Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at the NDTV Business Leadership Awards 2026
New Delhi:
The government never tried to stop the protest by students over exam paper leaks, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told NDTV today at the Business Leadership Awards 2026.
She was responding to questions by NDTV on whether the protests caught the government off-guard.
“Well, I’m not undermining their energy. But the young in every generation join protests,” she said. “I’m not undermining what happened in the last couple of weeks. You rightly recalled that when I was in JNU and I’m sure generations before me and generations after us will still do it, the young get very touched by things which are not ideal,” the finance minister, an alumnus of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University long known for student politics on campus, told NDTV.
The satirical political group Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which spearheaded the protest over exam paper leaks, called off the agitation yesterday after Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as Union Education Minister. His resignation was the main demand by the group.
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