Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the online political satire movement 'Cockroach Janta Party' (CJP), has accused the Indian government of taking down the group's official website. Dipke announced the move on X (Twitter) Saturday, calling the website an 'icon'.
Dipke, currently studying at Boston University, founded CJP a week ago shortly after India's Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant compared unemployed young people to cockroaches. Although Justice Kant later clarified his remarks were aimed at those buying fake degrees and stressed that young people are the 'pillars of a developed India', the CJP movement quickly gained traction.
According to Dipke, both his personal Instagram account and the CJP account have been hacked. Notably, CJP's Instagram page attracted more than 22 million followers in its first week. For comparison, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the largest political party in the world by membership, has just over 9 million followers on the same platform. The acronym CJP is seen as a play on BJP.
Dipke said one million people have signed up to join the movement in the past week. CJP is calling for the resignation of India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, with 600,000 signatures on a petition. The movement comes amid mass protests across the country following allegations of exam paper leaks, which forced the government to cancel the state-run medical entrance exam.
Speaking to Al Jazeera earlier, Dipke explained: 'Those in power think citizens are just cockroaches and parasites. They should know cockroaches breed where it is rotten. That is what India today is.'
