PM wants the country’s youth to keep making reels and frying pakoras, says Rahul Gandhi

Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, on Sunday (June 7, 2026), posted a video of his interaction with Sarthak Siddhant, the 18-year-old student who flagged the irregularities in the tendering process to select a vendor for the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On Screen Marking System (OSM), and said that the PM wanted the country’s youth to keep “making reels and frying pakoras”.

“Mr. Sarthak is 18 years old, yet in terms of mindset, courage, and principles, he is second to none,” Mr. Gandhi said in a post in Hindi, accompanying the video, on social media platform X. Naming ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary, who also exposed the vulnerabilities in the CBSE’s OSM portal, Mr. Gandhi said that the duo had accomplished what the country’s major media houses and investigative journalists could not. “They exposed the collusion between CBSE and COEMPT [edtech company] to the nation,” he said. He lauded Mr. Sidhant for being “faster and sharper” than the Central Bureau of Investigation, and said this victory for the youth was, in the true sense, a defeat for the government.

“Mr. Modi ji wants our youth to keep making reels and frying pakoras, without asking questions or opening their eyes. But these young men did ask questions, and they found the answers, too. This is India’s true youth power, inquisitive, aware, and informed. And remember, the country’s future will not be led astray,” the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

The eight-minute-long video is from Mr. Gandhi’s meeting with Mr. Sidhant and his family last week. The video opens with Mr. Gandhi asking the young man whether he believes he had done “a good thing” or “a bad thing”. Mr. Sidhant, who earlier made a presentation to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, responded that he did what a “concerned citizen” should do, explaining how Mr. Adhikari and he had investigated the issue.