Leaders of the country’s youth-led “cockroach” movement said that the government has asked for time until today to respond to their demand for the education minister’s resignation, following talks between the two sides.
The talks yesterday came hours after activist Sonam Wangchuk ended his 26-day hunger strike, raising hopes that the two sides could reach a breakthrough after tens of thousands of angry youth converged in the capital Delhi to demand the minister’s resignation over exam paper leaks.
The anti-government protests represent the biggest youth challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he came to power in 2014.
Opposition parties have echoed the movement’s demands that have disrupted the monsoon session of parliament that began this week.
At the Jantar Mantar protest site, student Sushmita, 20, said she felt the government dragged its feet on the issue for too long.
“Why did it take the government this long to announce the steps?” she said.
“I don’t know how Modi and this government can come back to us for support during the next elections.”
The protest has since evolved to include concerns over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what critics have called Modi’s increasingly authoritarian style of governance.
“We hope that the government comes with an open mind and it will listen to the people of this country who have been out on the roads for so long,” a spokesperson from the youth-led movement, Saurav Das, told reporters ahead of yesterday’s meeting.
“We will explain our demands to them in detail. And we hope that the government will listen to us,” Das said.
The talks were the first substantive meeting between the two sides after a preliminary round held on Monday.
The government was represented by senior federal ministers JP Nadda and Jitendra Singh, while the protesters were represented by Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, spokespersons of the self-named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).
The CJP leaders said that they had clearly conveyed to the ministers that nothing would be acceptable to them without the education minister’s resignation, warning that protests would become even more widespread if the demand was not met.
“The government has asked for time until tomorrow afternoon (today) to respond on this point (the minister’s resignation),” Ranka told reporters after the talks yesterday.
“We hope the government will dismiss Dharmendra Pradhan at the earliest, or that he will resign, so that we can bring this matter to a conclusion.”
Nadda said the talks took place in a cordial atmosphere.
“They had three main demands. We have told them we will meet you tomorrow afternoon (today)and discuss the demands,” he said.
Besides the resignation of minister Pradhan, the protesters want police cases filed against protesters dropped and compensation paid to families of more than a dozen students who local media reported took their own lives after the exam paper leak in May. — Reuters/AFP
