Top Congress leaders have slammed the Centre for the arrest of the party’s youth wing chief after a day-long questioning on Monday in connection with the “shirtless” protest at the venue of the AI summit in the capital.

A former Indian Youth Congress (IYC) president said internal politics had prevented it from taking a more militant stance on the arrest.

Uday Bhanu Chib, the national president of the IYC, is the eighth person to be arrested for the protest at the summit last week against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the US trade deal. Police have called it a “deep-rooted conspiracy” and booked them for criminal conspiracy, assaulting a public servant, unlawful assembly, rioting, promoting enmity between different groups, and imputations and assertions prejudicial to national integration.

A Congress delegation led by Ajay Maken on Tuesday submitted a memorandum to Delhi lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena, seeking “restraint and proportionality in enforcement” of the law.

Rahul Gandhi wrote on X: “The arrest of Youth Congress President Uday Bhanu Chib and other IYC comrades for bringing this truth before the country is proof of dictatorial tendencies and cowardice...”

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the IYC workers had “boldly confronted” the Modi government.

Current and former IYC leaders this newspaper spoke to could not recall the last time a national head of the sword arm of India’s oldest party had been arrested.

A former IYC president told The Telegraph: “Nobody had the guts to do this to a Youth Congress president, even when we were not in power…. There seems to be a loss of vitality in the organisation after internal elections were introduced (in 2007-08). Activists are too busy fighting each other to fight the BJP.”

The IYC on Tuesday held a satyagraha against the arrest, on the lawns of its office on Raisina Road. In the evening, they attempted to march towards Parliament, but were stopped at the police barricade.