Two days after he resigned as the Education Minister amid students’ protests over accountability around the NEET (UG)-2026 paper leak, Dharmendra Pradhan returned to Parliament to a hero’s welcome by his party even as the Congress questioned the BJP’s public praise for him.Soon as he alighted from the car in the Parliament House complex this morning, a group of BJP MPs, including party general secretary Tarun Chugh, greeted the former minister.Quick felicitations followed with one saffron MP placing a shawl around Pradhan’s shoulders and another presenting him a decorative headgear. The ruling party parliamentarians then ushered the two-time Sambalpur Lok Sabha MP into the Lower House amid “Pradhan zindabad” slogans.Not too far from where Pradhan was being feted stood Congress MPs who framed the salutations to the former minister as an “insult to the students”.But the unfazed BJP made it known that it stood firmly by Pradhan, who, it said, had resigned in the interests of the country and students, and displayed moral courage. Even after he arrived inside the Lok Sabha, several BJP leaders closed in around Pradhan to mark their presence. Later, when the former minister was leaving the House after adjournment around 12.30 pm, he was seen walking alongside Congress veteran Jairam Ramesh and reminding the latter of their first meeting when Jairam was the MoS, Commerce, under the UPA regime.At one point in this conversation, Jairam, in an apparent reference to Pradhan’s resignation, was overheard saying, “It happens”.To this, the former minister’s instant rebuttal was, “Nothing happened. I am a street fighter. I am not an AC room activist.”All in all, while the Congress jeered Pradhan today, the BJP went all out to make a statement of support and solidarity for the party’s key election strategist amid buzz that he would soon land a major role in one of the election-going states.Battleground states UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa will go to elections in 2027 and Pradhan has earlier steered poll strategy in UP, which the BJP won in 2022.Sources said notwithstanding Pradhan’s ouster from the Cabinet, he remained a key component of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s election management team.Shah is learnt to have even visited Pradhan at the latter’s residence after he put in his papers as the Education Minister. Signals from Pradhan’s welcome in Parliament today also bore the Shah signature and were loud and clear — Pradhan may have departed from the Union Cabinet but remained a significant part of the organisation.In the next reshuffle of the BJP party structure, Pradhan is likely to bag a major spot.