The Indian government answered a week of youth protests in the capital by ordering the mobile networks around them switched off.
Telecom operators cut mobile data across much of central Delhi on Thursday at the government’s instruction. Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone-Idea, the carriers that run India’s networks, complied.
The blackout took digital payments down with it. Vendors, shopkeepers, and restaurants were left unable to take money.
It was the widest mobile blackout in the capital since the farmers’ protests of 2021.
The demonstrators want Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan gone. They protest under the banner of the Cockroach movement, a name lifted from a chief justice who reportedly likened young Indians to “cockroaches” and “parasites.”
Their grievance is the leak of the NEET-UG medical entrance exam, which forced roughly two million students to take it again. The leaks have been linked to several student suicides.
“We will not leave this place until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns,” Cockroach Janta Party spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said.
Police met a march to Parliament on Monday with tear gas and batons, and protesters answered with stones. At least 178 people, including security personnel, were injured.
The same exam scandal has now produced two communications shutdowns.
The government banned Telegram across India in June, cutting off more than 150 million users, after claiming cheating rings used the app during the leak. It reached for Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the power it holds to block platforms.
The leak came from inside the exam system. India’s own testing agency said “there is no such paper available outside the secured examination chain,” and the channels blamed for it were selling access to material that did not exist.
The insiders who produced the leak are the subject of a police investigation.
Pradhan has not resigned, and the networks in central Delhi stayed dark.
