Police fire tear gas at 10,000+ India parliament march
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Delhi Police fired tear gas and baton-charged more than 10,000 Cockroach movement protesters marching toward parliament on the first day of the monsoon session — the largest protest yet against PM Modi's government.
- Sonam Wangchuk, the 59-year-old activist on day 21 of a hunger strike, was forcibly hospitalized on Saturday, swelling march numbers well beyond organizers' expectations.
- Protesters are demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and a crackdown on exam corruption that leaked test questions, forcing 2.2 million aspiring doctors to retake the medical entrance exam under heavy security.
- Delhi Police sealed exit points at metro stations near Jantar Mantar to slow the march; deputy commissioner Sachin Sharma told the crowd to go home, warning the protest site had run out of space.
- More than a dozen students died by suicide after learning the original medical entrance exam had been voided — one of several exam leaks that triggered the movement.
- The Cockroach Janta Party reclaimed its name after India's chief justice likened unemployed youth to 'cockroaches,' an insult turned into a viral badge of honor and the basis of a movement with millions of social media followers.
- Modi's government offered a minor concession: two activists were invited to meet Health Minister JP Nadda for talks, but Education Minister Pradhan accused protesters of acting 'against the nation.'
Why it matters: With parliament's monsoon session opening the same day, the government faces a credibility test: Pradhan called the 10,000-strong movement 'against the nation' while conceding only a meeting with a different minister. The youth-led protest, named for a chief justice's insult, is a rare public challenge to Modi's third-term government and tests whether space for dissent has genuinely shrunk.
