Indian Youth Congress (IYC) national president Uday Bano Shib has been arrested by Delhi Police in connection with the ‘shirtless protests’ organized by IYC members at the AI Impact Summit venue in the national capital last week.
This comes a day after Delhi Police announced on Monday that it had made the fifth arrest in connection with the AI Summit protest. The fifth person they arrested has been identified as Jitendra Yadav who has been detained from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
These arrests come after some Indian Youth Congress (IYC) workers entered the AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam last week on Friday, February 20, and staged shirtless protests at the exhibition hall. They walked around wearing T-shirts with slogans criticizing the government over the India-US trade deal.
Later, security forces removed the demonstrators from the place.
While the youth wing of the Congress received a lot of flak over the protest at the event that hosted prominent figures from across the world, the World Youth Commission defended the demonstration and said that the “peaceful demonstration is not anti-India”.
“Opposing the government is not ‘anti-India’ and it is our right,” Indian Youth Congress (IYC) national general secretary Shesh Narayan Ojha said on Monday.
“Some of our leaders protested peacefully at the AI summit. The Center and the BJP are trying to peddle propaganda that this was ‘anti-India’. As far as I understand, a peaceful demonstration is not ‘anti-India’. By calling anything against the government ‘anti-India’, can they escape from these issues? The message of the protesters was clear that the Prime Minister has been exposed,” news agency ANI quoted Ojha as saying.
“The Youth Congress protested against this in several states, but the police attacked and used water cannons. At the national level, we protested at Jantar Mantar and our leaders were arrested. They want to crush all opposition to the government. Opposing the government is not ‘anti-India’ and it is our right. When Rahul Gandhi raised the issue in Parliament, he was silenced. Finally, he spoke in Parliament about the deal,” he added.
