Janjivan Bureau
New Delhi : Clash between AISA and ABVP students over cancellation of JNU student Umar Khalid’s talk at Ramjas College. Students from the college were supposed to march to Maurice Nagar police station, demanding action against the ABVP. They were allegedly stopped by members of the student group affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Amid sloganeering and fights, police were deployed to bring the situation under control but scuffles and demonstrations did not stop.
Students from Ramjas College and other Delhi University colleges say this is a “breach of freedom of expression”.
The ABVP on Tuesday disrupted an event for which Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid was invited, prompting the college to take back an invitation to another JNU student, Shehla Rashid.
The college was forced to call off the seminar after heated protests against Rashid and Khalid, who was accused of shouting anti-India slogans last year.
Members of the college student union and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) disrupted the event even before Khalid reached the campus.
Khalid was invited by the college’s Literary Society to speak in the afternoon on a subject related to his PhD, which he is doing from JNU. His topic at the seminar was The War in Adivasi Areas.
Khalid, a former member of the ultra-radical Democratic Students Union (DSU), was arrested last year on charges of sedition for his role in organising a rally at JNU to commemorate the anniversary of the execution of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Anti-national slogans were allegedly shouted at the event. Following his arrest, Rashid, then the vice president of the JNU union, emerged as the face of a stir, demanding the release of Khalid and fellow students jailed for the controversial event.
