The Cockroach Janta Party caused a massive internet sensation by amassing double the number of followers on its Instagram handle than the Bharatiya Janata Party, the largest political party in the world in terms of membership, within a span of few days.
But the CJP, apparently named as a parody to the BJP, was not formed just a few days ago. The CJP was very much in existence, at least since 2022. The X account of the CJP, ‘@CJP_for_India, again patterned on BJP’s X handle, ‘@BJP4India’ was created in April 2022. It was just not active.
Compared to the CJP’s 18.4 million followers on Instagram, the BJP has 9 million while the Congress has over 13 million followers. There are about 535 million active Instagram users in the country that makes it about 36 per cent of the country’s total population. The Aam Aadmi Party, which also extensively uses social media platforms, has 2 million followers on Instagram.
The person behind the CJP is 30-years-old Abhijeet Dipke, who studies in Boston in the US. He was earlier associated with the Aam Aadmi Party, and has served in the party and its earlier government in Delhi as communications director. The platform was created four years ago and not in the aftermath of the Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant’s comments equating some unemployed youth who resort to blackmailing activism as “cockroaches”.
Justice Surya Kant made these remarks on May 5 while hearing a petition on the designation of senior advocates. He made a reference to some unemployed youngsters as “cockroaches” and described the fake degree holding advocates as “parasites of society”. While there was criticism of the CJI’s comments, he later clarified that he did not make the remarks about all the unemployed youngsters.
The CJI was absolutely right in his remarks describing fake degree holding and unemployed activists as “cockroaches” and “parasites”. There actually are such “cockroaches” and “parasites” across the country, in each city and town, who overnight become “RTI activists” and “journalists”, blackmailing people and extorting money from them.
Two simultaneous developments triggered such massive attraction for the party mostly from the youth. Plus, there were usual anti-establishment supporters who amplified and expanded its message leading to spontaneous rise in the number of its followers.
First, it was the CJI’s remarks, which were actually distorted and played up out of context. The CJI also clarified what he meant. But the algorithm brigade and the IT cells of the interested sections were already on the job to package his comments the way it would suit them.
Also read: Cockroach party beats BJP with 15 million Instagram followers
Besides, at the same time, reports emerged that the National Entrance and Eligibility test for MBBS course had been leaked. The paper was cancelled. This caused resentment and anger among the aspirants, as they will now have to appear again for the NEET test. These two things combined and with the use of algorithm, the Instagram followers of the CJP crossed the 18 million figure.
In an unrelated, but similar development, a Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng’s follower base reached 95,000 from a mere 500 in just three days after she tried to heckle Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a joint briefing along with his Norwegian counterpart Jonas Gahr Store in Oslo.
India is a country of 1.47 billion people. Prime Minister Modi may be the most popular leader but that does not mean he does not have his opponents and critics. Those opponents use such opportunities to amplify the criticism against him. The Cockroach Janata Party is obviously being helped and supported by the same people who have always opposed Modi and some of whom have a huge follower base across various social media platforms.
There is a section of people which is not happy with the government, particularly the youth. There is economic distress. There is large-scale unemployment among the educated youth and quite a number of them are active social media users.
At the same time, the sharp and spontaneous spike in the number of Instagram followers of the CJP is not a referendum on the existing government. Eighteen million is just a small fraction of India’s population. Moreover, there is a high likelihood that a large number of such Instagram followers are not from India. External agencies, which work round-the-clock for destabilising the country, try to use such occasions to their advantage. This is not to cast any aspersions against the genuine followers of the CJP on its Instagram page and their intentions.
The buzz around the CJP is understandable. But to equate it with the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement of 2012 would be an exaggeration. The IAC movement was an organic and grassroots movement with recognised and identified faces, while the CJP remains faceless with just an image of the cockroach.
Even the opposition parties like the Congress remain guarded in their stand on the CJP phenomenon, as there are apprehensions that it is being done to divide the opposition votes. After all, politics is the art of the impossible.
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