ABVP rally sparks tension on Jadavpur university campus

Students stage counter demonstration near the campus

Police stop ABVP activists who were taking out a rally outside Jadavpur University campus in Kolkata on Monday.

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members took out a rally here on Monday, demanding action against those who “roughed up ABVP supporters on the Jadavpur University campus” last week.

Leftist student unions of the university and the ABVP have been at loggerheads for the past few days over the screening of Vivek Agnihotri’s film Buddha in a Traffic Jam .

The screening scheduled on May 6 ran into a controversy with leftist student unions protesting against it. This led to a ruckus on the campus and the film was screened on a football ground. The varsity authorities lodged a police complaint against ABVP activists for allegedly harassing women students.

The ABVP’s rally was a counter to the one held by the leftist student unions earlier this week.

Police deployed

Though there was large police deployment, tension started to rise when a section of ABVP supporters tried to break the barricades near the Jadavpur police station.

In a bid to prevent the ABVP students from entering the campus, the police set up barricades at three places on the route of the procession. The university students also staged a counter demonstration near the campus.

Slogans such as “Anti-national forces go away from JNU and JU,” and “stop anti-national politics in the name of tolerance” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai,” were raised by the protesters.

As the rallyists, carrying the national flag, started to scale the barricade near the police station, the police declared the gathering as “illegal” and urged the agitators to leave. There was a minor scuffle between the police and the protesters.

Students threatened

ABVP State president Subir Halder threatened to “chop off the legs of the leftist students” if they stepped out of the campus. “We will not allow anti-national activities here [at the University],” he said.

The students, on the other hand, warned of “active democratic resistance” if the protesters tried to barge into the campus.

On Sunday, Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das urged the ABVP to ensure that the rally did not disrupt the examinations scheduled on Monday.