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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBy: Milonee Mishra<\/span>NEW DELHI: Amid the relentless humidity of a Delhi morning, a woman battling liver cancer and kidney failure sat on the dusty pavement at Jantar Mantar, wrapped in a dark shawl and holding a clear medical drainage bag.She is Babitanjali Kar. Not a political worker or a local resident, but a mother who travelled over 1,200 kilometres from Koida in Odisha\u2019s Sundargarh district.At Jantar Mantar, beside a pile of travel bags and a suitcase on a yellow-painted curb, Kar finds herself fighting two of the toughest battles of her life. One is internal: a diagnosis of liver cancer and kidney failure that has her undergoing treatment at Mumbai\u2019s Tata Memorial Hospital<\/a>.The other is civic: to be part of a relentless, round-the-clock protest over the national examination crisis. Through the dark hours of night and into the damp heat of morning, she remains seated beside her son.The demands of the journey and protest are nearly as draining as the illness she is battling. After boarding a train from Odisha, Kar and her son reached Delhi at 5 pm on Saturday.Following a brief rest, they joined the sit-in by 10 pm. The toll of travel and the gruelling conditions on the ground hit her almost immediately. As food and water restrictions tightened at the protest site, Kar fainted on the pavement.Fellow demonstrators and volunteers rushed to her aid with critical medication and a meal, after which she stabilised. By Sunday morning, as the protest showed no signs of slowing, she insisted she was feeling fine, her resolve unbroken.\u201cEver since I was a child, I have loved helping people,\u201d Kar said, her voice steady despite visible fatigue.A native of Odisha, she expressed deep disappointment with Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan<\/a>, who hails from her home state, over what she described as an \u201cinstitutional collapse\u201d.Asked why she had joined the protest, Kar said she carried no personal motive or private agenda. Yet her message was one of fierce empowerment for parents across the country.\u201cIf I, as a mother in this condition, can step forward, then a thousand other mothers can and should do the same,\u201d she said.\u201cI do not care even if I die here today. I will close my eyes knowing I drew my last breath fighting for the future of lakhs of students,\u201d she added.<\/div>\n