The Cockroach Janta Party is a Gen Z-lead, unregistered, political party that sparked from the Chief Justice of India calling all unemployed youth “cockroaches.” Their most recent protests happened after the Chief Election Officer’s Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, reported concerns about voter list changes by the Election Commission.
The Special Intensive Revision was enacted by the Election Commission to update the voter list. Instead of only deleting dead, missing or people who had moved, they deleted 130 million voters.
One voter expressed, “I panicked when I heard about it. Since then I’ve been going everywhere to prove that I’m alive.” Fueled with anger, protesters marched to the Supreme Court on Oct. 12, resulting in the police barricading central Delhi.
Soon after, the two co-convenors of the CJP, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were arrested for five days for protesting in central Delhi. Later, the founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was detained on Oct. 16 for protesting to release the two CJP leaders.
India is a long way from being a true democracy. However, after years of corruption, the youth is finally standing up.
The Indian government is no longer representing India, and they have lost the trust of their people. The CJP is taking action to restore economic equality and respect. On Oct. 23, students, farmers and civil society groups protested together.
They demanded the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, the termination of the SIR, suspension of state elections and the repeal of the 2023 law which granted the chief election commissioner immunity from prosecution for executing their responsibilities.
The change of the voter list is a calculated political move by the Bharatiya Janata Party to stay in power. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been re-elected since 2014. Many of his supporters are Hindu nationalists, as Modi runs on a platform that focuses on the degradation of Muslims.
Out of 173 campaign speeches, Modi perpetuated Islamophobic rhetoric in at least 100 of those speeches.
He also stated that The Indian National Congress would “steal wealth of the majority Hindus and distribute it among the minority Muslims, whom he called ‘intruders’ and ‘those with more children,’” if they won the general election.
Muslims and other minorities are not likely to vote for the BJP party. By changing the voter lists, they are invalidating over 200 million votes for the state elections.
The State Legislative Assembly, or the lower house, is elected by citizens every five years.
Each state in India has elections during different years. Next year there are seven state elections. The party that controls these seats controls the state.