Clashes at Ramjas College after ABVP ruckus

New Delhi, Feb 22 (IANS) Clashes erupted between two student groups outside Ramjas College here 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 are 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.

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".

(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)