New Delhi, Jul 21: Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Tuesday demanded that the list of police personnel and protesters injured during the march to Parliament be made public and expressed apprehension that students may be turned into accused in FIRs, alleging that this happened during the 2020 Delhi riots as well.
Sibal said children should raise their voice peacefully in every city of the country, so that governments listen to them.
He also lashed out at Union minister J P Nadda over his assertion that a proposal came from the protesters to hold talks with the government and asked that when “our fasting children’s proposals” were known to all, was the government waiting to tear gas and lathi-charge them.
In the first direct contact between the Centre and the agitating Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Nadda on Monday held talks with two representatives of the outfit and assured them that the government leadership would hold internal discussions on their demands, after thousands of protesters tried to march to Parliament.
According to the CJP, the assurance came after its spokespersons Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das met Nadda, who acted as a government emissary, twice within two hours at the health minister’s residence. They submitted a memorandum listing their demands, including the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged examination irregularities.
Reacting to the development, Sibal said on X, “Nadda: ‘for the first time a proposal came from the protesters to hold talks with the government’. How arrogant!”
“Our fasting children’s proposals were known to all. What was the government doing? Watching and waiting to tear-gas and lathi charge them! Shameful!” the Independent Rajya Sabha MP said.
Later, addressing a press conference, Sibal said the victims of the paper leaks are also the victims of the lathi-charge, which is ironic.
“They wanted to have a conversation with the government and what did they get in return, a lathi-charge, injuries they received at the hands of the police. That is what they got in return for their pure emotions and hope that the government would listen to them. And a government that does not listen should not be listened to,” Sibal said.
The peaceful protest to ensure that the future of the children is safe should continue through completely non-violent means, he said.
“Children should raise their voice peacefully in every city of this country so that governments all over the country listen to them, listen to the families who have suffered on account of these paper leaks, listen to the fact that they have no future in this education system,” Sibal said.
The MP said his concern is that what happened in the 2020 Delhi riots, when the injured became the accused, will happen again in this case.
“The people targeted were kept in jail for no fault of theirs and some of them are still in jail,” he said.
Posing questions to the government, Sibal said the names of all those police personnel who were injured in the protest should be made public.
“In these circumstances, when children never had these lathis, never had anything with which they could attack anybody, when did they (police personnel) go to hospitals, what are the medico-legal reports and who have they named? This is necessary because they have said 100 have been injured. Newspaper reports say about 10 of them,” he said.
“I can’t go into them, but they should tell which police people were injured, who injured them and who perpetrated this violence,” he added.
Sibal also asked who brought the trucks with stones to the protest site, as well as the van that was dented. The former Union minister said such a thing had never happened during the UPA’s tenure and called for a thorough investigation.
“My worry is that slowly, FIRs will be lodged against whom they (police) want, as they did in the (case of the) Delhi riots. Then they will keep them in jail under the UAPA, to teach a lesson, not only to them, but also to their parents and families,” Sibal said.
“We want to know who were the children who were injured and what injuries they sustained, so that the truth emerges that they were treated in such an inhuman manner,” he said.
Several people were booked in relation to the February 2020 Northeast Delhi riots, which left 53 people dead and over 700 injured.
The first dialogue between the government and youth-led CJP came on a day when police cracked down on the protesters, using tear gas and batons to prevent them from marching towards Parliament.
More than 118 police personnel, including several senior officers, were injured and around 70 protesters were detained on Monday as the CJP’s “Sansad Chalo” protest march turned violent in the New Delhi area, police said.
According to a Delhi Police statement, around 60 protesters were injured during the protest.
