Rahul, Priyanka detained

Blood spots on the walls, overturned barricades, shattered mirrors and sandals strewn across the road.

A scarf here, broken glasses and a torn shirt there lie as remnants of the chaos that took over the Indian capital.

The heart of New Delhi – Parliament Street and Connaught Place, a colonial-era square – bears the imprint of Monday’s police crackdown on thousands of protesters, most of them students who had shut down the capital, demanding that Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resign.

A swarm of protesters reached parliament’s doorstep before retreating as the police tear-gassed them. More than 100 students were injured.

“I still cannot believe my eyes that I’m in Delhi,” said Anshul Dev, an 18-year-old who grew up in the capital.

“Part of it is because tear gas still stings,” he added, bursting into laughter with his group of friends. One of them had both legs bandaged.

“This government, whom our elders voted to power, is treating us like terrorists and criminals,” Dev said.

“This is our country, and we are reclaiming it from their hateful politics. We are here to break the spell.”

Meanwhile, Delhi Police on Tuesday forcibly removed and detained Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as well as SP chief Akhilesh Yadav from the protest site outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence, while an increasing number of politician reacted to the dharna and detention, with both praise and criticism.

Rahul Gandhi along with other Congress leaders, including the chief ministers of Karnataka and Kerala, started a sit-in protest around 3.30 pm against the police action on protesting students the day earlier.

As police swooped down on the site, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha could be seen lying on the ground and resisting as security personnel tried to pick him up. He was hurt in the process, reported PTI.

The Congress has been demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and a discussion on the NEET issue in Parliament. They are also asking for justice to the protesting students.

The Aam Aadmi Party, which has been openly backing the ongoing CJP protest, on Tuesday took a dig at the Congress’ dharna outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence, calling it a “jugalbandi” with the BJP government, and accused Rahul Gandhi of “weakening” the agitation.

Senior AAP leader and former Delhi chief minister Atishi questioned how Rahul was “allowed” to stage a dharna outside the PM’s residence, while the Modi government had refused to talk to Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) supporters despite their month-long protest.

“This is amazing! CJP and Sonam Wangchuk: One month protest at Jantar Mantar. Modi govt refuses to talk to them,” she said.

“Rahul Gandhi: Allowed to protest outside PM residence. In one hour, Modi Govt starts dialogue. Wah! Kya jugalbandi hai!,” the AAP leader said on X in Hindi.

AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh accused Rahul of “undermining” the agitation.

“Apparently, to undermine CJP’s protest, Modi got Rahul Gandhi to stage a protest at his own residence.”

Delhi AAP chief Saurabh Bharadwaj also attacked the Congress, alleging that its leaders were silent on the ongoing movement, while their social media handles and influencers aligned to them have been trying to “weaken” the CJP protest.

“Congress’s top leaders stay silent on GenZ movement, but their social media and influencers have been trying to weaken the Cockroach Movement from the very first day,” he said in a post on X.

The Centre on Tuesday said it is ready to discuss all issues relating to the NEET exam and the movement associated with it in Parliament, after Rahul Gandhi’s dharna.

In a strongly worded statement, Minister of State in PMO Jitendra Singh, who along with Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan met Gandhi and urged him to end his sit-in, alleged that the LoP “backtracked” from his earlier demand for a debate and said it does not befit a leader of his stature.

The minister also said that the Congress “has not given any notice to date for a formal discussion on this serious matter (NEET issue) as per rules”.

“For a senior leader like Shri Rahul Gandhi and the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) to go back on his word is unfortunate and contrary to every norm of democracy,” the minister said.

“The government is ready to discuss in Parliament all issues related to NEET and the associated movement… Shri Rahul Gandhi’s behaviour does not align with the principles of democracy,” Singh said.

On the other hand, Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy on Tuesday expressed solidarity with Rahul Gandhi.

“The Hope of India, Shri @RahulGandhi, is on protest for the future of India, seeking the resignation of Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah,” Reddy said in a post on X.

He said AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge and MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were encouraging and extending full support to the youth who were “protesting across the country”.

“We are with you, youth of India. Congress ka haath, Yuva ke saath,” (The Congress hand is with the youth), Reddy said.

Former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP-led Centre for detaining opposition party leaders, saying the move reflected an administration “increasingly afraid” of students, questions and peaceful democratic protest.

“First, the Modi government answered young Indians with lathis and tear gas. Now, it is using the police against elected representatives who are demanding accountability.

This is not the conduct of a confident government. It is the reaction of a government increasingly afraid of students, questions and peaceful democratic protest,” he said.

Stating that Rahul Gandhi had consistently stood with students against examination irregularities, unemployment and injustice, the former chief minister said detaining and manhandling opposition leaders would neither erase the suffering of students nor absolve the union government of responsibility.

“The PM must stop using the police to silence dissent and start answering the country. India’s youth deserve justice, accountability and respect-not repression,” he said.

Kerala chief minister V D Satheesan described the developments in Delhi as “extraordinary” and said the country’s youth and students, who represent its future, had come under brutal attack.

The chief minister said the protest march to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence was being led by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, AICC general secretaries Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and K C Venugopal.

“I, along with Karnataka Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and MPs from Kerala, was part of this march.

This is a time for the country to stand united. Everyone should join this cause,” Satheesan said.

Anger among India’s youth, the world’s largest Gen Z cohort, has been simmering for the past two months over a string of compromised entrance exams that affected millions of students.

In some cases, exam papers were leaked; in others, students who sought copies of their answer scripts found that they had been wrongly graded. More than 20 students died by suicide, many citing the paper leaks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not addressed the protests, even as he appeared smiling on Monday in parliament, barely metres away from demonstrators at one point.

On Tuesday afternoon, India’s leader of opposition, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, camped outside Modi’s residence in New Delhi, joined by other members of parliament – and gave a public call to assemble.

Analysts said the student protests face formidable obstacles before they can extract concessions from Modi’s government.

Yet the protests, the government’s refusal to hold any of its own accountable and the crackdown have also embellished a charge that the prime minister has long faced from critics and opposition parties – that although he is elected democratically, his government has weakened democratic checks and accountability.

‘Protests will continue’
After dark on Monday, Abhijeet Dipke – the leader of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a political pressure group that called the march – returned to a torn-down stage at the CJP’s main protest site near Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century observatory that is now an important location for protests.

“This barbaric Delhi police has beaten up our students and comrades. We are heartbroken,” he said, addressing about 2,000 protesters who stayed back after the crackdown.

“We will continue to resist and demand accountability from the government. We will not back down until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns.”

Dipke told the protesters that the Delhi police “brutally cracked down to crush our hopes” that Pradhan would resign. “It was only our first call to march,” he said. “There will be more. Do not lose hope.”

Volunteers began to pick up rubbish, tie a tent together and sweep the road at the Jantar Mantar site.

This is where more than 100 protesters from student unions have been sleeping for nearly a month to join Sonam Wangchuk, a prominent activist, in a hunger strike seeking the minister’s resignation.

The police also rampaged through these student unions’ tarpaulin tents and belongings on Monday.

The movement gained momentum last week after the police forcibly removed Wangchuk from the protest site and restricted him to a government-run hospital, where he remains.

His family and the CJP have called it “illegal detention”, but the Delhi High Court has refused immediate relief.

Wangchuk, 59, broke his hunger strike before the march on Monday. However, later he said he would be at it again after “seeing the brutality” against “peacefully protesting students”.

The Delhi police have filed at least five criminal cases against protesters related to violence, stone-throwing and vandalism during the march.

As thousands of demonstrators assembled in New Delhi, two CJP spokespeople met JP Nadda, India’s health minister, to convey the movement’s three demands: Pradhan’s immediate resignation, Wangchuk’s discharge from hospital and compensation of nearly $105,000 for the families of those students who died by suicide.

However, they were disillusioned by sunset. “It was a waste of our time,” said Ashutosh Ranka, a CJP spokesperson. “We were made to wait for four hours, and the minister met us for 10 minutes.”

Nadda said he met with the spokespeople “in a cordial atmosphere”, adding that he “requested all the protesters to end their sit-in and assist the administration in restoring normalcy”.

Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, CJP leader Dipke said: “If the government wants to have talks again, they have to come to Jantar Mantar. We won’t be going there.”

Some students have been calling for the decentralisation of the protests, so they could move beyond the CJP to demand accountability from the government.

And political analysts who spoke with Al Jazeera said maintaining the credibility of the CJP’s leadership remains one of the biggest immediate hurdles for the movement in the face of an unprecedented crowd turnout for the march.

Confronting a ‘strong man’ Since the police forcibly removed Wangchuk from the protest site, the movement and demonstrators have called on Modi to resign. Slogans targeting the prime minister reverberated through central New Delhi on Monday.

The large number of protesters “is itself a big challenge to the prime minister”, said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author and Modi biographer.

As of now, he told Al Jazeera, “Modi has decided to continue with his instinctive response of not giving any concessions to protesters and continuing to project himself as a strong man with completely unshakeable will”.

The biographer added that the prime minister, who has been in power since 2014, “does not care before crushing a protest or using brute force until it cuts through his voting constituencies”.

“They will go by their gut response of a crackdown. Modi would not want to emerge from this with a bloody nose,” he added, “despite a lot of anger among youth, which shows the undercurrent of anti-incumbency.”

The simmering anger found a vent as Gen Z rallied behind a joke, the Cockroach Janta Party, after India’s chief justice equated government critics and unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites”.

Memes, online rants and students taking photos in front of police have flooded the internet in India, where they expressed anguish and took digs at the police crackdown.

Meghnad S, a YouTuber, was among the crowd of thousands in front of the Indian Parliament on Monday.

“It was insanity, and the crowd was really riled up due to police actions. It was cruel,” he told Al Jazeera from the protest site on Monday night.

“But movements are always messy. This is very difficult to control. We are all cockroaches, after all. And we are still swarming here.”

By Tuesday morning, the crowd had packed the site yet again. The cockroaches had returned.