A day after attacks on students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), allegedly by supporters of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her solidarity with the students and sent a Trinamool team to JNU.
“Our stand is very clear. We are absolutely with the students. I appeal to all my student brothers and sisters to be united and work together and fight the battle together,” she said.
However, the four-member Trinamool team, comprising former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi, Rajya Sabha MPs Manas Bhuniya and Vivek Gupta and Lok Sabha MP Sajda Ahmed, was not allowed to enter the campus. The team staged a sit-in outside the JNU gates.
“Many representatives of other political parties have been allowed to go in; but they have specifically targeted us and prevented us from entering. That means the administration is scared of Mamata Banerjee.…They [those who attacked the students] had come wearing masks. Terrorists wear masks. Perhaps if we wore masks then the police would not have stopped us, and would have allowed us to go in,” said Dinesh Trivedi.
Mamata Banerjee said that “a fascist surgical strike” was being launched on democracy in the country. “Democracy is being attacked in such a dangerous and pre-planned manner. Anybody voicing dissent is called a Pakistani or labelled an enemy of the state. Such a thing has never happened in Hindustan before…See the situation in JNU, AMU, IIT, and even Vishwa Bharati,” she added.
The attack on JNU students has caused widespread outrage across West Bengal, with student organisations and political parties, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress, taking out protest rallies in Kolkata and various districts.
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