Cockroach Janta Party: BJP sees bid to ‘destabilise’; voices within, allies, call for listening to young

BJP criticizes Cockroach Janta Party for foreign backing. Chandrasekhar urges caution in acknowledging youth discontent. CJP's X handle was withheld by MeitY due to intelligence bureau input. The ruling BJP has moved swiftly to criticise the viral Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) handle with senior leaders alleging foreign backing behind the social media phenomenon in a bid to “destabilise” India. But even as the party’s official line holds firm, a section of voices within and among the party’s allies are also urging the need to tread carefully acknowledging that youth discontent — over economic distress and the NEET leak, for example – can’t be banned into silence. Senior BJP MP and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Nishikant Dubey alleged that the movement could be a threat to national security and former Union Minister and BJP Kerala chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar saw it as a “coordinated influence operation.” “This has many of the hallmarks of something that is coordinated and planned rather than something like spontaneous anger against the Chief Justice of India’s statement. I am not in government, I am sitting far away in Kerala. But with my experience I can say this has some of the hallmarks of a coordinated influence operation. Who has mounted it, who is behind it, that is for the government to check,” Chandrasekhar, who was MoS IT in the Narendra Modi government from July 2021 to June 2024, told The Indian Express in an interview. In a social media post Saturday, Chandrasekhar, who has recently been elected as an MLA to Kerala Assembly, termed the Cockroach Party social media platform as “yet another classic cross border influence operation targeting India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi government” and that it is “designed by vested interests to destabilise India — helped along by elements in our opposition.” At the same time, in the interview, he admitted to underlying grievances. “I am not trying to say every dissent is an influence operation. I am not saying we must suspect every person who has a contradictory view,” he said. On the record, the party has been unequivocal. As first reported by The Indian Express, the CJP’s X handle was withheld Thursday following a direction from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), based on inputs from the Intelligence Bureau that raised “national security concerns.” Justifying this move, Dubey said: “I am not Shashi Tharoor (who headed the IT parliamentary panel earlier) and I will not allow the Standing Committee to take up the move to withhold the (CJP’s) account…The ruling party is not losing its support, it’s the Opposition. So, to say that the government got worried because of the voices of dissent is not right.” Within the BJP, that acknowledgment of youth frustration is shared more widely than the party’s public posture suggests. Senior leaders admitted that the speed with which the CJP has gone viral has sent “disturbing” signals, prompting internal discussions to assess its repercussions. Several leaders pointed to recent political