Cockroach Janta Party Rival Youth Congress Abhijeet Dipke

Cockroaches are incredibly resilient insects that have been around for hundreds of millions of years, by some estimates since the time of dinosaurs. Over the past couple of weeks, they have dominated the news cycle, with... Cockroaches are incredibly resilient insects that have been around for hundreds of millions of years, by some estimates since the time of dinosaurs. Over the past couple of weeks, they have dominated the news cycle, with satirical online platform Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) raising the government’s hackles and inviting a ban on its social media accounts. While the cat-and-mouse game between the government and the CJP goes on — it returned to X with an alternative account — there is another claimant for the mantle of the “real cockroach”. Congress’s youth wing, the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), has got in on the act through memes and songs via its alternative X account, the Indian Youth Cockroaches, and a website. And to emphasise that it is different and the real deal, it also had a message for the CJP. “Real cockroaches are not just online revolutionaries. You have to be on the ground and fight the system,” read one of the IYC’s social media posts on Sunday, accompanied by a video clip of a Youth Congress protest in Surat against the BJP-led Centre over the NEET paper leak. The message was clear: it is not just a satirical platform confined to the online world. Another post the day before had taken a jab at the CJP’s founder, Abhijit Dipke, who is Boston-based. “Indian Youth Cockroaches > Boston Cockroach,” it read. And on Monday, the Congress-backed account posted more videos of protests by “real cockroaches”. While the IYC has been flooding its social media handles with memes and songs, its leaders claim they are neither playing catch-up with the CJP nor copying it. They say the outfit has been protesting against Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET paper leak since it came to light. It held a press conference on May 12 and organised a street protest the following day. The cockroach entered the Indian political lexicon on May 15 when Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant compared unemployed youth drifting into journalism and activism with the insect. The remarks drew criticism, following which the CJI clarified that it is “totally baseless” to suggest that he criticised the youth. The IYC claims it got to work on a website — that has since been taken down — but Dipke’s website went live a day before its site did. “It got traction because some politicians endorsed his website and it exploded on the internet,” said IYC’s social media head Manu Jain. The Youth Congress says it has been churning out cockroach memes from May 16 onwards. But the outfit was perhaps a day too late and got eclipsed by Dipke’s platform and the subsequent controversy generated by the ban on its account. The Youth Congress, its leader says, came out with something called the