Clashes erupted between two student groups outside Ramjas College on Wednesday, a day after the ABVP forced the suspension of an event to be addressed by JNU student Umar Khalid, jailed last year for allegedly shouting anti-national slogans.
Ramjas students had planned a march to the nearby Maurice Nagar Police Station demanding action against the activists of the RSS-affiliated ABVP but were stopped by ABVP activists who surrounded the college.
A large number of policemen and policewomen were deployed at the college but the clashes continued.
"People from the ABVP were not allowing students who had come to attend a protest march to leave the college," Kawalpreet Kaur, president of the All India Students Association's (AISA) Delhi University unit, told IANS.
#WATCH: Clash between AISA and ABVP students over cancellation of JNU student Umar Khalid's talk at Delhi's Ramjas College. pic.twitter.com/YD15j8dMWr
— ANI (@ANI_news) February 22, 2017
On Tuesday, a large group of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad students disrupted the first session of a two-day seminar at Ramjas College on Indian tribals — a subject on which Khalid is writing his PhD thesis.
The ABVP, which dominates the students union in Delhi University, raised slogans denouncing Khalid as an "anti-national" and forced the organisers to suspend the day's event on Tuesday.
Khalid was among the students booked for sedition for allegedly raising anti-national slogans at the JNU on February 9 last year.
"I was on my way to Ramjas College when I was told the event was disrupted by the ABVP. Organisers told me to come from a different route but I still could not make it," Khalid told IANS on Wednesday.
He said the Wednesday march was not about him but about the "democratic space of the university".