NEW DELHI — India’s viral “cockroach” political parody group says the authorities have blocked its website just days since it launched as a joke after the country’s chief justice reportedly compared unemployed young people to the insects.The satirical movement, called the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), taps into growing frustration over unemployment, inflation and living costs under Narendra Modi’s government, gaining more than 22 million Instagram followers in just six days.Chief Justice Surya Kant later clarified he was referring to people with “fake and bogus degrees”, not India’s youth more broadly.The group’s website can no longer be accessed in the country and also appears to be down elsewhere. Its founder Abhijeet Dipke said Indian officials had “taken down our iconic website” and asked why they were “so scared of cockroaches”.He wrote on X that the group, which is not an official political party, was already working on a new “home” and added: “Cockroaches never die.”Its official X page with more than 200,000 followers is also inaccessible in the country. Those trying to open it are shown a message that it has been withheld “in response to a legal demand”.Dipke, a political communications strategist and student at Boston University in the US, has also claimed both his personal Instagram and the group’s have been hacked.The CJP, or the cockroach people’s party, satirises the name of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power since 2014.Prominent opposition lawmaker Shashi Tharoor has dubbed the government’s move as “foolish” in his post on X.Voicing concern for the blocked account,the Congress party leader said, “Democracy’s great virtue is the outlets it provides for public sentiment, frustration and grievances. Letting these be aired on a satirical site is in the national interest”.The group claims to be “the voice of the lazy and unemployed”. Its tongue-in-cheek membership criteria include being chronically online and having “the ability to rant professionally”.It has used AI-generated images to promote its cause online and has inspired the hashtag #MainBhiCockroach (“I too am a cockroach”).The group’s Instagram account has amassed more than 22 million followers — more than twice as many as the BJP’s.Young volunteers have also turned up dressed as cockroaches at clean-up drives and protests in recent days.Dipke previously told the BBC that the group’s popularity indicated wide discontent among young Indians about the high unemployment rate, and a feeling they are being ignored by mainstream politics.India has one of the world’s youngest populations, with roughly half its 1.4 billion people under 30 years. Yet formal political participation remains limited.
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