India’s viral “cockroach” political party says its website has been blocked just days after it launched.

The parody Cockroach Janta Party has gained more than 20 million online followers, compared with fewer than nine million for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, which says it is the world’s largest political party.

It was set up as a joke after India’s chief justice Surya Kant last week compared some unemployed youth to cockroaches.

Kant later said he did not mean to criticise young people but was referring to those with “fake and bogus degrees” who were “like parasites”.

The ‌CJP’s logo is an outline of a cockroach on a mobile phone, calls itself the “Voice of the Lazy and Unemployed”.

The group’s founder Abhijeet Dipke told the BBC Indian officials had “taken down our iconic website” and asked why they were “so scared of cockroaches”.

He wrote on X that the group, which is not an official political party, was already working on a solution, adding: “Cockroaches never die.”

The party’s official X page is also inaccessible in India. Those trying to open it are shown a message that it has been withheld “in response to a legal demand”.

Dipke said he hoped the party would change the political discourse of India.

“The youth of India has largely vanished ‌from the mainstream political discourse. ‌Nobody is talking about us. Nobody ⁠is listening to our issues or even trying to acknowledge our existence.”

The party uses AI-generated images to promote its cause online. Photo: BBC

The CJP’s Instagram account features graphics and videos by members, talking ​about everything from media independence to reserving half of parliament and cabinet seats for women. It also covered the recent cancellation of a national medical college entrance test after the question paper was leaked, affecting about 2.3 million students.

India ⁠is the world’s most populous nation and also has the world’s largest number of youth, with about 65 per cent ‌of its 1.42 billion people ​under the age of 35.

Government data shows the unemployment rate for those aged 15 and above was 3.1 per cent in 2025, but much higher at 9.9 per cent among those aged 15 to 29, ​including 13.6 per cent in urban ‌areas and 8.3 per cent in rural regions.

Experts say many youngsters are concerned the problem could deepen as artificial intelligence disrupts entry-level roles in the country’s vast back-office industry.

Dipke said more than 400,000 people had signed up to become CJP members via a Google form, with over 70 per cent aged between 19 and 25.

-with AAP