Protesters, Police Clash Outside IIT-Madras Over Ban on Students" Group

Chennai:  The student protest outside the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, turned violent this morning with protesters clashing with the police.

Around 100 protesters have been detained. Some members of a local students’ group, the RYSF, were allegedly roughed up by the police. The media was not allowed inside the IIT Madras campus.

Protests have been on since last week, when the institute temporarily derecognised the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle – a group of around 20 students — for allegedly violating its guidelines.

As the matter became politicised — with DMK and VCK stepping in and the Congress blaming Union minister for human resources Smriti Irani — the protest spilled over to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata.

The IIT-Bombay formed its own study circle to show solidarity with the Ambedkar Periyar Group and students’ groups from other university held protests in the city.

The IIT Delhi, too, formed its own Ambedkar Periyar group, and IIT Kanpur created a Facebook page to register its protest.In Kolkata, Jadavpur University created a Facebook page in support of the student body.

Around 200 people were detained after yesterday’s protests in Chennai.

The institute claims the group had been using the IIT name without permission. But students claim they’ve been targeted for criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Centre’s policies.

Denying they had used the name of IIT or had links to banned organisations, the members of APSC demanded that the ban on them be revoked.