Modi keeps education minister as student protests test third term

Thousands of supporters of India’s youth-led “cockroach” movement have camped in New Delhi for more than a month, demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resign over a string of examination paper leaks, Al Jazeera reported. The protests have become a major test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi early in his third term, especially after police used batons and tear gas on demonstrators on Monday.

Al Jazeera said more than 100 people were severely wounded in the police action. India’s main opposition parties have joined daily demonstrations and courted arrest, adding political force to the call for Pradhan’s removal.

Pradhan has remained in office despite the pressure. Al Jazeera reported that his position fits a broader pattern in Modi’s 12 years in power, during which ministers facing public demands for accountability have often kept their posts through major controversies.

Past calls for resignations

Al Jazeera cited the case of Mahesh Sharma, who was culture and tourism minister when Mohammad Akhlaq, a 50-year-old Muslim ironsmith, was lynched in Bishada village in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 over suspicions involving cow meat. Sharma, whose constituency included the area, described the killing as “an accident”, drawing demands from Muslim groups and opposition parties that he resign.

Sharma did not step down and remained in Modi’s council of ministers, according to Al Jazeera. A year later, he visited the family of Ravi Sisodia, one of the accused in the Akhlaq case, after Sisodia died of renal and respiratory failure; images showed Sharma bowing before a coffin draped in the national flag, prompting renewed calls for his removal.

Sharma was dropped from the ministry only after Modi won a second term in 2019, Al Jazeera reported. He remains a BJP parliamentarian in a third term.

Student death and ministerial pressure

Al Jazeera also pointed to the death of Rohith Chakravarthi Vemula, a 26-year-old Dalit doctoral student at the University of Hyderabad, who was found dead in a hostel room in January 2016. Earlier that month, Vemula and four other Dalit students had been removed from hostel housing and had their stipends withheld over an alleged assault on the head of a student group linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological mentor of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

The students alleged that university action against them was shaped by letters from federal ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, Al Jazeera reported. Vemula’s death triggered protests across India and demands that both ministers quit, with Irani facing criticism over her statements in parliament and her defence of the university administration.

Both stayed in the cabinet, according to Al Jazeera. Irani was moved to the Textiles Ministry in 2016 and later given Information and Broadcasting, while Dattatreya resigned as Labour Minister in 2017 before being appointed governor of Himachal Pradesh in 2019 and Haryana in 2021.

Farmers’ deaths and a rare exception

In 2021, Ashish Mishra, the son of junior Home Minister Ajay Mishra Teni, was accused of driving into farmers protesting against Modi government farm laws in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, Al Jazeera reported. Four farmers and a journalist were killed, while three BJP members and one of Mishra’s drivers died in retaliatory violence.

The episode brought calls for Teni’s resignation, but he stayed in office for three years until he lost the 2024 election, according to Al Jazeera. The outlet identified Health Minister Harsh Vardhan’s departure after criticism of the government’s COVID-19 response during India’s second wave as the only Modi-era ministerial resignation tied to public demands for accountability.

Al Jazeera reported that Modi’s critics contrast this record with the previous Indian National Congress-led government, where several ministers, including holders of major portfolios, resigned or were removed after accountability demands.

This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.