India Headlines: Protest Planned Over Exam Irregularities, LPG Prices Rise, Cricket Victory

Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke said on Monday he is returning to India on June 6 to stage a peaceful protest demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged exam irregularities.

In a video posted on X, Dipke said more than 10 million students had been affected by the failure of the system.

"Someone has to take responsibility for this," he said. "Even after such a big blunder, if the Education Minister doesn't resign, it means that there is no accountability left in this country."

India's nationwide medical entrance test was canceled last month, over allegations of leaked question papers. Around 2.2 million students had already sat the exam.

Dipke asked his supporters to meet him at the airport before heading to Parliament Street Police Station to seek permission for the protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

Dipke said the protest would follow the principles of Mahatma Gandhi, BR Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh and Jawaharlal Nehru, and called on students and supporters to join the demonstration.

"My friends and family are afraid that they will be arrested and sent to jail. But I still hope that our country is a democracy and we will get permission to protest peacefully," he said.

The 'cockroach' movement began last month as a satirical criticism towards the Chief Justice of India who likened some of India's youth to "parasites" and "cockroaches."

CJP currently has more than 22 million followers on Instagram, more than twice as many as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused the government and the premier national school board examination authority of compromising the evaluation process for Class 12 exams.

The allegations come amid growing scrutiny of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) over technical glitches and reported irregularities in evaluated answer sheets.

Class 12 exams are taken at the end of secondary education, as a path to university, Global equivalents include the High School diploma in the US and A-levels in the UK.

What Gandhi said abvout Class 12 evaluations

Gandhi said a May 2025 tender had required high-resolution robotic scanning of answer sheets, but specifications were later relaxed, allowing contractor COEMPT to allegedly use mobile phones for scanning.

"This is fraud," Gandhi said, claiming blurred scans and missing pages had led to incorrect marking for students.

"Modi ji's silence is no longer indifference. It is complicity," the leader of the opposition wrote.

He also criticized fees charged for re-evaluation and recounting, saying students were being forced to pay to correct errors caused by the system.

"The mistake is CBSE's. The punishment is the child's. The earnings are the government's," he said in a post on X.

CBSE and the government have not publicly responded to the allegations. However, in a post on X, CBSE said that cybersecurity professionals from "various arms of the government" are looking into the matter.

India on Monday raised prices of commercial Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders used by hotels and restaurants, while leaving household cooking gas rates unchanged, media reports said.

In Delhi, the price of a 19-kg commercial LPG cylinder sold by state-owned companies was increased to 3,113.50 rupees ($33, €28) from 3,071.50 rupees.

The price of commercial LPG cylinder was increased for the third consecutive time early last month by 993 Indian rupees (about €8.90, $10.50).

Monday's hike is expected to add pressure on restaurants, many of which have already scaled back operations amid the economic fallout from the Iran war.

Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Indians to adopt voluntary austerity measures to help shield the economy from the impact of the conflict in Middle East.

India's LPG crisis forces migrant workers to return home

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Virat Kohli smashed the winning six as Royal Challengers Bengaluru retained their Indian Premier League title on Sunday, fulfilling a long-held dream for the cricketing superstar.

"I have thought of this moment many times, wanting to hit the winning run," said Kohli, who was named player of the match.

Kohli, 37, hit an unbeaten 75 off 42 balls, sealing victory with his third six of the innings as Bengaluru completed the chase in front of more than 90,000 fans at the Narendra Modi Stadium.

The former Bengaluru captain has been with the franchise since the inaugural 2008 season.

He said back-to-back titles were especially meaningful after the team lost IPL finals in 2009, 2011 and 2016.

Kohli finished as Bengaluru's leading scorer this season with 675 runs, taking his IPL career tally to a record 9,336 runs, including 68 fifties and nine hundreds.

"I just take a lot of pride in getting better and trying to figure out areas where I can improve," Kohli said, crediting younger players for pushing him to adapt to the demands of modern T20 cricket.