Rahul Gandhi demands PM Modi resign after police crackdown on student protests, as anger grows over education reforms and exam scandals
NEW DELHI: India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, demanded on Tuesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi step down over the police crackdown against student protests calling for reforms in the education system.
Modi must resign “for destroying the future of India’s youth”, the Congress Party leader said in a post on social media as he led a march with other MPs towards the prime minister’s residence in New Delhi.
“The government doesn’t want to take any accountability, nor does it want to have a debate on it in parliament,” said Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house.
Gandhi later staged a sit-in protest outside Modi’s residence, where cries of “we want justice” were interspersed with chants of “down with Modi”.
Hours later, AFP journalists saw Gandhi and other parliamentarians being bundled into a bus and taken away from the area.
The developments come after police said 60 protesters were injured in clashes with security forces in the heart of New Delhi on Monday, marking the biggest street rally in the capital for about five years.
Thousands of protesters had gathered to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, following an appeal by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) online movement.
Police fired tear gas and charged with batons at protesters, who responded by pelting stones. At least 118 police personnel were also injured, Delhi Police said of Monday’s clashes.
“What happened yesterday is our Constitution got trampled upon,” Sandeep Dixit, a senior leader of the Congress party, told AFP.
“After that, no self-respecting politician or citizen can stand aside.”
The CJP vowed to press on with its demands for Pradhan’s removal as thousands of protesters remained camped at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar protest site on Tuesday, many of them calling for changes to the wider education system.
The CJP has won millions of followers on social media since its launch in May, fuelling one of the biggest challenges to Hindu-nationalist leader Modi since he won his third term in office in 2024.
‘Shameful day’
“We won’t stop. Pradhan has to be sacked,” CJP spokesman Ashutosh Ranka said on social media.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke urged protesters on Tuesday not to lose hope.
“They want to break our spirit,” he said, perched on top of a lorry. “Do not let them silence you.”
Protest organisers condemned the “high-handedness” of the authorities and said hundreds of protesters had been injured.
“It’s a shameful day in the history of Indian democracy that people, honest students, who had come for a genuine issue were brutally beaten by the Delhi police,” Ranka told AFP.
Ranka, who met senior minister JP Nadda on Monday, said the government had yet to respond to their demands.
Protesters said they would not relent.
“We have become even more fearless now,” said 25-year-old law student Chandra Pratap Sishwi.
“When I saw people being beaten up by the police like that, my blood boiled.”
Parliament was adjourned on Tuesday after the opposition benches demanded a discussion on the alleged “brutality unleashed on students”.
Despite rapid economic growth, millions of people in the world’s most populous nation still struggle to find stable and well-paying jobs, fuelling discontent.
The protests follow a series of examination scandals that have shaken confidence in India’s testing system.
Some 2.2 million aspiring medical students sat for a re-examination under tight security last month after the previous test was scrapped following the leak of a question paper.
That came on top of another scandal related to the online marking of tests taken by nearly two million high school students.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju defended the government on Tuesday, saying it had acted swiftly after the exam paper leaks by arresting several people.
He said Modi had called for a “foolproof system” to prevent irregularities in the future at a closed-door meeting with his allies on Tuesday.
Modi has yet to comment directly on the protests.
