New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Delhi minister Kapil Mishra on Tuesday (October 20) set ablaze a 30-foot-high effigy of a cockroach which was burnt alongside the effigies of Ravan, Kumbhkaran and Meghnad during Dussehra celebrations in Delhi’s Pitampura.The decision to burn the cockroach effigy was taken by the organisers of the Shri Keshav Ramlila Committee (NSP Pitampura). Notably, the BJP MLA Ashok Goel is the Ramlila Committee’s president.“The cockroach effigy was burnt as a symbol of conspiracies against Bharat by an alliance of filth, naxalites, jihadi and the corrupt who think they can create a situation like France in India. People celebrated it. The effigy of cockroach is burning but the pain is being felt by termites,” Mishra told Press Trust of India.The effigy was burnt at a time when the BJP-led Union government is dealing with countrywide protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over widespread irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise along with widespread voter deletions.The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which had in June-July staged a long protest at Jantar Mantar which led to the resignation of Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, is also protesting against CEC Kumar, with its leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das presently in jail.Earlier on Tuesday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) filed a complaint with Delhi lieutenant governor T.S. Sandhu and the Delhi Police against Mishra and the organisers of the Shri Keshav Ramlila Committee including its president and BJP MLA Goel.In its complaint, AAP accused them of deliberately hurting religious sentiments by introducing the 30-foot cockroach effigy alongside the traditional effigies of Ravana.“Deliberate alteration of Sanatan customs and hurting of religious sentiments: The festival of Dussehra, or Vijayadashami, is a highly sacred event governed by ancient Hindu rituals, scriptures and longstanding traditions. The burning of effigies is associated with specific mythological figures representing particular forms of evil, as described in the Ramayana. The unauthorised addition of an insect-themed effigy to a religious ritual distorts sacred traditions, mocks the solemnity of Sanatan customs and deeply hurts the religious sentiments of the Hindu community,” AAP Delhi president Saurabh Bharadwaj said in the complaint, reported PTI.Earlier, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke had thanked organisers of the event for giving them “free publicity” by burning the cockroach effigy.Mishra, who set fire to the cockroach effigy, has been accused in the past of delivering hate speeches which incited the 2020 riots in the national capital. In April last year, a Delhi court had ordered the registration of a FIR against Mishra in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots case.A 10-member fact finding team formed by the Delhi minorities commission had earlier said that the violence in Delhi was “planned and targeted” and held Mishra responsible for it.