Youth organisations backed by INDIA parties closed ranks on Monday to condemn the police crackdown on the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) following its “shirtless” protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the AI summit last month.
At a media conference on the sidelines of an ongoing satyagraha at the IYC headquarters, Fahad Ahmad, president of the Nationalist Youth Congress (Sharadchandra Pawar), said: “You have closed all the places of protest in this country.... Protests are meant to offend people in power.”
“Our country is not compromised. Our country’s Prime Minister is compromised. Our country is not Narendra Modi.... The next two years will be even more difficult because the most cruel face of the dictator is seen when he loses public support. The India Youth Front, which includes the youth wings of all INDIA bloc partners, will bring this movement (against the India-US trade deal and the police crackdown) to the villages of all districts of India,” he added.
Fourteen IYC activists, including its president Uday Bhanu Chib, were arrested for the summit protest. They were charged with criminal conspiracy, assaulting a public servant, unlawful assembly, rioting, promoting enmity between different groups, and imputations and assertions prejudicial to national integration.
Ten among the arrested, including Chib, have been granted bail.
Delhi High Court on Monday overturned a sessions court’s order staying the magistrate court’s decision to grant bail to Chib.
Anurag Nigam, representing the AAP-backed Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP), compared the police action against the IYC to that faced by the AAP top brass, who got a clean chit in the Delhi liquor policy case last week.
“Arvind ji (Kejriwal), Manish ji (Sisodia) and others were in jail for months, and now the court quashed the CBI case. They will do the same with Uday ji,” Nigam said.
“This is a message to the 60 crore youths of the country, that this cowardly government has taken away your employment, it has taken away your future, it has sold your dreams, and now it is ensuring that no youth in the country can raise their voice,” he added.
Ambedkarite activist and Congress MLA from Gujarat, Jignesh Mevani, participated in the IYC satyagraha on Monday.
He told The Telegraph that the IYC and Congress’s campus arm National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) have to take the “PM is compromised” message to every nook and corner of the country. “I hope this materialises soon, as people need to know that the PM is compromised and has been compelled to make the trade deal on account of the Epstein files,” he said.
The NSUI has held IYC-style “shirtless” protests on several campuses.
The Congress has demanded Union minister Hardeep Puri’s resignation over his emails to American financier and convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The party sees this as the reason behind India agreeing to duty-free American agricultural imports that would harm Indian farmers.
Harish Bala, national secretary of CPI-backed All India Youth Federation, said: “The AI summit, which brought shame to the nation, which was characterised by scientific socialism under Nehru’s leadership, has now become a mockery. Uday Bhanu Chib was arrested to divert attention from this.”
National secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League and former head of its youth wing, Asif Ansari, said the IYC protest was “not wrong at all”. “What is wrong is that the government of the day is taking decisions under the pressure of foreign governments,”
he said.