Lok Sabha: Rahul Gandhi says reassured by students protest, Rijiju objects to 'unparliamentary' language

NEW DELHI: Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said he was "very excited" and "reassured" by the student protests over the NEET paper leak issue and described them as an expression of the youth.

Participating in the debate on the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill , 2026, Gandhi said, "I was very excited, reassured by what the future of this country did on our streets. This was not anger, not violence, not hatred, this was an expression, deep expressions of the youth of this country, of the future generation of this country."

"All parties should respect this expression, including my friends in the BJP. If my friends in the BJP were to go and ask their own children about what their brothers and sisters were doing, they would find agreement among their own children. There is nothing wrong with what happened, and every Indian should be proud," he said.

Gandhi said a conversation with a group of students gave him a perspective on how young people view education and knowledge. "A good starting point would be a conversation I had with some students , young girls, which gave me a very interesting perspective," he said.

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Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026

Recalling the interaction, Gandhi said he asked a student what being a student meant. "The question I asked the girl was that you said you were a student -- what does that mean? Does it mean you study in a college, in a school , you read books? "

She said a student is someone who has an open mind (and) an open heart. A student is someone who accepts that he does not know everything. Whatever he knows will be superseded by new knowledge. He knows the universe is dynamic. He also understands that knowledge is constantly changing. The most important quality, she said, that a student has is humility," he said.

Gandhi said the student also described another category of people who believed they knew everything. "They are absolutely convinced that they know everything. They believe that the universe is static and they believe that knowledge emerges from inside them. They are arrogant. They don't listen, they don't respect other people's truth. She said I call them idiots," the leader of opposition (LoP) said.

The remark triggered an uproar in the House, with Speaker Om Birla asking Gandhi to focus on the debate. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju objected to the use of the "unparliamentary" word. Gandhi said he was attributing the term to a student and was not referring to any member of the House. Birla said unparliamentary expressions would be expunged from the proceedings.

Gandhi further said the student told him that the hallmark of a student was that "he wears the truth in their chest", while the other category needed to create an image. "And as that image is not true because the idiot is trying to pretend he is God, he has to create this image," he said.

"I asked about the third category -- andhbhakt. He is absolutely convinced that the idiot is a God," Gandhi said. He said the framework came from an 18-year-old student and argued that the protests, though centred around examinations, reflected wider concerns about the education system.