The Jharkhand student protestors insist that the protest against paper leaks and irregularities in the JPSC and JSSC recruitment exams is apolitical, even as the Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha (JLKM; a registered political party with the Election Commission) leads a faction of the protest. While this appears to contradict the spirit of the protest, the JLKM holds deep ties to the youth, having itself emerged as a youth movement in 2021.
On 5th July 2026, the preliminary results for the 14th JPSC Combined Civil Services Examination were declared, followed by a carbon copy of a candidate’s OMR answer sheet. The candidate had qualified for the mains despite answering 48 out of 100 questions in the first paper. The viral answer sheet snowballed into the protests, which began with a sit-in on 29th July, 2026.
Since then, the Jharkhand Criminal Investigation Department has arrested 19 people, including the candidate, the JPSC’s Deputy Controller of Examinations, and the directors of TSR Data Processing Private Limited (the firm contracted to conduct the exam despite being blacklisted by the JSSC in 2024 for abandoning the exam while it was still being conducted). Following repeated questioning and raids, the commission's Chairman, L. Khiangte, resigned as well. The administrative procedures have been accompanied by political attention. Representatives of both national parties, BJP and Congress, showed up and expressed solidarity with the protestors; the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad burned the Chief Minister’s effigy; the National Students' Union of India and the Indian Youth Congress meeting protestors carried a memorandum to Chief Minister Hemant Soren. However, the student protestors specified that this protest would not be the proxy landscape for furthering a party agenda. What raises the interest quotient of the apolitical claim is the presence of a regional political party amidst the students, accompanying their hunger strike.
The protest site of the Jaipal Singh Munda stadium comprises two factions, each occupying a stadium stage. One is occupied by the JLKM, with three of its leaders sitting on an indefinite hunger strike. The other is occupied by four unaffiliated aspirants on a hunger strike as well. A third protestor, also on hunger strike, lies by the statue of Jaipal Singh Munda, his appointment to a silkworm-rearing post stalled since 2023.
In December 2021, the Jharkhand government released a list of languages eligible for district-level recruitment exams in Dhanbad and Bokaro. Alongside the state’s tribal languages, it included Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Angika, languages associated with migrant and non-tribal populations rather than Jharkhand’s indigenous communities. Young men in Bokaro organised an ‘Aakrosh rally’, burning an effigy of the government under the slogan “Bahari bhasha nahi chalega”. By January 2022 the rally had transformed into the Jharkhandi Bhasha Sangharsh Samiti, a youth organisation. It intensified agitation against what it read as linguistic encroachment on jobs meant for the state’s own people. A founder and president of the JLKM, Jairam Kumar Mahato (also known as Tiger Jairam) emerged from that agitation. By August 2024, the organisation had become the Jharkhand Loktantrik Krantikari Morcha and registered with the Election Commission. In elections that same year, Jairam contested from Dumri and won the seat by defeating Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. In the Giridih Lok Sabha race h, he pulled 3.47 lakh votes as an independent. He finished third against the two national parties. The party’s Vice President Devendra Nath Mahato, also on hunger strike, has eleven pending cases against him from earlier protests. However, his colleagues cite these cases as being about previous movements.
The JLKM, therefore, began as a movement very much like the one now staged at Jaipal Singh Stadium in Ranchi. While the JLKM’s emergence centred on questions of identity and eligibility criteria as opposed to the prevailing student protests on procedural integrity and fraud, both share a youth-led agitation. The difference lies in the fact that it did not limit itself to agitation, but organised itself into a political party. It is not an outside actor in the students’ protests; despite being a political party, the political or apolitical nature of students ' protests does not depend on the presence or absence of the JLKM. The reason lies in what ‘political’ means.
For an act or claim to be political, it need not be restricted to party affiliation. David Easton (The Political System, 1953) defines politics as the contest over authoritative allocation of resources. Sydney Tarrow (Power in Movement, 1998/2011) defines social movements as “collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities.” This means that an act or claim is political based on its relationship to power. The student protests that began on 29th July, 2026, as well as the ‘Aakrosh rally’ which led to the formation of the JLKM, are both political irrespective of any political party affiliation. However, the student protestors' insistence that their protest shall not be used for peddling a party agenda aligns with non-partisanship and independence from affiliation to any political party. The Jharkhand protests are political. What they actually claim (and perhaps intend) is to be non-partisan.
References:
- The Print – Anatomy of Jharkhand protests: 2 stages, 8 on hunger strike, a quest to be ‘non-political’
- The Print – Jharkhand students are protesting ‘cycle of paper leaks’ CJP-style. It began with a viral answer sheet.
- The Indian Tribal – JPSC-JSSC Protest: Jharkhand Govt Agrees to Cancel 14th JPSC Exam, But CBI Probe Demand Keeps Standoff Alive.
- Newsgram – Jharkhand Student Protests Trigger Enforcement Directorate Money-Laundering Probe as Demand for CBI Investigation Grows
- Organiser – How Jharkhand students forced Soren govt to act on recruitment irregularities without CJP, abuses or hate