Modi’s midnight message promises strict action without timelines, again 

Just before midnight on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned to his phone camera to self-record a video message. Released shortly before midnight, the Prime Minister said the government had already prepared a draft legislation and would seek Cabinet approval before introducing it in Parliament during the ongoing Monsoon Session. It was also, notably, the second such post the PM had made on the issue in a single day. 

Cockroaches create chaos 

The trigger was familiar. The Cockroach Janta Party, a youth-led group, has been camping at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar since 6 June, demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged examination irregularities. The movement gained further weight when environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk joined with an indefinite hunger strike at the protest site. 

In the video, Modi struck a familiar, empathetic note. “Paper leaks are not an ordinary issue. They are extremely painful for lakhs of students and their parents,” he said, adding that several steps had been taken over the last two-and-a-half months to prevent and curb them, with those responsible identified, arrested and jailed. He said the government’s foremost priority after the NEET-UG leak was ensuring students did not lose an academic year, which was why the retest was conducted at the earliest opportunity. 

But the headline promise, once again, was procedural. The Prime Minister said officials had worked through the day to prepare a draft proposal on fast-track courts and stricter legal provisions, which would be discussed at Friday’s Cabinet meeting before being tabled in Parliament next week. The statement followed the Delhi High Court’s announcement of a fast-track court to hear such cases. 

All talk, no action 

For a government that has now spoken on this issue at nearly every turn for three years, that timeline, or lack of one, is exactly what critics say is the problem. 

Go back to October 2023, when Modi vowed the “paper-leak mafia will be held accountable and punished,” and that those who played with young people’s futures “will not be spared.” A month later, in November, he told the nation the issue had been “dealt with very strictly”, without clarifying how. By April 2024, he said the government had “now begun taking action.” In July that year, addressing the Lok Sabha, he assured the House that the government was very serious on the issue and the guilty would not be spared, with necessary steps being taken on a war footing. Again, no clarity was offered on what action would be taken, or who would be held accountable. Another assurance followed in December. 

Each statement promised resolve. None came with a deadline. In between, a new law was enacted, and now, once more, a fast-track court is being promised, and the last seems like a hazy memory that never happened. Critics also point to an uncomfortable contradiction: the National Testing Agency itself has previously maintained there was no organised paper leak at all, even as the government has separately spoken of arrests, mafias and crackdowns tied to exactly such leaks, making the issue something akin to Schrödinger’s cat. 

Opposition weighs in 

The opposition was quick to seize on the timing and tone of Thursday’s video. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s response was blunt: sack Pradhan, punish those who cracked down on protesting students, and apologise, he said, rather than offer what he called a “pathetic midnight video.” 

For the students still gathered at Jantar Mantar, and the lakhs who sat the NEET-UG retest after results were declared on 19 July, the question is no longer whether the Prime Minister takes paper leaks seriously. He has said as much, repeatedly, for three years. The question is why each fresh promise arrives looking so much like the last one, still short on the one thing that would make it different: a deadline anyone can hold the government to.