New Delhi: Anger at the leaked question papers for Staff Selection Commission (SSC) exams bubbled over on Saturday, as protesting students hit the streets and clashed with Delhi police personnel here.
What was supposed to be a sit-in protest at Parliament Street burst into a spontaneous march through Connaught Place during the afternoon, with SSC aspirants visibly tired of speeches, slogans and songs going on since morning.
Shouting for justice, almost 700 to 800 students marched through the inner and outer circle of Connaught Place. When the police halted them at Janpath, a brief clash ensued, with some protesters running away and some charging the police line.
A statement by the police in the evening said that 207 people had been detained and legal action had been initiated against them.
The SSC exams are held for all government group B postings, be it positions across the central government and its various ministries, the police forces, etc. They are of supreme importance to lakhs of aspirants across the country. The current protest starred end of February this year when news spread that the papers for the examination held between 17 and 21 February had been leaked.
“This is nothing new,” said Nitant, an aspirant from Delhi, and Sardar Singh, from Allahabad. “Papers have been leaking from 2013 and it's only getting worse.”
The aspirants said that since the exam went online the scale of cheating had only increased.
“We’ve been preparing for exams for almost two and a half years,” said Gayatri Singh, originally from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, who has been studying in a coaching centre in Allahabad for as long.
Allahabad has emerged as a major coaching hub in north India. Hence the massive presence of students from Allahabad in Delhi on Saturday, along with those from Rajasthan and Bihar.
After protesting in front of the CGO Complex in Delhi throughout March, the protesters were in no mood to be polite and calm. They marched despite the pleas of organisers to stay put, to not risk police action and to not break “student unity”.
For hours the organisers of Yuva Halla Bol, as the protest was called, managed to keep the student crowd sitting, promising a response from the government for their demands. By 3pm, the crowd that no such response was forthcoming.
In anger and discontent, the already fractured movement swept out of Parliament Street. Not before dramatically tossing packets of the water and a few slippers at the organisers who were left haplessly gaping on the stage.
One of volunteers, Hemanth Kumar from Bihar, claimed to be part of the core organising team. “The team is formed by people who were protesting regularly at the CGO Complex. I now recognise who are sincere protesters and who are not,” he said.
However, he admitted that Swaraj India, Yogendra Yadav’s political outfit, was supporting the protest.
This involvement, be it Yadav’s or unions from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was a point of discontent. When one speaker tried to extol the virtues of JNU, she was immediately shouted down by the crowd. “Where was JNU when we were protesting all month?” shouted some men. The protest, they demanded, could only and only be about SSC, not about other parties politicking.
“We need to do something big,” said Nitant, who was trying to fashion himself as a leader of the faction that marched. “We’re ready to be lathi-charged, ready to block traffic and stop metros.”
“But this has been going on too long,” he added.
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