The students of Ram Lal Anand College (RLA) had organised a public meeting on the 14th of January 2020 against CAA-NRC-NPR which was allegedly disrupted by members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
On the 14th of January 2020, concerned students of the College had organised a public meeting outside the RLA gate. The event witnessed Sucheta De and Jitendra Meena as speakers. Manik Gupta, a second year student of History Honours from the College, and a member of All India Students’ Association (AISA) states that they had ensured to follow all the formalities, including getting permission from the Delhi Police.
He further goes on to describe how ABVP tried to disrupt the meeting, He says “Around an hour or half an hour before the public meeting, the President of our college who is affiliated with ABVP, Gulshan Kumar, started going class to class and telling people that the public meeting did not have any permissions and telling students that aap sabhi ko pitwana chahte hai ( They want you to get beaten up) and tried to discredit the public meeting.”
Manik also states that there were further attempts to derail the public meeting after it had begun. He states that during the meeting “South Campus ka saara ABVP aagaya” (All the ABVP members of South Campus came) and they started shouting slogans such as “DU ko JNU nahi banne denge” (We won’t let DU become JNU), “we support CAA”, and “ Delhi Police Zindabad”. He also states that that some ABVP members started disrupting the meeting by asking stupid questions to the speakers.
The organizers eventually had to tell Jitendra Meena to go back due to concerns over his safety because of the atmosphere of fear which had been created by the ABVP. The Public Meeting however still went on, despite the efforts of ABVP, with a preamble reading and singing of the National Anthem. Manik also alleges that he was threatened later by ABVP goons who told him “ab parcha bata toh peet denge” (We will beat you if you distribute pamphlets).
Siddharth Yadav, the State Secretary of ABVP was reached out for comments, but he refused for the same, citing that he did not have full knowledge of the situation and will update DU Beat later.
Gulshan Kumar, President of RLA Students’ Union stated on Manik’s claim “ From the morning Manik campaigned in classes and said it is a public meeting by the students. But they invited the national president of AISA. So it was just to fulfill the political agenda and misguide the students. I went into the classes to clarify that students union and the college administration is not involved in such kind of meeting. The students union wrote a letter to the SHO of South campus to maintain the peace. But by making the public meeting a political meeting the meeting was itself disrupted. Manik said the students of RLA were in the meeting and outsiders of ABVP came and disturbed the meeting but I have video evidence that students of RLA were in favour of CAA and the so called public meeting of AISA president was witnessed by outsiders.” He goes on to say that as an elected representative he believes in peaceful protests but his first responsibility is the safety of students. He also shows a letter as proof sent by the SU to the SHO to maintain peace on campus.
Feature Image credits: India TV
Prabhanu Kumar Das
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