The Pulse | Politics | South Asia

Cockroach Janta Party: Is the Modi Government Wary of a ‘Gen Z Revolt’?

Hitherto confined to social media, the “cockroaches” emerged on the ground at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on June 6. What started as a joke has turned serious.

Abhijeet Dipke (holding mike), founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, addresses participants in a rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, India, June 6, 2026.

Midway into Narendra Modi’s third prime ministerial term, just as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is steadily increasing its strength through winning elections and engineering defections, a new phenomenon has struck it like a bolt from the blue: hints of a Gen Z revolt.

On June 6, thousands of students, youth, parents and activists assembled at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. Wearing cockroach masks and carrying placards and flowers they chanted slogans calling for the resignation of Union Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan. A series of scandals have emerged over question paper leaks in examinations for entrance to universities. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk and several leftist student organizations also joined in.

This was the first on-the-ground mobilization of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which began as a satirical political movement and has hitherto drawn millions of followers online.

It all started with Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s comments on May 15 equating unemployed youths engaging in different sorts of activism with cockroaches.

“There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI [the Right to Information Act, an important tool for transparency and accountability, which the Modi government has severely weakened] activists, and other activists, and they start attacking everyone,” he said.

Kant subsequently claimed he was misquoted. He was targeting individuals using fake degrees rather than the nation’s youth, he said.

But the “cockroach” label had already struck a sensitive nerve with millions of educated, yet unemployed, young Indians. Nobody imagined what happened next.

Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian living in the U.S., started a parody entity on social media two days later, named the “Cockroach Janta Party.” The word “Janta or janata” means “people” and finds itself in the name of several parties, including the BJP.

The CJP described itself as the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed.”

In just four days, the CJP’s Instagram following overtook the 9-million-strong handle of the BJP, which proudly calls itself the world’s largest political party.

Memes, satire and angry posts flooded social media.

Issues like affordable education, transparent entrance examinations to universities, and employment opportunities have been brewing resentment for a while and when Kant made his insensitive comment, youth frustration erupted online.

The satire-born, youth-driven “cockroach” movement started off as a joke but soon gathered momentum. It rattled those in power.

Leaderless or loosely organized youth uprisings have unsettled governments in several countries in 2025 — from Indonesia to Nepal and Madagascar — signaling a broader crisis among youth over issues like unemployment, corruption, nepotism, poor governance, economic hardship, education and exam issues, and inequality.

And in South Asia, Gen Z movements ousted governments in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka in the recent past. Consequently, the Modi government wasn’t taking any chances. It acted swiftly to silence the CJP. It got their social media handles and website blocked, allegedly for posing a “national security threat.”

That only further fueled the outrage online.

Then Dipke announced he was returning home to India.

In a bid to avoid outright confrontation, the Delhi police allowed the digital warriors to hit the streets on June 6.  The rally at Jantar Mantar followed. What started as a........

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