B-team.

Every step produced a fresh news cycle, a fresh hashtag and a few lakh fresh cockroaches. By the end of May the movement had spread to at least seven states. Supporters in cockroach costumes were cleaning the banks of the Yamuna. Anna Hazare, Shashi Tharoor, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata Banerjee and Sonam Wangchuk had all said kind things. Wangchuk declared himself an “honorary cockroach”.

No party in history has received a pan-India launch this energetically promoted by its own opponents.

Chapter 4: Season 1, in which the lazy refuse to go home

The party for people too lazy to leave their beds then did the one thing nobody budgeted for. It left its bed.

The trigger was the 2026 NEET-UG paper leak and the CBSE on-screen marking mess. The demand was simple: Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan must resign.

On 6 June, Dipke flew in from the United States for the first protest at Jantar Mantar. Delhi Police gave permission until 5 pm as a one-time exception and deployed about 5,000 personnel for a few hundred students carrying flags and books. The ratio alone was a compliment.

A roadshow followed through Pune, Lucknow and Bengaluru. On 20 June the cockroaches returned to Jantar Mantar with steel plates and spoons, borrowing a protest instrument the government itself once popularised. At 5 pm they were told to leave. They did not. Protesters said the lights went off and the water stopped. They stayed anyway. Anyone who has tried to evict an actual cockroach by switching off the light could have predicted this.

On 28 June, Sonam Wangchuk began an indefinite hunger strike at the site with six AISA students. By day 19 he had lost 9.1 kg. On 18 July police shifted him to Safdarjung Hospital, on medical advice and court directions by their account, by force according to the organisers. The same day a woman threw ink at Dipke.

Then came 20 July, opening day of the Monsoon Session. Tens of thousands tried to march to Parliament. Police used lathis and tear gas, shut metro stations and suspended internet nearby. Police said 118 personnel were hurt and that protesters threw stones. The CJP said about 150 protesters were hospitalised. Police called the pellet-gun claims false; a station diary entry later recorded two rounds fired. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib sheltered the injured. International outlets called it the largest anti-government demonstration in years.

The movement kept its sense of proportion throughout. On 21 July it sacked its own spokesperson for leaving the march to eat a burger. His defence was that he was hungry. Several national parties have retained spokespersons for far worse.

A plea on police excesses reached the Chief Justice on 22 July. He declined an urgent hearing and asked the petitioner not to waste the court’s time. The founder, it seems, does not do after-sales service.

The ending wrote itself. Wangchuk ended his fast on 23 July after 26 days and written assurances. On 25 July, Pradhan resigned in a letter addressed to his “young friends”. Two months earlier they had been a security threat with Pakistani followers. Promotions are fast in this party.

The protest was called off at a joint press conference with Union ministers J. P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh. A satirical party sharing a dais with the Cabinet to announce terms is the kind of scene satire itself would reject as too much.

Chapter 5: Season 2, now streaming from a police bus

August was quiet. The President signed the anti-paper-leak amendment. The CJP and AISA complained that students were still being arrested despite the truce. Dipke admitted to reporters that he had founded the party on a whim, in a bad mood.

Then the writers returned for Season 2 and went straight to manifesto point 2.

On 24 September, Dipke called Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar the “biggest threat” to Indian democracy. The charge concerns the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls, which the CJP and opposition parties allege deleted millions of genuine voters to the BJP’s benefit. He gave the CEC until 26 September to resign. The CEC did not oblige. Nationwide protests were called from 2 October, a date chosen with some care.

The showdown was set for Saturday, 10 October, at Jantar Mantar. The authorities responded with their now traditional promotional campaign.

• By 9 October, the CJP said thousands of supporters had been detained in several states on their way to Delhi.
• On 10 October, Jantar Mantar was sealed before anyone arrived.
• Trains to New Delhi were cancelled, mobile internet was suspended, and metro stations and markets were shut.
• Police boarded an Air India flight from Mumbai after it landed and stopped Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka from getting off.
• More than 1,000 people were detained in the capital, including Dhruv Rathee, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Mamata Banerjee.
• Journalists covering the smaller protests that broke out, including one at Dilli Haat, were also taken away in buses.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra declared the protest a flop show by anarchic elements and said India is calm. BJP president Nitin Nabin also tore into the CJP.

One must admire the logistics. To prove that a protest was a flop, the state cancelled trains, switched off the internet, closed the metro and detained a man inside an aircraft. Most flops manage to flop without assistance.

Amnesty International India and the Committee to Protect Journalists asked for the detainees to be released. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the “Mother of Democracy” had been turned into a “Muzzled Democracy”. The founder of the Lazy and Unemployed spent today being detained, which is the most employed he has been all year.

The complete timeline, 15 May to 10 October 2026

For readers who prefer their absurdity in chronological order.

Closing credits

In any honest history of the Cockroach Janta Party, the acknowledgements page is the longest.

• Concept and title: the Supreme Court of India, Court No. 1.
• National distribution: the Ministry of Electronics and IT, whose block order did what no influencer budget could.
• International marketing: the two Union ministers who put Pakistan in the headline.
• Outdoor advertising: Delhi Police, whose barricades made every protest look ten times its size.
• Season 1 finale: the Education Ministry.
• Additional paperwork: Abhijeet Dipke, who typed one question and went back to his game.

The moral is older than any of them. You cannot stamp out a cockroach by announcing loudly that it is a cockroach. You can switch off the lights, seal the room and call it a flop. It will be there in the morning, with 20 million friends and a Google Form.

In fairness: the other side

Satire picks a side; the facts are more contested than the jokes.

• The Chief Justice says he was misquoted, that his target was people with fake degrees in the professions, and that he regards the youth as pillars of the country. He founded nothing; the title of this piece is a joke.
• The BJP and the government reject the movement’s claims. Their spokespersons describe the organisers as anarchic elements and say the country is calm and well governed. The allegations about voter-roll deletions under the SIR are allegations, made by the CJP and opposition parties and not established findings.
• Delhi Police say their July actions were needed to keep order. They report 118 personnel injured, stone-pelting, damaged vehicles and CCTV footage of protesters attacking officers.
• Critics of the CJP point to Dipke’s years with the Aam Aadmi Party and call the movement a packaged digital campaign, not a spontaneous revolt. Analysts note that viral movements often fade once the attention does.
• The CJP itself is not registered with the Election Commission and has said it does not plan to become a conventional party.