The remarks came after the online Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) mobilised large protests in New Delhi and other cities over examination paper leaks, posing the biggest challenge to Modi’s government in recent years.

Some protesters featured in widely circulated videos shouting insults at the prime minister have since faced online abuse from Modi supporters as well as police complaints, according to local media reports.

Police have also asked social media platforms, including Meta and X, to take down what they described as abusive and manipulated content targeting the premier.

“The country and the world witnessed what happened at Jantar Mantar. Some mischievous youngsters hurled vile abuses,” Modi, 75, said in a video posted on Instagram late on Friday.

“Words were used that do not belong to civilised society — directed not just at me, but even at my late mother … I want to forgive them.”

Modi also said “mistakes made in youth” should be corrected through guidance rather than legal action, referring to the police cases.

The protests that began last month were initially sparked by anger over examination paper leaks.

But they broadened into a wider expression of frustration over unemployment and governance, culminating in the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

Since the protests began, Modi has increasingly used Instagram — the platform on which the CJP built much of its support — to communicate directly with youngsters.

Modi’s ruling party has 9.6 million Instagram followers, while the CJP, launched only in May, has more than 26m.

The monsoon delivers about 70 per cent of annual rains to replenish crucial water sources in the nearly $4-trillion economy, where almost half of farmland lacks irrigation and about half the population earns its livelihood from farming.

Rainfall in August is likely to be below 94pc of the long-period average, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director-general of the India Mete­orological Department, told a press conference.

Cumulative rainfall in August and September, the second half of the four-month monsoon season, is forecast to be below 94pc of the long-period average, Mohapatra said.

Weather department warns weak rains may hit crop yields

Moderate El Nino conditions are prevailing and are expected to strengthen gradually, with the weather pattern likely to become strong by September, he said.

El Nino is a climate pattern mar­ked by unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the central and eas­tern equatorial Pacific, which disrupts global weather patterns and can bring drier conditions to parts of Southeast Asia and other regions.

In the past, India has experienced below-average rainfall during most El Nino years, sometimes leading to severe droughts that destroyed crops and forced authorities to limit the export of some grains.

India received 1pc more rainfall than the long-period average in July, helping narrow the monsoon rainfall deficit since the season began on June 1 to 12.6pc from 35.4pc at the end of June.

“The rains picked up in July, which helped farmers catch up on planting after delays in many areas,” said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trade house.

“But if rainfall is below normal in August, it could affect the growth of the crops that have just been planted.” Summer crop sowing was nearly a quarter lower than a year earlier at the end of June, but the shortfall has since narrowed to less than 5pc, according to data compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2026

In a majority decision, a three-judge bench ruled that former police chief Pujith Jayasundara and former defence ministry secretary Hemasiri Fernando failed in their duties to stop the deadly attacks, blamed on a homegrown extremist group.

Jayasundara, 66, and Fernando, 76, can appeal against the sentence in the Supreme Court, but have been remanded to judicial custody until granted bail.

Sri Lanka has not carried out the death sentence since 1976, maintaining an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment.

Court rules Jayasundara, Fernando failed in their duties to stop 2019 Easter bombings that killed 279

There are at least 800 people on death row, according to government figures shared with parliament in February, with sentences usually commuted to life imprisonment.

Friday’s judgement at the special fast-track court came after the state appealed against a 2022 decision that acquitted the duo.

The court was told during the proceedings that an Indian intelligence agency had alerted Sri Lanka on April 4, 2019 to a possible suicide attack by extremists, but authorities failed to take action.

The attacks on April 21 that year targeted three churches and three hotels. More than 500 people were wounded.

Fernando and Jayasundara were arrested in 2019 and held in custody for four months before being released on bail. Under a previous civil action, they had to pay 125 million rupees (an estimated $372,464) as damages to survivors of the attack.

Prosecutors had earlier told the high court that “negligence” by the two top officials amounted to “grave crimes against humanity” and laid murder charges against them. Both men were eventually convicted of negligence leading to the death of 279 people.

Jayasundara and Fernando had testified to a parliamentary inquiry that then-president Maithripala Sirisena failed to follow established protocols in assessing national security threats ahead of the bombings.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2026

Police are preparing to send a notice to Meta Platforms regarding the case, which had not been issued as of Friday, said V Aravind Babu, deputy commissioner of police for cyber crimes in Hyderabad.

Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on Friday.

The case adds to a string of tensions between Meta and Modi’s government over content tied to the prime minister.

India’s IT ministry summoned Meta executives this week after Facebook briefly restricted a Modi post last week, with a top official saying the government wanted Meta to explain the matter at the highest level.

A Meta spokesperson said at the time that the post, which was Modi’s first where he addressed massive student protests that forced the resignation of the education minister, had been blocked inadvertently.

Modi has also come in for a barrage of online criticism, jokes and ridicule by protesters in recent weeks.

India is Facebook’s biggest market by users.

The reversal follows criticism from teachers, nutritionists and parents who argued that removing eggs from school lunches could deprive children from poor families a key source of protein.

The issue erupted last month after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, elected for the first time in the state in May, removed eggs from meals in some state-run schools and arranged for a Hindu religious charity to provide vegetarian food instead.

The move rekindled a long-running debate over food and religion in the world’s most populous country, with critics accusing the government of trying to turn schoolchildren vegetarian.

On Wednesday, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said eggs would again be provided to schoolchildren from August.

Under the new arrangement, eggs will be provided separately through women’s welfare groups while the charity would continue to supply “pure” vegetarian meals.

“The state government will supply boiled eggs separately to these schools by engaging self-help groups from August 1,” Adhikari told reporters.

“Some guardians requested the government to ensure that eggs were included in the meals,” he added.

The BJP often promotes vegetarianism as a part of its broader nationalist agenda, although most Hindus eat meat and fish.

Eggs, which Hindus consider non-vegetarian, are also widely consumed.

Teachers and nutrition experts had criticised the move to remove eggs from the menu, saying they helped improve both nutrition and school attendance among children from low-income families.

India’s free school lunch programme, the largest of its kind in the world, is widely credited with improving enrolment rates and helping reduce malnourishment and stunting among children.

“I may be killed. I may be arrested. I may be sent to prison,” Hasina, 78, said in an emailed response to questions by this news agency.

“I am fully aware of my fate. Still, I want to go back because my people are calling me.” Toppled in August 2024 by a student-led uprising that ended her 15-year, iron-fisted rule, Hasina fled by helicopter to India as crowds stormed her palace. The United Nations says up to 1,400 people were killed in crackdowns as she tried to cling to power.

In November, Hasina was found guilty by a Dhaka court of crimes against humanity and sentenced to be hanged — a verdict she described as “political vengeance dressed up as law”.

The former prime minister, who has been living in a secret location in India, insisted there was no pressure for her to return. Relations between India and Bangladesh, strained under the interim administration that took power after Hasina’s fall, have stabilised since Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman took office in February.

Dhaka has formally requested Hasina’s extradition — a request New Delhi has said is “under examination”. Hasina said the issue had “no connection” with her decision to return.

“I can say that I am staying in India with due respect and dignity,” she said. “Indian authorities have not discussed extradition with me. I myself have decided to return to my country.”

The Bangladeshi government has said it will ensure Hasina receives due legal process in all cases against her should she return. Rights groups have long accused Hasina’s former administration of abuses including the murder of rivals, suppression of opposition parties, rigged courts and one-sided elections.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2026

The online Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which organised protests over exam paper leaks and other irregularities, said they had received reports of students held in detention, particularly in the states of Assam, West Bengal and Bihar.

“Any failure to release those detained or withdraw criminal cases would amount to a breach of public trust,” the protest group said in a statement, adding they would take “further necessary steps” if their demand was not met.

The statement comes two days after Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as education minister over repeated failures in the conduct of competitive exams that have fuelled anger among millions of young Indians.

The CJP accused the government of backtracking after authorities had assured them that no punitive action would be taken against protesters.

The movement has won millions of followers on social media since it was launched in May by 30-year-old public relations graduate Abhijeet Dipke.

It emerged initially as a satirical response to Chief Justice Surya Kant reportedly likening young people to “cockroaches” and “parasites” during a court hearing.

The movement has since broadened its agenda to include concerns over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what it describes as Modi’s increasingly authoritarian style of governance.

Tens of thousands of protesters, mainly students, rallied last week in New Delhi and other cities, demanding Pradhan’s resignation and broader reforms of the examination system.

Demonstrations in the Indian capital turned violent on July 20 when a crowd attempted to march towards parliament from the Jantar Mantar protest site.

Police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the protest, triggering clashes and a wave of detentions.

The protests have emerged as one of the biggest challenges to Modi since his re-election for a third term in office in 2024.

The issue reverberated in parliament on Monday, with repeated disruptions as opposition lawmakers demanded a response from the government over last week’s police crackdown.

Despite the disruptions, the government introduced legislation in the lower house seeking tougher penalties for examination paper leaks.

A series of exam irregularities have undermined trust in India’s testing system, including the leak of a medical entrance question paper that forced more than two million candidates to retake the test.

Another dispute involving the online marking of examinations taken by nearly two million high school students has further fuelled public anger.

On Sunday, Singh had stated that there would be “no talks with Pakistan”. According to the Times of India, he went on to say that if any took place, they would only be on Azad Jammu and Kashmir, claiming that it was “illegally occupied by Pakistan”. He also said that any “misadventure” would invite a response “beyond their imagination”, the publication said.

The FO responded to the claims in a statement issued early on Monday, saying Pakistan condemned in the “strongest possible terms the highly provocative and irresponsible comments” by the Indian defence minister.

“His statement not only distorts facts regarding the UN and internationally recognised Jammu and Kashmir dispute that remains on the agenda of the UN Security Council but also shows Indian government’s deliberate policy to threaten regional and international peace and security,” the FO said.

“Such insinuations are an attempt to divert attention from India’s continued occupation of Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, its sponsorship of terrorism across the region, as well as its domestic instability,” it said.

“While resorting to its misplaced rhetoric of aggression and belligerence, India must not underestimate the people and government of Pakistan’s unwavering resolve and determination to thwart any Indian adventurism as demonstrated by the entire Pakistani nation and its valiant armed forces during Operation Bunyanum Marsoos last year,” it said.

In May 2025, a four-day conflict between Pakistan and India was sparked by an attack on tourists in occupied Kashmir, which New Delhi, without evidence, linked with Pakistan. Islamabad strongly denied responsibility while calling for a neutral investigation. The two had traded tit-for-tat strikes before American intervention on May 10 led to a ceasefire.

“Pakistan urges the international community, in particular the United Nations, to take note of India’s continued rogue behaviour and to hold it accountable for its failure to uphold the relevant UN Security Council resolutions that guarantee the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” the FO statement said.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said that India’s “continued attempts to rewrite internationally recognised legal realities through coercive rhetoric cannot alter the facts”.

Referencing Singh’s remarks, he said that such statements reflected a continued attempt to distort internationally recognised legal realities through political rhetoric and coercive posturing.

“They neither alter the status of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir nor contribute to regional peace, stability or meaningful dialogue,” the minister said in a post on X.

“India’s repeated attempts to malign Pakistan lack credibility in light of its own well-documented record of state-sponsored terrorism and criminal activities. In fact, India remains the biggest sponsor of terrorism and perpetrator of instability in South Asia, holding the region hostage to its aggressively revisionist designs,” Asif said.

“Equally alarming is India’s irresponsible rhetoric which risks lowering the threshold for interstate conflict in the region,” he added.

Asif said that Pakistan remained committed to peace and dialogue but its resolve to safeguard its sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security “is absolute and must never be tested”.

“Defence minister’s rhetoric is an attempt to deflect the attention from internal turmoil and increasing unrest and discontent against Modi’s autocratic and divisive style of governance,” he said.

• Indian PM posts video promising remedial steps amid growing youth anger
• Experts say social media-driven activism signals changing political trends

NEW DELHI: Nearly five weeks after the leaders of India’s youth Cockr­oach Janta Party (CJP) began their protest dema­n­ding the resignation of the education minister over exam paper leaks, Pri­me Minister Narendra Modi, 75, posted a rare selfie video: he said he was pained by their suffering and promised remedial steps

The video, posted late on Thursday on Instagram, where CJP amassed 22 million mainly Gen Z followers in a matter of days in May, was not enough to satisfy the thousands of protesters who had gathered in central Delhi, braved a massive police crackdown days earlier, and then inspired protests across the country.

On Saturday, the education minister stepped down, meeting the protesters’ main demand, in a rare such setback for Modi.

The resignation of Educ­ation Minister Dharm­endra Pradhan hands a clear win to the CJP, whose young supporters have openly mocked Modi through raps, placards and graffiti, an almost unthinkable development only weeks earlier in a country whose politics has been almost fully dominated by Modi since he came to power in 2014.

“A large number of people who were at the protest may actually be his supporters and that’s quite different from other kinds of protests in the past,” said Sanjay Srivastava, anthropology professor at SOAS University of London.

“What might be interpreted as a win is the fact that there is now a much wider cross-section of people questioning the government. A much wider cross-section has begun to question the idea that the ruling party is necessarily good for the country.” The protests were triggered by a leaked medical-entrance exam, but there are other issues, mainly youth unemployment and fear among the young that AI could take their jobs in places such as IT back offices that India is known for, analysts said.

“The paper leak is a trigger point,” political analyst Amitabh Tiwari said. “It is largely a reflection of the anxiety, nervousness, discontent, frustration and anger among the youth.” Modi’s senior ministerial colleague Rajnath Singh said the government’s “top priority remains to understand our students’ genuine concerns, address them promptly, and ensure that they know their voices are being heard”.

Govt out of touch with what Gen Z wants

Indians aged 18 to 40 are estimated to make up abo­ut 40 per cent of the population but hold only about 10pc of seats in the lower house of parliament, down from more than double that in the 1950s, Tiwari said. The cabinet’s average age is more than 60. Tho­u­gh the CJP is not a political party, all opposition parties have tried to cash in on the rare opening they have seen in the protests against Modi, by taking up the cause of the students.

The first tests of the youth anger could be in elections next year in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, in Punjab and Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The BJP runs both Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. The bigger risk for Modi could lie in the 2029 national election if the CJP turns itself into a party. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has said no decision had been made so far on joining electoral politics.

Some analysts say young voters have hitherto largely cast ballots along religious or caste lines, benefiting Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. But things may be changing.

An actor — running for his own party and allied with opposition parties — was recently elected chief minister in the prosperous southern state of Tamil Nadu, propelled by his Instagram-first Gen Z fanbase.

“This has been a moment of reckoning for PM Modi — and it shows how they are completely out of touch with what Gen Z wants,” said author Anurag Minus Verma.

“For years, the BJP’s digital political strategy was centred on platforms like X, where much of the political conversation took place. But that conversation has increasingly shif­ted to Instagram now, particularly among younger users.” The BJP may rule most of India, and calls itself the world’s largest political party, but it has managed just 10 million Instagram followers in years, less than half what the CJP gained in days. The BJP has 23 million followers on X and 18 million on Facebook, though Mo­di’s personal followers on all three social media platforms are massive, ranging between 60 and 107 million.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi annou­nced Sunday a special task force to reform the country’s exam system, a day after his administration’s education minister resigned.

Published in Dawn, July 27th, 2026

The social media-driven Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) had drawn thousands of demonstrators, mainly students, to the capital’s Jantar Mantar site in New Delhi, forming one of India’s largest anti-government protests in recent years.

Modi said in a video posted to X that his administration “decided to set up a high-powered task force” led by Nandan Nilekani — the co-founder of India’s IT giant Infosys — “which will focus on examination reform”.

“Our examination system must be reliable. Our examination system must be transparent. Our examination system must make maximum use of technology,” Modi added in the video statement.

Modi said the government “will work to ensure the credibility of upcoming examinations as quickly as possible”.

Weeks of protests over exam irregularities and other issues affecting young Indians culminated on Saturday with the resignation of the education minister and the government accepting other key demands.

The movement sparked by a call for education reforms evolved to include concerns over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what critics brand as Modi’s increasingly authoritarian style of governance.

Protest site cleared

On Sunday, dozens of municipal workers were washing the pavements along the road leading to the site, where activists had camped for weeks and where just hours earlier the crowd sang protest songs, chanted slogans and painted acerbic graffiti.

“We have been here since midnight when the protesters left,” a municipal worker who declined to be identified told AFP.

“The walls have been painted, but may require another coat of paint as some lines [from the slogans] are still visible,” he said.

Nayan Thakrele, 19, one of many young people who had come from across India to join the movement, finally reached Jantar Mantar on Sunday morning.

“It’s a shame that the protest is over by the time I reached here,” Thakrele, who took a 20-hour train journey from the central state of Madhya Pradesh, told AFP.

“I first heard about it on Instagram and saw the electrifying atmosphere, colourful walls, posters, and wanted to be here and experience it myself,” Thakrele said.

‘Face the electoral consequences’

Amish, 35, had also hoped to join the protests but reached the site when it was already being painted clean.

“I had booked the flight from Mumbai before Pradhan’s resignation,” he told AFP.

Amish said that the Modi government had backed itself into a corner with its response to the protests, which at times escalated into brief clashes and outbursts of violence.

“Had they not tried a crackdown, the protest wouldn’t have become as big as it did,” said Amish.

“I feel that this government will now face the electoral consequences of its recent actions.”

A Delhi police constable at Jantar Mantar said that only a few people came there on Sunday morning, “mostly locals who are curious to see the site they’d seen in protest videos online”.

Now painted red, the wall behind the constable was used by demonstrators to put up posters and notes, including of police officers who had baton-charged or used tear gas against protesters.

“We want everything to be documented and remembered,” protester Rahul told AFP on Saturday near the so-called “wall of shame”.

“We have taken photos and videos of these posters and hope everyone shares them widely.”

India’s biggest street protests of recent years had become a political flashpoint, posing one of the biggest challenges to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as opposition politicians joined youngsters’ calls to demand action and disrupted parliament.

The minister announced his resignation on X just as police fired tear gas to scatter young protesters in Delhi, hours before their leaders were set to hold another round of talks with ministers to push for the move.

In a two-page statement shared on X, Pradhan said he has sent his resignation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Considering the situation that has developed at Jantar Mantar and across the country — that anti-national forces should not take advantage of this situation, that the unity of the country should be preserved, that not even a single Indian student’s future should get entangled in legal complications, and that our children should devote their time to studies and focus on building their careers — I have sent my resignation to the honourable prime minister,” The Times of India quoted the letter as stating.

The self-named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) youth movement, which has been at the helm of the protests, welcomed the resignation by stating on its X account, “Cockroaches won.. Democracy won!”

“We have done it,” said CJP Founder Abhijeet Dipke to loud cheers at the Jantar Mantar protest site in New Delhi.

“This [resignation] is for them,” he said, pointing towards a banner with the pictures of 20 students whom activists say took their lives following the exam leak.

After a third round of talks between CJP leaders and ministers — held after Pradhan’s announcement — the movement said the government had accepted “all” its demands and called off the nationwide protests.

Dipke had voiced other demands in his address at Jantar Mantar. “We are cockroaches. Once it enters, it does not leave,” he quipped.

He also urged his supporters not to turn him into a “hero” because of Pradhan’s resignation.

“Do not make this mistake. Do not make me a hero because of Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. The country has been ruined because of making one person a hero.”

He further said, “When we rise above Hindu and Muslim politics and talk about issues, then it will be good for the country.”

Supporters of the “cockroach” movement had been protesting since June, but anger boiled over since police on Monday injured dozens of students, launching baton charges and firing tear gas to deter crowds of protesters marching on parliament.

Demands accepted

A post on CJP’s X account after the talks with the government said it was agreed to provide the “maximum possible compensation for families of NEET paper leak-related suicides”.

It further said all cases against those involved in the protests will be withdrawn and no action will be taken.

“CJP’s 5-point exam reform charter will be considered by the govt and the CJP will meet with the govt to discuss these reforms further,” it added.

Pradhan announced his resignation before the third round of talks.

The government held two rounds of talks with CJP leaders on Monday and Friday, but little headway was made initially, with the youth-led movement sticking to their demands.

Among those was the demand that the families of all students who reportedly took their own lives should receive 10 million Indian rupees in compensation.

Another was that action be taken against police officials involved in the July 20 crackdown on protesters and that all cases registered against students be withdrawn.

The CJP had also called for a public apology from the Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Delhi Police — a demand not mentioned in the movement’s announcement later.

Youth celebrate

Protesters continuing their sit-in at Jantar Mantar, the same site of Monday’s police crackdown, erupted in joy after Pradhan’s announcement.

They shouted “Jai Hind”, a patriotic slogan meaning “Victory to India”, as the national anthem played on loudspeakers and sweets were distributed among the crowd. At least 1,000 police officials stood nearby guarding the area, according to Reuters journalists at the site.

The protests also reflected anger over job scarcity, corruption and government accountability.

“Young generation is here. This is a win for the constitution, protester Tluanga Ralte said, walking with a copy of the Indian constitution at the protest site after the minister’s resignation.

“We are not a lazy generation.”

Sunil, 27, who came to the protest site for the first time on Saturday to “experience the atmosphere”, said it was “truly electrifying, especially after the minister’s resignation”.

“What the young people did was commendable,” he told AFP.

Federal authorities even on Saturday restricted access to the internet and to 18 metro stations to try to limit the protest in the capital, the latest day of such restrictions.

Students, youth activists and opposition supporters had in recent days staged protests in the states of West Bengal, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, holding placards demanding Pradhan’s resignation and boycotting classes in some places.

‘Not a matter of personal reputation’

Pradhan, 57, is a senior leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has been regarded as a rising figure, and even mentioned in the past as a potential BJP leader.

“From day one, I took responsibility for this and never turned away from this situation,” the education minister asserted in his letter today, referring to the exam leaks.

Pradhan said the government took immediate notice when irregularities emerged in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) held on May 3.

“The Government of India took immediate cognisance of this, handed over the investigation to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation), cancelled the exam, and announced a new date for re-examination. Alongside this, it was also decided to conduct the exam in CBT (Computer-Based Test) mode from next year,” he highlighted.

In his letter, the minister also accused “certain individuals occupying positions of responsibility” of trying to mislead students and create obstacles.

Pradhan stated: “I have always been an unwavering believer in the strength of our democracy and I have always held deep respect for the aspirations, dreams and expectations of the youth. They are not only the future of India, but also the bearers, builders, and architects of a new and developed India.

“Watching the events of the last 10 days has saddened me. This is not a matter of personal reputation for me.”

Pradhan concluded his letter saying, “My resolve is that we will not let the country’s youth get caught in a web of confusion.”

A minister since Modi first took office in 2014, he has held the petroleum and natural gas, steel, skill development and education portfolios, becoming education minister in 2021.

His father was a veteran BJP leader and served as a junior federal minister between 1998 and 2004.

‘Victory of democracy’

Supporters of CJP, including the opposition Congress party, welcomed Pradhan’s resignation.

Activist Sonam Wangchuk, who ended his 26-day hunger strike yesterday, hailed the resignation as a “victory of democracy”.

“It’s a victory of peace, patience & persévérance,” he wrote, congratulating CJP and the Gen Z of India.

“Thank you all citizens for shedding fear and the fear of fear and rising up from every corner of the nation,” he added.

India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi threw his weight behind protesters in support of their cause, calling Pradhan’s resignation a “huge step”.

Rahul called for Modi to “apologise” and respect students and India’s future generations.

“Action should be taken against those guilty of violence against students,” he said. “The time has come to remove this government,” he added.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Rahul’s sister and a Lok Sabha member, expressed Congress’s support for the youth movement.

“The youth of India have started to take our country back from those who tried to suppress their voice… today is the day an undemocratic and oppressive government was forced to bend to the will of the people of India,” she wrote on X.

Shahabuddin, 76, has held the largely ceremonial post of president since April 2023, a period that included volatile months after Hasina’s flight to India following a student-led uprising against her rule in 2024.

“Recent medical examinations have diagnosed me with a condition known as autonomic neuropathy. Due to this condition, I occasionally experience momentary loss of consciousness,” Shahabuddin said in a statement released by his press secretary.

The speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad, the national parliament, will perform the duties of the president until a new one is elected, the statement said.

Shahabuddin also cited his deteriorating health in a resignation letter to the speaker of parliament, seen by AFP.

“Due to worsening physical and mental incapacity… it is no longer possible for me to properly discharge the responsibilities of an important constitutional office such as the presidency,” it said.

Shahabuddin, widely known as “Chuppu”, was elected by parliament in 2023 with support from Hasina’s Awami League.

When a student revolt ousted the autocratic Hasina in 2024, calls mounted for the president to be removed, too.

Shahabuddin was accused of speaking to Hasina by phone while he was undergoing medical treatment in London in May, an allegation he has denied.

Shahabuddin’s resignation would leave Hasina with no allies in high office five months before her planned return.

Her Awami League party is banned, and many of its leaders and activists have been jailed or gone into hiding since the deadly student-led uprising in 2024.

The 10-team men’s competition, starting from September 24 in Nagoya, will begin with a preliminary round featuring Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal and Oman competing for the remaining quarter-final berths.

Afghanistan, Japan and Nepal were drawn in Group A, while Hong Kong, Malaysia and Oman were placed in Group B. The top two teams from each group will advance to the knockout stage to join the four seeded sides.

The women’s tournament, scheduled from September 17-22, features eight teams and will begin at the quarter-final stage. Defending champions India will face hosts Japan, Bangladesh will take on China, Sri Lanka will meet Malaysia, and Pakistan will play Thailand.

All matches in both competitions will be played in the Twenty20 format.

India swept the cricket gold medals at the 2022 Asian Games, held in 2023 in Hangzhou, claiming both the men’s and women’s titles.

At a UNSC debate on natural resource governance, Pakistan’s Permanent Representation to the UN Asim Iftikhar Ahmad had highlighted India’s unilateral decision to hold the treaty in abeyance, saying that “no state should be permitted to abuse shared water resources as an instrument of coercion or political pressure, much less when it breaches solemn treaty obligations”.

Subsequently, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni had accused Pakistan of “state-sponsored cross-border terrorism”, saying that it had “eroded the basis for bilateral cooperation on the treaty”, according to Indian news agency ANI. He had also asserted New Delhi’s claim on occupied Kashmir.

In response, Pakistan’s First Secretary Ansar Shah responded, saying India’s “misleading statement” was a “futile attempt to distort facts and misrepresent the situation”.

“The treaty contains no provision whatsoever permitting its so-called abeyance. India’s unilateral action is simply illegal,” he said.

Shah said that the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in August 2025 had reaffirmed that the treaty “remains valid, binding and fully in force, together with its dispute settlement mechanisms”.

“India’s weaponisation of a shared natural resource for political coercion, with the stated aim of starving the population of Pakistan, is a serious breach of legal instruments and international norms,” Shah highlighted, adding the situation poses a “direct threat to regional and international peace and security and is completely germane to today’s debate”.

The first secretary also dismissed India’s “baseless assertion regarding terrorism”, saying it was an effort by New Delhi “to conceal its sponsorship and financing of terrorism against Pakistan”.

“India’s terrorist proxies — the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, Balochistan Liberation Army and Majeed Brigade — have killed thousands of civilians and law enforcement personnel, including women and children on our soil,” Shah said.

“India’s involvement in extraterritorial executions including in North America is also well known. India is not a victim of terrorism. It is a sponsor of terrorism,” he said.

He went on to say that India was also a perpetrator of state terrorism in the Occupied Kashmir. He added that the population of the territory “is being denied its right to self determination in gross violation of numerous resolutions of the UNSC”.

“India continues to disregard its obligations under the UN Charter, including Article 25, which requires member states to carry out the decisions of the Security Council,” he said, adding that occupied Kashmir “never was, nor is, an integral part of India”.

“No unilateral or unlawful measures by the occupying power can alter the historical, legal and disputed character of the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

‘Natural resource governance must be anchored in international law’

In his remarks, Ambassador Ahmad had said that natural resources should serve as instruments of sustainable development and prosperity and must not become sources of conflict, coercion or exploitation.

“Yet, in many contexts, weak governance, illicit extraction, external interference, violations of international law and UN Charter, and the unequal distribution of benefits continue to fuel instability and conflict, and exacerbate humanitarian crises,” he said.

He pointed to Africa, saying that Pakistan had long stood in solidarity with African countries in their pursuit of sovereign control over their natural wealth.

“Sustainable peace cannot be achieved where immense natural wealth coexists with persistent poverty and underdevelopment. It is a recipe for conflict,” he asserted, adding that natural resource governance must remain firmly anchored in the UN Charter and international law.

“The right of peoples to permanent sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources, as enshrined in General Assembly resolution 1803, remains fundamental. International cooperation must strengthen national capacities while respecting national ownership, priorities and policy space,” he said.

Highlighting India’s decision to hold the IWT in abeyance, he said, “Our eastern neighbour has sought to weaponize water against Pakistan by abusing its status as the upper riparian, unilaterally and illegally placing the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance – a course of action for which neither the Treaty, nor the general principles of international law, provide any basis whatsoever. Pakistan categorically rejects this unlawful action, which directly threatens the livelihoods and well-being of more than 240 million people of Pakistan.”

He said that the IWT remained “valid, binding and fully in force, as reaffirmed by the August 2025 Award of the Court of Arbitration”.

“No State should be permitted to abuse shared water resources as an instrument of coercion or political pressure, much less when it breaches solemn treaty obligations. That this is happening in the backdrop of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, a longstanding flash point in South Asia, carries grave risks for international peace and security,” he said.

Ambassador Ahmad said that the UNSC had an “important responsibility where the exploitation or weaponization of natural resources, threatens international peace and security, whether through the illicit exploitation of minerals that fuels and perpetuates conflict, or the unilateral actions to exploit shared natural resources as instruments of coercion in disregard of international law and binding treaty obligations”.

“Such actions require the council’s continued vigilance. The council should make full use of the tools at its disposal, including preventive diplomacy, peaceful resolution of disputes, sanctions regimes and monitoring mechanisms to address these threats,” he said.

The comments came after thousands of protesters, led by the social media-driven Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement, rallied in New Delhi on Wednesday, triggering fresh clashes with the police.

“Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth,” he said in a post on X, promising to set up fast-track courts to punish those involved in question paper leaks.

“Those who try to harm the future of our youth will not be spared,” he added.

The protesters, mostly young students, have been demanding the resignation of the education minister over exam paper leaks since last month.

Protests snowballed on Monday after police fired tear gas and baton-charged tens of thousands of demonstrators as they tried to march to parliament on the opening day of the monsoon session.

As tensions escalated, protesters responded by hurling stones, marking the largest street rally in the capital in about five years.

At least 178 people, including security personnel, were injured in the violence, according to the police.

The CJP, which has millions of followers on social media, emerged in May initially as a satirical response to Chief Justice Surya Kant reportedly likening young people to “cockroaches” and “parasites” during a court hearing.

The movement has since broadened its agenda to include concerns over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what it describes as Modi’s increasingly authoritarian style of governance.

The protests have emerged as one of the biggest challenges to Hindu-nationalist Modi since his re-election for a third term in office in 2024.

A series of exam irregularities have undermined trust in India’s testing system, including the leak of a medical entrance question paper that forced more than two million candidates to retake the test.

Another dispute involving the online marking of examinations taken by nearly two million high school students has further fuelled public anger.

The comments by Dharmendra Pradhan are his first since the youth-led “cockroach” movement launched a protest in New Delhi last month seeking his resignation over the leak of medical school test papers that affected some two million students and was linked to several student suicides.

The protests by the self-named Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) — which began as an online satire — involved a few hundred young people when they were first launched.

This week, the movement has grown into the biggest youth challenge to Modi in his third term as the prime minister as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Delhi on Monday, clashing with police who used tear gas and batons to push them back.

The protests gained further momentum on Tuesday when the main opposition Congress party, led by Rahul Gandhi, launched a sit-in outside the gates leading to Modi’s residence.

Gandhi, his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and several other senior opposition leaders were detained by police after they refused to end their protest, but were released late on Tuesday.

“Our government remains 100 per cent committed to discussing NEET and addressing every genuine concern of our youth on the floor of the house,” Pradhan said in a post on X late on Tuesday, referring to the medical school entrance test.

“The students of India deserve far better than being treated as props in a political campaign,” he said, referring to Gandhi’s protest.

“We owe our students more than outrage. We owe them answers, reforms and accountability. That is exactly what our government remains committed to delivering,” he added.

Pradhan’s comments follow those by Modi on Tuesday — his first on the issue — who vowed to punish those behind the exam leaks and also called on his lawmakers to help create a foolproof exam system.

Separately, Health Minister JP Nadda held talks with CJP leaders on Monday for the first time and assured them the government would consider their demands.

Gandhi demands debate in Parliament

Youth anger and protests over the exams have become the biggest challenge for the prime minister in his third term.

The CJP’s surge in popularity reflects frustrations among young Indians over issues such as job shortages, as well as exam leaks, which they say happen frequently.

It has also given opposition parties a rare opening to pressure Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who count young voters as a core base and have won a series of state elections since a shock result in the 2024 election, when Modi did not win an outright parliamentary majority.

“Why is the Indian education system collapsing? Why are papers leaking? Why is education so expensive in India? Why do families have to destroy themselves financially to educate their children?” Gandhi said in a video message recorded while he was in detention at a Delhi stadium on Tuesday night.

“These are legitimate questions. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking these questions,” he said.

Gandhi said the students’ issues should be debated in parliament on Wednesday and Modi should apologise to the students for the police action on Monday and begin reforms to the examination and education systems as soon as possible.

The CJP movement gained momentum from the support of activist Sonam Wangchuk, who began a hunger strike on June 28, but was forcibly moved to a hospital by police on Saturday.

On Tuesday, he was moved to a private hospital following a court order in response to a petition from his wife that alleged he had been illegally detained.

Here is a look at what sparked the protests and the situation now.

Why do protesters want Pradhan to quit?

The immediate trigger for the demonstrations was the cancellation of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), India’s undergraduate medical school entrance exam, after its question papers were found to have been leaked.

About two million students across India took the exam on May 3, but it was later scrapped, with about a dozen student suicides linked to its cancellation.

A re-test was held in June.

Why is NEET important?

The exam is the sole gateway to undergraduate medical courses across India, and millions of aspirants sit for it every year, competing for fewer than 150,000 seats, making it one of India’s toughest entrance exams.

The situation is also symptomatic of broader strains on the country’s higher education system, where grossly limited spots leave millions cramming for months, or even years, and high-stakes entrance exams leave many of them burnt out and in debt.

Have test papers been leaked before?

Exam question paper leaks are fairly common in India, and the NEET questions themselves were similarly leaked in some places in 2024, although a re-test was not ordered at the time.

Other examination papers have also been leaked in the South Asian nation of 1.4 billion people, including those for recruitment of police constables and teachers.

Why is this leak different?

The exam leak this year coincided with the birth of the self-named Cockroach Janta Party satire movement, which appears to have channelled the frustration of the youth into the current protests.

Experts say the group, which amassed millions of Instagram followers within days of being created in mid-May, tapped into the concerns of under-30s, who make up more than half the country’s population, which includes high youth unemployment and the latest exam paper leak.

How has the government responded?

Pradhan says the government is committed to addressing the concerns of the youth and promised exam reforms, while Modi himself has vowed to punish those behind the leaks.

Health Minister JP Nadda met the protesters on Monday and sought time to discuss their demands, which also include the release of fasting activist Sonam Wangchuk, who was taken to hospital last week, and compensation of 10 million Indian rupees each for the students who died by suicide after the exam leak.

What is the situation now?

Two days after tens of thousands of protesters attempting to march on parliament were met with tear gas and baton charges, thousands remain camped at the sit-in protest site in New Delhi, where the movement’s leaders say they will remain until their demands are met.

Opposition groups, including the main opposition Congress party, have also vowed to raise their cause in and outside parliament, seeing it as a new opportunity to corner Modi and his party over an issue that has massive resonance and impacts Modi’s youth vote base.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and his sister and fellow lawmaker, Priyanka Gandhi, and several other senior opposition leaders were detained by police after they refused to end their protest outside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence on Tues­day, but were released later.

Around 100 people are unaccounted for, the national disaster agency and the provincial governor’s office said, also updating the death toll from Monday’s deluge.

An AFP journalist saw dozens of people gathered in remote Parun, the capital of Nuristan province, using wooden poles and their bare hands to search for the missing.

Farid Gul Zaheer, a 34-year-old pharmacist, said he had “never witnessed such a dangerous flood”.

“It felt like there was an earthquake, and I heard children and people screaming,” he told AFP, after getting injured while trying to flee up the mountain.

On Tuesday, a bulldozer was of limited use in clearing some debris in Parun, where the flood had buried multiple shops and brought huge boulders that smashed into buildings.

Parun’s mayor and other government employees were among the missing, the governor’s office said on Monday.

Zakirullah Zaki, manager of the Spogmai Hotel, said it felt like “an act of God struck us”.

“The rest of the hotels, markets, and shops were completely destroyed,” the 29-year-old told AFP.

The Spogmai was still standing, surrounded by destruction, and the manager’s missing younger brother was found.

‘Traumatised’

Juma Khan Nayel, communications chief for the Afghan Red Crescent Society, described a “devastating situation” with water rising to unprecedented levels.

They have deployed dozens of volunteers who are working by hand, using shovels.

“Right now, urgently, we are supplying some food, water and tents for those whose homes have been destroyed,” he told AFP.

Afghanistan’s defence ministry said the military had been deployed to the area to support the relief effort, while the United Nations said it was assessing the disaster.

Zaheer, the pharmacist, said he had “lost everything”.

“Everyone is traumatised, they didn’t sleep all night,” he said.

Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to climate change and flooding has increased, according to the head of the country’s environmental protection agency.

Environmental problems “have severely affected the Afghan people and have contributed to a humanitarian crisis in the country”, Mawlavi Matiul Haq Khalis said this month.

The opposition leader, also chief of the Indian National Congress party, demanded that Modi step down over the police crackdown against student protests demanding reforms in the education system.

Modi must resign “for destroying the future of India’s youth”, the Congress Party leader said in a post on social media as he led a march with other MPs towards the prime minister’s residence in New Delhi.

The Press Trust of India reported that as police swooped down on the site, the opposition leader could be seen lying on the ground and resisting as security personnel attempted to pick him up. He was hurt in the process.

“The government doesn’t want to take any accountability, nor does it want to have a debate on it in parliament,” said Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house.

Gandhi’s comments came after police said 60 protesters were injured in clashes with security forces in the heart of New Delhi on Monday, marking the biggest street rally in the capital for about five years.

The Cockroach Janata Party movement vowed to press ahead with their campaign until the education minister resigns, a day after at least 180 people were injured in protests in New Delhi.

Thousands of protesters gathered in the heart of the Indian capital on Monday, demanding Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation and wider examination reforms, in a show of force by the CJP online movement.

The CJP has won millions of followers on social media since its launch in May, fuelling one of the biggest challenges to Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he won his third term in office in 2024.

Shameful day

“We won’t stop. Pradhan has to be sacked,” the CJP’s Ashutosh Ranka said in a social media post.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke urged protesters on Tuesday not to lose hope.

“They want to break our spirit,” he said, perched on top of a lorry. “Do not let them silence you.”

Organisers and hundreds of protesters remained camped at the Jantar Mantar protest site today, many of them calling for wider changes in the education system.

On Monday, police fired tear gas and baton-charged protesters to stop them from marching on to parliament, in one of the biggest street rallies in Delhi in around five years.

At least 178 people were injured in clashes between protesters and security officials, Delhi Police said.

That included 118 police personnel, including senior officers, it said while criticising what it described as “unruly, aggressive and violent behaviour” by a “violent mob”.

“During the scuffle, around 60 protesters were also reported to get injured,” it said in a statement late on Monday.

Protest organisers condemned the “high-handedness” of the authorities and said hundreds of protesters had been injured.

“It’s a shameful day in the history of Indian democracy that people, honest students, who had come for a genuine issue were brutally beaten by the Delhi police,” Ranka told AFP.

Ranka, who met senior minister JP Nadda on Monday, said the government had yet to respond to their demands.

Protesters said they would not relent.

“We have become even more fearless now,” said 25-year-old law student Chandra Pratap Sishwi. “When I saw people being beaten up by the police like that, my blood boiled.”

Parliament was adjourned on Tuesday after the opposition benches demanded a discussion on the alleged “brutality unleashed on students”.

Despite rapid economic growth, millions of people in the world’s most populous nation still struggle to find stable and well-paying jobs, fuelling discontent.

The protests follow a series of examination scandals that have shaken confidence in the country’s testing system.

Some 2.2 million aspiring medical students sat for a re-examination under tight security last month after the previous test was scrapped following the leak of a question paper.

That came on top of another scandal related to the online marking system of tests taken by nearly 2m high school students.

The incident occurred on Monday in the Himalayan state of Sikkim, where workers were constructing a tunnel for a state-run hydropower project on the Teesta river.

“We are estimating around 25-27 people were trapped,” Rajiv Roka, director of the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority, told AFP.

“Nine bodies have been recovered.”

The collapse was likely triggered by a blast, the cause of which was yet to be ascertained.

The region has seen torrential monsoon rains in recent days.

Roka said authorities were “not sure what caused the blast because it was deep in the tunnel”, adding that “it was most probably natural”.

Toxic methane gas leaking from underground rock formations was hampering rescue efforts, officials said, allowing only teams carrying oxygen equipment to enter.

“Aggressive rescue operations are under way, but the problem is there’s a lot of gas present there,” Roka said.

A specialised team trained in mining accidents had been flown in to aid the rescuers, he added.

Accidents on large infrastructure construction sites are common in India, but ecologists say excessive development projects have led to more disasters in the fragile Himalayan areas.

In 2023, 41 workers were rescued after 17 days being trapped under a Himalayan road tunnel that had collapsed in northern Uttarakhand state.

Only mud remained where riverside shops previously stood in Parun, the provincial capital where residents were searching for their mayor among others.

Twenty bodies have been recovered so far, while more than 80 were injured, Afghanistan’s disaster agency ANDMA said.

Those casualties were reported in Parun and other parts of Nuristan, which borders Pakistan, the agency reported. Government employees including the mayor were among the missing in the town, the governor’s office said.

“Nine dead bodies are recovered,” said Feraidon Samim, spokesman for the Nuristan governor. Both he and the disaster agency said more than 100 remained missing.

Journalists who visited the remote northeastern area last month said a market, shops and other buildings were located near the riverside in Parun.

Ashiqullah Safi, head of Shpoul, an NGO in the town, said the flood had “completely destroyed the municipality” as well as hotels and dozens of shops. Residents were searching the area without equipment, he said, after floodwaters left big boulders in the town.

Dozens of people stood atop the mud while others gathered along a road beside the rushing river, according to a video filmed by another resident and shared with this news agency.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the top spokesman for the Afghan government, confirmed deaths and property damage in Nuristan province. “The relevant agencies are seriously engaged in saving people’s lives and property,” he wrote on X.

ANDMA forecast more rain and storms to come across multiple provinces, warning residents to stay away from riverbanks and other areas with a risk of flooding.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2026

Protesters were stopped by police from staging their demonstration, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a post on X, which had videos and pictures of people holding posters and shouting slogans.

“This is only the beginning of our struggle for statehood, our rights, our dignity and everything that was taken away from us,” Abdullah said in the post.

In August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the partial autonomy of the occupied Kashmir state, removed its statehood and divided it into two federally controlled territories: held Kashmir with Jammu, and Ladakh.

The government has since said statehood to the Himalayan region will be restored at the “appropriate time” but has not given a deadline.

Abdullah and his party, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, have said statehood should be restored at the earliest, in keeping with the government’s promise.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders claim the protest is an attempt to divert attention from what they allege are governance failures of Abdullah’s government.

“It is the misfortune of the people of Jammu and Kashmir that today we have to come to Delhi to protest and remind our Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of their promise,” IoK’s Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary said, according to Press Trust of India.

“You promised the people of Jammu and Kashmir that you would restore statehood after the elections. Today, it has been nearly a year and a half, and neither the prime minister nor the home minister has fulfilled that promise,” Choudhary pointed out.

The protesters, mostly young students, ran for cover as police charged at them and fired tear gas shells near Jantar Mantar in the Indian capital.

They are seeking the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over exam irregularities, including question paper leaks and technical glitches.

Thousands of protesters started gathering from early Monday, defying a steady monsoon drizzle and police barricades, marking one of the biggest demonstrations in the capital in five years.

“Our country deserves a government that is bothered about what the young people have to say and is willing to correct its mistakes,” said Sumit Kumar, 18.

“The future belongs to us and not these politicians.”

The protest comes after prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly taken to hospital on Saturday, bringing an abrupt end to his 20-day hunger strike in support of youths and the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement.

The CJP has won millions of followers on social media since its launch in May, tapping into widespread anger over the country’s education system and unemployment.

“Is this a war zone? Why is the police resorting to tear gas assault on peaceful protesters?” CJP said in a post on X.

“First, your government ignored this protest for a month, and now, when we are peacefully marching, your government is attacking us. Why?”

The movement is seen as one of the biggest challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he won his third term in office in 2024.

‘We shall win’

Despite rapid economic growth, millions of people in the world’s most populous nation still struggle to find stable and well-paying jobs, fuelling discontent.

Some 2.2 million aspiring medical students sat for a re-examination under tight security last month after the previous test was scrapped following a question paper leak that triggered widespread outrage.

That came on top of another scandal related to the online marking system of tests taken by nearly 2m high school students.

The CJP said two of its leaders met a senior minister on Monday and submitted a letter spelling out their demands after the government reached out to them in the morning.

The internet was cut in parts of central New Delhi on Monday, with police saying they had not given their permission for the protest.

“Any person violating these prohibitory orders shall be liable for prosecution,” Delhi Police said in a statement.

Shubhi Rao, 16, said she had joined the protest to support Wangchuk and demand accountability from the government.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown himself as someone who isn’t bothered about the youth of this country,” she told AFP.

Modi, in a public address before the start of the monsoon session of parliament, did not mention the protesters.

But Mallikarjun Kharge, a senior leader of the opposition Congress party, brought up the issue in the upper house.

“Thousands of students have gathered at Jantar Mantar. The government is trying to use force, suppress voices, and drive them away,” he said.

Slogans were also shouted inside the lower house by the opposition benches, demanding the resignation of the education minister and justice for students.

Activists set terms to end his fast

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and his supporters began a sit-in last month seeking the resignation of Pradhan. Wangchuk joined them on June 28, launching an indefinite hunger strike at the site.

In a handwritten note from the hospital posted on his X account on Monday, Wangchuk said he would end his fast if the government took responsibility for recent failures in the education system and for paper leaks, or if CJP protesters were allowed to reach parliament and lawmakers assured them they would take up the issues.

He said he would also end the hunger strike if lawmakers and leaders of various parties met him in the hospital and gave him the same assurances, since his health did not allow him to march on parliament.

The rise of the CJP reflects frustrations among young Indians over issues like high youth unemployment and frequent examination paper ​leaks, analysts say.

Unemployment in 2025 stood at 3.1 per cent among those aged 15 and above, government data shows, but was 9.9pc for those from 15 to 29. In urban areas, it was 13.6pc, and 8.3pc in rural regions.

Police cited a court order and “deteriorating health condition” on Saturday when they picked up Sonam Wangchuk, who had refused to eat since June 28 in protest of alleged university exam fraud.

The activist, 59, has demanded the education minister’s resignation after the leak of test materials that resulted in over two million students being forced to retake exams.

Gitanjali J. Angmo, Wangchuk’s wife, said that she “lost faith” in the government hospital, which she said refused her desire to move her husband to a private facility.

“With around 30 police personnel stationed on our floor and well over 100 across the hospital, our movement is severely restricted,” Angmo said.

“It is not medical care. It is illegal detention,” she said, adding she asked the high court to allow her to move Wangchuk.

The hospital, late on Saturday, said that Wangchuk hadn’t yet consented for recommended medical interventions.

“Despite repeated counselling by the treating team and the independent expert regarding the urgent need for treatment, the patient has declined intravenous fluids, oral rehydration solution and all medications,” the hospital said.

India’s parliament session starts on Monday, and opposition parties have backed Wangchuk and ongoing protests in New Delhi, where a few hundred students had joined him around his stage in recent weeks.

Several political and farmers’ groups are expected to reach the New Delhi protest site, Jantar Mantar, to demonstrate during the parliament session.

The founder of satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) online movement, Abhijeet Dipke, announced on Saturday an indefinite hunger strike after Wangchuk was moved to the hospital.

CJP asked people to join a protest march towards the parliament from Jantar Mantar protest site on Monday, when other groups have also announced similar marches for other causes.

“For a Better Tomorrow, For a Better Education System & Most Importantly for Accountability!” CJP said in a post on X.

On Sunday, a few hundred people gathered around the stage vacated by Wangchuk. Many were carrying posters and photos of the hospitalised activist while others were demanding the education minister’s arrest.

Some 2.2m aspiring medical students sat for a re-examination under tight security last month after the previous test was scrapped following a leak that triggered widespread outrage and fuelled youth protests.

Wangchuk, 59, has been fasting since June 28 to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged irregularities in examinations to study medicine.

A few hundred students have also joined Wangchuk around his stage at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in recent weeks, with other protests also organised by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) online movement.

“As per the orders of … high court and on expert medical advice due to deteriorating health condition of Sonam Wangchuk, he has been shifted to the hospital for essential medical care,” a deputy commissioner of Delhi police said in a statement.

“While complying with the orders … the protestors tried to create obstruction, in which slight commotion ensued,” the statement added.

“We request the protestors at Jantar Mantar to peacefully vacate the place at the earliest.”

A video from Jantar Mantar showed confusion among a few Wangchuk supporters at the site in the morning as police, carrying white sheets, hurriedly moved him from the stage.

Police also moved some CJP supporters who were staging a sit-in at the venue, asking them to vacate the area. Visuals showed one woman protester being physically lifted by policewomen and carried away.

ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake, said Wangchuk was conscious, and his vitals were stable in the hospital.

“They dragged Sonam Sir away … a 60-year-old man, who had been on a hunger strike for 20 days and hadn’t eaten a thing, was forcibly dragged away by the Delhi Police. We have no idea where they have taken him,” CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke told reporters.

A New Delhi court ordered government doctors on Thursday to monitor the activist’s health daily.

The “life of any citizen is precious,” the court said after a petition filed by activist lawyer Rakesh Kumar Saini warned that Wangchuk may not survive for long if he does not break his fast.

“Whatever medical intervention is needed to save Sonam Wangchuk’s life should be done,” the Delhi High Court ordered on Thursday.

An engineer by training, Wangchuk is best known for pioneering water conservation projects in the Himalayas.

A few hours before he was picked up by the police, Wangchuk said: “Smaller movements have brought down many governments in India … and here it is about education.”

Wangchuk has been at the centre of CJP’s protests, lying on a mattress in the middle of a stage, as supporters and visitors to the protest site mill about.

Last year, Modi’s government accused Wangchuk of inciting people through what it said were provocative statements during violent protests in Ladakh, to which he belongs.

Wangchuk spent about six months in jail before being released in March this year. He has denied the allegations against him, and said the violent protests were a reflection of the frustration with the federal government.

On the third day of his fast, Wangchuk told Reuters his fast would last six weeks unless he died first.

“But hopefully, we don’t have to go that far,” he had said. “A sensitive government in a democracy listens to the pains of the people, and I hope they will take action.”

Last month, some 2.2 million aspiring medical students sat for a re-examination under tight security after the previous test was scrapped following a paper leak that triggered widespread outrage.

The failure of the hugely competitive exam, along with a separate marking fiasco in high school tests, sparked an outcry and fuelled youth protests.

Several members of opposition parties have voiced their support for Wangchuk and the student activists.

The project is part of a broader push to modernise one of the world’s largest rail networks while reducing carbon emissions.

The 10-coach train runs along an 89-kilometre route between Jind and Sonipat in India’s northern state of Haryana, powered by a 1,200-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system.

Officials described the system as the world’s most powerful for a train.

Hydrogen trains use fuel cells to generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, emitting only water and steam.

“This is a very significant day in the direction of self-reliant India and sustainable development,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who flagged off the inaugural journey, said in a social media post.

The railway ministry said the train was “developed entirely in India”, although senior officials told reporters that some key components, including the fuel cells, were imported.

The ministry also inaugurated what it described as the country’s largest railway hydrogen storage and refuelling facility in Jind, with a capacity of some 3,000 kilogrammes, to “support hydrogen-powered train operations”.

The pilot project cost around $12 million, according to a senior railway official who acknowledged it was significantly more expensive than a comparable conventional service.

However, he said costs were expected to fall as the technology matures.

With the launch, India joins countries such as Germany, Japan, China and the United States that are testing or operating hydrogen-powered trains.

India’s railways have undergone a major transformation since the first passenger steam train puffed out in 1853 from Mumbai.

In recent years, New Delhi has pumped billions of dollars in investment aimed at upgrading infrastructure, improving safety and expanding capacity.

The vast network carried 7.41bn passengers and 1.67bn tonnes of freight last year, official data shows.

India has also introduced its domestically designed Vande Bharat trains, which can reach speeds of up to 180 kilometres per hour.

At the same time, the country is building its first high-speed rail line using Japanese Shinkansen technology.

Officials expect the bullet train, designed to operate at up to 320 kph, to begin service on its first section in 2027.

Ziaur Rahman was killed in 1981 during a military coup. Following his assassination, a martial law court convicted 18 military officers of mutiny, although the defence argued they had not been given a fair trial.

Thirteen of them were then executed by hanging. One of the alleged assassins, Md Mozaffar Hossain, went into hiding immediately after Rahman was killed.

Authorities had offered a reward of $2,000 for information leading to Hossain’s arrest, and on Thursday he was taken into custody.

“Md Mozaffar Hossain had remained a fugitive since 1981 after president Ziaur Rahman was assassinated. We detained him today,” Md Shafiqul Islam, chief of the police’s Detective Branch, said.

“During interrogation, he explained his role in the assassination to us,” Islam added.

Police arrested the suspect shortly after he landed in Dhaka. “Hossain left Bangladesh immediately after the coup attempt and had remained abroad ever since,” Islam said. Rahman, whose son Tarique Rahman is now the country’s prime minister, became president in 1977 following the assassination of Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

His four-year presidency was marked by dozens of coup attempts. The circumstances surrounding Rahman’s assassination have remained shrouded in mystery.

He was killed while on a visit to Chattogram, where he had gone to resolve a crisis within his newly formed political party.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2026

Protests that grew from an online campaign spilled onto Dhaka’s streets on Tuesday and continued into Wednesday, snarling traffic in parts of the city.

The demonstrations were sparked by the education ministry’s refusal to cancel one paper of the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examination despite torrential rain flooding examination centres and forcing some candidates to travel by boat to reach test venues.

“We will continue our protests until the minister resigns,” Faisal Khan, an HSC candidate, said.

“Ignoring our request, he mocked us by saying we are broiler chickens that catch cold easily. We want to show him what broiler chickens can do,” Khan said.

He also drew a comparison with student-led protests in 2024 that helped topple former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. “A group of people had to flee the country after making derogatory remarks about students,” said Faisal Khan, alluding to weeks of demonstrations that ended in Hasina’s ouster.

A student who declined to be named for fear of reprisals said the education minister, Ehsanul Hoque Milon, was out of touch with students’ concerns.

“He keeps saying he wants to stop cheating in examinations and ignores almost every other issue,” she said.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is the largest of India’s seven nuclear plants and central to Prime Minister ‌Narendra Modi’s ambitious plans to expand the country’s atomic energy capacity.

Indian businessman Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group, one of the plant’s contractors, told Reuters in a statement that there had been a “partial breach” of its data on a server hosted by third-party Indian data centre service provider Yotta, and that the government had been informed about the incident.

Reliance did not disclose what data had been breached.

The data breach could pose a “serious” risk to the safety of the plant, says Nickolas Roth, a senior director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which ​advises governments and benchmarks countries’ preparedness on nuclear security. The breach also underscores how hacks have become more common in India, where many companies are ill-equipped to deal with such threats.

Reuters reviewed the documents, which ​were dated from 2016 to mid-2025, but could not verify their authenticity. In addition to some blueprints and supplier details, they purportedly show meeting and inspection records, equipment ⁠reviews and insurance policies.

The 19,000 files appeared to be the most sensitive of a total 858,000 Reliance files on the World Leaks website.

One of the conglomerate’s subsidiaries, Reliance Infrastructure, won a contract in 2018 to design and ​build infrastructure for the plant’s Unit 3 and Unit 4. Both units, still under construction, are due to be operational by 2027 and are slated to provide a combined 2,000 megawatts of capacity.

World Leaks, a well-known ransomware group that ​has previously targeted Nike and India’s Tata Group, did not respond to Reuters queries on the Reliance data breach. The group typically posts stolen corporate data on its website after companies decline to pay the ransom demanded. Its website can only be accessed with a specialised browser.

In June, World Leaks told Reuters it had sought $1.5 million in ransom for Tata Group files that contained confidential component designs of clients Apple and Tesla, adding that it posted the data after Tata “ignored” its demand.

Suspicious activity on server in May

The Nuclear Power Corporation of ​India, which commissions and operates the country’s nuclear power plants, has been communicating with Reliance about the breach and India’s main cybersecurity agency — the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) — is looking into the incident, according to a source ​familiar with the matter. The source declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Nuclear Power Corporation Chairman Rajesh Veeraraghavan, CERT-In and the government’s main press office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Yotta said in a statement it ‌had noted suspicious ⁠activity on May 29 on a server it hosts that belongs to Reliance Infrastructure. It said the activity was immediately terminated and that the suspected ransomware execution was prevented, but Reliance Infrastructure informed it at the end of June that there had been claims of a data breach made by “external threat actors”.

Yotta said it has not been able to verify the claims of the “threat actor”, but added that it has shared its detailed technical investigation with Reliance Infrastructure and supports an ongoing investigation.

India’s Department of Atomic Energy declined to comment, while Modi’s office did not respond to Reuters queries.

Blueprints and insurance policies

The documents posted on World Leaks do not appear to relate to the nuclear reactors’ core ​systems, which are supplied by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom.

They did ​contain purported blueprints for the ventilation and cooling systems ⁠used in Unit 3 and Unit 4, as well as what appeared to be the complete floor layout of a “common control room”.

The files also included what appeared to be vendor proposals, a list of approved suppliers, and a record of a 2024 meeting about a joint inspection by the Nuclear Power Corporation and Reliance, with photos of equipment.

Another ​document purports to show that Reliance Infrastructure and the Nuclear Power Corporation had taken out an insurance policy that would entitle them to $112m if either Unit ​3 or Unit 4 were ⁠to suffer an act of terrorism.

The files, in the hands of bad actors, could in theory be exploited to map the plant’s support systems, identify its suppliers and pinpoint weaknesses in its security chain, according to researchers.

They could “show an adversary not just who has access to the project but which systems that access reaches”, said Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Roth.

India ranks third among a list of countries suffering the most data breaches, with 28.9m accounts compromised last year, lagging only the United ⁠States and France, ​according to cybersecurity company Surfshark.

A report last year by the Data Security Council of India and cybersecurity firm Seqrite said that of 204 ​organisations surveyed across India, some 73 per cent were “unaware if they have ever been attacked” while 57pc lack cyber hygiene practices.

It is also the second time that the Kudankulam plant has been linked to a cyber incident, with malware tied to a North Korean hacker group found on the ​plant’s administrative network in 2019. At the time, the Nuclear Power Corporation said the matter was investigated immediately and plant systems were not affected.

The humble egg, a popular food in West Bengal, was taken off the menu after the state’s recently elected Hindu nationalist government said a religious charity will provide free, vegetarian cooked meals in state-run schools.

The new arrangement has rekindled a long-running debate over food, faith and nutrition in the world’s most populous country, with critics accusing the government of trying to turn schoolchildren vegetarian.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which swept to power in West Bengal for the first time in regional elections held in May, often promotes vegetarianism as a part of its nationalist agenda, although most Indian Hindus eat meat and fish.

Eggs, which Hindus generally consider non-vegetarian, are even more widely consumed.

Former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, whose regional Trinamool Congress (TMC) lost May’s vote after 15 years in power, has denounced the move to remove eggs from school meals as going “against the culture” of the state, home to more than 100 million people.

“The BJP government is trying to impose vegetarianism on school children,” TMC lawmaker Dola Sen told AFP.

Some teachers have expressed concerns over attendance rates as well as good nutrition.

“The mid-day meals have been one of the biggest attractions in state-run primary schools,” teacher Dey told AFP.

World’s largest school lunch scheme

While there is no nationwide data linking eggs to attendance in government-run schools, Dey said that “students turn up in large numbers on days when eggs are provided”.

In the southern state of Karnataka, official figures from last year showed that attendance rose from 93.5 to 98.97 per cent after egg distribution had been expanded to six days a week.

In West Bengal, eggs, previously served once a week, were replaced last month with plant-based alternatives as the state government tapped the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon) — commonly known as the Hare Krishna movement — as the new provider of school meals.

Iskcon is the leading provider of India’s school lunches — the largest such programme in the world, according to the UN — and serves only vegetarian food.

The lunch scheme is widely acknowledged to have improved enrolment rates across the country, with multiple peer-reviewed research papers identifying an increase of up to 15pc.

There are also nutritional benefits.

A 2021 report by the International Food Policy Research Institute found that the scheme has played a key role in reducing stunting among Indian children.

With eggs off the menu, public health advocates have warned that children from poor families — the primary target of the lunch scheme — could lose an important source of protein and other nutrients.

‘Gold standard’

Iskcon has pushed back, arguing that soya chunks, cottage cheese and lentils were as nutritious.

“We will ensure that whatever nutrients a child gets from eggs will be matched or exceeded by superior quality protein and vitamins in our meals,” Surovijoy Govinda Das, a senior member of Iskcon, told AFP.

The state’s education minister, Dipak Barman, said that “there are many people in our country who lead a healthy life on a vegetarian diet”.

Some nutritionists beg to differ.

Eggs are “the gold standard for protein quality”, Sylvia Karpagam, a community health physician, told Frontline magazine.

Without “fact-based information … the country faces a looming crisis in nutrition and health outcomes”, she said.

In the run-up to May’s vote, TMC party members had accused Modi’s BJP of seeking to ban fish and meat altogether.

The ruling party denied any such intention, but last month’s menu change has revived concerns.

The matter has made it to the high court, which has asked the state to clarify its position on handing over the lunch scheme to Iskcon.

A hearing is slated for next month.