The political fallout from weeks of exam paper-leak protests reached the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, as Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and BJP leader JP Nadda clashed over police action against student demonstrators.

Kharge raised the issue of a Delhi Police team’s attempt to detain SFI leader Aishe Ghosh from the CPM’s AKG Bhavan office on Tuesday, calling it “very shameful” that police would “barge into a national party office and try to arrest.”

“I request you, people who have gone there unauthorised, they should be punished,” Kharge said, adding, “Democracy is not safe, people are not safe.”

Nadda, as Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, defended the police response, describing it as “a very normal law and order situation that we have to understand,” and maintaining that police had “acted according to the law and order situation.”

He added that “any student who is into activism will have to face such a situation,” citing his own arrest as a student activist during the Emergency — a framing that positions today’s crackdown as continuous with an older political tradition of student dissent.

The episode traces back to the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march, when protesters linked to the Cockroach Janta Party marched from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament over demands tied to alleged exam paper leaks — a movement that has already reshaped one ministerial portfolio.

The march turned confrontational after security personnel attempted to stop it, with reports of lathi-charge and tear gas shelling during the clashes.

The protests culminated in the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on July 25, a reminder of how quickly sustained, organised public pressure can force a cabinet-level change in India.

The Rajya Sabha exchange unfolded as the Lok Sabha continued debating the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, the legislative response to the same underlying grievance that triggered the protests.

(Image: Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India (GODL-India), via Press Information Bureau)