By YP Rajesh and Tanvi Mehta
NEW DELHI, July 23 (Reuters) – Youth protesters demanding the education minister’s resignation clashed briefly with police on the streets of New Delhi late on Wednesday, with officers firing tear gas and wielding canes to push them back, police and witnesses said.
More than 10,000 people were estimated to have gathered at the Jantar Mantar protest site in central New Delhi, local media said, as leaders of the “cockroach” movement vowed to continue their month-old protest until the minister resigned over exam paper leaks that affected some 2 million students in May.
The protests have grown into the biggest youth challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he came to power in 2014, with opposition parties echoing the demands of the youth movement and disrupting the monsoon session of parliament that began this week.
Tens of thousands of protesters marched on parliament on Monday in violation of a ban as police and paramilitary personnel sought to push them back by firing tear gas rounds and beating them with canes.
On Wednesday, thousands of protesters started gathering at the Jantar Mantar protest site shouting slogans and waving the Indian flag, while others protested outside parliament.
By late evening, the crowd had swelled to more than 10,000 and spilled over into other roads in the area before the trouble began, local media reported.
Some protesters attacked police with stones and plastic bottles late on Wednesday, injuring a few police officers who were taken to hospital, news agency ANI quoted Delhi Police as saying.
Videos shared on X, including by some local journalists, showed small groups of people clashing with police wielding canes and firing tear gas rounds.
Reuters could not independently verify the videos.
The protests by the self-named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) began as an online satire and involved only a few hundred young people when they were first launched.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke said their protest would continue until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.
“It has been 25 days so far. Even if it takes 25 months, that is acceptable, but we will not move from here,” Dipke said, addressing the protesters late on Wednesday night.
DELHI METRO SHUTS STATIONS
Delhi Metro Rail Corp. said it was shutting 16 stations in and around central New Delhi on Thursday until further notice, the second such large scale closure this week due to security concerns.
Responding to the sustained pressure from protesters, Modi’s government has held one round of talks with CJP leaders and assured them that their demands will be considered. The government has also offered to debate the issues in parliament and launch exam system reforms.
Opposition groups led by the Congress party have echoed the demands of the protesters, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi heading a protest outside Modi’s house and outside the parliament building.
The resignation of Pradhan is not negotiable and opposition leaders would hold talks on Thursday morning to decide on their next course of action in parliament, Gandhi said.
The CJP’s surge in popularity reflects frustrations among young Indians over issues such as job shortages, as well as exam leaks, which they say happen frequently.
It has also given opposition parties a rare opening to pressure Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which counts young voters as a core base and has won a series of state elections since a shock result in the 2024 election, when Modi did not win an outright parliamentary majority.
(Reporting by YP Rajesh and Tanvi Mehta; Editing by Michael Perry)
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