Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has attacked the Modi government for failing to respond to students’ protests over alleged cheating in competitive exams and the NEET paper leak. Gandhi said the government had chosen “cowardice and wanton cruelty” over dialogue.
In ‘An Education System’s Collapse, Young India's Trauma’ (The Hindu), the former Congress president stated that India’s education system has been systematically weakened and that the government has repeatedly failed to take responsibility for examination-related controversies.
Gandhi also revived the Opposition's demand for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, while she claimed that his determination to stay in office despite repeated failures had stoked public anger.
Gandhi said the student protests are simply a manifestation of the larger crisis facing India's education system. She said students were calling for basic demands such as accountability from the government and reforms in the examination system.
But she alleged that the Modi government had responded to their demands with repression rather than engagement. Gandhi accused the Centre of treating protesting students as “enemies of the nation” when they are young people concerned about their future.
She also criticized the government’s handling of dissent, claiming that authorities had used force in protests throughout. Speaking on the 20th of July student demonstrations, Gandhi described the police action as a “day of infamy” and claimed Delhi Police and Central Armed Police Forces used lathicharges, tear gas, and pellet guns on demonstrators.
Gandhi also accused the government of a larger pattern of suppressing dissent, citing protests by farmers, activists, and other groups. She said that the Centre should have reached out to students preparing to become doctors, engineers, teachers, civil servants, and entrepreneurs rather than using state power against them.
The Congress leader also took a broader attack on the government’s education policies. She said falling public investment and growing privatisation had led to the current crisis. Gandhi claimed that nearly one lakh government schools were closed in the past twelve years and thousands of private schools opened in the same period.
She also expressed concern for families that depend on private coaching to prepare for competitive exams like NEET. Gandhi says the amount of money spent by families on NEET coaching is a manifestation of growing reliance on private education and coaching institutions.
The Congress leader also questioned the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA), the centralised examination system having become vulnerable because of staffing shortages and reliance on private contractors. She said paper leaks had shattered public confidence in the examination process.
Gandhi said the lack of accountability remained one of the biggest problems facing India's education system. She said the government repeatedly failed to hold meaningful conversations with students and opposition members.
Targeting Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, she claimed that recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education had not been adequately addressed. Gandhi claimed the Minister's refusal to resign despite what she described as “monumental failures” had further fed public anger.
Her comments come at a time of increasing political tension over examination irregularities and student protests. The Congress has continued to push for greater accountability from the government, and the Opposition has intensified its criticisms of education and recruitment examinations.
The controversy has made the need for secure examination systems, transparent investigations into alleged paper leaks, and more accountability to institutions that conduct high-stakes competitive examinations and the whole system all come into focus.
