In the second week of June, the BJP held special briefings for the media in Delhi on completion of 12 years of the Narendra Modi government, where a 15-minute film lauding the Modi regime’s performance was played. The voice-over for the film was in chaste Hindi, but the tone and the vibe of the video changed dramatically in a segment featuring “young India on the move”.

Visuals depicting the pro-youth measures of the government rolled out to the accompaniment of a rap song, the lyrics a mix of Hindi and English.

On May 26, too, the BJP released a music video to mark the occasion, which again was a rap number. The lyrics were more urbane and in a hip form of Hindi rather than the Sanskritised version of the language the party is known to use in its publicity material. The music was in tune with hip-hop songs that have ruled the charts in recent times. “Modi, Modi... 12 years of glory! Turn up the volume and vibe to this rap, celebrating 12 years of transformation, milestones, and a journey written in bold,” read the BJP’s announcement of the release of the song on its social media platforms.

The two musical efforts of the BJP came amidst a strong buzz about a growing disenchantment amongst young people, especially Gen Z, with the establishment. The videos were released at a time when the NEET paper leak and the CBSE Class 12 evaluation fiasco have fuelled widespread discontent among students, providing fertile ground for the emergence of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which describes itself as a youth movement and a platform for Gen Z. The CJP has hit the streets to protest against paper leaks and demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The Modi government has, thus, encountered perhaps its biggest challenge so far in its third term in the form of Gen Z ire. The immediate challenge is the vociferous demand for the ouster of Pradhan in view of frequent paper leaks and the problems with the CBSE’s on-screen marking of Class 12 examination papers. The larger worry for the BJP is ensuring that the Gen Z protests do not grow into a larger campaign with more issues thrown in, and encompassing other sections of the society.

That Gen Z has emerged as a politically significant demographic is not lost on the BJP. There are concerns in the ruling dispensation about this constituency having its share of grievances with the present political set-up, especially the party in power. The party also knows that the youth can play a crucial role in elections, as was clearly evident in the recently-concluded election in Tamil Nadu, with the shock victory of C. Joseph Vijay and his party, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. And the discussions within the party have also factored in Gen Z protests in India’s neighbourhood and the impact they have had.

The BJP-led Union government’s reaction to the creation of the CJP and the virality with which it gathered online supporters, and how it dealt with the protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on June 6 are a clear indication that the government views the Gen Z outcry very seriously and with a lot of unease.

Interestingly, on June 2, in the run-up to the CJP demonstration, when BJP president Nitin Nabin hosted, at the party headquarters, a visiting delegation of Nepal’s Rastriya Swatantra Party, led by chairman Rabi Lamichhane, the political importance of Gen Z came up for discussion. While the context was the role played by Gen Z in effecting a regime change in Nepal, the immediate unstated backdrop was the phenomenal online engagement of youngsters with the CJP.

According to a BJP press release, Nabin and Lamichhane discussed the growing role and potential of Gen Z in politics, particularly in shaping democratic participation, public discourse, and future leadership.

The BJP’s recalibrated approach

In the beginning, the government cracked down on the CJP by blocking its account on X, and senior BJP functionaries raised questions about its funding and motives. However, the ruling dispensation recalibrated its approach as CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke returned from Boston to Delhi and helmed the June 6 protest.

There had been speculation about whether the CJP would be allowed to hold its day-long protest and whether Dipke would be detained upon his return. However, the Delhi Police promptly granted permission for the protest after Dipke landed.

The police handled the demonstration with a lot of caution, and there was heavy force deployment at Jantar Mantar to prevent any untoward incident. They promptly detained and removed right-wing fringe elements from the protest site. They made announcements at regular intervals asking the protesters to stay away from the middle of the road and walk on footpaths towards the protest site. At the end of the protest, they made a polite announcement to the protesters to vacate the spot and even listed out the different public transport options that were available for them to head back home. The CJP thanked the police for its cooperation and for ensuring that the protest went off smoothly.

A top BJP leader insisted that the decision to allow the CJP to hold its protest at Jantar Mantar was nothing out of the ordinary. “We are a democracy. In a democracy, everybody has the right to speak up and voice their dissatisfaction. We allowed them to do that,” he said.

The leader acknowledged that there is dissatisfaction amongst the youth, especially with regard to paper leaks and joblessness. “There are shortcomings, no doubt. As a government, it is our duty to inform the people about what we are doing to deal with those shortcomings, and we are doing that,” he said.

Meanwhile, sources close to the BJP president, who is the youngest person to occupy the post at 45 years, said he will particularly be focussing on reaching out to Gen Z, as has been seen during his recent visits to Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, where he made it a point to talk about the importance of Gen Z. The sources added that Nabin is keen to emphasise in his public interactions that Gen Z should not be seen in a negative light or be branded as disruptive or anti-establishment

According to political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, the ongoing Gen Z protests, which have now hit the ground after becoming an online rage, are definitely outside the prepared script for the BJP. “This is something completely new for the present lot of BJP leaders. What makes matters worse for the party is that it sets a precedent that people are not scared of taking a position against the government,” he said.

Mukhopadhyay said that, in today’s world, a protest registered in the virtual sphere can itself create a narrative against the ruling party in elections. “The BJP is walking on thin ice because the ones who are getting enraged by the repeated failures in conducting exams or the CBSE evaluation fiasco are those who will either be first-time voters in the next Lok Sabha elections or may have voted for the first time in the Lok Sabha election in 2024,” he said.

The BJP’s support among the youth

Since the Lok Sabha election of 2014, Modi and the BJP have, all along, banked on the support of young voters. Surveys show that in the general elections in 2014 and 2019, the vote of the youth contributed in a big way to the BJP’s victory. According to a post-poll assessment of the Lok Sabha election results of 2024 undertaken by CSDS-Lokniti (the findings of which were published in The Hindu on June 7, 2024), compared to 2019, when the BJP got 40 per cent of the votes of youth in the 18-25 age group, in 2024, there was only a slight decline in youth support by 1 per cent. This was despite joblessness being a major talking point in the election.

Modi, whose persona dominates the BJP’s, and who is the face of the party in elections, has enjoyed high popularity ratings amongst the youth. He has also been projected by the BJP as a leader in sync with the aspirations of a young India. During the Lok Sabha election in 2019, the party had launched a “My First Vote for Modi” campaign which targeted first-time voters and banked on Modi’s appeal to young voters.

However, it is now being discussed whether the BJP’s popularity amongst the youth and Modi’s own image amongst young voters are in jeopardy given the visible Gen Z dissatisfaction with the establishment. Growing joblessness could especially become a major challenge for the ruling side. According to “State of Working India 2026”, a report by Azim Premji University released on March 17, 2026, India has scored a marked improvement in providing higher education to those in the 15-29 age group, which has resulted in a large number of the youth shifting from agriculture to other sectors like industry and services. However, the survey found that unemployment in the same age group continues to be very high at nearly 40 per cent in the 15-25 age bracket and 20 per cent amongst those who are between 25 and 29 years. As per the report, only a small number are able to get stable salaried jobs within a year of graduation.

Mukhopadhyay said, “The poor view education as an escape from poverty. They are sending their children to schools and colleges. There have been incredible success stories of children from poor families becoming IAS officers, and they show how education has opened up avenues for the underprivileged. Paper leaks come as a huge setback especially for these families because higher education and jobs are the only way they can come out of their difficult existence.”

He further noted: “Modi represented this aspirational class. So for him to fail carries additional significance for the children and their families who are hopeful of education improving their lot. Many of these youngsters may not be voters at present, but they will be in 2029 when the next Lok Sabha elections are held. They have only seen Modi at the helm and when they begin to feel he is not able to deliver, they could look at other options.”

The challenging new media space

There is also the aspect of the means of communication, especially when it comes to reaching youth, who are known to consume information predominantly through new media. The BJP takes pride in being a pioneer in using social media for political communication and electoral outreach. In 2008, the BJP became the first political party in the country to set up an IT cell.

The use of social media to mobilise people during the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement in 2011 and the innovative use of new media by the AAP, which was born out of the IAC campaign, in the Assembly election in Delhi in 2013 made parties sit up and take notice of the impact online means of communication can have in political outreach.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha election in 2014, the BJP made use of platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp to boost its poll campaign. It gained a first-mover advantage in the use of social media for political messaging, which it used in subsequent elections.

According to a senior BJP leader, the party is well aware of the importance of social media when it comes to engaging with youth, and the government has launched various online campaigns to ensure that the young generation engages with it in areas such as education, skill development, employment generation, and launching start-ups.

However, in recent years, other parties have caught up with the BJP and are now able to match its online prowess. Significantly, the CJP surpassed the BJP on Instagram in the number of followers within just four days after it came into being on May 16.

Ankit Lal, who has previously headed the social media department of the AAP, said, “A lot has changed in the past 15 years. Facebook is now Meta. Algorithms and AI now play an important role in deciding what you get to see and read. This is as far as technology goes.... The present generation has no memory of the use of social media 10 or 15 years ago. They have come up with their own ideas, language, and strategy, which the traditional parties cannot recreate simply because their perspective is different.”

Lal, who authored the book How Social Media is Leading the Change and Changing the Country, said the way Gen Z consumes information on new media and responds to it is also very different. “Zohran Mamdani could be a bigger influence on the youngsters than leaders back home, and the kind of virality achieved by the question posed by a Norwegian journalist to Modi during his recent visit to that country would have been unimaginable a few years ago,” he said.

The youth have been a core constituency of the BJP for more than a decade. They have now posed a challenge to the party, and it is both online and offline in nature.

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