Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi must apologise to students for the police brutality against them and resign along with Home Minister Amit Shah.

Interacting with reporters in Parliament House complex, Gandhi added that he met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in the morning along with other MPs and conveyed that the opposition wants to discuss the students’ issue.

“He (Birla) said he will have to ask the government. So understand, the speaker is telling us that to debate in Parliament he has to take permission from the government,” Gandhi said.

“The issue is of students and future’s youth and the way people are being beaten up, this is completely ‘unIndian’. Modi ji has not even apologised for what has happened yesterday,” the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

These students are protesting over the education and testing system, he said.

“The whole country knows that the education system and the testing system is broken and has ceased to exist,” he said.

Thousands of young and angry people converged near Parliament on the first day of the Monsoon session on Monday to push for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, only to be pushed back by lathis and teargas shells.

According to Gandhi, the testing system has been hollowed out by termites and that is what the students are stating.

“There is nothing wrong with it. We have been saying this, I have been doing presentation after presentation about this. Why is the prime minister silent? What is the reason? He should apologise to the students and stop this nonsense of police people thrashing students, it is completely wrong,” Gandhi said.

The point is that this is no way to treat the young people of this country, he said.

“The young people of this country do not have any opportunities. All the doors are closed. There is only one door that is open, which is the door of the competitive exam and that door is also destroyed,” he said.

The students are not just complaining about the education system but about their future, he said.

“They are saying that ‘in this country today, because of Mr Adani and Mr Ambani, because of the RSS’ complete takeover of the education system, because of ‘pracharaks’ becoming vice chancellors of universities, we have no future’. This is not just about education, this is about the future of young people.

“They look at Mr Ambani’s wedding and they watch thousand crores being spent over there and they have no money to open a business if they want, they have no future. That is what this is about, this is much bigger than simply education. This is students of this country saying — ‘in India, we have no future, we want a future’,” Gandhi said.

He said the students demands are legitimate and there was nothing wrong with that.

“Instead of saying ‘ok, we are going to work to improve the education system, we are going to work to fix the testing system’, the prime minister, I don’t know what he is doing?” he said.

Asked about the opposition’s demand that Pradhan should resign, Gandhi said Pradhan is an intermediary.

“Absolutely, he should resign but Dharmendra Pradhan has not beaten up these students, but the home minister (Amit Shah) has, he should resign and the home minister reports to the prime minister, he should resign,” Gandhi said.

Tagging a clip of his remarks, Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X, “The country’s students are saying — ‘We have no future’. And this government’s ministers are saying – ‘We won’t lose our seats.’ In a country where students lose their future and ministers don’t lose their seats — there is no justice at all.” 
Opposition parties on Monday launched a blistering attack on the government over the police action against the Cockroach Janta Party-led protest during the ‘Chalo Sansad’ march on the Neet paper leak issue, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi dubbing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “most anti-youth” PM in the country’s history.

The CJP accused Delhi Police of using excessive force against protesters to prevent them from reaching Parliament, alleging that several students were injured and activist Sonam Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali J Angmo, was pushed around.

Delhi Police, however, denied that Angmo was assaulted, saying the reports were “completely false and misleading”. “No individuals were subjected to targeted assault,” it said.

Opposition parties protested over the Neet paper leak issue in Parliament and demanded a discussion, stalling proceedings on the opening day of the Monsoon session.