The Internet’s biggest political poke-in-the-eye just met a brick wall. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is officially parting ways, even before it has been put on a ballot paper.
A Haryana lawyer hopes to get the viral movement off his ground. His/her name is Sudhir Jakhar. His age is 35 years and he is a lawyer in Panipat. He walked in earlier this week to the Election Commission of India with a huge stack of documents. He is keen to register the Cockroach Janta Party as a real-political party. The catch? He is registering it under his own name.
The original founder, Abhijeet Dipke, is currently at Boston University in Massachusetts working towards a master’s degree. It was launched by Dipke in the middle of May in response to a controversial comment by a Supreme Court judge equating jobless youth with cockroaches. It exploded online. It took only a few days for the Instagram account to gain a following of millions of people. Now Jakhar is being more aggressive to recruit that huge digital crowd as his own voting base
The Panipat Maneuver
Jakhar is not just any ordinary individual with a printer. He’s experienced in street politics. He used to be a student leader. He also played a key role in the large scale protest by farmers against the central government’s agricultural policies a few years ago. He even encountered criminal charges in that midst of agitation.
He applied for the party registration under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act of 1951. This is the legal process followed by all the big political parties in the country to obtain official recognition. In the application, Jakhar had claimed that he would be convenor of the national body of the Cockroach Janta Party. He even slapped the famous viral logo of the group “cockroach” directly on the official documents he submitted to the secretary of the ECI.
Jakhar shared his views with the media. He told reporters that it was Dipke who he called first. His team advised the Boston student to return to India to lead the movement there, Jakhar said. Dipke allegedly refused.
I was worried,” says Jakhar. He witnessed hundreds of thousands of unemployed youth vocalizing their emotions in this digital party. He was worried about a bad guy grabbing it and exploiting it if it wasn’t registered properly. So, Jakhar decided to steal the name for himself. He framed his takeover as a rescue mission. He basically says that he needed to go and turn the party around or it would have been lost.
We must change The Rules Of The Joke.
The soul of the party will, therefore, change if the Election Commission approves Jakhar’s paperwork. The first wave of digital was pure and simple satire. Dipke’s version was presented with five hilarious, aggressive demands. They demanded a 20-year prohibition on “flip-flopping” politicians. They argued that the reserved seats for the Rajya Sabha for retired Chief Justices should not be “given up” to them. They even pushed for the cancellation of media licenses owned by billionaires.
All of that was history, however, because Jakhar did not.
His plea to the Election Commission appears to be a typical, ordinary political agenda. The Panipat lawyer listed a completely new set of objectives. In his rendition of the Cockroach Janta Party, he hopes to spread its core message of Article 51A of the Constitution. He wishes to promote animal rights. He set up the protection of environment, communal harmony as the basis of his objectives. He also offered some general assurances on social audits and protecting whistleblowers.
The original internet joke was biting and acerbic, and that is no longer present. Jakhar is attempting to tame a wild mob of social media to become a conventional political organization that abides by the rules
The Missing Insect
One huge logistical challenge lies in Jakhar’s way. The Election Commission is very particular about the symbols that are placed on the electronic voting machines.
Jakhar wants to place a cockroach symbol. It will not be delivered to him by the ECI, it’s a near certain. The commission has a list of approved “free symbols” that new, unrecognised parties can select from. There are 164 items on that list. One of the pressure cookers can be retrieved. A selection of noodle bowls is available for you to choose from. It’s even possible to stand for election while using a baby walker as your symbol.
However, insects are not allowed at all. Non-dead animals are no longer permitted to be symbols of elections in the commission’s jurisdiction, for the most part due to complaints of animal rights advocates years ago. The only two exceptions in the whole country are of the lion and the elephant party—this is what I mean by grandfathered. So, in the event Jakhar prevails in his fight to have the name, he will have to campaign on another completely different object on the ballot.
A familiar battle between the Commission and the people was again underway.
This places the Election Commission on very shaky ground. They now need to work out who owns a viral meme.
The commission is used to dealing with political splits. Recently, they had to choose between the two wings of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party on the issue of retaining their symbols and names. Those were established parties, with decades of physical infrastructure and elected officials.
The CJP is nothing more than a website, an Instagram page and a banned X account. If Jakhar’s application goes through, he may be able to claim the party’s huge social media footprint. The ECI can make the determination of the authorized office-bearers of any registered party under the Election Symbols Order 1968
The move by the Haryana lawyer hasn’t been met with a formal response from Dipke. He already has a huge litigation pending in the Delhi High Court to restore X account, which was suspended. But he now finds himself in an entirely new battle. A lawyer from Panipat is working on his new plan to take the movement away from under him and while the government is going to try and remove it from the internet. The paperwork is notarized. It’s now the turn of the Election Commission.
