Letter to ally JMM, but message for students: Rahul Gandhi’s balancing act

5 min readNew DelhiAug 17, 2026 06:05 PM IST First published on: Aug 17, 2026 at 12:17 PM IST Amid mounting pressure over the students’ protest in Jharkhand, the Congress has sent out a message to Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), its ally in the state’s ruling coalition. Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, has written to Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, urging him to hear the protesters out and take appropriate action. A senior Congress leader told The Indian Express that while the JMM is a “strong ally”, the Grand Old party does not want students to feel that the Congress is not with them. What Rahul wrote In his letter to Soren that the Congress has shared on social media, Gandhi wrote, “The Congress party believes that the right to peaceful protest as enshrined in the Constitution of India is one of the central pillars of our democracy. We have, therefore, offered our full support to students protesting paper leaks and irregularities in the education system over the last few months. It is also our belief that the Indian education system has been captured by the RSS and BJP and transformed into a tool for the exploitation and oppression of students. It is no longer the robust knowledge system that it used to be a decade ago.”