The Karnataka Pradesh Youth Congress on Thursday, May 21, organised a protest at Freedom Park in Bengaluru, demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the dissolution of the National Testing Agency (NTA).
The protest follows the NTA’s scrapping of the NEET UG 2026 examination conducted on May 3. The examination, attempted by around 22 lakh candidates, was surrounded by allegations of large-scale malpractice after a “guess paper” was circulated across physical coaching centres and digital platforms.
Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee Vice President VS Ugrappa pointed out that leaks first occurred in Rajasthan and then in Maharashtra. He reminded the audience that these states were under BJP administration, the same party that criticised the Congress government when Kimmane Rathnakar was the education minister during the SSLC paper leak in February 2016.
“When the SSLC question paper was leaked, the BJP leaders of this very state, starting from R Ashoka… demanded that Kimmane must resign,” he said, asking who would take responsibility now that the NEET examination had allegedly been leaked under the BJP’s administration. Kimmane Rathnakar did not resign over the paper leak. He was dropped from the Cabinet in June 2016.
“This is not the first time the NEET exam paper has been leaked; it has happened several times,” said Shivajinagar MLA Rizwan Arshad. He said that students faced anxiety and uncertainty over the exam as soon as it was announced.
He questioned the Modi government’s ability to conduct examinations properly. He called the NEET examination a “dream” for students and said the government was preventing that dream from coming true.
“Even without the NEET exam, rich children can pay crores of rupees and become doctors. Where should the children of the poor go?” he questioned.
“All the youth and students will join together to teach a proper lesson to this hypocrisy of Narendra Modi and the BJP in the coming days,” he said.
Calling out the Prime Minister for disappearing instead of addressing candidates on why the paper was leaked and what action had been taken, Karnataka Medical Education Minister Dr Sharanprakash Patil demanded that the authority to conduct examinations be transferred back to the state governments.
“Karnataka is a state known across the country for transparency through the CET exam. The CET was never entangled in such chaos. We conducted a very transparent and people-friendly exam,” he said, accusing the Union government of putting MBBS seats up for sale. The Common Entrance Test (CET) was conducted by the Karnataka Examinations Authority for admissions to professional courses such as medical, engineering, agricultural, and veterinary sciences.
Higher Education Minister MC Sudhakar declared that he had met with Patil and concluded that Karnataka would no longer wait for the NEET examination, instead starting a “separate counselling process for engineering and other courses.”
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who appeared during the protest, also addressed the gathering, saying that the Union government owed an apology to the people and demanded Pradhan’s resignation. “I want to say this to the Union government, don’t conduct NEET exams. You’re incapable of conducting it. Let the states conduct the exams as they used to,” he said, calling for appropriate compensation for families affected by the leaks.
In a written statement, Siddaramaiah called for the reintroduction of the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), an exam administered by the CBSE that was primarily used to fill a 15% quota of undergraduate seats in government medical and dental colleges across the country. It was replaced by NEET-UG in 2016.
Siddaramaiah alleged that there was widespread corruption in examinations held under the administrations of former Chief Ministers Basavaraj Bommai and BS Yediyurappa. He further claimed that the appointments of sub-inspectors and engineers had raised concerns regarding legality. He also referred to the arrest of an officer of ADGP rank, describing it as an unprecedented incident in the state.
Siddaramaiah further claimed that medical exam question papers had been leaked a total of five times since NEET’s reimplementation in 2016. He said there had been leaks in 2016, 2021, 2024, and 2026. He added that this was not the case during the administration of Manmohan Singh from 2006 to 2014. Under the earlier system of AIPMT and state-level CETs for medical courses, papers were not leaked, he claimed.
He alleged that private coaching centres were complicit in the leakage of examination papers. Furthermore, he asserted that the National Testing Agency (NTA), the body responsible for administering NEET, relies on private entities to organise the examination and evaluate results, a practice that multiple states had previously blacklisted.
Potshots at CJI over ‘cockroach’ remark
Siddaramaiah and several Youth Congress leaders and protesters were also seen holding up and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the caption “I am cockroach” during the protest.
This was in reference to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant allegedly terming struggling or unemployed youth as “parasites” and “cockroaches”.
The terms fuelled a satirical online movement, with a 30-year-old political communication strategist, Abhijeet Dipke, launching a satirical political outfit on Instagram called the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).
Embracing the “cockroach” meme as a badge of honour, the protesters turned the term into a symbol of student solidarity, mocking the establishment’s perceived dismissiveness towards the student community.