India: Can 'cockroaches' threaten Modi's political grip?

India's Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) may have anticipated pushback from the government after its first round of protests in July, but the scale of barricading and detentions that greeted its leaders in a fortress-like New Delhi on October 10 was unlike anything they had anticipated.

The CJP began as a satirical online movement after the chief justice of India, Surya Kant, referred to unemployed young people as "cockroaches" in an offhand remark. The name is an ironic riff on the name of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In its latest round of agitation, they are demanding the resignation of the country's controversy-hit Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar , after more than 130 million names were reportedly removed from electoral rolls nationwide.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, accompanied by co-conveners Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, was detained from the plane in which he landed in the national capital on Saturday.

Meanwhile, police were stationed outside the homes of several other faces associated with the movement, including social media personality Dhruv Rathee, who has nearly 20 million followers on Instagram.

In central Delhi, buses were loaded with protesters, many of whom were taken to far-flung centers, where they were kept for hours. According to local media, at least 3,000 people were detained across the city.

The protests come as Modi marks 25 uninterrupted years leading elected governments, first in Gujarat state as chief minister and then as prime minister of India.

Ironically, "this celebration has happened at the time when he's politically at his weakest," Delhi-based writer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay told DW. Mukhopadhyay is the author of Modi's 2013 biography "Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times."