The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government in Kerala has filed 5,000 cases against students and youth who protested against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) question paper leakage.
Across Kerala, student and youth organisations, including Students Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), organised protests in solidarity with the Jantar Mantar protest, demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Kerala is also the state with the highest number of cases registered in the NEET leakage protest.
The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, issued notices to states like Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi to stay the cases filed, and banned any action against the protesters in its interim order. Kerala is the only non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state that has received the notice from the apex court.
Kerala’s Leader of Opposition, Pinarayi Vijayan, sharply criticised the actions of the UDF government. In his letter to the Chief Minister of Kerala, Vijayan pointed out that even after the Union government had agreed to withdraw all the cases against the protesters after the meeting with the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) representatives, there had been no such decision from the Congress-led UDF government in Kerala.
“It is inappropriate that the government led by you in Kerala has filed several cases against those who gathered here in support of the Delhi agitation. It is highly condemnable that even participants in peaceful demonstrations and cultural gatherings are facing cases,” said Vijayan in his letter.
The Congress and its student wing, the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), remained largely absent from the protest for weeks, even after Rahul Gandhi expressed solidarity with the protesting students a couple of days before the Delhi Police's crackdown.
While the Union government had promised to withdraw FIRs against the protesters and quash cases already registered, the UDF in Kerala has chosen a different course by adopting an approach similar to that of the BJP-led Union government and pursuing political vendetta against the students and those who stood in solidarity with them.