New Delhi: Inventor and activist Sonam Wangchuk will attend the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)’s planned June 6 protest in Delhi to demand Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation if the official does not step down by then, he has announced.Wangchuk demanded on Tuesday (June 2) that Pradhan step down in light of what he called the ‘disheartening’ state of Indian education. Combined with issues such as the NEET paper leak of last month, he said, it would prompt ‘any self-respecting education minister in any self-respecting democracy’ to resign.Although Wangchuk said he appreciates the Modi government’s ‘intentions’ to improve Indian education – he cited his admiration of the 2020 National Education Policy – he said he becomes “very disheartened” by seeing their implementation on the ground.“Success only follows action, desire alone does not build a country. Look at the last three or four education ministers – who has come and what miracles they have performed. When I see this, I do not think India will become viksit [developed],” Wangchuk said in a video message in Hindi on X.The NEET paper leak is a “very big issue” amounting to “playing with the lives of lakhs of students” but the “question of what will happen ahead is the bigger one”, he said.“In order to improve all this, I insist to the prime minister that in any self-respecting country and democracy, any self-respecting education minister would offer to resign when such things happen, when papers leak and nothing works,” Wangchuk continued. If Pradhan does not put in his papers by June 5, he added, he would be “compelled” to join the CJP’s planned protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar Road the next day.“If not us, who? If not now, when!” Wangchuk wrote on X.He had spoken to Abhijit Dipke and got the impression that the CJP founder is “very patriotic” and making a “sacrifice to improve the country”, said the Leh-based engineer, days after rebuking Ladakh lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena for suggesting that he had expressed uncertainty over the satirical party’s origins and that the outfit is a conspiracy by foreign powers.The activist also presented a screengrab Dipke had shared with him showing that the vast majority of the CJP’s Instagram followers – of which it has close to 13 million more than the BJP – are based in India.Pradhan and the Modi government are in the hot seat over last month’s NEET-UG paper leak that led to the exam’s cancellation days after more than 22 lakh candidates attempted it on May 3. The leak, coming on the back of irregularities in the 2024 NEET-UG edition, has sparked protests, calls for the minister’s resignation and some student suicides.They are also under fire for problems with the CBSE’s online marking system, with class 12 students reporting that papers marked under their name belonged to someone else, that their answer booklets were incorrectly marked or had pages missing, and that they faced issues with the board’s verification portal. The board is also under scrutiny over the process by which it contracted work for the portal to one Coempt Edu Teck firm. Pradhan has said he accepts responsibility for issues with the on-screen marking system.In response to the NEET paper leak, Dipke has said he will return to India from the US on June 6 and ask the Delhi police for permission to hold a peaceful protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar Road.“If the education minister does not resign even after such a big blunder, it means there is no such thing as accountability left in this country. It feels like the system may make as many mistakes as it can and there will be no consequences for it,” Dipke said on Monday, calling on supporters of his CJP – whose burgeoning online presence the Modi government has moved to suppress – to join him.His friends and family fear he will be jailed upon arrival at the airport but “I still have hope that our country today is a democracy”, Dipke added. “For how long will we live in fear? This country does not belong to any one party. This country belongs to all of us. It is a question of our future. Our future is being destroyed.”Wangchuk’s attendance would mark a high-profile presence at Dipke’s planned protest. The activist had attempted to march to Delhi with an entourage of demonstrators in October 2024 to demand constitutional safeguards for Ladakh but was detained before entering the city itself. Released later that month, he went on a 16-day-long hunger strike in the capital.When similar protests turned violent in Leh last September, the Modi government accused Wangchuk of fomenting the unrest and jailed him under the stringent National Security Act for six months. Wangchuk has denied the allegation.