Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and BJP leader JP Nadda clashed in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday over the arrest of student protesters in recent weeks.
Kharge raised 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 in the House, adding, “Democracy is not safe, people are not safe.”
Nadda, responding as Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, defended the police action as “a very normal law and order situation that we have to understand,” 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 as a student activist during the Emergency period.
The exchange follows the July 20 ‘Sansad Chalo’ march, when protesters linked to the Cockroach Janta Party marched from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament over demands tied to alleged exam paper leaks.
The march turned confrontational after security personnel attempted to stop 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, aimed at tightening laws against paper leak rackets.
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)
