India's cockroach movement: from a judge's remark to the voter rolls

On Friday 15th May 2026, the Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, was hearing a contempt petition about how senior lawyers are designated. He later called it a frivolous case. During the hearing, the chief justice spoke about people he said held doubtful law degrees.⁴⁵

The remarks were oral, and there is no official transcript of them. The News Minute reported his words as: "There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment and don't have any place in the profession. Some of them become media persons, some become social media influencers, some become RTI activists, some become other activists, and they start attacking everyone." RTI is the Right to Information law, which citizens use to request official records.⁴

The reports spread quickly, and so did the criticism. Journalists, activists and public figures condemned what they saw as dehumanising language about young people.⁴

The next day, the chief justice issued a statement. "I am pained to read how a section of the media has misquoted my oral observations made during the hearing of a frivolous case yesterday," he said. He had criticised "those who have entered professions like the Bar with the aid of fake and bogus degrees", and such people, he added, "are like parasites".⁶⁵

"It is totally baseless to suggest that I criticised the youth of our nation," he said. He described India's young people as "the pillars of a developed India".⁶

By then, many young Indians had already decided what the word meant to them.¹

Abhijeet Dipke, now 31, is a political communications professional from a Dalit family. In May he was studying public relations in the United States. He replied to the reports of the chief justice's remark with a six-word question: "What if all cockroaches come together?"³⁷

The post spawned the Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP. Its initials are a play on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dipke launched a website and social media accounts, and within a week the CJP's Instagram page had more than 22 million followers. The BJP, the world's largest political party, had just over nine million.⁷

To put that into context: a satirical account a week old had more than twice the following of the governing party.⁷

Dipke was clear about the joke's target. "Those in power think citizens are cockroaches and parasites," he told Al Jazeera. "They should know that cockroaches breed in rotten places. That's what India is today."⁷

Not everyone took it as satire. Some BJP figures and right-wing commentators said many of the page's followers were in Pakistan; one BJP leader called it the "Pakistan Janata Party". The Union minister Kiren Rijiju wrote that there was "no need to seek validation from the anti India gang". Dipke published the page's analytics, which showed 94.7 per cent of its audience in India.⁸

He also said the CJP's Instagram account and his own had been hacked, and accused the government of taking the movement's website down. Al Jazeera did not report any government confirmation.⁷

The movement needed a cause beyond the joke. One was already waiting.⁷

The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) is India's biggest undergraduate entrance examination, and the way into medical school. The 2026 paper was sat on 3rd May by more than 2.2 million candidates.⁹

Four days later, the National Testing Agency, which runs the test, received a whistleblower's complaint about a "guess paper" circulating on messaging apps. Investigators later said that more than 100 of its questions matched the real paper's 200.⁹

On 12th May the agency cancelled the examination. Its director general, Abhishek Singh, said: "Any move short of cancelling exams would signal that those who are trying to beat the system, scam the system would have succeeded." The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the case.⁹

It was not the first time. In 2024, after a similar controversy, the government and the Supreme Court had rejected demands for a retest. This time the testing agency itself concluded that the examination had been compromised.⁹

So the chief justice's remark landed three days after more than two million students learned they would have to sit their exam again. The CJP turned that anger on one man: the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. Within days, it was campaigning for his resignation; Dipke said 600,000 people had signed its petition.⁷⁹

The retest took place on 21st June, and its results were declared on 16th July. The campaign against the minister did not stop.¹⁰

Jantar Mantar is New Delhi's designated protest site, near Parliament. In July, hundreds of CJP supporters were camped there, saying they would stay until Pradhan resigned. The activist Sonam Wangchuk had been on hunger strike for three weeks when, on 18th July, police took him to hospital.¹¹¹²

On Monday 20th July, the opening day of Parliament's monsoon session, thousands tried to march on Parliament. Delhi's deputy commissioner of police told Reuters there were more than 10,000 protesters that morning.¹²

Accounts of what followed differed. The Associated Press reported that police used tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd. Delhi Police denied using force and said the protest was "being handled professionally". It later said nearly 180 people were injured: 118 security personnel and 60 protesters.¹¹¹²

The same day, the government opened talks. Two CJP spokespersons, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, met the health minister, J.P. Nadda, a former BJP president. The movement asked for action rather than assurances: Pradhan's resignation, examination reforms and compensation for the families of students who had died by suicide after alleged exam irregularities.¹²¹¹

On 25th July, just before a third round of talks, Pradhan resigned.¹⁰

His letter to the prime minister cited the distress caused by the irregularities. It also gave a further reason: "to prevent anti-national forces from exploiting it, preserving national unity", and to ensure that "not a single Indian student's future gets entangled in legal complexities".¹³¹⁰

Reuters called it a rare exit from Modi's cabinet. The movement had won its first demand. It went looking for another.³

The second cause had been building for a year. On 24th June 2025, the Election Commission of India began a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in the eastern state of Bihar, where assembly elections were due later that year. Around 100,000 booth-level officers collected enumeration forms to check who was entitled to vote.¹⁴¹⁵

The Commission described its aim in its motto: "no eligible voter to be left out, and no ineligible person to be included in the Electoral rolls".¹⁴

Bihar had about 78.9 million electors on 24th June. The draft roll of 1st August had about 72.4 million. The Commission said that about 6.5 million had been removed: 2.2 million because they had died, 3.6 million because they had moved away or could not be found, and 0.7 million because they were registered more than once.¹⁴¹⁵

To put that into context: roughly one entry in every twelve on Bihar's roll had gone from the draft.¹⁴

The Supreme Court ordered the Commission on 14th August 2025 to publish the names of those left out, booth by booth. It did so four days later.¹⁵

The final roll, published on 30th September 2025, had about 74.2 million electors, after 2.15 million eligible people were added and 366,000 ineligible entries removed. Anyone still unhappy could appeal to a district magistrate, the Commission said.¹⁴

The revision was then extended to most of India's states and territories. Critics say its requirements are confusing, and that some people may not have the documents it asks for, such as older government records.¹⁶¹⁷

By October 2026, protesters and the Associated Press put the number of names removed nationally at more than 130 million, larger than the population of Japan. The Commission describes the figure differently. It says it comprises entries flagged during the draft revision, and that voters wrongly removed can enrol again.¹⁷³

A removed entry is not the same as an eligible voter denied the vote. How many of the 130 million were each of those has not been independently established.³¹⁷

The Election Commission has three members: a Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners. In 2023 a new law changed how they are chosen. It replaced the Chief Justice of India on the selection panel with a Union minister nominated by the prime minister, alongside the prime minister and the leader of the opposition.¹⁸

Gyanesh Kumar was the first Chief Election Commissioner chosen under that law. On 17th February 2025, the panel of Modi, the home minister Amit Shah and the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi selected him. Gandhi had asked for the decision to wait until the Supreme Court ruled on challenges to the law, and recorded a dissent. The panel went ahead.¹⁸¹⁹

Two days later, a Supreme Court bench led by Justice Surya Kant, the future chief justice, deferred the hearing of those challenges.¹⁹

On 23rd September 2026, The Indian Express reported that the two other commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected at least 14 times in ten months to decisions on the revision. They said some decisions and orders had been issued without their knowledge.²⁰²¹

The Commission responded that all its orders carried full legal sanction and that "differing views and observations are a normal part of deliberation in any institution". Sources in the Commission said that every decision on the revision had been unanimous.²²²¹

Congress called it "Gyaneshgate", and opposition parties demanded Kumar's removal. The BJP defended the Commission. "Neither the Election Commission of India nor any constitutional body in India is under dictatorial rule," its spokesperson Sambit Patra said.²⁰²²

Within days, petitions in the Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court cited the report. One argued that the Constitution vests control of elections "in a Commission", not in "an individual Chief Election Commissioner". Others asked for an investigation, Kumar's removal, or the restoration of deleted voters.²³

On 24th September, the CJP gave Kumar 48 hours to resign. "If within 48 hours Gyanesh Kumar doesn't resign, the Cockroach Janta Party will start a nationwide agitation," Dipke said. He called Kumar "the biggest anti-national of this country".²⁴

Kumar did not resign. Dipke then said protests would begin in Mumbai on 2nd October, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. "This Gandhi Jayanti let's pledge to save democracy," he wrote.²²

Its demands were Kumar's resignation, a temporary suspension of upcoming state elections and a change to how election commissioners are appointed. The group called them "non-negotiable". With opposition parties, it also called for the revision to be halted and for names it says were wrongly removed to be restored.²¹⁶

The opposition was on the streets too. On 7th October, police detained Rahul Gandhi as he and other opposition MPs marched towards Jantar Mantar; it was his second detention in two days. The opposition accuses the Commission of manipulating voter registrations to benefit the BJP. The Commission and the government deny it, and say the revision has no political motive.¹⁶

The next day, thousands marched in Bengaluru, the southern technology hub, and Dipke led them.¹⁷³

The cause had changed. The question was no longer who would sit a medical exam, but who would be allowed to vote.¹⁷

On 10th October, police boarded Dipke's flight from Mumbai as it landed in New Delhi. "I have come to be arrested, arrest me ... I am not afraid of you guys," he told officers. "No, this is not an arrest," one replied. "Please cooperate." Das and Ranka were taken with him.²⁵

Across the city, 45 metro stations were shut. Tens of thousands of police and paramilitary personnel kept demonstrators away from Jantar Mantar. The Associated Press reported more than 2,000 people detained; some Indian outlets put the figure higher. Most were released that night.²⁵²¹²⁶

The next morning, the three leaders were brought before a special executive magistrate. Delhi Police said they were released on furnishing a surety bond of 50,000 rupees, for keeping the peace for a year. The movement's legal director described the condition as "no breach of peace for one year".²⁷¹

Das urged supporters to take to the streets. "A situation has been created where the state is at war with its own citizens," he told reporters. The BJP called the CJP and the Congress-led opposition alliance "anarchist groups".¹²

The condition was tested within days. On 12th October, Jantar Mantar was withdrawn as an authorised protest site. When Das and Ranka tried to enter it the next day, they were detained again. A magistrate sent them to five days in judicial custody; police alleged trespass and a breach of their bonds.²⁸²⁹

On 16th October, as the CJP called supporters to central Delhi, police dragged Dipke into a car outside a house in the city, witnesses said. A senior officer told Reuters he was in preventive detention.²⁹

The defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said the protests were the opposition Congress party's attempt to "seize power". "Instead of channelling the energy of the youth toward nation-building, they are being used as pawns in the politics of anarchy," he said.²⁹

Five months after the hearing, the chief justice's explanation stands: he says he meant people with fake degrees, not India's youth. The word escaped that explanation almost at once. Many young Indians, the Associated Press reported, took up the cockroach as a symbol of resilience.⁶¹

The movement it named has already forced one minister from office. It has not achieved its larger demands. On 16th October, Gyanesh Kumar was still Chief Election Commissioner, and near-daily protests were still calling for his resignation.³²⁹

The questions that remain are open ones. How the courts will deal with the petitions over the revision. What a pledge to keep the peace will mean for leaders whose cause is protest. And how many of the names removed belonged to people who were entitled to vote.²³²⁶

In May, a judge used a word in court, and the next day said he had been misquoted. By October, a movement had made the word its own, and carried it into a dispute over who gets to vote.⁶¹