India's 'Cockroach' movement vows to protest until education minister resigns

New Delhi: India’s “Cockroach” party movement vowed Tuesday 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 Cockroach Janta Party (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.

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

Hundreds of protesters remained camped at the Jantar Mantar protest site on Tuesday, many of them calling for wider changes in the education system.

On Monday, police fired tear gas and baton-charged protesters to stop them for 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.

India’s ‘cockroach movement’ leaders say minister promises talks on demands

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 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.

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 two million high school students.