Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday resigned after weeks of student- and youth-led protests over the NEET-UG paper leak, becoming one of only two ministers in Narendra Modi-led governments to step down over a controversy.
The protests, spearheaded by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), had drawn nationwide sit-ins since June.
CJP ends protest: Live updates
Resignations on moral grounds are uncommon in Indian politics, but they aren’t unknown. Ministers have stepped down over rail and air disasters, financial scandals and corruption charges, wartime failures and terror attacks, sexual harassment allegations — and, in one case, over the price of onions.
The instances involved a political leader accepting responsibility for a disaster, controversy or governance failure, whether or not personally implicated:
Rail disaster: 1956
Lal Bahadur Shastri, then the railway minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet, resigned in November 1956 after the Ariyalur train disaster in Tamil Nadu, in which a passenger train plunged into a river following a bridge collapse. More than 140 people were killed. Shastri had offered to resign months earlier, after the Mahbubnagar train accident in then Hyderabad State, but was persuaded by Nehru to stay.
His resignation is widely cited as the founding benchmark for ministerial accountability in India.
Financial scam: 1958
{{/usCountry}}His resignation is widely cited as the founding benchmark for ministerial accountability in India.
Financial scam: 1958
{{/usCountry}}Finance minister TT Krishnamachari resigned in February 1958 after the Chagla Commission, headed by former Bombay high court chief justice MC Chagla, reported on the Mundhra scandal — Independent India’s first major financial scam.
The public-sector Life Insurance Corporation had bought over ₹1.24 crore worth of shares in six companies controlled by Calcutta businessman Haridas Mundhra, bypassing its own investment committee.
Feroze Gandhi, the Congress MP from Rae Bareli and Indira Gandhi’s husband, exposed the deal in Parliament. Krishnamachari was not personally accused of corruption but stepped down over the administrative failure.
Defence unpreparedness: 1962
Defence minister VK Krishna Menon resigned during the Sino-Indian war after facing criticism over the Indian military’s alleged lack of preparedness. Nehru had initially stripped him of the defence portfolio while leaving him in charge of defence production; Menon insisted on quitting altogether. His resignation was accepted in November 1962.
Election funding: 1963
Keshav Dev Malviya, the minister for mines and fuel, resigned in June 1963 after a Supreme Court judge's private inquiry found that he had asked a private firm to contribute funds for a Congress candidate's election campaign.
According to a historian’s account, the sum was small and Nehru believed the firm had derived no benefit from the assistance, but that the issue could not be shirked. Nehru is believed to have accepted the resignation reluctantly.
Stock purchase controversy: 1992
Minister of state for commerce P Chidambaram resigned in July 1992 after it emerged that he and his wife allegedly bought 15,000 promoters' quota shares in Fairgrowth Financial Services, a company tainted in that year’s securities scam.
Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao accepted the resignation.
Onion prices: 1998
Sahib Singh Verma, the BJP chief minister of Delhi, resigned in October 1998 as onion prices climbed to ₹40-50 a kilogram and public anger over the shortage mounted. He was replaced by Sushma Swaraj weeks before the state assembly election, which the BJP nonetheless lost to the Congress under Sheila Dikshit.
Verma, known for his austere style, is reported to have gone home in a DTC bus after signing his resignation. Though he headed a state government and was not a member of the Union Cabinet, his exit remains one of the most invoked examples of political accountability in India.
Rail disaster: 1999
Railway minister Nitish Kumar resigned in August 1999 after the Gaisal train disaster in West Bengal, in which the Awadh-Assam Express and the Brahmaputra Mail collided head-on, killing an estimated 290 people. Kumar cited moral responsibility and tendered his resignation to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He returned as railway minister in 2001.
Mumbai terror attacks: 2008
Home minister Shivraj Patil resigned days after the November 26, 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, in which coordinated assaults on hotels, a railway station and a Jewish centre killed over 160 people. His resignation came amid public outrage over failures in intelligence coordination, coastal security and crisis response.
Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh also stepped down over the attacks shortly after.
2G spectrum scam: 2010
Telecom minister A Raja resigned in November 2010 after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reported that the 2008 allocation of second-generation mobile spectrum, at 2001 prices on a first-come-first-served basis, had cost the exchequer up to ₹1.76 lakh crore. Raja, a DMK member, denied any wrongdoing; a special CBI court later acquitted him and all co-accused.
Aircel-Maxis deal: 2011
Textiles minister Dayanidhi Maran resigned in July 2011 after the CBI told the Supreme Court there was prima facie material to suggest he had coerced — during his earlier tenure as telecom minister — Aircel owner C Sivasankaran into selling his stake to Malaysia's Maxis group. A special CBI court also discharged the Maran brothers in the case.
Corruption charges: 2012
Union minister for micro, small and medium enterprises Virbhadra Singh resigned in June 2012 a day after a Shimla court framed charges of corruption and criminal conspiracy against him and his wife Pratibha Singh in a case dating to his tenure as Himachal Pradesh chief minister in 1989. Singh described the resignation as his “moral duty”. A special judge acquitted him in December that year.
Coalgate: 2013
Union law minister Ashwani Kumar resigned in May 2013 after the Supreme Court criticised the Congress-led UPA government's handling of the coal block allocation investigation. Kumar was accused of reviewing and making changes to a CBI status report before it was submitted to the court. His resignation was framed as political accountability rather than any admission of legal wrongdoing.
Sexual harassment allegations: 2018
Minister of state for external affairs MJ Akbar resigned in October 2018 after women journalists levelled allegations of sexual harassment against him during India's #MeToo movement. Akbar said he was quitting to fight the charges "in a court of law in my personal capacity" and to "challenge false accusations". His resignation, before Dharmendra Pradhan's, was the only case of a minister in a Modi-led government stepping down over a controversy.