JNU row: Left parties hold protest in Jammu

Left parties today held a protest demonstration here over police action against JNU students and demanded the release of those arrested and the withdrawal of the sedition case against them.
Led by CPI(M) leader and Kulgam MLA Mohd Yousuf Tarigami, workers of his party and CPI demonstrated at Press Club here against police action in the JNU case.
The protesters raised slogans against the "hate campaign" targeting students and Left parties. They charged that BJP wants to capture universities and run them like RSS shakhas, saying that the attack on students and journalists at the Patiala House court complex in Delhi demonstrates the designs of the party and its affiliates.

The protesters wanted to hold a march in the city but police prevented them.
BJP workers are "openly threatening democracy" and the right to debate and dissent thereby weakening the very foundations of our constitutional rights, the protesters said while demanding the immediate release of all JNU students who have been arrested following a protest on their campus against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru where anti -national slogans were allegedly raised.
The protesters also called for an end to harassment of Kashmiri students at various universities and raised slogans against "encroachment of universities" by police authorities.

Abdul Rehman Takroo and Sham Prasad Kesar, CPI and CPI(M) leaders, respectively, addressed the protesters and pledged to carry forward the message of brotherhood and tolerance in J-K.

Tarigami underlined the necessity of broader mobilisation against "RSS and its other affiliates".
"Whatever the BJP-led government is doing is fraught with serious consequences. The RSS campaign is deliberately designed to polarise the situation," he said, adding that it is "time that the Left and democratic forces unitedly resisted the onslaught of communalism".