Union minister JP Nadda on Wednesday said that any discussion on alleged irregularities in the education system should take place in Parliament and urged the Opposition not to politicise the matter.

“Tell us how much time you [the Opposition] want – 12 hours, 18 hours – the government is ready for a discussion,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader said.

Nadda was addressing his first press conference since the Cockroach Janta Party called for protests demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged lapses in the conduct of competitive examinations.

His remarks also came hours after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologise for the police crackdown on protesters during Monday’s march to Parliament, when security personnel fired tear gas and carried out a lathi-charge to disperse demonstrators in Central Delhi. On Tuesday, the Leader of the Opposition, along with his sister, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, was detained while protesting outside the prime minister’s residence against the police action.

During the press conference, Nadda accused Gandhi of selectively highlighting paper leak cases and listed alleged irregularities in conduct of examinations in several states and Union Territories led by non-Bharatiya Janata Party governments. These included Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab, Kerala and Karnataka.

The government in West Bengal has since changed to one led by the BJP.

Responding to Gandhi’s claim earlier in the day that more than 150 examination papers had leaked in the past decade, Nadda said the allegation would be investigated.

“... [But], taking political mileage out of this is not proper,” he said, urging the Opposition to “to address this [matter] together and move forward towards a lasting solution”.

Nadda said that Parliament should discuss where paper leaks had occurred, who was responsible, how the Union government had responded and what the state governments should do to prevent such incidents.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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