india

Updated: Dec 16, 2019 03:40 IST

Protests erupted on the campuses across the country against the police action on students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University on Sunday. Situation turned violent on Sunday night at the Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh after the students, reportedly agitated by Jamia crackdown, clashed with the police. By midnight, students of Moulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), in Hyderabad, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi and Kolkata’s Jadavpur University raised slogans against the Jamia incident.

The students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) also joined those of Jamia outside the police headquarters at Delhi’s ITO to protest the alleged police assault on students at the Jamia campus earlier in the day, when they were protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

In a show of solidarity with the Delhi varsity students, a group of students protested outside the BHU gates. “We protested against the CAA because it is against the Article 14 of the Constitution. The government should withdraw it. We are with the students of JMI and AMU who are raising voice against it,” said a student of BHU’s BA part one political science.

Dozens of students of the country’s only Urdu university in Hyderabad expressed solidarity with the Jamia and demanded action against the policemen who entered the campuses and resorted to baton-charge on students, reported news agency IANS.

At Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, around 50 students held a demonstration against the police crackdown on the students of Jamia Millia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University.

Amid protests against the CAA in Aligarh, Lucknow and Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has appealed for peace and harmony, saying the protests were instigated by vested interests. “Injustice won’t be done to anyone. The government is committed to the safety and security of all. None however would be allowed to take law in their hands,” said the chief minister in a statement.

The Delhi police said people agitating against the CAA set fire to buses and several other vehicles, following which they fired tear gas shells and lathi-charged the protesters to disperse them. The Jamia university said its students were not behind the violence, and that people from outside the campus were involved in the clashes with the police.

Jamia Millia Islamia chief proctor Waseem Ahmed Khan said the police entered the university by force and beat up staff members and students, who were forced to leave the campus.

The new citizenship law that favours non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.