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

India's Cockroach movement vowed Tuesday to keep protesting until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns, a day after clashes with police injured at least 180 people during a march in New Delhi.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led online movement, is also demanding wider reforms to the country's examination system.

What is India's Cockroach movement?

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) is a youth-led online movement that launched in May, quickly gaining millions of social media followers. It has become one of the biggest challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government since he won his third term in 2024. The group organizes street protests demanding accountability over India's exam system.

"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 called for wider changes to the education system.

What happened during Monday's protest in Delhi?

Police fired tear gas and baton-charged protesters attempting to march toward Parliament, in one of the biggest street rallies in Delhi in about five years. Delhi Police said at least 178 people were injured in the clashes, including 118 police personnel among senior officers. The force said around 60 protesters were also injured, criticizing what it called "unruly, aggressive and violent behaviour" by a "violent mob."

Protest organizers condemned the "high-handedness" of authorities and said hundreds of protesters had been hurt. "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.

Why are protesters demanding the education minister's resignation?

Ranka met senior minister JP Nadda on Monday, but said the government had yet to respond to the movement's demands. Despite rapid economic growth, millions of people in India still struggle to find stable, well-paying jobs, fueling discontent. The protests follow a series of examination scandals that have shaken confidence in the country's testing system.

About 2.2 million aspiring medical students sat for a re-examination under tight security last month, after the previous test was scrapped following a leaked question paper. That came on top of another scandal involving the online marking system for tests taken by nearly two million high school students.