India's youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has threatened to restart nationwide demonstrations after accusing the government of breaking a pledge not to pursue legal action against student protesters, days after its campaign achieved what had seemed unthinkable: forcing a senior minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to resign.
The CJP agreed to suspend its protests on Saturday after Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan stepped down and senior ministers assured the group that no punitive action would be taken against participants. But by Monday, the movement said hundreds of students had been detained, questioned, or harassed by police. Cases have been filed in Delhi, Assam, West Bengal, and Bihar. "If the government does not honour the agreement and release everyone detained or arrested, we will be compelled to resume the protest," CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka told reporters. The movement gave the government until Tuesday afternoon to provide written confirmation that it would honour the deal. Shortly after the press conference, two states announced they would drop charges against protesters.
The CJP emerged only months ago after the Chief Justice of India made a remark likening the country's youth to cockroaches — a comment that the movement's founder, 30-year-old public relations graduate Abhijeet Dipke, turned into a rallying cry. The group's name is also a deliberate satirical play on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The movement gathered force over deepening anger at India's competitive examination system, which millions of students depend on to access higher education and government employment. Leaked exam papers — including for the NEET medical entrance exam taken by aspiring doctors and nurses — triggered mass cancellations, devastating years of preparation for many young people. Organisers say at least 22 students took their own lives in connection with the scandal this year.
Protests that began online and spread to New Delhi's Jantar Mantar — a historic public space in the heart of the capital — turned violent on 20 July when tens of thousands attempted to march on parliament. Police responded with teargas, batons, and stun grenades. Eyewitness accounts and widely circulated photographs documented officers striking protesters, including minors. A police officer in Bihar was suspended after footage showed him using an assault rifle to disperse crowds. The Chief Justice of India subsequently called for an independent investigation into police conduct, stating that the right to peaceful protest is constitutionally guaranteed. In West Bengal, which the BJP recently came to control, the hardline chief minister suggested all protesters were Muslim — a claim the CJP rejected — and charges have been filed under a strict new state law.
Pradhan's resignation marked only the second time a BJP minister has been forced out by popular pressure in over a decade of the party's rule at the federal level, and it represented a significant symbolic victory for a movement that had gained millions of social media followers since May. The government has since announced a panel to overhaul India's examination system and introduced legislation in parliament to impose tougher penalties for exam paper leaks. But for many in the movement, those concessions are only a beginning. As CJP spokesperson Saurav Das warned, the pattern of targeting individual protesters after demonstrations lose momentum is one the group had anticipated — and is now building legal and digital infrastructure to resist.