Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and BJP leader JP Nadda sparred in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday over the police crackdown on student protesters.
Kharge raised the issue of a Delhi Police team’s attempt 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, “Democracy is not safe, people are not safe.”
Nadda, as Leader of the House, defended the police action in response, calling it “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 added that “any student who is into activism will have to face such a situation,” recalling his own arrest as a student activist during the Emergency.
The exchange follows the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march, when protesters linked to the Cockroach Janta Party marched from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament over alleged exam paper leaks.
The march turned confrontational after security personnel attempted to stop it, with reports of lathi-charge and tear gas shelling during the clashes.
The protests eventually led to the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on July 25, following weeks of demonstrations over exam-related concerns.
The Rajya Sabha exchange came as the Lok Sabha continued to debate the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, aimed at tightening 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)
