Cockroach Janata Party founder Abhijeet Dipke moves Delhi HC, challenges blocking of X account

Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke on Monday approached the Delhi High Court challenging the blocking of the ‘party’s’ X account. The suit was filed through advocate Nakul Gandhi of NG Law Chambers, the Bar and Bench said.

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a satirical political collective that emerged last week, broke the internet with thousands of registrations before its X account was suspended in India. X CJP’s handle had 200 thousand followers.

On May 22, the government blocked X CJP’s account, allegedly for national security reasons.

Read also | Fraudsters sending phishing links on the pretext of joining CJP: Punjab Police

X usually holds accounts as required by law. Such action will occur if the platform receives a “valid and properly defined request from an authorized entity” and when “it may be necessary from time to time to deny access to certain content in a specific country,” according to the rules.

Why was CJP’s account suspended?

An Indian Express report quoted a senior government official as saying that the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) satirical site’s X handle was denied on the orders of the Modi-led Union government after the Intelligence Bureau (IB) raised “national security concerns”.

According to the report, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has asked Company X to suspend the satirical account under Section 69 (A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

The official added that the impetus for this came from the IB as the central agency cited a threat to India’s sovereignty.

Read also | Cockroach Janta Party explodes online as Akhilesh and Mahua join

“IB believed that the account was posting seditious content through its account that could threaten the country’s national security,” an official told the newspaper on condition of anonymity because the government issues such blocking orders in a confidential framework.

A second government official told the newspaper that the order to suspend the account was sent to social media platform X when it had gained roughly 90,000 followers.

Later on May 23, the CJP website was also taken down. “Government has taken down our iconic website – 10 Lakh cockroaches have registered on our website has members. 6 Lakh cockroaches have signed a petition demanding Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation,” Dipke wrote on X.

Dipke also claimed that CJP’s Instagram account was hacked.

Recently, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Supreme Court seeking legal action against the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ Abhijeet Dipke for allegedly misusing and commercializing the words of the Supreme Court, according to ANI.

Read also | Cockroach Janta Party explodes online as Akhilesh and Mahua join

About CJP

The CJP platform was founded as a joke after India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant described young, unemployed Indians as “like cockroaches”.

The “party” soon became a political movement online, gaining more followers on Instagram than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the world’s largest political party in terms of physical membership.

The online campaign was launched by Dipko on May 16. The CJP website, which has now been taken down, satirically claimed to be the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed”.

The CJP’s manifesto demands include demands such as a ban on post-retirement Rajya Sabha seats for chief justices, 50 percent reservation for women in Parliament without increasing the strength of the House and a 20-year ban on cross-dressing.