Why INDIA bloc is welcoming the Cockroach Janta Party – but Congress is not

From Punjab to West Bengal, leaders of major Opposition parties such as the Samajwadi Party, the Trinamool Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have voiced support for the Cockroach Janta Party over the past week. The satirical political campaign has gone viral, amassing more than two crore followers on Instagram so far.

But the largest Opposition party has yet to jump on the bandwagon. Though the Congress has for years been raising the same issues that the cockroach campaign is focused on – judicial independence, media freedom and election integrity – it has chosen to keep its distance from the initiative.

Scroll spoke to representatives from various parties which constitute the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance to understand how they view the campaign. Most of them said that the significant support for the Cockroach Janta Party on social media signalled growing discontent against the Modi government, especially among young Indians.

However, Sandeep Dikshit, a former MP who liaisons with civil society on behalf of the Congress party, remained sceptical of the initiative. He questioned the ideological moorings of those supporting the campaign and aired his doubts about their commitment to political activism. The youth wing of the Congress has even claimed that its workers are the “real cockroaches” because they protest on the ground and not just on social media.

This divergence between the largest Opposition party and its allies has once again brought the INDIA bloc’s internal divisions to the fore.

For ‘the lazy and unemployed'

The Cockroach Janta Party began as a tongue-in-cheek response to a comment made in the Supreme Court by Chief Justice Surya Kant. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was among those who took exception to the chief justice’s remarks likening unemployed youngsters to the insect.

The chief justice later clarified that he was only censuring seemingly ill-motivated lawyers and had nothing against the youth.

Dipke floated social media accounts under the name of Cockroach Janta Party and started a website to reach out to “the lazy and unemployed” in India with his five-point manifesto. The campaign began to make headlines because of the swift rate at which it acquired followers online. Opposition politicians such as Mahua Moitra were quick to endorse it.

Though the Cockroach Janta Party’s X account was restricted in India, on Instagram its follower count eventually exceeded that of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It also came up with an internet petition demanding that Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s education minister, be sacked because of the repeated instances of paper leaks under his watch. The petition has received nearly six lakh signatures thus far.

Dipke, the man behind this social media storm, is a 30-year-old political communications strategist from Maharashtra and currently lives in the United States of America. He has worked with the Aam Aadmi Party in the past, but denies having any present links to it. BJP leaders have pointed to his history with the political party to raise questions about his independence.

A platform that was needed?

Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, a national spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party, acknowledged Dipke’s previous association with his outfit and admitted to having met him before. However, like Dipke, he too rejected the accusation that his organisation had propped up the Cockroach Janta Party. “We have nothing to do with them,” he said.

Even though he denied any links, Singh welcomed the initiative taken by Dipke and extended his best wishes to the campaign. “The youth needed an alternative platform to express their anger,” he added. “We will wait and see how big of a revolution this spark can ignite.”

Singh contended that the “economic crisis” caused by the US-Israel war on Iran, which in his view had been made worse by the Modi government’s foreign policy, was to blame for the Cockroach Janta Party’s online popularity. Inflation, driven by the rising cost of fuel, was pinching people’s pockets, he argued.

“Narendra Modi has brought this inflation upon us,” Singh alleged, claiming that the Modi government had reduced oil imports from Iran and Russia under US pressure. “The Cockroach Janta Party reflects people’s anger against his policies. The Opposition should stay out of this. If we try to stand behind them [Cockroach Janta Party], it will put their credibility at risk.”

Samajwadi Party leaders in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh made a similar point.

“There is resentment among the youth for a lot of reasons,” said Udaiveer Singh, a spokesperson from the party. “When an issue is taken up outside a party forum, it gets a lot more support. If any political party raises the same issue, it is asked what it did when it was in power. The discussion becomes ideological and divisive.”

Besides tackling questions about their past record at governance, Opposition parties are also expected to put forth policy ideas and plans when they criticise the government, he pointed out. A social media campaign, on the other hand, is not encumbered by such expectations.

This is perhaps why, on May 20, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav pitted the Cockroach Janta Party directly against the ruling party at the Centre. “BJP versus CJP,” he wrote on X.

Derek O’Brien, who represents the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha, echoed what Yadav had written. In his view, the Cockroach Janta Party had the potential to go beyond social media and bring all non-BJP parties on one page.

“In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP got only 37% of the vote,” O’Brien told Scroll. “They are 32 seats short of a majority. Any platform which takes the BJP on is welcome. Many like-minded parties will be on board.”

In a social media post, the MP even wrote that former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the party’s National General Secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, had “expressed their fondness and full support for cockroaches”.

‘A fad’

The Congress party, though, is not pleased with the cockroach trend. The Indian Youth Congress, which is the party’s youth wing, has created its own website mirroring that of the Cockroach Janta Party. It has also made a new X account by the name of Indian Youth Cockroaches. “Real cockroaches fight on the streets, not just on timelines,” reads its bio.

While top Congress leaders continue to lend their support to causes that concern the youth, they have so far avoided supporting the Cockroach Janta Party.

“I don’t take this seriously,” said Sandeep Dikshit, a former MP from the party who was twice elected to the Lok Sabha. “People clicking on something and thinking they are political – it’s nonsense. I think it’s a fad like the Aam Aadmi Party.”

Dikshit is supposed to engage with the civil society to “link Congress with what is happening on the field” as the chairperson of the Rachnatmak Congress, the revamped avatar of the party’s outreach cell. Rachnatmak means constructive or creative in Hindi.

The manner in which the Cockroach Janta Party had presented itself was also creative, but it was mostly benefiting from the curiosity of social media users, Dikshit assessed.

“You go and follow an Instagram account because others are following it,” he elaborated. “The number of people following it is what is attracting you. In the olden days, more people used to go and watch a film when it completed its golden jubilee. It’s like that.”

In stark contrast with his party’s allies, who have welcomed the Cockroach Janta Party as an avenue for the youth to express their frustration, Dikshit framed it as a threat.

“If people use this platform to vent, then they will stick to the same options,” he surmised. “Once a hungry person has satiated his hunger at a new restaurant, they will go back home.”

And “home”, Dikshit contended, was the BJP.