Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and BJP leader JP Nadda clashed in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday over police action taken against student protesters in recent weeks.
Kharge raised the issue of a Delhi Police team attempting to detain Students’ Federation of India leader Aishe Ghosh from the CPM’s AKG Bhavan office on Tuesday, calling the action “very shameful” and saying police had “barge[d] into a national party office and tr[ied] to arrest.”
“I request you, people who have gone there unauthorised, they should be punished,” Kharge told the House, adding, “Democracy is not safe, people are not safe.”
Responding as Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, JP Nadda defended the police response, saying, “It was a very normal law and order situation that we have to understand,” and that “police acted according to the law and order situation.”
Nadda added that “any student who is into activism will have to face such a situation,” and recalled his own arrest as a student activist during the Emergency to argue that such consequences were not unusual.
The exchange comes against the backdrop of the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march, when protesters affiliated with the Cockroach Janta Party marched from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament over demands linked to alleged exam paper leaks.
The march turned confrontational after security personnel moved to stop the protesters, with reports of lathi-charge and tear gas shelling during the clashes.
The protests had culminated in the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on July 25, following weeks of demonstrations over exam-related grievances.
The Rajya Sabha face-off unfolded even as the Lok Sabha continued debating the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, aimed at tightening laws against paper leak rackets.
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, which proposes stricter penalties including imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to Rs 50 lakh for organised paper leak rackets, has been under discussion in the Lok Sabha through the week.
(Image: Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India (GODL-India), via Press Information Bureau)
