Indian police baton-charged hundreds of protesting students and activists on Monday to prevent them from launching a march to the parliament.
The protesters are demanding the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over a series of botched national exams.
Ahead of the scheduled march, hundreds of people thronged Jantar Mantar in the national capital Delhi, waving the Indian flag, and shouting slogans against the education minister as well as prime minister Narendra Modi. “Quit, quit,” they chanted in Hindi. “Dharmendra Pradhan quit. Narendra Modi quit.”
The march coincides with the start of the parliament’s monsoon session, posing a challenge to the Modi government.
The protest was called by the Cockroach Janta Party, a youth-led movement seeking reforms in the education system following the alleged leak of the paper for the national medical entrance exam that affected around 2.3 million students earlier this year.
The movement, which began in May and rapidly garnered wide support online, was galvanised after police forcibly moved hunger-striking activist Sonam Wangchuk to hospital on Saturday, prompting thousands of supporters to reach Jantar Mantar.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and his supporters started a sit-in at Jantar Mantar last month to press their demand for Mr Pradhan’s resignation.
On 28 June, they were joined by Mr Wangchuk, an innovator and education reformer, who launched an indefinite hunger strike at the site.
Following the forcible removal of Mr Wangchuk, Mr Dipke launched an indefinite fast of his own on Saturday.
On Sunday, police denied the protesters permission for the march and banned gatherings of five or more people in the New Delhi district housing the parliament.
“Protest marches, processions, demonstrations, and assemblies of five or more persons are strictly prohibited except at the designated protest site at Jantar Mantar, with prior permission,” the Delhi police said in a post on X.
On Monday morning, hundreds of police and paramilitary personnel were deployed in the area, threatening a standoff as the protesters said they were determined to go ahead with the march.
At Jantar Mantar, meanwhile, police charged at the protesters with batons.
They also closed five metro rail stations servicing the area to prevent the protest from swelling.
In response, the CJP asked its supporters to “remain calm”.
“Even if you’ve been stopped at certain points, remain calm and maintain peace. We will only win this with peace and love,” the party said.
CJP spokesperson Vijeta Dahiya said earlier that they planned to start the march from Jantar Mantar at around 9am and expected over 100,000 people to join.
The spokesperson told the Indian Express the party hadn’t sought any permission to hold the march as they “want to challenge these colonial laws where you have to ask for permission from the government to protest against the government, while the government can arbitrarily deny it”.
The fear of a standoff with police did not prevent students, parents and activists from travelling long distances to join the demonstration.
“All these leaders in power are illiterate and I’m here to protest because we don’t want exam papers to leak,” Adi Nathan, 21, a student from Meerut city, about 100km from Delhi, said. “This should come to an end.”
Mohammed Tabrez, 22, a student from Amroha in Uttar Pradesh state, about 165km away, said he and his peers wanted “this corruption to end”.
“We want all the frauds in paper leaks, in competitive examinations to end and this is the reason I have come here,” he said.
While Mr Pradhan was yet to directly respond to the demand for his resignation, he told NDTV that the teachers entrusted with the responsibility of setting the exam paper had failed in their duty.
The National Testing Agency, responsible for conducting the medical entrance exam, had “placed its trust in certain teachers but some of them did not fulfil their responsibility”, he said. “The protectors themselves turned predators.”
In a handwritten note from hospital that was posted on his X account on Monday, Mr Wangchuk said he would end his fast if the government took accountability for recent failures in the education system and the paper leaks, or if the protesters were allowed to reach the parliament and assured that their issues would be discussed by the lawmakers.
“India’s second freedom movement, march to the parliament,” he said in a message relayed through his wife on Sunday. “Please make it a big success.”
Meanwhile, three leaders of the All India Students’ Association, a leftist activist group, who had been fasting alongside Mr Wangchuk ended their strike on Sunday after actors Shabana Azmi and Prakash Raj and parliamentarian Manoj Jha offered them water.
The rise of the CJP reflects growing frustration among India’s youth Indians over unemployment and frequent examination paper leaks, analysts say.
In 2025, the rate of unemployment stood at 3.1 per cent among Indians aged 15 and above, according to government data, but in the bracket from 15 to 29 it was much higher, at 9.9 per cent. It was also far higher in urban areas, at 13.6 per cent, than in rural regions, where it was around 8.3 per cent.
