Same House, Same Day: AAP Slams Centre Over Paper Leaks While Congress Demands Bains' Resignation Over Punjab's Own

Punjab Assembly paper leak resolution dominates day one of the Monsoon session, as AAP’s Cheema condemns the Centre while Congress demands Education Minister Bains’ resignation over Punjab’s own leak record.

North Desk Bureau

Chandigarh, August 3

Punjab Assembly Paper Leak Resolution: The Monsoon Session of the 16th Punjab Vidhan Sabha opened on Monday with a spectacle in political symmetry: the ruling AAP moved a resolution condemning the BJP-led Centre over the national paper leak controversy, even as its own opposition, in the very same sitting, demanded the resignation of Punjab’s Education Minister over an almost identical charge closer to home.

How we got here

The backdrop is the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)-led protest movement that has convulsed Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for weeks, after allegations of large-scale irregularities in the NEET-UG examination. The protests, which drew tens of thousands of students and youth, eventually forced the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The protest had AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann both publicly backing the demonstrators and appealing to the Centre to “listen to the youth” rather than respond with force.

It’s this same movement that Punjab’s Assembly formally endorsed on Monday — and it’s this same movement’s underlying demand, ministerial accountability for exam integrity that the opposition turned back on AAP within hours.

The Punjab Assembly Paper Leak Resolution

Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema moved the condemnation (or Punjab Assembly Paper Leak) Resolution, targeting the Centre over what he called 70 incidents of paper leaks and examination irregularities under the BJP’s watch, and over the police response to protesting students at Jantar Mantar and in states including Bihar and Maharashtra.

The resolution went further than a simple condemnation: it also criticised what it termed the excessive use of force, arbitrary detention and criminal prosecution of peaceful protesters, specifically naming education and environmental activist Sonam Wangchuk, and called for criminal cases against demonstrators to be withdrawn. Rebel SAD MLA Manpreet Singh Ayali, backing the resolution, praised Gurdwara Rakabganj’s Delhi management for having housed and fed protesting students during the agitation — a rare moment of cross-party agreement in an otherwise combative session.

What Bhagwant Mann said

Punjab Assembly Paper Leak Resolution: Speaking in favour of the resolution, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann made the case in sweeping numbers: 93 incidents of paper leaks reported nationally since 2014, when the BJP came to power at the Centre, and 65 of those between 2019 and 2024 alone. He was equally sharp in his rhetoric. Mann said the BJP was “still unable to recover from its own history of paper leak incidents,” and credited Kejriwal and Wangchuk with rallying behind the Gen Z-led protest in a scale the government “did not expect.”

He accused the Centre of treating the problem as a matter for fast-track courts rather than prevention — “why don’t they stop paper leaks?” — and delivered what was arguably his sharpest line of the day, asking rhetorically whether any other country in the world had ever needed to deploy its Army or Air Force to conduct an examination, calling it proof of institutional inefficiency rather than resolve. He separately accused the Centre of using pellet guns against students and alleged, without elaborating, that the Prime Minister’s degree was fake.

Where it turned

Punjab Assembly Paper Leak Resolution: The symmetry lasted barely as long as it took Cheema to sit down. During Question Hour, Leader of the Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa led Congress MLAs to the Well of the House, forcing Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan to briefly adjourn proceedings. Bajwa’s charge: Punjab itself had seen six examination paper leaks over the past four-and-a-half years, including the Punjab TET, a Class 12 English paper, and the Faridkot pharmacy officer recruitment exam.

He renewed Congress’s demand for Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains’ resignation, and said the state’s health minister should share responsibility too.  

The BJP pressed an almost identical case from outside the House, with spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari asking directly when Kejriwal would demand Bains’ resignation “on moral grounds,” explicitly invoking the Pradhan precedent — the same standard AAP has spent weeks demanding of the Centre, turned back on the party itself.

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The government’s defence

Mann’s response to the domestic charge has been consistent and categorical: “not a single paper has leaked” in four-and-a-half years of AAP government in Punjab. He has acknowledged cheating incidents at two examination centres, with 21 arrests, but rejects the “paper leak” characterisation.

On the specific Faridkot pharmacy officer exam controversy — the flashpoint that triggered Bajwa’s Well protest — Education Minister Bains has gone on the offensive, saying Punjab Police uncovered a Haryana-based cheating syndicate operating out of Bhiwani, and accusing the neighbouring state of “exporting” its cheating networks into Punjab. SAD MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal has disputed the government’s own account, pointing out that the FIR in the case makes no mention of the scanner-pen device Mann has publicly cited, and has demanded a sitting High Court judge probe the matter instead.

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A sobering note

Amid the political crossfire, the day’s proceedings carried a quieter moment: during obituary references, the House paid tribute to NEET aspirants who died by suicide in the aftermath of the alleged national paper leak. Speaker Sandhwan raised the issue himself, and the House observed condolences for the students and their families — a brief but necessary reminder, on a day given over almost entirely to political point-scoring, of what the argument is actually about.

The Monsoon Session runs until August 10, and is widely seen as the last full session before Assembly elections due early next year — which raises the stakes on both sides of this exchange considerably.  

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