Civil Services aspirants, who had clashed with the police in Mukherjee Nagar and Gandhi Vihar on Thursday night, tried to take their protest to Parliament on Friday morning, but were stopped by the police and later detained.
According to the police, over 235 protesters were detained at the Parliament Street police station as a preventive measure. Students had started gathering at Rail Bhawan roundabout and near Parliament around 11 a.m. and started shouting slogans against the Union Public Service Commission. They were soon taken into preventive custody by the police as Section 144 has been imposed in the New Delhi area due to the ongoing Parliament session and, therefore, holding protests are illegal.
“We detained 235 students protesting in different places, including near the Parliament and Rail Bhawan,” said Additional Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, S.B.S. Tyagi. No case has been registered as yet.
The police had also asked the Delhi Metro to shut down Central Secretariat and Udyog Bhawan metro stations from 12-45 p.m. to 3 p.m. Through this measure, the police claimed to have restricted the number of students coming to Parliament for protest.
The protesters claimed that the current format of examination discriminates against those students who are not proficient in English.
“We don’t want to come on to the streets and get beaten up by the police like criminals, we just want to raise our issue with the government, but no one is willing to talk to us. The government had assured that it will not conduct exams unless our issue is sorted, but they issued admit cards on Thursday. This is extremely unfair. They are going back on their promise,” said a UPSC aspirant protesting near Parliament.
Police officers, however, denied using any force on the protesters and said they detained the students as part of their preventive action.
Samajwadi Party leader Choudhary Munawwar Saleem and Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh Dharmendra Yadav also came to the Parliament Street police station to show support for the protesting UPSC aspirants, who have been demanding that the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) be scrapped.
