Protests end at Jantar Mantar
NEW DELHI: If the students’ protest held the Modi govt hostage for a week, its potency was amplified by the political class that blockaded the Parliament alongside.But the symphony was not perfect from the start as the anti-BJP bloc had two opposing streams. The one led by Congress viewed CJP with suspicion, haunted as it was by the spectre of the Anna Hazare agitation that became the nemesis of the Manmohan govt and was later found to have been orchestrated by RSS. But Left outfits and some regional parties backed CJP as the voice of the youth.When the like-minded parties met an hour before the start of the monsoon session Monday, the NEET protest competed with “Ayodhya donation scam” row as the plank to be espoused.Congress and SP argued that Ayodhya should be picked as the opening salvo against BJP. But a consensus emerged on taking up the “paper leak” protest first after a forceful push from other parties which argued that the opposition had to associate itself with the youth march to Parliament.
CJP Jantar Mantar Protest Updates
For Congress, which had been protesting against “paper leaks” for two years, the issue of political credit was also a consideration. The AAP background of CJP founders Abhijeet Dipke and others made many sniff a conspiracy. But barely two hours later, the police crackdown on young marchers ended all equivocation.All along, protesters were also actively courting political support. Activist Sonam Wangchuk, and later his wife Gitanjali Angmo, questioned Rahul’s absence from Jantar Mantar, even as SP’s Dimple and Akhilesh Yadav, Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray and son Aditya, NCP-SP’s Sharad Pawar, AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal and scores of others visited the venue. CPI (ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya and CPM’s M A Baby were among the first to lend support in early June.Post-crackdown, the gap kept closing as the controversy intensified, crowds continued to swell and the story went global.Amid scepticism about the newbie, Congress and opposition were assured by the fact that the Jantar Mantar stage of Dipke had been filled with student activists from the Left parties. It was evident in the way Rahul Saturday held a news conference with AISA activists to reiterate that protesters would not budge without the resignation of the education minister. It appeared to be a bid to queer the pitch for CJP, which was in talks with govt.In the end, as Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, the political class and the Jantar Mantar platform were together in hailing it as a victory for the young seeking accountability from the govt.
