Teachers, Principals, Doctors: The Employment Crackdown That Followed CJP-Led Protests
Sabah Gurmat | 10 August 2026 | The Print
Bareilly: 32-year-old Mohit Bhardwaj returned to Bareilly from the Jantar Mantar protests in a high-heady mood. The students had won. Dharmendra Pradhan had stepped down as the Union education minister. But the assistant professor from Bareilly had bad news waiting for him back home. A suspension notice from the college authorities.
“As soon as I returned to my college on July 22, the Principal called me. He told me that the administration had seen videos of me at the protest. I was served a letter, on behalf of the college administration, which said that I was no longer needed on the job. Forget suspending me temporarily, they straight up said that I was removed from the job. The letter doesn’t name any complainant,” Bhardwaj told ThePrint.
The seven-week protest at Jantar Mantar, led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), ended with a political win, with Pradhan tendering his resignation on July 25. But running parallel to the protests, yet away from national news coverage, was a less visible crackdown: the systematic use of service rules, suspension orders, and termination notices against teachers, professors, and other citizens, who attended the protest or extended support to their cause. Their cases reveal a lesser-seen repression: crushing dissent by targeting livelihoods.
Apoorvanand, an academic and writer at Delhi University, said that it has become “obvious” that educational institutions have given up on their autonomy and are working in deference to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “We can safely assume that participating in a pro-BJP programme will not have led to any suspensions or terminations,” he said.
Although Bhardwaj escaped unhurt from the police action on protesters at Jantar Mantar on July 20, he came back to Bareilly with bigger problems.