Rajnath Singh's 'ministers don't resign' clip is from 2015. It's back after Pradhan quit

New Delhi: Hours after Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as Union Education Minister on Saturday, an eleven-year-old clip of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh began doing the rounds on social media again — this time with a sharper edge.

In the clip, Singh says that ministers in the NDA government do not resign. The footage is genuine, but it goes back to a press conference in New Delhi on June 24, 2015, when Singh was Home Minister. He was fielding Congress demands for the resignations of Sushma Swaraj and Smriti Irani, who were then facing questions over the Lalit Modi affair and a degree row. "Our ministers do not have to resign," Singh said, adding that this was the NDA government, not the Congress's.

One line frequently bundled into the viral version is not Singh's at all. The jibe about BJP ministers not doing the sort of things UPA ministers did was made at the same press conference by Ravi Shankar Prasad, then Information Technology Minister.

This is also not the first outing for the clip. In May this year, fact-checkers examined a version of the same video being shared with the claim that Singh had said it in reply to demands for Pradhan's resignation over the NEET-UG paper leak. That claim was found to be false — the footage was an edited excerpt from the 2015 press conference.

Reactions on X

The renewed circulation has drawn a stream of jibes. One user asked Singh who it was, then, who had just resigned, pointing back to his line about the NDA government.

Journalist Veena Jain contrasted the two moments in a post, writing: "2017 (Modi 1.0): No minister will resign in the Modi government; this is not the UPA government." (Singh's remark was in fact made in June 2015.) She added that with Pradhan's exit in Modi 3.0, the decline had begun.

[The 'Cockroach Army' post is from an anonymous account. Either drop it or label it clearly as an unverified handle — don't present it as representative public reaction.]

What Dipke said

Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, referred to Singh's old remark while addressing supporters after the resignation. [Your quote — "the world bows down; one just needs someone to make it bow" — needs a source. If it's from the Jantar Mantar speech, cite the video and give the Hindi original alongside your translation.] Dipke's confirmed reaction at the protest site was simply that they had done it. CNBC

How the resignation came about

Pradhan resigned on Saturday amid nationwide student protests over the NEET-UG paper leak, with Jantar Mantar in Delhi as the epicentre. Announcing it on X, he said he had sent his resignation letter to the Prime Minister, that he was saddened by the events of the previous ten days, and that it was not a matter of personal prestige for him. He also acknowledged that irregularities had surfaced in the NEET-UG examination held on May 3, 2026. ThePrint

OpIndia

Rajnath Singh has not publicly responded to the renewed attention on his 2015 remark. [Confirm before publishing.]

Note on the Pradhan quote: your "I am pained" and the wires' "I am saddened" are both renderings of the Hindi. Either is defensible — just add "(translated from Hindi)" once, so nobody accuses you of inventing phrasing.