India student protest camp demands education minister quit

A youth-led protest movement in India has turned an online campaign into an overnight sit-in in New Delhi, pressing for federal Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. Al Jazeera reported that supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party remained at Jantar Mantar despite police orders and heavy security.

Dozens of demonstrators slept on roads and pavements in the capital’s June heat, with more joining on the second day, according to Al Jazeera. The group’s founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has said protesters will stay at the designated protest site until Pradhan steps down.

Exam anger drives the protest

Al Jazeera reported that the movement is drawing support from young Indians angry over repeated exam paper leaks and disputed scores. The discontent has sharpened among students facing intense competition for university places and jobs.

India has a population of about 1.4 billion, and more than half are under 25, according to Al Jazeera. For many of those young people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, in power since 2014, is the only national political era they have known first-hand.

One protester, 18-year-old Sachin Kumar, told Al Jazeera he had spent a year preparing for India’s top medical entrance exam before it was cancelled after an apparent question paper leak. Kumar said the episode had damaged his motivation and that he had not returned to studying.

Al Jazeera reported that about 1.7 million students retook the exam on Sunday, while Kumar stayed at the protest site. India has temporarily banned Telegram in an effort to limit leaks, a step critics of the government described to Al Jazeera as a “Band-Aid solution”.

In the period between the two exam dates, more than a dozen students across India died by suicide, Al Jazeera reported. Those deaths added to demands from protesters that the education minister be held responsible.

From social media joke to street campaign

The Cockroach Janta Party began after comments by India’s chief justice comparing young people to cockroaches drew anger online, according to Al Jazeera. Dipke, who recently graduated from Boston University, posted on X asking what would happen if “all cockroaches came together”; the phrase spread widely and led him to create an official website.

Al Jazeera reported that the movement’s Instagram following has passed 22 million, more than twice the account following of India’s ruling party. Dipke staged the group’s first protest in New Delhi on June 6 and later took demonstrations to Mumbai, Bengaluru and Nagpur, drawing hundreds of supporters in several cities.

At Jantar Mantar, Al Jazeera described protesters sitting in circles to discuss politics after midnight, while others danced to hip-hop music. Kumar and another first-time protester, Shubhankar, slept on the road against their parents’ wishes and said they did not plan to go home soon.

Delhi police have tried to push the group away from the barricaded protest site, including by briefly restricting access to food and water, Al Jazeera reported. Dipke told the outlet that the government would be wrong to think protesters could be worn down, adding that they would remain in place.

This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.