Modi's 12-Year Pattern of Keeping Embattled Ministers
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Dharmendra Pradhan faces demands from thousands of "cockroach" movement protesters who have camped in New Delhi for over a month to demand his resignation over exam paper leaks, with more than 100 people wounded in police baton and tear gas attacks on Monday—the biggest public challenge to Modi's third term.
- Mahesh Sharma called the September 2015 lynching of Muslim ironsmith Mohammad Akhlaq in Uttar Pradesh an "accident" but refused to resign; he was only dropped from the cabinet after Modi won a second term in 2019.
- Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya were accused in letters of pressuring the University of Hyderabad to expel five Dalit students, after which Rohith Vemula hanged himself on January 17, 2016, sparking nationwide campus protests; both remained in Modi's cabinet.
- Ajay Mishra Teni stayed as junior Home Minister for three years after his son Ashish was accused of driving a car into protesting farmers in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri in 2021, killing four farmers and a journalist, only leaving after losing the 2024 election.
- Harsh Vardhan is the only Modi-era minister to resign under public pressure, quitting as Health Minister during India's deadlier second COVID wave in 2021 before retiring from politics after the BJP did not field him in 2024.
- Opposition parties including Congress have joined daily street demonstrations and courted arrests to amplify the demand for Pradhan's sacking, contrasting Modi's retention of scandal-hit ministers with the preceding Congress government's record of sacking ministers over key portfolios under accountability pressure.
Why it matters: In 12 years, only one Modi minister—Harsh Vardhan during the 2021 COVID wave—has resigned under public pressure, meaning accountability demands from the Gen Z-led cockroach movement over exam paper leaks face a structural pattern where ministers linked to a lynching, a Dalit student's suicide, and farmer killings all kept their seats.
