It’s rare for the Narendra Modi government to bow to public pressure. Even rarer is a sitting minister resigning. This is why education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation is such a big event.
Event Context
To even draw a remote parallel, one has to rewind the clock all the way to 2018, when MJ Akbar stepped down from his post as Union minister of state for external affairs at the height of the #MeToo movement.
The CJP also said that the third round of talks with the government would take place only if Pradhan resigned. Just hours before the talks were supposed to be held (which later happened), the resignation came.
Pradhan said he took full responsibility for the NEET paper leak and “never turned away from the situation”, but “individuals holding responsible positions attempted to create obstacles and mislead students”.
Before that, in August 2017, railway minister Suresh Prabhu offered to resign after two train derailments in five days, tweeting that he had met PM Modi to take “full moral responsibility” for the accidents. Modi asked him to wait, and Prabhu was moved from Railways to commerce and industry in a cabinet reshuffle days later.
Team Analysis
Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday, marking a major victory for the Cockroach Janta Party-led protests against alleged paper leaks. The protesters refused to budge without his resignation despite the government assuring that it would accede to their other demands, including compensation to the families of students who died by suicide after the NEET paper leak and no legal action against those who took part in the march to Parliament earlier this week.
“Considering the situation at Jantar Mantar and across the country-with the aim of preventing anti-national forces from exploiting it, preserving national unity, ensuring that not a single Indian student’s future gets entangled in legal complexities, and allowing our children to devote their time to studies and focus on building their careers – I have submitted my resignation to the Honourable Prime Minister,” the 57-year-old wrote in a letter that he posted on X.
The Opposition has long accused the Narendra Modi government of “arrogance”, and alleged ministers don’t step down even after several controversies. Their claim is that it became a trend since PM Modi came to power in 2014.
Back in 2015, Rajnath Singh fueled the fire of such claims, which the opposition still quotes. “This is the NDA government. Resignations don’t happen here,” he had said back then. And it has mostly held true. Well, mostly.
The last and only other time something similar – yet very different in terms of the kind of allegations levelled – had happened was in 2018, when MJ Akbar resigned.
Akbar, who had been the minister of state for external affairs since 2016, was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women amid a growing #MeToo movement in the country. Most of these women had worked or interacted with him when he was the editor of several leading newspapers. There were protests against him, but nowhere near as intense as those against Dharmendra Pradhan.
Several reports at the time said the decision to step down was Akbar’s, and that he would remain in the BJP. “This will not set a precedent,” the BJP leaders were quoted as saying at the time.
Akbar himself said he was quitting to fight the charges “in a court of law in my personal capacity” and to “challenge false accusations”.
Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni, the minister of state for home, faced opposition demands for his resignation after an SUV registered in his name ran over farmers and a journalist in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri in 2021. Mishra’s son was accused of driving the SUV.
Teni remained in office until he lost his Lok Sabha seat in the 2024 general election.
