Indian opposition legislators disrupted parliament proceedings yesterday in support of student protesters, echoing their calls for the education minister to resign over exam leaks and ratcheting up pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi after days of unrest.
The protests, which started last month over the leak of medical school entrance exam papers that affected some two million students, grew this week when tens of thousands of young protesters took to the streets of New Delhi on Monday, with police using tear gas and batons to push them back.
Protests have since spread around the country to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Goa, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Jammu and Ahmedabad, heightening the biggest youth challenge to Modi since he came to power in 2014.
Opposition legislators led by Rahul Gandhi gathered outside the parliament building in New Delhi yesterday, many dressed in black and waving placards calling on Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to quit.
Later, they disrupted proceedings by shouting and interrupting the speaker, forcing repeated suspensions of the lower and upper houses.
Gandhi told a Press conference that students want Pradhan to quit, those who beat them during protests in Delhi to be held accountable, and Modi to apologise to them.
“We are fully backing them. This is not negotiable under any circumstance,” he said. On Tuesday, Gandhi’s main opposition Congress party launched a sit-in outside Modi’s residence. Police detained Gandhi, his sister Priyanka Vadra, and several other opposition leaders but released them later.
The protests by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) began as an online satire and involved only a few hundred young people when they were first launched.
Yesterayday, thousands of protesters again gathered at their Jantar Mantar protest site in Delhi, shouting slogans and waving the Indian flag.
Security remained high in the capital. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation shut 16 stations in central areas, reopening them yesterday evening.
Members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched counter-protests in several Indian cities. Water cannons were used to disperse the BJP protesters in Jaipur, Raipur, and Thiruvananthapuram, and protestors hurled stones at each other in Patna, local media reports and visuals showed.
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