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New Delhi: Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the satirical digital sensation Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), has moved the Delhi High Court challenging the Centre against the blocking of its social media accounts.

Dipke challenged the suspension of the group’s X account, which was withheld in India on May 21, following directions from the Centre and inputs from the Intelligence Bureau that raised “national security concerns.” The case will likely be heard this week.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) asked the social media platform to take down the account, citing Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The law empowers the Union government to restrict access to information if it believes the content poses a risk to sovereignty, security, public order of the country, or to the prevention of incitement to offences.

Dipke had earlier announced that his Instagram account was hacked along with the digital outfit’s handle. The group’s backup account and website were also taken down, he wrote on X.

How it started

The Cockroach Janta Party controversy traces back to May 15, when the CJI made remarks during a hearing on senior designation for a lawyer, equating those who attack institutions under the guise of online activism with “cockroaches” and “parasites.” The comments were widely reported as a broadside against unemployed youth, triggering a social media backlash and the birth of the satirical CJP, which amassed millions of followers within days before its handles were taken down.

On May 16, the CJI issued a strongly worded clarification saying he was “pained” by the coverage, stressing that his remarks were directed specifically at those entering the legal profession through “fake and bogus degrees” and had been “misquoted by a section of the media.”

Notably, on the same day Dipke moved the HC, the Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi declined to urgently list two petitions linked to CJP.

Advocate NK Goswami submitted that despite the CJI’s clarification, a “distorted and malicious narrative” was being kept alive. The CJI was having none of it. “Don’t take it so sentimentally,” he told the lawyer.