KOLKATA: Enhancing punishment alone cannot prevent irregularities caused by shortcomings in the education system, All India Students' Association (AISA) president Neha Bora said in Kolkata on Tuesday.
Bora, who was on a two-day visit to the city, had joined social activist Sonam Wangchuk in a 23-day hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to protest the NEET paper leak and demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Speaking to reporters, Bora said irregularities in education were a “systematic problem” that could not be addressed through punishment alone.
The AISA chief had also participated in the ongoing student protest against an alleged recruitment scam in Jharkhand, where the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) is in power. She faced an ‘ink attack’ during the protest in Ranchi and called for greater unity among anti-BJP political forces in handling student movements.
Bora said the government's new anti-paper leak law largely dealt with what happens after an examination paper is leaked, while failing to address the structural problems that allow such incidents to occur.
Parliament passed the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, last month. The legislation introduces stricter jail terms of five to 10 years and fines of up to Rs 50 lakh for individuals involved in examination paper leaks.
The bill was brought by the government in response to student protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), with support from Left student organisations such as AISA and SFI, at Jantar Mantar.
Bora argued that non-BJP parties could not effectively challenge the BJP and RSS politically if, when in power, they handled student protests in the same way as the governments they opposed. "If they do not do that, they will face the same fate as the BJP," she said.
The AISA leader said the significance was not merely that a minister had resigned, but that it showed representatives of democratic institutions could be held accountable.
"After years of democratic and electoral institutions being weakened one after another, such movements could revive the fight to restore them and bring hope back to the country," she said.
Bora also criticised what she described as the centralisation of education, saying it was leading to the privatisation of education.
The National Education Policy should be rolled back to the extent that it promotes centralisation and creates greater disparities among students, she said.
Speaking at a programme at the Rammohan Library later in the day, Bora, who hails from Uttarakhand, spoke about her connection with West Bengal and said the state had distanced her from the rightists.
She had completed her education in the 10th, 11th and 12th standards in north Bengal because her father, an Army personnel, was posted there.
“I could have missed the Naxalite leader Charu Majumder, poems of Pablo Neruda and works of Arundhuti Roy if I was not in Bengal, which had taught me how distance myself from the rightists. I have started my journey in Left politics later,” she said.
Leaders of the SFI and DSO, as well as Dr Debashis Halder, a prominent figure in the R G Kar Hospital rape and murder protest movement, also addressed the programme. The SFI presented Bora with a portrait of Rabindranath Tagore at the event.
