New Delhi: Over 100 people were detained near Jantar Mantar Tuesday after student and youth outfits held two separate marches towards the iconic site.Both demonstrations echoed similar slogans, including “Jantar Mantar wapas karo” and “Gyanesh Kumar isteefa do”. Those detained included two CPM MPs from Kerala: A A Rahim and V Sivadasan.Both marches took aim at CEC Gyanesh Kumar over alleged manipulation of voter rolls and a recent order issued by MHA denotifying Jantar Mantar as a protest site.Ayan, one of the protesters, said, “They have scared us so often that we have now stopped fearing them.” At around 1.35 pm, he and other members of Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) marched towards police barricades erected at Ferozeshah Road.Following an unsuccessful attempt to breach them, the students staged a sit-in — waving flags, raising slogans and holding up posters for 30 minutes — before security personnel detained them and took them to waiting buses.Rohan, a protester who came from Bengaluru to express solidarity with the agitation, said, “This protest is symbolic. You may think police are overpowering us, but we need to continue the struggle as there are millions who support us. One day, either the people or the oppressors will lose.” He hoped the latter would go down first.A few minutes after Ferozeshah Road was cleared out, members of Indian Youth Congress started marching from their office on Raisina Road towards Jantar Mantar. Walking towards security personnel, a protester said she wasn’t afraid of cops using force or detaining her as she was a “Gandhivaadi”.The protesters were allowed to march till Parliament Street police station, from where security personnel shoved them into buses to be taken away as prohibitory orders under Section 163 of BNSS were imposed there.An agitator said govt’s duty was to listen to people, not suppress them. Another said he was aware all of them would be detained, “But the dream for fair elections is ours. The dream for a better country is ours. If not us, who else will fight for our dreams?”
