At a joint press conference on Friday, BJP office-bearers responded to Congress, contending that the opposition party had been attempting to unsettle public order for electoral advantage. The development was preceded by remarks attributed to Prashant Bhushan at a press conference, where the phrase "regime change" was put forward.
Piyush Goyal, who holds the Commerce and Industry portfolio at the Union level, argued that the opposition's explicit invocation of the phrase "regime change" points to priorities centred not on electoral roll revisions, the functioning of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, or youth employment in India, but rather on unsettling a government that came to power through democratic elections.
Posting to platform X, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju characterised the dispute as a tension between the nation's institutional order and elements he described as working against its stability. Two video clips featuring Prashant Bhushan were posted by Rijiju, with the accompanying assertion that certain perspectives push toward undermining territorial cohesion in areas including Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast.
Rijiju shared a photograph depicting Bhushan in conversation with senior Congress figures, contending that a coordinated relationship exists between civil society activists and the principal opposition bloc.
Dharmendra Pradhan, who holds a cabinet portfolio, contended that the Congress party tends to call the independence of established institutions into question whenever election outcomes go against it. Pradhan drew a comparison between what he described as the Congress party's present-day disposition toward concentrated power and the suspension of civil liberties that took place under Indira Gandhi's 1975 Emergency declaration, framing the two as expressions of the same underlying tendency.
Pradhan argued that displaying a pocket-sized copy of India's Constitution does not, by itself, shield a political figure from acting outside its provisions, and went on to attribute Rahul Gandhi's repeated challenges to state institutions to a pattern of electoral losses that, in Pradhan's view, have undermined Gandhi's public standing. Pradhan contended that questions being raised about the Election Commission of India and the ongoing revision of voter rolls amount to a strategy for undermining the legitimacy of future electoral results.
Fadnavis posted the press conference clip to his X account, contending that the move laid bare what he described as the opposition's broader political agenda. In a written statement, Fadnavis put forward the view that the disturbances were driven by a goal of toppling the government, adding that the comments bore out concerns the ruling coalition had previously raised about organised disruption.
Fadnavis argued that opposition parties exploit student discontent, agrarian grievances, and divisions along caste and linguistic lines to turn public sentiment against the ruling administration — ultimately, he said, as a means of gaining power. Fadnavis further argued that orchestrated protest movements serve to undermine the international reputation of the country's democratic bodies, and that deploying the appearance of nonviolent opposition as a vehicle for toppling governments puts constitutional order at risk.
