Spearheaded by an online satirical campaign-turned-national movement, the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), the massive youth-led protests over the alleged NEET-UG 2026 paper leak culminated on July 25, 2026 with the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
However, by the time Pradhan resigned after 36 days of relentless protests at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, the developments around the movement also became the subject of a wide-ranging misinformation campaign that saw false claims, AI-manipulated media, among other forms of fake news.
Newschecker uncovered a systematic and high-volume misinformation campaign active between May and July 2026, which began after the CJP movement was founded in May 2026, sparked by a Gen Z internet backlash following a controversial courtroom remark.
Of the 68 fact-checks published by Newschecker across English, Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bangla languages, 47 were classified as outright “False” and 15 identified as “Altered Photo/Video”. A significant portion of the misinformation relied on sophisticated digital manipulation, as evidenced by 15 confirmed instances of AI-generated or edited content designed to mislead the public. The analysis further shows that Twitter (37 instances) and Facebook (24 instances) served as the dominant conduits for spreading these narratives, which frequently centred on themes of protests (27 instances) and anti-BJP sentiment (20 instances). Ultimately, the...
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