NEW DELHI – Abhijeet Dipke left India as a graduate student with a satirical idea. He is returning as the man 20 million people are following.
Dipke, the 30-year-old founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), announced Monday that he will fly back to India on June 6 and lead a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The decision, delivered in a video message posted on social media, has sharpened a confrontation that began as an internet joke and has since grown into one of the most consequential youth movements India has seen in years.
The NEET-UG 2026 medical entrance examination, taken by more than 2.27 million students on May 3, was cancelled on May 12 after investigations by the NTA revealed overlapping questions between the actual paper and a guess document circulating before the exam. The CBI has taken over the investigation. Several people have been arrested, including individuals who allegedly purchased and resold leaked materials at prices between 30,000 and 30 lakh rupees. India’s Congress party had previously accused the Modi government of covering up the NEET scam when similar irregularities surfaced in 2024, raising questions about whether systemic failures had gone unaddressed.
For the students who spent years preparing, there is no clean timeline yet for when the exam will be rescheduled. What the government cannot quite answer is who takes responsibility.
The CJP emerged in mid-May after India’s Chief Justice Surya Kant compared unemployed youth to cockroaches during an open court session. Dipke, then based in Chicago and recently finished with a master’s in public relations from Boston University, launched a website and social media presence the following day. Within 78 hours the Instagram account crossed three million followers. It has since surpassed 20 million, while the ruling BJP’s official account has roughly nine million, Al Jazeera reported. The movement has no formal registration with the Election Commission of India.
Dipke cited disruptions across multiple national examinations in his announcement: 22 lakh students affected by the NEET cancellation, 17 lakh by CBSE irregularities, 16 lakh by CUET issues, and 40 lakh by problems in the SSC GD examination. A joke has been made of the lives of one crore students, he said. Someone has to take responsibility for this.
At least three students have died by suicide following the NEET paper leak, according to media reports. Protests erupted in Delhi and other cities after the cancellation, with student groups demanding accountability from the National Testing Agency.
Dipke says he turned down employment offers in the United States to make this trip. Over 94 percent of the CJP’s Instagram followers are from India, he has claimed, and most belong to the 17 to 28 age group, the precise demographic every established political party is competing to attract.
Dipke acknowledged that some friends and family feared he could be arrested at the airport. I still hope that our country is a democracy even today, he said. An Indian court has been hearing a petition related to the government’s blocking of his personal account on X; the court declined to provide interim relief, meaning the account remains inaccessible for now.
The decision to plant the protest at Jantar Mantar carries deliberate symbolism. The stone observatory turned protest ground has hosted movements from anti-corruption campaigns to farmer agitations. Those in power think citizens are cockroaches and parasites, Dipke told Al Jazeera from Chicago. They should know that cockroaches breed in rotten places.
What the June 6 demonstration will actually look like remains uncertain. What is already clear is that a generation that grew up with the internet has found, in a Supreme Court judge’s offhand insult, something to organize around. The government’s ability to manage that is not a question for social media. It is a question for the streets.
—Inputs from Sputnik.
