· Refers to Minister’s defence of Bilkis Bano’s rapists
· Venugopal questions absence of PM and HM from LS during debate on Public Examinations Amendment Bill
The sundya Mail
NEW DELHI,: Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi today blasted the Prime Minister for appointing someone who defended rapists as the Union Education Minister of the country.
In an informal interaction with reporters outside the Parliament today, Rahul Gandhi noted, “as the Education Minister of India, the BJP puts a man who is a defender of rapists. That is the filthiest type of man. There can be no filthier man than somebody who says that rapists need protection. That is the Education Minister of India today”.
Questioning the Prime Minister’s choice, he remarked, “it is a strange reaction from the PM. There are so many people in his Cabinet; he could have chosen any one of them. But he chooses a person who protects rapists”.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha during the discussion on the Public Examinations Amendment Bill 2026, Congress general secretary in charge organisation, KC Venugopal questioned the absence of the Prime Minister and the Home Minister.
“Why are the PM and the HM absent when such an important Bill, Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, related to students and youth is being discussed?” he asked.
Demanding that all those responsible for attacking students must be identified and held accountable, Venugopal said, students were protesting peacefully and they are not enemies of the state. “They are citizens of India, and the government must answer for treating the country’s young citizens so brutally”, he added.
The Congress general secretary said that even the Opposition leaders had to endure this brutality at the hands of the police. “The way the police treated the Leader of the Opposition in this country was witnessed by the entire world”, he said, adding, “in a democracy, you have to listen to everybody’s voice, but the Modi government is not ready to listen”.
Maintaining that this fight was not about one examination, he said that it was about repairing India’s education system and questioning whether we are going to continue with a system where coaching has become a necessity, where public schools disappear and private schools expand, where students have to fight in court simply to get justice, where students who protest have to face police violence and where a degree doesn’t guarantee a job?
The party Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi said that the Modi government was not serious about reforming the education system
Referring to the earlier investigation of the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak, he said, chargesheets were filed against 45 people, and out of them, 44 have already been granted bail. “This is shameful”, he remarked. He said, when the paper leak happened in 2024, Dharmendra Pradhan was not ready to accept the truth then, and in 2026 too, his attitude remained the same. “It should be a matter of shame for the Modi government to honour a minister under whose watch 21 children lost their lives”, he remarked.
