Neha Bora on NEET Paper Leaks, Student Anger, and Political Change

The protests at Jantar Mantar and in other parts of the country have truly galvanised the nation. A sign of hope. A return to democracy. What does it all mean? To better understand what the protests were about, what they are, and what they might imply for the future, Neha Bora, president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) and one of the central figures in the protests, spoke to Amit Baruah in the 18th episode of SpeakEasy. Edited excerpts:

You’re the national president of the All India Students’ Association, and you must have participated and led many protests before. Tell us, what was different about these protests and how come they came to galvanise so many people both offline and online?

I think these protests, initially everybody was skeptical about it. Our participation in it meant not appreciation for the first time, but questions, scrutiny, all of that. So when, on 6th of June, if I’m not wrong, the first call was given at Jantar Mantar, and we participated in it, and AISA activists were there. We had mobilised for it. And then when we went back from the protest, suddenly being part of a protest was a matter of great scrutiny, I mean very rightly, people did not know who these people who were claiming to be representatives of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) were, what their current political affiliations were. Some of them were in Aam Aadmi Party before, but what were their current political affiliations? What did they want? Whether these protests were just a way of letting off steam that was building up against the current regime, or whether it was something more malicious and in fact, sponsored and a subsidiary of the RSS. That’s what everybody was also saying.

But I think beyond all of this, when we got down on the 6th of June for the protest, and then there was a protest in Lucknow, which AISA activist Comrade Manish, who was also on hunger strike with me, he was the one who was mobilising for it—from permissions to campaigns. Then Abhijeet Dipke and others reached out to us, and then we invited Abhijeet for the protest in Lucknow. Then CJP also got in touch with our comrades in Bangalore such as Comrade Clifton, and in other places in the country it was organised jointly by student organisations as well.

Neha Bora is the president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), and during the NEET-UG protests she was on a hunger strike for 23 days. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

In all of these places, there was one thing consistent and that was that the common people, the common students. They did not care who these protesters were and who they are affiliated with. Because the anger against the BJP and the fact that it has become a normal part of the lives of the students of this country, that if you prepare for an examination, there is a 50-50 chance that it might get leaked, and there is a 50-50 chance that your exam will not get leaked. And this is accepted by everybody in this country. It’s accepted by TV media, it’s accepted by the parents who put in all of their financial resources into sending their children to a coaching institution or to private institutions, it’s accepted by them, and it’s accepted by the students of this country.

It need not even be a very central examination like the medical entrance exam (NEET) or the JEE exam for engineering entrance, something as basic as the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission Lekhpal Exam or the Uttar Pradesh Police Sub-Inspector exam. So, from a low-level, low-ranking official in the police, to a doctor—all of these exams get leaked in this country. Whether it is students from villages where there is no robust educational system, to cities like Kota, Sikar, Delhi, which are hubs for coaching, all of them were affected. Students who were living in villages, students who were living in cities, everybody was affected by this crumbling, completely rotten system of education and entrance examinations. What was different this time was that all of that anger that has been building up for the past few years, all of that got channelised into something which people thought was a fun thing. The CJP was a satirical platform. It was something that you could make fun of.

You were saying that these protests were different because they didn’t know who the leaders were and they didn’t really care.

Yeah, they didn’t really care. And I think a lot of things coincided. First was the fact that the Chief Justice called young people or RTI activists or social media influencers “cockroaches”. Now, the term cockroaches has been used in history again and again for a section of the population that was unwanted. It has been used during ethnic cleansing against ethnic groups that were facing violence. It has been used for the longest time for the working people, for the poor people. It has been used in this country for Muslims. It has been used for Dalits. It has been used for a wide section of the people, all of them unwanted in this society. So that was one incident that coincided.

The second incident was the fact that there was such massive paper leak in the NEET examinations this year as well. It happened in 2024, when we were sitting on Jantar Mantar. We occupied Jantar Mantar for four days. There were protests then, and even then there was increasing pressure on Dharmendra Pradhan. We know because we were protesting and when we were talking to the media or other political people, they were telling us that there is a lot of pressure, and it was feeling like he was going to resign. Dharmendra Pradhan was going to resign. But then it did not happen, and then this year again the paper leak happened.

But it was not just the paper leak which happened. The 12th board examination happened, and they brought in a new system of marking, the On-Screen Marking (OSM), in which lakhs upon lakhs of students were affected. There were students who were writing on social media, showing their answer sheets and saying that, look, this handwriting and the answer sheets of all my other question papers—the handwriting doesn’t match. I’ve been marked for an answer sheet that I did not even write. And those students were being called Pakistanis and anti-nationals. That coincided.

Also Read | How the cockroaches have reimagined India

The Common University Entrance Test (CUET-UG), which happens throughout the country as one exam for entrance to undergraduate courses, also happened. Students were called to their centres and made to sit for three hours before they were told that the server was down, so their exam would happen some other day. But the second shift of the same exam still took place. The question papers are fairly the same; it’s just an up-down of the questions. Then, while the protests were going on, while we were sitting on a hunger strike, the UGC NET Sociology exam happened. One day before the exam, there was a PDF getting circulated online. From that PDF, about 120 to 160 questions were the same as the questions in the exam the next day. So, the fact that there was so much pressure on the government—and by all means, they would have wanted no paper leaks to happen, no mismanagement to take place, and no technical glitches to occur, but the system is so...

Is this sheer mismanagement or callousness?

Not just sheer mismanagement. I would say they’ve erected a system that not only creates opportunities for exam leaks; in fact, the NTA serves as a front for this entire paper leak mafia. We, in the student movement, strongly believe that it’s not a technical glitch happening in the system. Nor is it a few corrupt individuals causing problems. The entire system has now been designed and reconstructed in such a way that, even if the government wants to, they cannot escape paper leaks.

At the height of the protests, perhaps on the 18th or 19th day of Sonam Wangchuk’s hunger strike, an examination is happening and the paper is getting leaked. Can you imagine the sheer incapability of the system to deal with examinations? An examination that they conduct every year, they’re not able to hold properly. So it was all of these things that coincided at the right place, at the right time, and the aggregate anger of so many years consolidated itself into the mass-scale protests that we saw in the country.

And it was so beautiful because earlier, how do you suppress protests? One way is to label them with things that are considered worse than anything else, which is calling somebody an anti-national, calling somebody a Pakistani, calling them American agents or Chinese agents or Pakistani agents. So, that was seen as extremely shameful, or something after which people would just be quiet. People would just stop talking. Once your public trial happens on Godi media, you would go silent because then it’s not just a few BJP people who think that you are a bad apple or that you are bad for the country.

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke addresses a press conference as party spokepersons Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka look on, amid the protest over the NEET paper leak, at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi, Friday, July 24, 2026. | Photo Credit: PTI

For someone like you, who comes from an AISA background, is it worse?

I am from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and I’m from a Left organisation. So a lot of these abuses and allegations that they throw, they are aimed at us—all of it started from JNU.

Now, everybody, including the “Godi media”, wants to talk to you.

Oh, it is so funny that these Godi media people would come to the protests, their mics would be there, but our protests were consistently absent from their news channels. The only times we got any coverage were when Dharmendra Pradhan would call us terrorists or Nitin Nabeen would call us viruses. So, the only publicity we got from them was negative publicity. And now it is so funny because they are having to call us on their news channels, and they can’t even misbehave with us because, if they do, the entire young generation is going to be up in arms. So even they have to behave properly with us. The maximum that a Godi media anchor has tried to misbehave with me is by saying, “Oh, but Gen Z is not just with you. Gen Z is also with the BJP. They vote.”

Somewhere or the other, what they’re trying to do now is pit student organisations against the CJP, which we are resolutely denying. We are saying that this movement was the hard work of a lot of people, including the CJP spokespersons and the student organisations. So this victory—all of this victory—is ours. All of this victory was won united by all of us. And no matter how much you try, you can’t divide us now. Everybody knows that all of us sat day and night at Jantar Mantar, and we won this. Something I would like to point out again and again, and which I do point out again and again, is how these protests were different from the others. Like I was saying earlier, the Godi media channels would portray protesters as people who have nothing better to do, or as a leftist cabal, or JNU-motivated people who just want to protest because they want to destabilise the nation—there were no takers for this kind of narrative.

Did the protests see a Hindu-Muslim effort as well?

There was, of course, an effort from our side. We actively tried to put out that narrative because these protests were not just about Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. Of course, there have been repeated demands for his resignation over the years. But this protest was also about the kind of politics that has prevailed in this nation, where even when you make an attempt to fight for what is right. To fight for, for example, equal citizenship, to fight against the farm laws, to fight against sexual harassers being in the government, as in the case of the wrestlers’ protest, or to fight for workers’ rights, as in Gurgaon, Manesar, and all of these places.

The government consistently divided protesters from one another. It was very easy, and the government did it so well by using a lot of institutions: the media, social media, and everything in their power. They would say that the citizenship protests were protests by Muslims. They would say that the farmers’ protests were protests by Khalistanis. They would say that these workers’ protests were protests by antisocial elements. They would constantly name and label these protesters. They were constantly trying to demean democratic protests and constantly trying to tell the broader section of society: “Look, this doesn’t concern you. It’s only the concern of a few people. Let them scream and shout. You maintain your distance.”

The NEET protests saw a large-scale participation of women at the venue in New Delhi. | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

They also ensured that people maintained their distance through the sheer state repression that these other protests faced: the level of repression that the equal citizenship protests faced, the prosecution that the students faced in those protests, and the prosecution that the farmers faced during the farmers’ protest and other protests. With these student protests, they found it very difficult to label them as Left protests, or Dalit student Ambedkarite protests, or Muslim protests. They found it very difficult to do that while the protests were going on because the protest itself had very large-scale participation by women, people from marginalised gender identities, Muslims, and people from the Sikh community. So it was a very good space in which to exist.

I think we as student organisations, specifically we as AISA, whenever we got the mic, consistently talked about the fact that this movement is not just telling us that the powers, no matter how repressive they are, can be fought. This movement is telling us that if we hold each other’s hand, if we fight united in this struggle against this regime, which seems all-powerful and all-repressive, we can register a victory. And the kind of politics of hate they have been peddling for the past 12 years will stand exposed, will stand defeated only if we stand with each other. And that, somewhere or the other, was a very resounding success in terms of the narrative as well.

That is why, once the protests were nearing their end, once the conversations were going on, and it was clear that the government would agree to, if not all, at least some of our demands, they started picking up people. It happened with Mohammad Junaid—we met him yesterday. He has a robust team of lawyers now, so he’s better. He’s doing well. He feels supported by people. He feels that the young students of this country are standing behind him and that they’re going to fight. If anything happens to him, they’re going to be on the streets. And the kind of witch hunt that happened in Bihar—I was in Bihar three days ago.

What is the kind of information do you have? Is this witch hunt continuing in other States? Or have there been some releases of student detainees as well?

There have been releases of student detainees now everywhere. News has started coming in. In Bihar also, people have started getting released. There was an earlier release of about 355 people who were juveniles and young women. They were released by the police three days before the others were released. But yesterday, the rest of the people—over 300 students—were released. So, there were over 600 arrests made by the Bihar Police from the 24th to the 26th.

We have seen the state functioning by dividing protesters and students along the lines of Muslim protesters and the rest, Dalit protesters and the rest—these are the kinds of narratives that the state peddles. That was being picked up by the police, and they were specifically targeting students based on their names. There were Muslim students who were being told police encounters will be done against them. There were Dalit students whose names the police were asking, and when they realised that someone was a Dalit student, that student faced intimidation and violence at the hands of the Bihar Police. That was happening. But as of today, most of the students in Bihar have been released.

In Bengal also, a few students have been released, and the kind of repression that we thought was getting built up—because even Suvendu Adhikari put out a statement saying that they were going to make 70 more arrests, and charges were being filed under laws like the NSA and the Goonda Act—that conversation has now died down. And it seems like people will be released even in Bengal. A few students have been released, and a few more are going to be released. There were about 16 students in total. Fourteen were released earlier, out of whom 13 were Muslim students. And I think Bengal is seeing, ever since the BJP came to power, a politics of vengeance against Muslims and against the working class there. And that is clearly being reflected in the arrests being made of students as well.

Police personnel detain supporters of the CJP during a protest demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged examination irregularities and the NEET paper leak, at Sanvidhan Square, in Nagpur on July 23. | Photo Credit: Snehal Sontakke/ANI

In Assam, we got to know that students are getting released. In Mumbai, we haven’t got an update because there were two students who were arrested there. We are trying to get an update from there. But overall, it seems like the pressure that we were building after these protests happened—legal pressure through cases filed in different States, as well as in the Supreme Court and the High Courts, along with calls for protests—is working. There was a protest march in Kolkata. There was also a call that we gave on July 30 that if all the students were not released, we were going to have protests all over Bihar. I think that is working.

The fact that protests are happening even in Delhi, and people are overwhelmingly standing in support. And this slogan—that we are not going to leave behind even one person—has really caught on. This movement is not complete. This movement is not successful unless and until all of those students across the country who have been detained for protesting against paper leaks are released and all cases against them are taken back. All of these narratives have caught on and students are standing with each other. I think because of that, the government is abiding.

The protests seem to have galvanised a section of people whom we possibly thought were apolitical. They’ve shown themselves to be very political, especially the young people. But will these protests have any kind of effect on how the system itself has been working, whether it’s the Election Commission, the judiciary, or the bureaucracy? Do you think these protests have the potential to affect other people and encourage them to just do their jobs in a fair manner?

I actually think this is beyond Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. I think one of the things that will remain with me, even after many years from today, is that during the protests, and even during the hunger strike, while we were sitting on a hunger strike, people—erstwhile BJP supporters, old people, middle-aged people, people who we used to make fun of as WhatsApp uncles and all—would come up and sit on the beds that we were sleeping on during the hunger strike. I can’t even count how many people have cried in front of me.

When it started happening in the beginning, I couldn’t really understand it. It started happening from the day the hunger strike began. As the hunger strike went on, people got more and more emotional. They could see what was happening. Some were the same people who would come back after four or five days, but there were also completely new people who had been following us on social media. They would make the trip from Jaipur, Maharashtra, Bihar, even Assam and Manipur. They would make that trip from these places and come to visit us for nothing else but to apologise.

They would come, sit on our beds, cry for half an hour or 45 minutes, and apologise. They would say that it was their fault that the BJP came to power. It was their fault that they brought the BJP to power again and again, allowed them to form the government and the students were suffering for their decisions. There were students who committed suicide after the NEET paper leak. Their family members came. They apologised to us. They said, “I voted for the BJP. I made my entire family vote for the BJP, and now nothing in this world can bring back my son.” All of these things were said to us by people whom we had never met before, who we did not know, and who did not know us. All of them apologised to us.

That is why I said earlier that the same people who would be clapping at their television screens when protesters were called anti-national or Pakistanis—their TV screens were lying silent after the July 20 violence. I mean, they were lying silent even before, I would say. But after the July 20 violence, there were no takers. There were no takers for the BJP ministers’ narrative that, “oh, we felt so threatened that the protesters were coming for our very lives.” Nobody believed it. Nobody believed that 15-year-olds, 17-year-olds, and 18-year-olds who were trying to march to Parliament, who were trying to raise the demand for a better education system and for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, were after anybody’s lives.

Neha Bora was visited by many parents while on a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar. They would sit at her bed and apologise. | Photo Credit: Salman Ali/PTI

Among those young people were parents who were coming to the protest for the first time. They were bringing their own children to the protest for the first time, and today they have lathi marks on their bodies. They were affected by tear gas shells. It was these very parents, who used to vote for the BJP, who are now standing shoulder to shoulder with us in this struggle. And I think that is what scared the BJP government so much.

In fact, what do I say about other parents? My family are staunch BJP supporters, and we have had very big disagreements in my house. My mother came to the protest on the 19th, one day before the Sansad March. She saw people whom she used to think... people she never agreed with, and whom she had asked me to stay away from. In fact, she scolded me and tried every emotional blackmail in the mother’s playbook to ask me to stay away from them. She saw those people sleeping on the ground because there was a narrative that I could be picked up, or that my other comrades who were on hunger strike could be picked up on the 20th or before the 20th so that the momentum could be dissipated. We got to know that the police would lathi-charge inside Jantar Mantar on the 20th. My mother heard this, and 15 minutes later, the lathi-charge happened and the tear gas shells were fired. She saw dozens upon dozens of students coming into our tent because we had three doctors and medical supplies there. We were hunger strikers, so we could not join because we were not in a condition to do so.

Dozens upon dozens of protesters—17-year-olds, 16-year-olds—came into our tent. One came with a broken hand. Another had a lathi injury on his neck, so it was all swollen. His neck was bent because he had been hit there. There was a woman whose leg had been slit open—I think by those nails they put in the lathis. My mother saw all of it. And the police that she believed were so honest, so sincere—I think she believed all good things about the security forces and the police—she saw what they did to protesters. The day Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, she called me and asked me to congratulate everybody in AISA and tell them that they had done a good job.

So what do I say? I mean, it’s not just other parents. My own house. I saw this happening in my own house. And this is what truly, I think, scared the BJP into asking for and getting Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, because the people who were at Jantar Mantar after the July 20 violence were no longer just asking for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, they were asking Modi to go.

So you were talking about your own family. How have you dealt with that?

It’s been a very long time since this disagreement has been going on in my house. Since I came to Delhi and started being political, this disagreement has existed in my house. It becomes very violent at times. I think I have been independent, even in terms of my finances, more or less, and in the decisions I make in my life, ever since my second or third year of my bachelor’s, because that was a breaking point.

I saw on social media platforms that children were severing their relationships with their parents. There was a lot of anger against the government, but there was also a lot of anger against their own parents, uncles, and families.

I think this was an overwhelming emotion at Jantar Mantar. Our older generations, or people in our families who were staunch BJP supporters, believed the BJP because it gave them a false idea of what its politics was going to be. The BJP constantly told them that its politics was about Indian culture, about Indian traditions, and that was what it stood for, while it was destroying those very traditions, that very culture. So, our elders thought that, for them, it was probably a matter of maintaining the status quo in the house.

When the BJP told them that it stood for Indian values, Indian culture, and Indian traditions. They perhaps thought that the BJP would ensure that their kids stayed close to them, that their kids learned the kind of stories they had learned, or believed in the kind of ethos or values that they believed in. But that was not true, and young people know it now. And they demonstrated that none of what you say is what it is. And now even the older generations know that it was not really about traditions. It was not about India. It was not about Indian culture. It was just about being in power. It was just the RSS’ way, the BJP’s way, of packaging itself to the Indian masses so that it seemed more palatable.

The youth at the protest were disillusioned with the BJP even though many came from families with staunch BJP supporters. | Photo Credit: Sumit/ANI

Coming back to the fact that the RSS was a militant organisation right from its conception, it has betrayed what the Indian people have stood for. The RSS betrayed the Indian freedom struggle while young people like myself, like the people who were at Jantar Mantar, were participating in the Quit India Movement, while they were laying down their lives. People in the British police were giving up their jobs, saying that they would no longer serve their British masters and would stand with the people of this country. Indian police and security personnel in the British forces were refusing to fire on Indian protesters who were asking for freedom. This is what India was doing. The RSS, meanwhile, was taking out leaflets upon leaflets saying that young people should concern themselves only with their own affairs and not participate in the Quit India Movement. That’s what the RSS was doing.

Nobody can unwrite the fact that the RSS and its many functionaries are responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Nobody who has read history, who knows history, who wants to understand history and make sure that it does not get repeated, can go back from the fact that, at the peak of the freedom struggle, when this entire country was galvanising itself into one united force against the British, the RSS was constantly peddling, even then, an anti-Muslim narrative.

Do you think the young people you spoke to get some of these points that you’re making?

Yes, now they do. Because even at Jantar Mantar, a lot of the posters that came up were about this. They were about the fact that, “You believe in Godse, we believe in Bhagat Singh. That’s the principal difference between you and me, and that is why you must go.” People who believe in Godse will not govern this country. This kind of narrative was constantly being repeated by people.

There were also posters saying, “You keep saying that this country is not for Muslims. You keep talking about a Hindu Rashtra. I am a Hindu. I don’t want your Hindu Rashtra.” That is why all of those people who are saying, “No, don’t make it political,” should know that it was as political as Jantar Mantar can get, as political as any protest can get. It was talking about the RSS’ legacy of betraying the people. It was talking about how they stood for Godse and we stand for Bhagat Singh. It was talking about how their politics of division has brought the country to this place where a paper leak is not a big deal, but a Hindu-Muslim narrative suddenly gets all the eyeballs. People were constantly talking about that.

CJP supporter protesting at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi on Thursday, July, 23, 2026. | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

I think these protests revealed so much about what the young people of this country do not want anymore from the ruling dispensation. And I think what this movement gave, the lessons that this movement taught all of us in this country, went beyond the fact that you can take accountability from fascists as well. It was, in fact, the lesson that the BJP’s politics of hatred, the BJP’s politics of division based on caste, religion, gender, and all other things, can be defeated. That is the one most resolute thing that I will carry for the rest of my life. And that is why, when I came back from the hunger strike and was talking on the mic, that is what I said: the young people must remember this feeling right now, this feeling of what it is to fight for one another and not against one another. Because that is what we have known in the past 12 years

But now, what we have learned from the citizenship protests, the farmers’ protests, the wrestlers’ protests, and the workers’ protests—all of these lessons became aggregated into this movement, where we stood with one another, where we fought for one another. And the young people of this country must remember this feeling because this is India. That is not India. And in the coming years, we will be called upon again and again to remember this feeling.

Also Read | The complete guide to the CJP-led student movement against NEET

That’s the other thing I wanted to ask you. Do you think this momentum will be sustained? You’re in the business, so you know that it’s not always easy to mobilise people. Do you think young people—those who came to the protest as well as those who watched it on their phones—have absorbed this? Has it seeped into their minds?

I do think that it has seeped into their minds. But I also think that once such a big movement is nearing the completion of its immediate goals—I would not say nearing the completion of the movement, but its immediate goals—it falls upon those people who received immense support while the movement was going on, people like me. I got so much support from people whom I did not know, and who did not know me. I guess it falls upon us—people like me, spokespersons of the CJP, student organisations and their activists, who received such support from the young people.

It falls upon us that, with everything that we have within our being, with all the inspiration that we got from the people and the students who participated in these protests, from the victory, from the encouragement of the victory of this movement, we give everything that we received from this movement to the movements that remain incomplete, to the movements that are currently being fought in this country. Because our movement was part of the larger fight in this country for democracy, the larger fight in this country for preserving the democratic, socialist, secular fabric upon which this country was built.

It falls upon me, my comrades, my other friends, and the young people who were part of these protests, who led these protests, who exposed the government’s narrative during these protests. It falls upon all of us that we do not let this momentum die down. We convert this momentum into the momentum of the other fights that are being fought in this country, be it the fight against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which is something so fundamental. It changes the very nature of how the Indian people will exist.

Because it’s not just about the fact that your name is not in the SIR, so you can’t vote. It is about the fact that people whose names are not appearing are being denied basic government facilities. What they wanted to do with the NRC, they’re doing here with the SIR. And that is what is happening across the country. In Karnataka, in Delhi, in Bengal, we saw the disenfranchisement of such a big section of the population.

That is an important fight that we are fighting. The fight against delimitation is an important fight that we are fighting. The fight for workers’ rights, women’s reservation—all of these are very important fights that we are fighting in this country. And the momentum from this young students’ movement must also translate into these movements. That’s how we see it.

Amit Baruah was The Hindu’s Diplomatic Correspondent and Foreign Editor of Hindustan Times. He is now an independent journalist.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.