Opposition leader Gandhi demands India PM's resignation over protest crackdown

India’s main opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, demanded on Tuesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi step down over the police crackdown against student protests demanding 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’s comments came 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.

The Cockroach Janata Party movement vowed to press ahead with their campaign until the education minister resigns, a day after at least 180 people were injured in protests in New Delhi.

Thousands of protesters gathered in the heart of the Indian capital on Monday, demanding Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation and wider examination reforms, in a show of force by the CJP online movement.

The CJP has won millions of followers on social media since its launch in May, fuelling one of the biggest challenges to Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he won his third term in office in 2024.

Shameful day

“We won’t stop. Pradhan has to be sacked,” the CJP’s Ashutosh Ranka said in a social media post.

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.”

Organisers and hundreds of protesters remained camped at the Jantar Mantar protest site today, many of them calling for wider changes in the education system.

On Monday, police fired tear gas and baton-charged protesters to stop them from marching on to parliament, in one of the biggest street rallies in Delhi in around five years.

At least 178 people were injured in clashes between protesters and security officials, Delhi Police said.

That included 118 police personnel, including senior officers, it said while criticising what it described as “unruly, aggressive and violent behaviour” by a “violent mob”.

“During the scuffle, around 60 protesters were also reported to get injured,” it said in a statement late on Monday.

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 the country’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 system of tests taken by nearly 2m high school students. ...