Cops have to act: Nadda defends police action on NEET protesters
New Delhi: Debate over the alleged police brutality on protesters at Jantar Mantar continued to rock Parliament on Wednesday, July 29. In the Rajya Sabha, while the Opposition insisted on a response from the Home Minister, Congress president Mallikarjuna Kharge alleged that “Those who hit students are roaming free.”
Responding to Kharge, senior BJP leader and Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda said that the Delhi Police action was to “maintain law and order”.
Accusing the Opposition of ‘politicising and sensationalising’ the police action, Nadda maintained that the police crackdown on student protesters during the Parliament March on July 20 was a “normal law and order situation”.
“I have been a student activist, and I was arrested several times in the classroom during the Emergency under Congress rule,” he said, adding that any student into activism would face such a situation.
The Opposition has been seeking a government response on the issue of the crackdown and the use of pellet guns in police action. Several students who have suffered pellet gun shots have claimed that security personnel fired at them. Meanwhile, police have also insisted that their personnel were attacked. The Delhi Police has, using face scans, identified over 900 people with criminal charges against them who were allegedly at the protest site.
Nadda initiated talks with CJPNadda’s outburst has raised many an eyebrow, considering he was the one who met a two-member delegation of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), initiating talks as protesters sat at Jantar Mantar and marched towards Parliament, demanding action over the NEET paper leak.
The CJP had then said that Nadda had sought some time, assuring them that he would hold talks with the government leadership over their demands, the foremost being the resignation of the then Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
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