Opposition lawmakers have disrupted a session of India’s parliament in solidarity with the youth-led Cockroach movement, which mobilised tens of thousands of supporters to march through New Delhi earlier in the week, braving attacks by police who fired tear gas and beat protesters with batons and canes.

Led by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, the lawmakers – many dressed in black and waving placards calling on Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to quit – gathered outside parliament on Wednesday.

They then entered the building and disrupted proceedings by shouting and interrupting the speaker, forcing repeated suspensions of the lower and ‌upper house.

Gandhi, his sister Priyanka and other opposition figures had been detained by police on Tuesday during a sit-in outside the residence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Their protests followed Monday’s march by tens of thousands of supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party, the satirical name adopted by the activist movement seeking reform of the education system and the resignation of Pradhan. The violent efforts by police to halt the marchers wounded at least 150 protesters, organisers said.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have questioned the “legality, necessity, and proportionality” of the police response.

Protests have since spread around the country to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Goa, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Jammu and Ahmedabad. Thousands of activists gathered again in Delhi on Wednesday, shouting slogans and waving the Indian flag.

The movement, which has become the biggest youth challenge to Modi since he came to power in 2014, emerged amid intense public criticism over allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the education system.

About 2.2 million aspiring doctors had to retake India’s annual medical entrance exam under heavy security last month because the original test in May was annulled after the questions were leaked. The popular messaging app Telegram was temporarily banned by the government to try to prevent further leaks.

Students who had been struggling with months of stress and long hours of study ahead of the exam were outraged when they learned the initial test was voided and they had to do it all over again. More than a dozen were reported to have died by suicide.

After the chief justice of India’s Supreme Court likened some unemployed young people to “cockroaches”, activists adopted the insult as a badge of honour.

Their campaigning began online, with viral satirical memes mocking the government, quickly amassing millions of followers on social media. But the Cockroach Janta Party has morphed into a movement able to mobilise tens of thousands on the streets, as Monday’s march demonstrated.

Education minister refuses to resign

In his first comments since the march, Pradhan condemned Gandhi’s sit-in in a post on X on Tuesday night, accusing him of trying to “shamelessly exploit students as political tools to manufacture disruption”.

“The students of India deserve far better than being treated as props in a political campaign,” Pradhan wrote. “They deserve certainty over chaos, solutions over slogans, and responsibility over disruption.”

The Supreme Court refused on Wednesday to allow an urgent petition on the issue of police attacks on student protesters, Global News Insight’s Yashraj Sharma reported from New Delhi.

The chief justice of India, Surya Kant, told the lawyer who mentioned the matter: “Don’t waste our time, and don’t waste your time.”

The protest movement has gained momentum from the support of veteran activist Sonam Wangchuk, 59, who began a hunger strike on June 28 but was forcibly moved to hospital by police on Saturday.

He was moved to a private hospital by court order on Tuesday after a petition from his wife alleged he had been illegally detained.