The Cockroach Janta Party, which led India’s biggest student protests in years, wants to build a nationwide movement to hold the government accountable for its promises to young people, one of its senior members said.
The group is seeking to create a grassroots organization with workers in every district, Saurav Das, the group’s 27-year-old spokesperson and a former investigative journalist, said in an interview in New Delhi on Friday.
The group, which grew from a social media joke into a mass student movement in just two months, has no immediate plans to register as a political party, Das said. Instead, it plans to travel across the country, hold public assemblies in villages to hear young people’s concerns, and demand greater government accountability on issues including unemployment, inflation and food security.
“The movement is about accountability. The issues that we want to raise are all going to be youth-centric,” Das said. “We want to take this movement to the grassroots because people at the grassroots face a lot of issues and nobody hears them out.”
The “Cockroach” party, which was created by a Boston University graduate Abhijeet Dipke, helped to channel youth anger over repeated exam paper leaks and other failures in the education system. Last week, the group drew tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets of New Delhi, with demonstrations quickly spreading to other cities across the country and opposition parties rallying behind its demands.
The protesters eventually forced the resignation of the country’s education minister, the first time that one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet ministers stepped down under public pressure.
In a social-media video posted Friday, Modi said he opposed punishment and court proceedings against the protesters and said he forgave them for their use of foul language against him during the demonstrations.
“Punishing them, dragging them through the courts or subjecting them to harassment within society will not change the situation,” Modi said. “I want to forgive them. And I request society to accept this sentiment of mine.”
Das said the Cockroach Janta Party would continue to stay a “youth political movement” and expand its reach. “We are going to act as a pressure group,” he said. “We are going to create an organizational structure so that every district should perhaps have a CJP cadre.”
The group also plans to keep up pressure on the government over allegations of excessive force by police during the protests. Earlier this week, the CJP launched a digital evidence repository to collect photos, videos and testimonies documenting alleged misconduct by the Delhi Police during the demonstrations. The repository has already received more than 500 submissions, Das said.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi also raised allegations of excessive force against protesters in Parliament and demanded the resignation of Home Minister Amit Shah, one of the most powerful figures in Modi’s government.
Das said that the CJP is glad that answers are being sought from the home minister, since his ministry is directly responsible for Delhi Police.
“No minister is above accountability,” Das said. “All ministers serve at the pleasure of the people.”
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.