Not the Cockroach Janta Party, not even Sonam Wangchuk: The Modi govt defeated itself

Newslaundry · Jul 28, 2026

First things first. Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday, announcing it himself on X. “I am pained to see the events of the past 10 days,” he wrote. No union education minister has ever resigned over paper leaks before. That this one did – a minister central to the BJP’s political organisation in Odisha, a man with the organisational leverage to dig in had he chosen to – makes it, as CNN put it, a rare defeat for a government that does not, as a rule, bend to street protest. Perhaps he chose to fight and lost. Perhaps he chose not to fight at all. In the end, it did not matter. The…