Congress indicated that it has been demanding the resignation of Education Minister Pradhan for nearly two months. This request is shared between the CJP and Wangchuk.
And now three generations of the Gandhi family have found themselves, in different ways, embroiled in Sonam Wangchuk’s fasting politics, even as the Narendra Modi government remains indifferent at best to the protest at Jantar Mantar.
As the Wangchuk hunger strike entered its 20th day in Delhi on Friday, the Congress’ response to the protest by the activist and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) moved along three tracks – one rooted in family memory, one cautious as the main opposition, and the third maintaining a calculated distance for a parallel track.
Indira history
The memory being evoked dates back to 1984, a poignant year for many reasons. Sonam Wangchuk’s father, Sonam Wangyal, went on a five-day hunger strike that year to demand Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for Ladakh communities. Sonam Wangyal, a former MLA from Leh in Congress and later a minister in the Jammu and Kashmir government, was important enough for the prime minister to respond.
Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister. She traveled to Leh and convinced him to end her fast, committing to being granted ST status and the benefits that come with it.
She was at the center of several fires at the time, and was assassinated later that year due to the army’s actions during Operation Bluestar at the Sikh shrine of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. Its promise to Ladakh was fulfilled by 1989. Sonam Wangyal himself had a complicated relationship with the party by then, having been expelled from the Congress in 1987 for “anti-party activities”. He died in 1998.
Sonia enters
It was this incident 42 years ago involving her mother-in-law that Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress parliamentary party, reportedly invoked this week to push her party towards publicly supporting the current Wangchuk fast.
The intervention marked a turning point after weeks of apparent silence by the Congress on the CJP’s protest, even as it was already supported by AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal, Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee. Congressional representatives did so in their individual capacities.
Party insiders are reported to be concerned about supporting a satirical group that could confuse the anti-government voice that… Congress intends to lead the party as the main opposition party.
But the shift became evident on Thursday, when Secretary General (of the organisation) KC Venugopal broke the party’s silence, expressed solidarity with Wangchuk, and said that the demand for resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, over alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG exam, had already been submitted by the Congress as well.
It was that day too CJP’s Sourav Das posted on X about Indira Gandhi’s 1984 intervention, referring to it as responsible behaviour – apparently in contrast to how the NDA regime launched an attack, with Pradhan himself calling the protesters “Team B of terrorists”.
Sonia Gandhi presided over the A meeting of Congress MPs on the same day was also attended by her son, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharg as well as all other MPs.
Witnessed Friday First in-person presence of Congress at the protest site, where Rajya Sabha MP Pawan Khera met Wangchuk and other CJP members on the 20th day of his fast.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh separately noted that the party has been demanding Pradhan’s resignation for nearly two months.
This request is the essence of what Rahul Gandhi has been doing on this issue.
Rahul’s parallel path
Rahul did not visit Jantar Mantar, choosing instead to press the same demand – Pradhan’s resignation over NEET-UG paper leak and other issues – through the separate party.The student awareness campaign Chhatron Ki Goonj, which moved to Dehradun on the same Friday after Khera visited the protest site in Delhi. He also met students affected by the CBSE papers examination scandal separately.
The absence did not go unnoticed. Wangchuk himself reportedly criticized this, calling it “very petty” if opposition leaders did not support him.
CJP leaders have insisted that the platform, which was formed and named after some statements made by the Chief Justice of India, He will not side with “existing political parties.”
Online history now shows that they have made unflattering remarks about Rahul Gandhi in the past, including company founder Abhijit Deepki calling ‘Bharat Guddu Yatra’ ‘just a travel vlog’.
“Opinions change over time,” DeBakey said in recent interviews.
As he pushed back on The entire “Where is Rahul” narrative in a post on X, arguing that the presence of the opposition on the site was not the real test. He said the important questions are why Prime Minister Modi continues to reject dialogue and why the Education Minister has not been held accountable so far. “Ask the questions that actually matter to you,” he said in his post.
Complex relationships
Congress’s measured handling of Wangchuk comes against the backdrop of his policy Dramatic disagreement with the Modi government. In August 2019, when the Center abrogated Article 370 and created Ladakh as a separate union territory by withdrawing special status and statehood from Jammu and Kashmir, Wangchuk was among the most vocal supporters of the move, thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the X. He even met Pradhan in 2023, and there was mutual praise.
This goodwill collapsed when Ladakh’s status, unlike Jammu and Kashmir, left it without an elected legislature. Wangchuk led an incitement campaign but was jailed for violence last year – accused of sparking “Nepal and Bangladesh-inspired events”. “Generation Z protests” – for six months until March of this year. His wife then cited Prime Minister Modi’s tribute in Pakistan in 2025 as evidence that he cannot be “anti-national”.
Some of Ladakh’s demands regarding internal democracy have since been accepted in principle by the Centre.
Rahul has provided issue-based support for these issues.
As for Wangchuk’s latest case against paper leaks, there is no information yet on whether Congress will join the APC’s march to Parliament scheduled for July 20, coinciding with the start of the monsoon session.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi was in the northern states on Friday, where he promised to develop Punjab and sought votes for the BJP on the development plan.
Arish Chhabra is an associate editor on the Hindustan Times online team, where he writes news reports and explanatory features, as well as overseeing the site’s coverage. His career spans nearly two decades across India’s most respected newsrooms in print, digital and broadcast. He has prepared He reports, writes, and edits across formats—from breaking news and live election coverage, to analytical long reads and cultural commentary—building a body of work that reflects editorial rigor and a deep curiosity about the community he writes for. Areesh studied English Literature, Sociology and History along with Journalism at Punjab University in Chandigarh, and began his career in that city, eventually moving to Delhi. He is also the author of Little Big City: What Life is Like from Chandigarh, a collection of critical essays originally published as a weekly column in the Hindustan Times, which examines the culture and politics of a city that is much more than just its famous architecture – and in doing so, holds up a mirror to modern India. During his stints at BBC, The Indian Express, NDTV and Jagran New Media, he has worked across formats and languages; Mainly English, as well as Hindi and Punjabi. He was part of the crack team for the BBC Explainer project which was replicated around the world by the broadcaster. At Jagran, he developed editorial guides and trained journalists on integrity and quality content. He has also worked at the intersection of journalism and education. At the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad, he developed a website to streamline academic research in management. At Bennett University’s Times School of Media in Noida, he taught students the craft of digital journalism: from newsgathering and writing to social media strategy and video storytelling. Having moved from small town to larger town to megalopolis for education and work, his intellectual passions lie at the intersection of society, politics, and popular culture—a perspective that guides his writing and worldview. When he’s not working, he’s constantly reading long-form journalism or watching cerebral content, sometimes both at the same time.Read more
