BHOPAL: Reverberations of the ongoing students' and youths' protests in Delhi, as well as Tuesday's protest by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi outside the Prime Minister's residence and his subsequent detention by Delhi Police, were strongly felt in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday.
Both the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP staged protests over the issue in the state capital, Bhopal.
A day after the Congress protested outside the Prime Minister's residence in Delhi over the NEET-UG paper leak and police action against protesting students, and also held demonstrations in Bhopal, the ruling BJP staged a protest outside the Madhya Pradesh Congress headquarters in Bhopal on Wednesday.
The ruling party's protest outside the state Congress headquarters was led by state BJP president Hemant Khandelwal and attended by other senior party leaders, including third-time MLA Rameshwar Sharma.
Addressing the gathering, Khandelwal, a second-time MLA from the Betul constituency, accused the Congress of creating unrest and anarchy in the country after suffering repeated electoral defeats.
"Our message is that if the Congress wants to fight, it should do so in the electoral arena. But it is scared because the people have already rejected it," Khandelwal said.
He also alleged that the Congress leadership was trying to defame the BJP government and trigger chaos in the country.
Around 3.5 km away, at the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, Congress MLAs created a ruckus after their demand for a debate through an adjournment motion on the alleged lathi charge on students and youths in Delhi and the NEET-UG paper leak was disallowed by Assembly Speaker Narendra Singh Tomar on the grounds that the matter was outside the purview of the state government.
The Congress MLAs, led by Leader of Opposition Umang Singhar, entered the House wearing black armbands and went into the well, demanding that the debate be allowed. They argued that thousands of students from Madhya Pradesh had appeared for the first NEET-UG 2026 examination, whose question paper was leaked, and that at least two NEET-UG aspirants from the state had died by suicide following the leak.
The developments unfolded shortly after Question Hour ended on the third day of the five-day Monsoon Session of the Vidhan Sabha. Heated exchanges between Congress and BJP MLAs compelled the Speaker to adjourn the House for 15 minutes soon after Zero Hour began.
The protests by Congress MLAs inside the House came just hours after they had demonstrated outside the Governor's residence in Bhopal and outside the Chief Minister's chamber in the Vidhan Sabha building on Tuesday evening and night.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and LoP Umang Singhar trade charges
Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Umang Singhar continued to accuse the state's Urban Development, Housing and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya of using objectionable words such as "keeda" (worms/insects) and "cockroach" for students protesting in Delhi.
Singhar, who first made the allegations against Vijayvargiya in the House on Tuesday night, repeated them in the Vidhan Sabha on Wednesday, drawing sharp reactions from BJP members.
Towards the latter part of the Vidhan Sabha proceedings, Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya raised the issue of the Leader of the Opposition making what he described as false accusations against him and demanded an apology.
The senior-most minister in the state government was backed by other Cabinet colleagues, including Prahlad Singh Patel and Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla, as well as other BJP MLAs, who pressed for an apology from the LoP for allegedly making false accusations against Vijayvargiya.
The LoP, however, claimed that he had evidence that the minister had used the objectionable words.
Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Narendra Singh Tomar said, "The minister (Vijayvargiya) had met me in the morning and raised the issue, besides telling me that the false allegations had the potential of tarnishing his image before students in his home city Indore. I've gone through the House's Tuesday proceedings record, but didn't find any such utterance by the minister."
While the ruling BJP MLAs demanded an apology from the LoP, the concerned minister, Kailash Vijayvargiya, said, "I have no expectations from the Leader of the Opposition... Nor do I expect him to express regret. Mr Speaker, please tell us -- you have seen the record. You tell us... What is the truth?"
Meanwhile, social activist couple Prahlad and Sangeeta Pandey were reportedly detained by police in Indore for staging an unauthorised protest outside Vijayvargiya's house in the city's Nanda Nagar locality on Wednesday.
The couple alleged that Vijayvargiya had made inappropriate comments about the students protesting in Delhi.
