Jadavpur University Students, BJP Activists Face-Off Over JNU In Kolkata

Jadavpur University students and BJP protesters clashed with the Kolkata police today as the two groups came to a near head-on collision in the city’s Sulekha junction.
JU students had marched to the bustling south Kolkata junction, in close proximity to their campus, to stop a BJP demonstration from marching past their university. Dramatic visuals from the spot showed the police lathi-charging nearly a hundred slogan-shouting students and BJP workers who tried to march on despite the cops trying their best to stop them. Putting up barricades to block both rallies did not help either.
This comes after a nearly 2-hour long face-off when the police stopped the BJP protest past Jadavpur University until students went to the junction to stop the march. JU, which has often held demonstrations in solidarity to any university marred by violence, held a number of protest marches across the city.
Several colleges across the country have been hit by unrest after the masked attack on students and teachers at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday evening. No arrests have been made so far in the case that left at least 34 injured in a horrifying attack that lasted over 3 hours.
JU students also burnt a BJP flag apparently in retaliation to the BJP burning a CPI (M) flag during the protests earlier.
The BJP protest was led by Anupam Hazra, a former Trinamool Congress MP who joined the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year.
The violence at the university, whose students have been actively supporting the protesters against the amended Citizenship Act, triggered a furore across the country with celebrities to political parties condemning the attack.