India’s youth protesters called for nationwide demonstrations on Friday even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government urged them to join talks, while shutting metro stations and mobile internet services and curtailing business in central Delhi.
The youth protesters, led by the self-named Cockroach Janta Party movement, are demanding the resignation of the education minister over leaks of medical school entrance test papers that affected some 2 million students in May and have been linked to several student suicides.
The protests have swelled into the biggest youth challenge to Modi since he came to power in 2014. Opposition parties have echoed the youth movement’s demands and have disrupted the monsoon session of parliament that began this week.
The Indian government has ordered telecom companies to disable mobile data services in central parts of the capital Delhi, in and around the site of youth protests seeking the resignation of the education minister, two sources told Reuters on Thursday.
The companies have complied with the order, the sources said.
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Spokespersons for the government and the telecom department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
Top Indian telecom firms, billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Idea, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
There was no mobile data connectivity in many parts of central Delhi on Thursday evening, Reuters journalists said. Vendors, shopkeepers and restaurants complained that they were unable to accept digital payments.
Earlier today, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) rejected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s response to the ongoing paper leak controversy, announcing that it will continue its protest until the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
In a statement, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said it was a positive development that the prime minister had finally taken notice after nearly one and a half months of protests. “Perhaps his foreign visits are over, and he has returned to India, which is a good thing,” Press Trust of India quoted Ranka as saying.
Reiterating the party’s stand, Ranka demanded Pradhan’s resignation and said the protests would continue until accountability was established. “We will not leave this place until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns,” he said.
