Dipke, a postgrad from Boston University, has made a habit of turning online grumbling into hard numbers. When he put up a Google form for sign-ups on 16 May, he was offering a place for those who don’t feel they have a voice. “We hit 5,000 in no time,” he said, as if to say there was plenty of frustration and a good sense of humour looking for an outlet.
The numbers didn’t stop there. By 18 May, he was touting 50,000 members. A day after that, he put it at over 80,000 to LiveMint. The whole thing was set in motion when the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, made an offhand comment about cockroaches. Even though he later backpedalled to say he was talking about people with bogus degrees, the impression was made.
One old hand in media thought the reaction was well-earned and was taken aback by how fast the party put up a website, an anthem and a manifesto. “I’ll be keeping an eye on this,” she said.
From a postgrad’s prank to a platform
For his part, Dipke and a couple of friends had the site up in a matter of hours with some AI help. He was very direct about who should apply: the unemployed, the lazy, the ones who are always on their phone and can make a rant of it.
He has since put out an election symbol and made it known that if his party ever gets to rule, a spot in the Rajya Sabha won’t be handed to any Chief Justice as a thank-you for retiring. On social media, the party is on the up: 29,000 on X and 12,000 on Instagram as of 19 May.
What the Cockroach Janta Party wants
You could call the website a megaphone for the ones the system has left out. There are no sponsors here, just a “stubborn swarm” with five things to get done and a promise to put in writing where the money has gone.
The group’s five-point manifesto targets the guardrails of democracy rather than freebies or one-off sops. It demands structural checks to curb defections, gender disparity, and the misuse of institutions:
– 50% reservation of all Cabinet positions for women
– A 20-year ban on MLAs and MPs who defect
– Investigating the bank accounts of godi media anchors
– Arresting the CEC under the UAPA if any legit vote is deleted
– Barring post-retirement Rajya Sabha appointments for any Chief Justice
Dipke sees the name as a way to put the label back where it belongs. “If we’re to be called cockroaches, we will be,” he says. “But they only do well in rot.” In other words, the system is so run down that those who were pushed aside are now in plain sight.
Put simply, the party is secular, socialist, anti-caste and democratic, with Gandhi and Ambedkar as reference points. He has little time for the chief justice’s explanation and wants to know why not having a piece of paper should stop you from having an opinion on the state. As the tagline has it: we are the Voice of the lazy and unemployed. To his followers, the joke is funny because it’s true. “We are putting the nation on notice that the young are done with a system that has stopped working for them,” he says.
And if you let institutions write off their critics in the same vein as the ruling party, you only make people more sceptical of their motives. The movement is on the upswing, he says, because the resentment behind it has been there long before this row.
Who is Abhijeet Dipke
Dipke is 30 and has just put in the work for a two-year master’s in Public Relations at Boston University. His background is in journalism, which he picked up in Pune, and he put in some time with the Aam Aadmi Party‘s social media side from 2020 to 2023. Back in 2020, when he was 24 and fresh out of college, he was part of the AAP’s meme-driven push for the Delhi Assembly. They made good on it and won in February. After a stint in Aurangabad in 2023 to sort out his grad school papers, he made for the U.S.
These days, though, the volume of messages and what they expect of him is not something you can put aside. “With 80,000 sign-ups, you can’t just let it be,” he says. He plans to be back in India in short order to figure out where to go from here.
Satire’s political lineage and reactions
Some will put the Cockroach Janta Party in the company of other satirical outfits that have used the ridiculous to have a word with those in charge. You had the Yippies and Freak Power in 1960s America, or the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in Britain in the ’80s. In Poland, the Orange Alternative made a point of using a bit of levity to get under the skin of the regime. More recently, the Pirate Party in Sweden put some internet sensibilities to use for digital rights. This is all in the same family; we’re just making our punchlines do some of the heavy lifting.
It has even put a few names in the mix. The party’s feed shows Trinamool Congress’ Mahua Moitra and Kirti Azad have shown an interest in coming on board, and you’ll see former officials and others chipping in on the updates. For the faithful, that kind of nod is enough to put some weight to the cause.
Sure, a judge’s comment was the spark, but the fuel is something else. Dipke would have it that the standing of our institutions is very much in doubt. What we are seeing is an airing of old grievances, not a passing fancy.
CJI Surya Kant has made it plain his words were for the ones with phony credentials in law and media, not for the jobless. But the damage was done; by the time he set the record straight, the idea had already taken on a life of its own.
Why it matters and what comes next
It comes down to this: does it stay a one-liner and wither, or do we put some of these five demands into practice and make some noise? One way or another, it has opened a new door to talk about how the youth are treated and who is in a position to represent them.
A cockroach, to Dipke, is a mark of tenacity. And for the ones who have put their name down, the joke is apt. It tells you what it is like when the system is no longer in earshot: even a swarm has a say.
