More than 110 students from four Left student organisations were detained by Bengaluru city police at Freedom Park on Saturday after they gathered to protest the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The students were planning to march from Freedom Park to the office of the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer, located a few hundred metres away. They said they were detained before the march began and while they were still inside Freedom Park, the city’s designated protest site.
Members of the All India Students’ Association, All India Students’ Federation, All India Democratic Students’ Association and Students’ Federation of India said barricades had been placed at both ends of the protest area. They said they had not crossed the barricades or moved towards the Chief Electoral Officer’s office when the police detained them and took them away in buses.
Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh said permission had been granted for the protest but not for the march to the electoral officer’s office. He said the students were taken into preventive detention for attempting to participate in the march.
The protesters were seeking the withdrawal of deletions from the electoral rolls, including 1.07 crore names reported at the draft stage as absent, shifted or dead. They also demanded the resignation of Mr. Gyanesh Kumar as Chief Election Commissioner.
AISA members initially said they were unable to establish where all the detained students had been taken. Protesters were transported in different buses, and students said they did not know whether they were being held at separate locations or at the same police station. They later said that some protesters had been taken to Chamrajpet police station and that all the detained students were released by 5 p.m.
The student organisations said hundreds of police personnel had been deployed and roads on both sides of Freedom Park had been barricaded to prevent the protesters from reaching the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer’s office. They condemned the action as suppression of the democratic right to protest.
AISA Karnataka also criticised the Congress-led Karnataka government, questioning its handling of dissent. The organisation said the Congress had opposed the Special Intensive Revision at the national level but was restricting a protest against the exercise in the State. The police’s position was that the approved permission covered the gathering at Freedom Park, but not the proposed march to the Chief Electoral Officer’s office.
