India, July 25 -- After weeks of the Cockroach Janta Party-led protests, Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday resigned as the Union education minister and said he was doing this to prevent the ongoing controversy over the NEET-UG examination "from harming students' futures" and to ensure that "anti-national forces do not exploit the situation".

In a letter in Hindi addressed to the country's youth and posted on X, Pradhan said he was taking moral responsibility for the developments surrounding the medical entrance examination while defending the government's handling of the crisis.

"From the very first day, I accepted responsibility and never turned away from this situation," Pradhan wrote. He said that once irregularities were detected in th...