India education minister resigns after student protests over exam leaks

India’s education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, resigned Saturday after nationwide Cockroach protests and a 26-day hunger strike pushed alleged exam leaks to the center of national politics. The movement, driven by anger over repeated paper leaks, especially the NEET medical entrance exam, turned a student grievance into one of India’s largest youth protests in recent years.

What began as satire under the Cockroach Janata Party became a serious campaign as students and activists marched, sat in, held torchlight processions and staged symbolic demonstrations. Supporters moved toward Parliament in New Delhi in June and July, and police action during a June march helped intensify the anger rather than contain it. The protests focused on the National Testing Agency’s exam failures and on a wider sense that young people were being forced to compete inside a system they no longer trusted.

Sonam Wangchuk gave the movement a national face. He ended his 26-day hunger strike on July 23 after government assurances and warnings about possible violence. Wangchuk had been fasting in New Delhi since June 28 in solidarity with the Cockroach Janata Party, and the fast helped keep pressure on the government even as the protest leadership said it would not back down from its demand that Pradhan leave office.

The demonstrators did not stop at the minister’s resignation. They also demanded compensation for families of aspirants who died by suicide over the exam controversy and the withdrawal of cases against protesters. On July 24, government representatives sought time until Saturday to answer the resignation demand, while JP Nadda and Jitendra Singh met with Cockroach Janata Party representatives as the standoff widened.

The resignation handed the protest movement its clearest victory yet, but the larger test is political. The episode exposed how quickly student anger over education failures can become a national challenge to authority, especially when exam irregularities, corruption and scarce opportunities converge in a country with millions of young voters watching closely.