Leaders of the All India Students' Association (AISA) in Delhi have been detained by the Delhi Police today, June 30.
At 9.30 am today, police personnel from the Model Town Police Station placed Abhigyan Gandhi, President of AISA, Delhi, and Anjali Sharma, Secretary of AISA DU at their home. This detention took place mere hours before the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the campus for the university’s centenary celebrations.
Speaking to EdexLive, both Anjali and Abhigyan confirmed that they are being detained to allegedly “protect the peace of the campus” during the hours of the Prime Minister’s visit.
“At around 8.30 am, some of our comrades from AISA informed us that the police were enquiring about the address and whereabouts of AISA leaders in Vijay Nagar. When they reached our apartment, the sub-inspector told us that we had to be detained for the next couple of hours,” Anjali claims.
Detained on arbitrary grounds
The leaders went on to explain that the police refused to state a proper reason for detaining them. The police even refused to show them an official warrant for their detention, alleges Abhigyan. “We were only told that we were part of a list of suspicious individuals and that the police detained us on orders from higher authorities for the Prime Minister’s safety,” he adds.
“Despite telling the police multiple times that we were not guilty of any crime and asking them for what reason we are being detained, we were only blatantly told that we posed a threat to the Prime Minister’s security,” alleges Anjali. They further claim that the police gave the two of them a choice – either to accompany them to the police station or stay put at their home under police vigilance.
Currently, the leaders are still detained in their residences. “The police have been telling us that we would be free in an hour, but we have been detained since 9.30 am. We have no clarity as to when the police would leave our residence,” Anjali says.
Attempt to curb dissent, leaders say
According to the leaders, their detention is a clear move by the state’s machinery to curb opposition to the Prime Minister and his government’s policies.
Prior to the detention of the leaders, AISA had put up posters at multiple locations in DU before the Prime Minister’s visit, demanding answers to a series of questions. These questions focus on rising college fees, the exclusion of chapters on Ambedkar, Gandhi, gender, and caste from the syllabus, cuts in education funding, rising unemployment rates and expulsion of teachers from colleges.
These posters have thus been taken down by the university administration and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Abhigyan says, “Students are extremely dissatisfied with how they are forced to study unnecessary subjects under the Four Year Undergraduate Programmes (FYUP), and the privatisation of education under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The students are worried about the growing unemployment rates. It has become clear to us that the Prime Minister does not have an answer to our questions.”
Attendance mandatory
Further, the administration also stated that attending the event was compulsory attendance-wise and that wearing black clothes, usually a sign of protest, would not be allowed, students claim. The university also cancelled the holiday for Eid-al-Adha yesterday, June 29, for the Prime Minister’s visit.
The leaders also allege that AISA leaders were not allowed into the campus at Kirori Mal College and the students at the Miranda House College for Women are not allowed to exit or move around the campus. “While the Prime Minister wants to show that DU has received him with adoration, dissenting students and activists are being denied their agency to enter or exit the campus in dissent,” says Anjali.
In the meanwhile, AISA has sent a letter to the Subdivisional Magistrate of Delhi, marking the Station House Officer of Model House Police Station, demanding that the police present the order for the leaders’ detention, if any. Otherwise, they demanded that the detention be considered an illegal confinement, as well as a “breach of personal space and privacy.”
