Cockroach Janata Party attacks govt. on JEE data exposure, presses for Education Minister’s sacking

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The Cockroach Janata Party’s press conference on June 4 came a day after the outfit held its first media interaction at the Constitution Club of India, where it said it was open to dialogue with both the government and the Opposition over its demands. | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

The Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) on Thursday (June 4, 2026) said the reported exposure of JEE (Advanced) 2026 candidate data due to a cloud storage configuration issue in the results portal showed how "incompetent" people were running the country's education system and digital infrastructure.

The leaders of the campaign, which began on social media and went on to take a life of its own, also appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately sack Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, saying he had failed to ensure accountability in the education sector.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, CJP leaders said the incident had raised fresh concerns about the security of student data and the government's handling of examination systems.

CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and the London School of Economics who was appointed the campaign's spokesperson on Wednesday (June 3, 2026), said the exposure of candidate information reflected the poor state of cybersecurity safeguards.

"Names, phone numbers and images of nearly two lakh students got exposed. In a country that has produced techies leading top technology companies across the world, the education minister and the government are so incompetent that they are unable to run basic systems securely," Mr. Ranka said.

"The education minister is totally incompetent. He has run the education system into the ground. We appeal to the Prime Minister to sack Dharmendra Pradhan immediately. This is about the future of our students and a lot is at stake," he added.

He also said public institutions required individuals with scientific temper and technical competence.

Questioning the response of IIT Roorkee, which con