What happened
The Cockroach Janta Party was born from a specific humiliation: India's Chief Justice described unemployed youth as 'cockroaches,' and the youth responded by registering a political party with the name. The party grew to 23 million social media followers in a matter of weeks, making it one of the largest online political presences in India. On June 13, the party held its Lucknow chapter of a national protest series demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the 2026 NEET paper leak. The venue was Eco Garden. The crowd was approximately 1,500 — representing 0.007 per cent of the party's declared base. Police officials, working from intelligence inputs suggesting as many as 10,000 protesters might arrive from districts across Uttar Pradesh, deployed 1,500 personnel, achieving exact numerical parity with the movement they had come to manage. The protest permit had not been filed by CJP or Dipke; it was filed by a local teacher named Vivek Kumar. Dipke arrived at this pre-existing protest, remained for around twenty minutes, declared the agitation would continue, and departed. The party's previous Pune protest also drew a fraction of its online following. The next planned protest is in Amritsar. The internet has already RSVP'd.