Pradhan only the second minister to quit Modi government in 12 years

Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation follows mounting pressure over the NEET paper leak, marking only the second ministerial exit during Narendra Modi's 12 years in office

On Saturday afternoon, Dharmendra Pradhan announced on social media that he had offered to resign as the Union education minister and sent his resignation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

 

Once accepted, Pradhan will become only the second minister to have resigned from the Union Council of Ministers in the 12 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led governments since May 26, 2014.  It also marks only the second instance in which the government has bowed to public pressure, resulting in one of its ministers offering to quit.

 

M J Akbar, who served in the Union Council of Ministers as minister of state for external affairs, resigned on October 17, 2018.  Akbar quit amid the "MeToo" movement following allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Nripendra Misra, who was then the principal secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, met Akbar to nudge him to put in his papers. 

In 2017, then Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu had also offered to resign, "taking full moral responsibility for a series of train accidents." In a series of tweets on August 23 that year, Prabhu said he had met the PM and offered to quit, but that the PM asked him to wait. In a subsequent reshuffle of the Union Council of Ministers on September 3, 2017, Prabhu was named the Commerce and Industry Minister. 

 

Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), put it succinctly at the protest site at Jantar Mantar in the national capital after the news broke of Pradhan offering to resign.

 

"They used to tell us that there are no resignations in this government," Dipke said, adding, "We wish to tell them, the world bows if you are determined."

 

The Modi-led governments have had to backtrack on a couple of other occasions in the last 12 years.

 

The government withdrew the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill in 2015 after sustained protests from the Opposition and organisations affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the affiliates of the RSS and is the Sangh Parivar's political arm.

 

On November 19, 2021, the prime minister announced the repeal of the three farm laws after more than a year of protests against them.

 

After the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2019 and early 2020, the government did not notify the rules under the law.

 

However, it has seldom succumbed to Opposition demands for ministers' resignations, dropping controversial ministers from the Union Council of Ministers only in subsequent Cabinet reshuffles, such as Rajasthan's Nihal Chand, who faced sexual harassment allegations, in July 2016.

 

Pradhan's offer to resign, and before that the government's reshuffle of Ministry of Education bureaucrats and dismissal of 47 officials of the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts the NEET exam, came after the government recalibrated its strategy to deal with the protests that snowballed from July 20.

 

The government and its security apparatus, including the Delhi Police, did not anticipate the number of people who participated in the 'Sansad Chalo' march on July 20.

 

The police and the Rapid Action Force baton-charged and tear-gassed the protesters who reached within a few hundred metres of Parliament House.

 

Visuals of the police action fuelled protests across the country and drew international criticism, forcing the government to rethink its strategy for dealing with the protests.

 

Several decisions were taken, including the prime minister reaching out to the protesters on social media platforms such as Instagram and announcing the setting up of fast-track courts to hear cases related to exam paper leaks.

 

Modi also announced that the government would make the anti-paper leak law more stringent by bringing amendments. The Union Cabinet approved the amendments at its meeting on Friday, and the Bill is likely to be introduced in Parliament on Monday.

 

The Opposition insisting that it would allow Parliament to function only after Pradhan resigned also played a part, as the government was keen to take up legislative business, sources said.

 

The government was also concerned about Congress leader Rahul Gandhi gaining traction on the issue, as were other Opposition leaders, such as Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, with crucial elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and three other states scheduled for February-March.

 

The government, the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar feared losing the support of the youth in the country. They wanted to defuse the protests before other groups, including farmers from Punjab, joined the protesters.

 

The government's interlocutors, Union ministers J P Nadda and Jitendra Singh, will meet CJP representatives in the afternoon. The CJP has asked people to take out candlelight marches across the country on Saturday evening.

 

The CJP has said only one of its four demands has been met. It said it will not leave the protest site until its other demands are also met, including ₹1 crore in compensation to the families of all students who ended their lives because of the NEET paper leak, no action against any of the student protesters, and a public apology from the Rapid Action Force and the Delhi Police.