By A face-off between Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and BJP’s JP Nadda played out in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday over police action against student protesters.
Kharge cited an attempt by a Delhi Police team to detain SFI leader Aishe Ghosh from the CPM’s AKG Bhavan office on Tuesday, calling it “very shameful” that police would “barge into a national party office and try to arrest.”
“I request you, people who have gone there unauthorised, they should be punished,” Kharge said, adding that “democracy is not safe, people are not safe.”
Nadda, as Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, defended the police action, describing it as “a very normal law and order situation that we have to understand,” and saying police had “acted according to the law and order situation.”
He said “any student who is into activism will have to face such a situation,” recalling his own arrest during student activism in the Emergency period.
The exchange stems from the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march, when protesters linked to the Cockroach Janta Party marched from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament over demands related to alleged exam paper leaks.
The march turned confrontational when security personnel attempted to halt it, with reports of lathi-charge and tear gas use during the clashes.
The protests culminated in the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on July 25, after weeks of demonstrations over exam-related grievances.
The Rajya Sabha exchange came as the Lok Sabha continued debating the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, meant to tighten laws against paper leak rackets.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor separately said during the bill debate that the legislation “only talks about punishment and fast-track courts,” and argued that provisions to prevent paper leaks in the first place were also needed alongside punitive measures.
The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, which proposes stricter penalties including imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to Rs 50 lakh for organised paper leak rackets, has been under discussion in the Lok Sabha through the week.
(Image: Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India (GODL-India), via Press Information Bureau)
