160 ABVP members protesting against JNU hostel fee hike detained, released later

One-hundred-and-sixty members of the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) were detained and taken to the Parliament Street Police Station after they tried to march towards Shastri Bhawan, that houses the HRD Ministry, in protest against hostel fee hike in Jawaharlal Nehru University, police said. The students' organisation began their protest march from Mandi House demanding scrapping of the high-power committee set up by the HRD Ministry following the agitation by JNU students against the hostel fee hike.

According to the RSS-affiliated students' organisation, Delhi University Students' Union President Akshit Dhaiya and ABVP's State Secretary Siddharth Yadav were am,ong those detained. The police said 160 protestors, including 12 women, were stopped midway and taken to the police station, after they jumped barricades. All the detained protestors were later released.

DUSU President Akshit Dahiya said, "We stand in unison with all sincere protestors and request the government to put in place a discrete regulatory body to independently judge the necessity as well as delineate the quantum of any fee hikes in future." A protester, Rajiv Mittal, said, "All we want is a complete rollback of fee hike. The temporary relief by administration is just a lollipop."

"Besides the rollback of hostel fee hike, we also want that some of the other issues pertaining to dress code, time restrictions on library hours must also be looked into," another protester said. ABVP Delhi Secretary Sidharth Yadav said, "We chose to organize a separate protest vis-a-vis JNUSU because of the latter's unseemly actions wherein they desecrated the university space and damaged public property, in addition to undercutting the momentum and sullying the spirit of the ongoing movement."

Manish Jangid, Secretary, ABVP, JNU, said, "While JNUSU has thrown in the towel, we continue to hold out. The manner in which the police authorities stymied our protest was undemocratic. We call for the HRD Minister to either unconditionally comply with our demands or resign forthwith." Gajender, a PHD scholar, said, "We have raised objections to certain rules imposed by the administration in the hostel manual. Earlier we didn't have to pay for electricity, water and sanitation but with this new rule, we will have to end up spending more money."

Another protestor said that their classes were affected due to the ongoing dispute. "We want the issues to be sorted at the earliest so that we can resume our classes," said Rakesh, a PHD scholar.

Students of JNU have been protesting for over three weeks against a draft hostel manual, which has provisions for a hostel fee hike, a dress code and curfew timings. The executive council (EC) of the university had announced a partial rollback of the fee hike, only for the students from the BPL category without any scholarships, but the students had dubbed it as an "eyewash". The EC had also removed the provisions for curfew timings and dress code from the draft hostel manual.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)